How do you spell excitement? Carpet Installation!

Yes, our new carpet is finally installed in the house. After months of deciding "should we or shouldn't we," we finally ordered the carpet a couple of weeks ago and it was finally installed over two LONG days last Friday and this Monday. We had the dining room, study, 3 bedrooms upstairs and the stairs and hallway replaced.

After hauling all the furniture from one room to the next and back, we are glad to have this project behind us. Plus, I never knew carpet installation could be so messy! Perhaps it is the carpet, we replaced the old berber with a new frieze style. It looks great, but their are tiny shreds of the frieze everywhere.

So here is our dilemma. The installer was great. Very polite and talkative - father of 2 small girls the same age as Carter and Logan. He worked his tail off and probably lost about 5 lbs of sweat in our house. However, he also left dozens of scratches and marks on the paint on all four walls of our master bedroom. I understand that the red, flat paint is very prone to marks....but it was a pain having to go back and re-paint all the walls. So do we call Home Depot and complain....knowing that it may indirectly hurt this nice guy's future contracting assignments with them, or just let it go. Thoughts? My vote is let it go and move on.....

Dining Room Before (left) and After (right):


All the junk from the boys bedrooms stacked in our master bedroom:

Roger & Karen - 45th Wedding Anniversary

This weekend we celebrated Roger and Karen's 45th wedding Anniversary. Congratulations on an amazing journey through life together.

For the sentimental side of the family: "Love is a symbol of eternity. It wipes out all sense of time, destroying all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end." ~Author Unknown

For the humorous side of the family: "Infatuation is when you think he's as sexy as Robert Redford, as smart as Henry Kissinger, as noble as Ralph Nader, as funny as Woody Allen, and as athletic as Jimmy Conners. Love is when you realize that he's as sexy as Woody Allen, as smart as Jimmy Connors, as funny as Ralph Nader, as athletic as Henry Kissinger and nothing like Robert Redford - but you'll take him anyway." ~Judith Viorst, Redbook, 1975

Describe your perfect day…

For some people, their perfect day would be a relaxing day at the beach. For others, it would be a lazy afternoon on the golf course. For my wife - it would be defined as "coupon bonanza." Sara's ideal day happened this morning when she was able to utilize a .30 cent off per gallon coupon at the gas station. To make her life even better, she was able to utilize it on our Pilot as I coasted into the gas station on fumes after our trip home from Duluth - hence, maximizing the coupon value.

Total save: 18 gallons x .30 = $5.40

Yes, Sara is in heaven! Now I know the secret to keeping her happy for the next 11 years of our marriage. For more coupon obsessive savings, please feel free to reach out to Sara.

UPDATE: Annual Mayfield BBQ

Quick update - the wife had a great idea this weekend to ask each family to bring a non-perishable food item to the BBQ on Saturday, August 29. Please feel free to donate as much or as little as you would like - we will take care of packaging it up and transferring it to the place of greatest need.

Thanks for your generosity!

This is the post that will never end....

Shawn went a little crazy with the digital camera tonight.

Mid-summer update on the gardens.

1. Tomatoes are doing great. We have (3) varieties this year: Roma, Cherry, and Super Something or Another. The Cherry plant is a dwarf (less than 12 in) but has over 50 green tomatoes on it. Each plant has lots of tomatoes - now if only the weather could get over 70 degrees they may be ready to eat. The plant in the first picture that is taller than Logan is snap peas.

2. Logan's flower pot. This spring Logan bought a couple packs of flower seeds and mixed them all in a flower pot. He is responsible for watering them each day. They are doing great - hard to tell from the picture but they are taller than Logan - curious to see them when they flower.

Earlier this spring we cleaned up the fire pit we built in the woods a couple of years ago. Shawn has been keeping up with clearing the path and the boys have made it a weekly tradition to roast smores and have a bonfire.

Random pictures of the boys enjoying their favorite activity - bike riding! I think they would sleep with their bikes if they could. It is great living on a dead-end so the traffic is minimal.

Mark Your Calendar - Annual Mayfield BBQ

Happy Birthday Shawn

The joke of this birthday is that 35 is half way to 70 - very funny! Not sure if that makes me feel old or young.

Sara and I celebrated the special day with a round of golf in the afternoon; grandma closer watched the boys for a couple of hours. What is more relaxing than playing golf with no children. We then opted for a meal at home - with the craziness of summer it seems like the last quiet meal we have enjoyed at home was weeks ago. We then had some friends over for cake and ice cream to finish the day off. Now comes the real challenge for my coupon-obsessive wife...how do we use all those "free" birthday coupons before they expire. The list includes:

-Caribou (done - 2x)
-Red Robin (tonight's dinner)
-Culver's
-Meal in a Cup (done)
-Timberlodge
-Cold Stone

I think that is the list - maybe I am missing one or two. For all those other coupon OCD types, email Sara and she will set you up. I guess she has a new website that generates all the freebies available in your area on your b-day.

Other happenings in the Mayfield house this past week/upcoming week:
-Happy Birthday Ewen.....thanks for the amazing party!
-Shawn is in San Fran again this week (Tuesday pm-Thursday)
-Next weekend we are going to VLM's 50th reunion
-The garden is exploding with green beans, snap peas, and cucumbers (pictures coming shortly)
-Boys are doing great! Logan has been so tired the last couple of days due to all the excitement in the neighborhood that he can barely stay awake after dinner. On Saturday he crashed about 6:50pm.
-Went to the zoo on Saturday to check out the opening of the new playground...highly recommend

Have a great week!

Happy 4th of July!

Here are some pics of our long weekend. We split our time between home and the cabin. One of our annual traditions is to go strawberry picking at a farm about 10 minutes from our house - Carter ate his way through the patch. Logan's friend Adi was in the row next to us.

Sara's sister Amy organized the first annual Mattson cousin's 4th of July relay races at the cabin.

65 Minutes

What can you accomplish in approximately 65 minutes? In our lives: average commute to work, short church service at Hosanna!, good workout at the Health Club....and as of today, out-patient surgery for tubes.

I knew tubes were considered minor surgery, but it almost appears that surgery has become an auto-body repair shop....pull in, get your part fixed, and pull out as soon as possible. From the time we finished our registration at the hospital this afternoon for Logan, it was only about 65 minutes for the anesthesia, surgery, recovery time, mandatory purple Popsicle, and discharge. Obviously, this round of tubes was MUCH easier than the last when we combined tonsils and adenoids.

Logan did great, he took the anesthesia (cotton candy flavor) very well! Dad still has nightmares of vomiting for 2 days straight after his series of childhood tubes - grandma closer still remembers as well. After the surgery we went home, watched "Antz," then Logan was out riding his bicycle and chasing the neighbor boys around 90 minutes later.

Happy Fourth of July!