Hitting a Wall (or 19 doors and some moulding?)

Today was the day:  spray all of the basement doors!  Our kind framer/finish contractor offered us the use of his sprayer so we were saved the hassle and cost of renting.  However, the amount of free time, daylight, and sunshine that we had was enough to put us in a bind.  Here is a record that I made of that experience:

I went to Hannah's rainy soccer game early that morning and came back after Tyler left to coach Drew's game.  He got a flat tire on the way home.  Then he got to work taking all the basement doors off of their hinges and carrying them outside because it was time to paint the doors and the weatherman said no rain from 12-5pm.  Partway in to the set-up we were both grumpy, overwhelmed, and trying to figure out how to make it work (we were so sleep-deprived).  Our next door neighbor came over smiling and saying she wanted to see our basement.  She surmised our difficulties and so kindly brought us a tub full of tarps, duct tape,and helped us figure out a system.  She was heaven-sent!  ***I can not stress how true that is.  We had hit a wall, and didn't know how we were going to make things work.  Alisia was our angel that day; she helped us get going and gave us the encouragement and boost that we needed***  Once we got going things went well and by 3pm we could send Tyler out car shopping with Lisa.  When he got back we did a fast second coat.  The doors turned out very well - Tyler has gotten to be great with the paint-sprayer.  He carried all the dry stuff back downstairs and felt so good that we started on the baseboards.  We were fighting for daylight with coat two and opted to leave them out in the driveway to cure.  Callie & I finished up the last of the white paint on her one wall and closet, Tyler picked Hannah up from a party and we called it a night at about 11pm.  We woke up to wet baseboards the next morning - it had rained again, but by the time we left for church the sun was shining.  As we got out it started raining AGAIN so the kids helped me dash around to moved everything into the garage and sop it all up.  I'm not too happy about how they turned out between painting in the dark & getting rained on so I think we are done spraying and I will do all the casing by hand once it is installed.  Overall, though, we were really blessed and thank goodness for rain in this parched desert.

It's a day that I am glad is past, but I do want to remember how much Alisia's actions blessed our lives.  It probably seemed pretty small to her and took just a few minutes of her day, but it made all the difference for us.

And here is how the little girl entertained herself during our painting spree, because in the midst of all of this we also happen to be the parents of six adorable children: