Nothing like a little cat pee to get you motivated in the morning!

Two weeks ago I rushed home from work, quickly packed myself and River, fed everyone, bathed River and brushed all necessary teeth. We then packed our entire family (canine members included) in Cory's work truck and embarked at 8 pm on an all night drive from Ft. Collins, CO to Great Falls, MT. All said a 10 1/2 hour drive. Kudos to Cory (and his trusty engergy sodas for the assist) for driving all night after spending an exhausting day packing the truck and getting most everything ready. We arrived at 6:30 am the next morning. The purpose of the trip was to help my father-in-law with some major construction and remodeling projects around the house, and most importantly spend some much needed time with Gala, Papa Bear, Kelli, Angie, Brandon, Preston, Jodi, Jeremy, Noah, Jeremy (yes, there are two in the family one born into, one married into), etc.

Every day was exhausting, and every day was fun. My mother-in-law took advantage of having us in town and took all the grandkids in Great Falls at the time (only 5 of the total 16) to Sears for portraits. Let me tell you that was an adventure! 5 children ages 4 1/2, 21 mo., 1 year, and 3 mo. old twins. Tears were shed by all, adults included. Luckily we did get some cute pictures and Gala gave River a cute haircut and bought him an adorable little suit to match Preston and Noah's. We got to help dig out the foundation/root cellar area for their new green house using a rented Bobcat. That was fun as I hadn't been able to play around in one of those since I was back in college working for the Engineering Research Center making physical models of rivers. Angie dyed my hair. Black and auburn low lights. It looks super cute and she doesn't even have any formal training yet!

But I digress, because what I really want to talk about is cat pee. Yes, cat pee! Fast forward three days later. We left Great Falls around 8 pm and decided again to just drive straight through. This time it was a colaborative effort between Cory and myself. We got in to Ft. Collins at 7 am dirty, tired, and grumpy because not only had we driven all night but we had also been working hard outside all day prior to leaving. Immediately when we get in the house I hear the warbling meow of my cat Louie. The kind of meow indicating something is wrong. It also was a muffled sound which baffled me because she should have had free reign of the house. Well, much to my chagrin when I closed the door to River's nusery with the express purpose of keeping Louie OUT (she loves to lounge in or under his crib, in the bags of clothes in his closet, etc.) I accidentally closed her IN his nursery. When I opened the door out flew an angry, hungry, thirsty cat, and of course the pungent, dizzying odor of cat pee... Going to work the next day was officially out of the question as I refused to leave the pee festering for any longer than necessary.

Luckily, River's Nanny Debbie had a carpet shampooer and I purchased carpet cleaner at a Janitorial Supply store, the most effective I could find, pre-treated the areas where she peed and then shampooed all the carpet in his room. Did you know you can use a black light to see all of the organic matter on any surface? Well, I know this now and I effectively used this technique in my efforts!

The Good News: While giving the pre-treatment time to work I had some extra time on my hands and FINALLY got around to changing out all of the clothes in River's dresser and closet. Up until this point there were still size 0-3 month clothes in the mix. As a result I didn't have enough room for the clothes size 9-12 month so I was just pulling them out of a tub I had stored clothes this size that we had received as gifts or that were hand-me-downs from friends and family. I also put away all of the big items that are now too young for him like the swing we have and a gym/playmat. They are all now tubbed or bagged up for the next baby. I must say I did tear up as I put everything away. I love to watch how River grows and becomes more interactive each day but seeing all of the little clothes makes me wish he was able to stay that little for a little while longer. And I also was sad because I'm not sure if/when we will be able to have another baby. We couldn't afford fertility treatments or another adoption right now so hopefully good old fashion baby making will work for us this time around.

The Bad News: Unfortunately, though I've repeated this process several times the smell is still detectable. To minimize it we constantly have a fan going in his room and I plan on one last big clean this weekend involving some serious sudsing because apparently cat pee is oily and suds help break it up. Even still this carpet only has to last another month or so until we can finally get an appointment with the hardwood flooring company that Cory is going to exchange work with. Then we can replace the carpet in his nursery with the carpet in the living room (which is only 1 year old) that we are replacing with hardwood floors.

I will post pictures of our trip to MT soon! We didn't take out our camera once so I have to have my MIL and SIL Kelli email me the ones they took on their camera. Hint, hint to both of them if they are reading this ;)