welcome dc-24!

let me preface this by saying my stairs hadn't been vacuumed in months. and for the amount of traffic our 8x8 foot family room gets the carpet is well, worn. and no matter how often i changed the bag our hoover windtunnel with its duct-taped power cord despite picking up popcorn kernels and mightymachine dirt actually made the room feel less clean. . .

i even took it to a vacuum repair shop and the vacuum salesman scoffed and offered me a $200 trade in for a $900 miele (and not the pretty one in the back of hte w-s catalouge either) or $90 to clean it and make it usable. i rolled my hoover back out of the sew & vac and spent an hour carefully disassembling and cleaning that red hoover. i felt damn handy and i had used power tools. but the vacuum still sucked. (hmmm. hadn't meant to be punny.)

. . . anyhow, i'd been dreaming of a dyson for some time and was determined to hold out for a vacuum cleaner that was as beautiful as it was functional. three best buy gift cards (the "perks" of michael living at a best western for 3 weeks at a time) and one visa check card (the last of the radisson points) later and we are pleased to announce the newest member of our family:

the dc--24

you can check out the reviews for yourself--amazon, target, best buy. . . it's a

love or hate kind of deal. we got the "ultra lightweight" dyson and. . . i'll let the pictures do the talking. ok let me just say that after vacuuming the living room (twice already this week), our bedroom and the hallway owen exclaimed: "ok mommy now i'll go pick up my room so we can vacuum it next!". oh, and unlike the airblade (which is soo worth a trip to the san clemente beach bathroom despite it's jet engine sonics) it is gloriously quiet--a key bonus if you refuse to use restrooms that have automatic flushers because they are too loud (fixed, by the way with a bandaid--but that's another story). now the pictures:

here owen's actually dancing with a mop. that's right--vacuuming is so fun that all cleaning is exciting! and below he's wiping down our blinds.

tomorrow: the stairs.