"Extreme Makeover" Doesn't Even Do It Justice!!!

Oh...Wow! So here's what happened:

While we were in India, some very excellent friends of ours (operating in clandestine fashion) coordinated the retrieval of our house key from Sami's dad and spent several days totally remodeling two of the rooms in our home.

Living Room: We've always wanted to kind of go with the whole "Asian" motiff for our living room, but just have never really been exactly sure how to go about doing it. We have a Samurai Daisho (sword set), and some cool Asian pictures and knick-knacks, but we just were never sure how to go about the rest of it. Two of our friends, however, Mrs. Tracy Carlstrom, and Mrs. Shelley Arredondo, are visionary wizards when it comes to decorating, and they just jumped in with paint and trim and their own hand-sewn pillows. They provided Asian fabric-colored chairs, and cool end-tables, and a variety of cool other wall things and curios and curtains and rods and... wow... you name it! It was AWESOME!!! It represented us better than we could have done ourselves, and we have been amazed at the level of detail and excellence in their attentiveness and execution. It was amazing!!!

Bathroom: About 6 months ago, after a bizarre "Money Pit"esque string of mishaps every time we tried to "fix" our bathroom, Jack cried "surrender". The paint, the surround, the floor, the toilet, the ceiling fan (or lack thereof), the mirror, the... well... pretty much the entire room. A complete disaster. Nay, debacle of near Biblical proportions.

But no longer!!!! They came in (a small, highly skilled, Unspec-War unit armed with saws and hammers and other "tools of the trade"), and completely gutted the entire little area. They stripped paint, then created a dry-wall end to the tub, installed the surround, bricked in the window, installed a shower, put down and sealed tile, fixed plumbing, and then installed the ceiling fan (complete with switch) and mirror assembly. It looks amazing! We would never have thought it possible, truly!!!

I tell you, the whole thing was incredible! But more than being thankful for all the work and love and effort that went into it, we were reminded once again that more than anything, we have the best friends on the planet!!!