It takes a village

Happy Valentines' Day! To celebrate the Hallmarktastic holiday, we invited a bunch of people over to the house to check out the new place and engage in some voluntary labor on our behalf. We had a cast of seeming thousands and a lot got done, thanks to all their hard work. My mom also flew in from FL for the long weekend to help us with the house.

The Cast of Characters:
Powell brothers Eric and Nathan; Nathan's lovely GF Jaricia; friends Jeanie, Mike, Mike's daughter Alyssa; Bryan's cousin Michelle, husband Matt, sons Noah and Sam (4 wks old!); my super-awesome friend from grad school Casey, and my mom!

The many accomplishments included:

• a first coat of paint in the living room, dining room and cat-pee closet (our affectionate nickname for the main (only) downstairs closet, which appears to have doubled as a cat box for the previous tenant) - thanks to Jeanie, Jaricia, and Michelle)
• scraped up nearly all of the goo off of the hardwood floors upstairs (a tedious job that was rocked by Nathan, Matt, Mike, Jaricia and Eric)
• raked up approximately 400 cubic yards of leaves from the backyard, which made a huge difference (thanks to the brothers Powell)
• removed the hardware and gorgeous glass doorknobs from our awesome original wood doors (thanks to our Director of Restoration Services, Casey B.)
• took downthe wire shelving and pulled up the cat pee carpet from the cat pee closet (thanks Eric)
• hard-core cleaned the kitchen and downstairs bathroom - thanks to my mom. Cleaning is her unique (and apparently non-genetic) expertise. The kitchen cabinets look 250% better than they did before her elbow grease.

We kicked butt today, thanks to everyone's help!