We just ate in the dining room, for the 1st time in 4 years

Totally crazy, we just ate dinner in the dining room.

Huh???  You may be wondering why that's crazy.  But in our house for approx. 4 years, our dining room was not used for dining in, instead it's been used for working-out.  It's been our home gym since we started training for our 1st ironman, which we did in 2009.  We bought a treadmill and a computrainer, so that as working parents we'd be able to train whenever it fit our busy schedules.  And a gym it's been until just the other weekend.  Dahlia, who just turned 5 the other day, does not remember ever having a real dining room.

Unfortunately our basement ceiling is low, so the dining room was really the only option in our house, but after all these years, we miss having a dining room.  But, since Bill has rarely used the treadmill in the last few years (having more opportunities to get it done outside), we determined that, short me would be able to run on the treadmill in the basement despite the low ceiling and Bill didn't need it.  Hence we decided to move it downstairs.

And the other weekend when I'm in the middle of icing Dahlia's birthday cake, Bill decided it was moving time.  I took an icing break and we took a long time just getting it through the dining room door into the hall.  It is long, wide, and very heavy!  After various discussion on how to proceed and with a few bangs in the wall we made it down to the landing.  This was extremely difficult and at one point Bill was somewhat trapped between the wall and the treadmill at the bottom of the landing.  This was scary.  And then we couldn't figure out how we could get it the rest of the way down, safely!  And I had to finish icing the cake, the party was starting in not too long.  So we left a treadmill in the stairwell.  Bill called his brother-in-law and he and our nephew came over and eventually they got it down to the basement.

Okay so there is one other sort of funny story, yeah I think the treadmill got slightly broken during the move. I tried running on it yesterday and usually like to run at a small incline (2).  So I hit the incline button 2xs while I'm running (2 hits means it goes up to the 2nd level, 3 hits = 3rd level etc) but this time it just keeps going,  I am of course getting pretty close to the ceiling.  I hit down button, it stops going up, but doesn't go down.  It currently looks like I'll be running at an incline indefinitely!

Carpets got steamed cleaned in the dining room (thanks mom-in-law) and the table and chairs got set up and today we ate diner in the dining room.  It was extra delicious!