It’s October! October has been a busy month, but what month hasn’t been, really. So it’s been awhile since there’s been an update of much substance. So, while my family answers the door to greet and treat Halloween visitors in full costume, I thought I would take a few minutes (or 60) and update the world on the goings on in the Grady Household.

Adoption - Complete

I don’t have to restate how much work and waiting it’s been to complete this, our second adoption. It’s been long. This past Friday, though, we hit a big milestone. Mireille had her day in court, and she is now officially adopted in the United States, meaning she if officially a Grady! I wish that meant we were all done! But alas, this is yet another milestone. It marks our ability to complete more paperwork, and pay out more money for interesting new bureaucratic processes. But, it is a reason to celebrate, at least for the fact that this part of the process has come to a close.

Home Improvement - Door Edition

Our big project for the end of the year was to be exterior doors. Last year we replaced the patio door leading to the actual patio. This year we meant to install a new front door, a new patio door leading to the deck, and the fire door between the house and the garage. About 2 months ago we ordered all three from Home Depot when they were having a sale, which they seem to have almost as often as Kohls… Last Thursday we finally got a call from Home Depot asking us if we wanted them to deliver the doors, since they had been sitting there for over a month!!! Thanks Home Depot!!! No, we really wanted the doors to sit in your warehouse while we lost daylight and warm weather for our exterior door projects!!!

So, yes, we asked them to deliver them as soon as they could, which they said would be the next day, Friday, the day of Mireille’s court appearance. The delivery window was from 8AM to 8PM. I told them that would be fine except for the hours between 10 and 2. So when do you think they called? 11:30… After some runaround, they agreed to just deliver them in front of the house without us being there… When we got home from the court appointment (which was 90 minutes late), two of our three doors were waiting for us! Yeah, we had to ask them to deliver the other one, which they were supposed to deliver… It wasn’t a huge deal, but this particular order from Home Depot hasn’t been the most smooth of experiences.

Knowing that the warm weather won’t last forever, even in Denver, we cleared the schedule on Sunday to get the heaviest one installed, the patio door. The most difficult parts were getting the old door out, which was installed before the siding, so that had to be trimmed, and getting the packaging material off of the new door, which was mysteriously affixed to the door with double sided tape at the bottom. We eventually had to lay the door down, a big no-no for fear that it will throw the door out of square. If we didn’t do it, we wouldn’t have been able to install the door at all.

Anyway, six or seven hours later, the door was in, the hardware installed, and the home was once again closed off to bugs and outside nasties. There is still considerable work to complete the trim on either side, and the deck is not even close to being safe, so it will be replaced next year, but the bulk construction is complete and I will rest better knowing that one of my three exterior doors has been installed before the snow flew!

Halloween 2016

Lastly, it was Halloween tonight! Quinton went as a skeleton, complete with a bowler hat, and Mireille went as a butterfly princess. She loved telling people how beautiful she was, and she really loved trick-or-treating! We had to cut her off of her candy just now as she was promising to eat the whole bag, which would have been quite a feat, but I’m sure she was up to it.

Happy Halloween, everybody!