Friday Roundup

I am listening to the Friday News Roundup on NPR so I figured I would do one of my own.

1. I met with the dean of 6th grade students this morning for a quick conference that was optional to sign up for. He said that kids usually take 30-60 days to adjust to middle school, but that Ben adjusted right away and is doing great. He has all As on his first report card -- no easy feat considering he has 7 classes!-- and his teacher comments were things like "great transition to middle school, great job completing work, learning new concepts and helping others", and "Does a great job, participates in class and completes all work on time" and "a solid and intelligent young man who works hard in class". So YAY BEN!!

2. I had someone out to take a look at our fireplace yesterday, because every time it is turned on it smells and the smoke detector goes off. It turns out that the smoke detector is also a carbon monoxide detector and that's why it was going off :( Hooray for working CO detectors! Not so hooray for my fireplace, which is a vent-free gas system that is no longer being made, in fact the company that made it is out of business. And it is totally messed up and the guy spent 2 hours working on it but could not get it working without the dangerous CO levels. So he is putting together an estimate for some various options for replacing it with a new system. Which is rather pricey but I think Joel will be OK with it because when I told him about the carbon monoxide he asked if they couldn't  have just taken the old fireplace with them when they left? LOL.

3. Besides the Halloween party tomorrow night and trick or treating -- which the kids are insanely excited for especially Caroline who doesn't really remember trick or treating because we were in Disney last year -- we are having our laundry room and two upstairs bathrooms tiled on Sunday. We went to Lowes last weekend and picked out the tile and all the supplies and paid for it, and the contractor is supposed to pick it up this weekend and start (hopefully finish?) the job on Sunday. Which means that I think I had better get all the laundry done tomorrow :)