Taxes, painting, decluttering, and projects... ugh!

This has been quite a week. It's been a while since I've felt this frazzled with life. I've got so many balls up in the air, I'm getting a bit tuckered out. At least I was able to knock off one major thing off my to do list...

Flippin, flippity, flip, flip TAXES. No, we didn't get ours filed or anything. I was just finally able to print off my employees W-2 and the W3 forms after a long week of being past due and completely stumped as to how to get these forms printed without spending a million dollars. I'm not going to bore anyone with the details, but I will say that Quickbooks simple start payroll is a flippin rip-off, nobody in Utah county has a typewriter, and I ended up having to spend $40 for a program that would allow my printer to print the forms without a big, flippin, RED, "DEMO" printed down the middle. So, now I can give Tia her w2 tomorrow (a week+ late) and send in the necessary forms and necessary money to the necessary people.

We've been painting our upstairs this week. It looks AWESOME! And just for the record... painting is a royal pain in the (you know what)(I'd say "ass" but it's Sunday). But taking the extra time to tape well and use painters caulk has made a HUGE difference and it looks super-de-duper!

We're also making some headway with installing our 2nd bathroom. There is now a big hole in the concrete... one made in order to locate the drain, which apparently was brilliantly placed under the WALL. Idiot builders. We also have the initial wiring/electrical all ready to go and the framing ready for drywall. We're going to buy the tub/shower unit tomorrow and have it installed by a plumber on Tuesday. Hopefully, we can then get the drywall completed this week as well, and move on to the floor, sink/toilet install, paint, and fixtures. I'm so excited to be getting this all done! It does mean, however, that our house has been in a complete state of CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome) since all these projects began. We're decluttering everything, and clearing out excess furniture as well. We were able to take a truck and minivan full of crap to DI yesterday and it's so liberating!! One room at a time, this place is starting to look pretty good... or at least better.

So this next week, I'll be praying for continued energy to just keep plugging along on that monstrous to do list. I'm hoping I don't burn out too quickly.

A new potty training trick for Charlie

Today we tried a different trick for Charlie and his potty training. This process has been so different for him than it was for our other two boys. While he's not nearly as old as Andy was when he was ready, Charlie is months and months behind where Canon was.

We've tried a bunch of different things to try and motivate Charlie... starting with the basic and simple stuff (ie. bribing him with M&M's, toys, 'big boy' underwear, Santa gifts, etc.) with no avail. When you ask Charlie if he's a big boy or a baby, he says, "I'm just Charlie!" Which is oh, so true!

Today, I stayed home sick from work (I basically can't inhale, I'm so congested... which sucks). We were also painting the house and so I knew we'd be home all day long. Charlie is motivated to wear underwear, but doesn't have the initiative to go potty when necessary. He said he wanted to wear his Lightning McQueen undies today, so knowing I'd be distracted, I set my phone's alarm to go off in an hour to remind me to have him go potty. When the alarm went off, Charlie was in the room and he thought someone was calling me. In a spark of brilliance, I told him Lightning McQueen was calling for him to ask if his underwear was dry and if he needed to go potty. Charlie played along with me and told McQueen that he would go potty right now.

So he went. And we proceeded to stay dry all day with alarms going off at longer intervals! Charlie would talk to Lightning and agree to go potty (even this is a big step). At one point in the afternoon, he got soaked playing outside in the pool of water in the neighbors sandbox. We changed his pants and underwear (He chose the Wall-E ones) and from then on, Wall-E was calling him everytime the alarm went off again. Unfortunately, at the last alarm at 8:00 tonight, Charlie did NOT have a good report for Wall-E because he had gone poo in the Wall-E underwear :( Booo!! Thankfully it was an easy cleanup, but so frustrating! This #2 potty training has been tough-tough-tough! He still wants to go and hide instead of using the potty.

So, we'll try it again tomorrow. Paul is willing to give it a go, since he's the one who will be home with Charlie. We're hoping Charlie will be motivated to stay dry ALL day long so he can get another train car for his GeoTrax set! It may be a while, but I've got my fingers crossed that this trick may work!