Kitchen news and a mini vacay

I just got off the phone with the dude who ordered my flooring.  It turns out the company is closing, and we may not get that flooring that I already paid (an arm and a leg) for, which happens to be a match to the rest of the flooring in the house, which is no longer printed. Drat! Do these things always happen on Mondays?

Let me back up though.
I'm getting a new kitchen!!
I am beyond excited.

We ahem, yes we (hey, I tore out one 12 inch wall cabinet!) are doing it ourselves, so its really slow going. I'm tired of having no sink, but I've waited 3 years for this renovation so it will be worth it in the end!

Dean took a couple days off work to have a solid 3 days to tackle the cabinets.  He didn't get as far as he thought he would (typical remodel story, right?!).  To be fair, I waited until he had already started ripping out old cabinets to say "oh, and I want these outlets and outlet covers to be white (not to mention GFCI and up to code)".  That ended up taking half a day. So I'll take the blame there!

Life got busy after that work weekend and we've been living with it like this for a past few weeks.  We were waiting for our trip down to Mesa for a cousin's wedding so we could run to nearby IKEA for the countertops and the island cabinets.

My five fish. They take after their Dad.

How I keep Loretta quiet at 7am in a hotel room so the other kids can sleep in.

We had a fun and relaxing quick weekend down in the valley of the sun.  The wedding was lovely, the kids swam for hours in the hotel pool both Saturday night and Sunday morning, AND I got Ikea drawer bases in the finish I wanted despite them being out of stock in every other cabinet base and every other configuration.

Now that we have the 3.4 hundred IKEA boxes in our garage, we can move forward!
Seriously, guys, does date night get any better than pulling out the screw drivers and umpteen flat boxes and saying "lets do this"!  Assembly is the biggest pain, but I like their prices and product, so I'll take it!

If you are looking for me this coming week, I'll be sitting on the living room floor surrounded by boxes.
Wish us speedy luck; I can't wait to have a sink again AND I can't wait to show you the final result!