This one never gets old

Update

I haven't felt like blogging lately. I have been so worried about my very good friend that is in the hospital right now and so for some reason it seems superficial to blog about my usual stuff. I don't know why that is, it's not like the two things are connected. I think I feel like if all the other usual stress is what's on my mind and that's what I'm blogging about, that I'm not giving enough thought to my friend. Even though I am thinking about her all throughout my day, every day since I've heard of her illness.

It's been hard waiting to hear how this is going to turn out, and even harder not to be able to see or talk to her. I want more than anything to give her a big hug and tell her how much I missed her and how much she means to me. Knowing how I feel I can't even begin to comprehend how her husband and mother that have been there by her side must be feeling. And her kids have been in very good hands, but they must really be missing their mother by now. It's been 11 days now.

One upside is that her awesome husband has set up a web page where he is posting updates on the status of things, and I am so thankful to him for that.

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Well, a quick update on things around here:

Mike's birthday was yesterday (He's 33! *gasp*), and we celebrated on Monday. I made his favorite Lemon Jello Cake (I'll have to put the recipe on my cooking blog, it' very yummy) and we went to Chuck E. Cheese's with us and both sets of our parents. I think we were there about 2 1/2 hours. It was much funner for me this time than in recent months because the adult to child ratio was a lot higher, so I was more at ease. Mike seemed to have a blast reverting back to his inner child :-) He and Adrienne spent a lot of time playing games together.

We are so so so close to moving in! We will probably start moving stuff over this weekend. Then next week once the utilities are hooked up and some other things are wrapped up, we'll really move in and have this place demolished shortly after.

I have a bunch of pictures I took and by now they're old news so I need to take new ones. Maybe this weekend I'll do that.

Okay, well that's pretty much it, our days are just all about getting finished with the house and getting moved in!

Thank you Mom and Dad

As we are coming to an end of this year-long project of building our house I have been thinking a lot about my parents' involvement. I just want to say in this public forum (as public as my lowly blog can be) that I am so grateful for their time, expertise, energy, money, love, support, etc., etc., etc. More specifically:

My dad has been an obvious asset this past year. At 67 years old (almost 68 now!) and working here 6 days a week most weeks in all types of weather (he was out here digging to save the basement on the day of the worst storm in 30 years!). Literally putting his blood, sweat, and tears into this home. Dad, I am just so thankful you've come out of this alive (especially considering the fall you took in August)! That may sound like an exaggeration, but I know how you hurt every day you go home from putting in a hard day here. To describe you as a hard-worker is the understatement of the century.

But I also have to give so much credit to my mom who has been working tirelessly behind the scenes and keeping things going smoothly. Putting in hours and hours of groundwork that I didn't even know needed to be done and if she hadn't been doing it we would have been at a stand-still over and over again throughout the year. Making phone calls, literally showing up at people's doors to get answers to tough questions, running errands, doing the bookkeeping, calling to arrange subs, etc., etc., etc!! Also for watching the kids so that Mike and I can work on the house, and chipping in on the work of the house when needed. All this while heading up other projects to help people in need. Mom, I hope to one day have the legacy of charity that you have lived.

I really can't begin to repay you, and so I am just going to pay it forward and try to be the same giving, loving parent for my children that you have been for me.

I love you...Ambergirl

Book Tag

Michelle tagged me... My first inclination is to say that I don't have time since we've been so busy. But this woman has 3 kids, is pregnant with the fourth and has been sick. So if she can do it, I can :-)

Here are the rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book. (At least 123 pages long.)

2. Open to page 123.

3. Find the fifth sentence and post it.

4. Post the next three sentences.

5. Tag 5 other people.

Well the nearest book wasn't a "grown-up" book, but still fun for us old people to read :-) The girls got it for Christmas, and we read the whole thing cover-to-cover recently. I'm sure you've all read or at least heard of it - it's "Where The Sidewalk Ends" by Shel Silverstein... anyway, page 123 is a poem and it only has 6 sentences to it (there are several lines, but I'm being technical and counting the sentences). I'm just going to go ahead and post the whole thing:

Double-Tail Dog

Would you like to buy a dog with a tail at either end?
He is quite the strangest dog there is in town.
Though he's not too good at knowing
Just exactly where he's going,
He is very very good at sitting down.

He doesn't have a place to put a collar,
And I'll admit it's rather hard to lead him,
And he cannot hear you call
For he has no ears at all,
But it doesn't cost a single cent to feed him.

He cannot bite, he'll never bark or growl,
Just scratch him on his tails, he'll find it pleasing.
But you'll have to take him out
For twice as many walks,
And I'll bet that you can quickly guess the reason.

Well I broke rules 3 and 4, and now I'm going to break 5 too. I'm not going to tag anyone...if you want to do it, then do it and let me know!

Happy Valentine's Day

Hope you're all having a nice Valentine's Day. It was just another day for us...still just plugging away on the house and trying finish in the next few weeks. We won't be all done, but we'll be moving in.

A few random things - Edward turned 3 months on the 8th, but he had his 2 month appt about 2 weeks ago. He started out pretty big at 8 lbs 11 oz. He's now in the 80th percentile for height and 50th for weight. Sounds like a basketball player :-) My dad would love that.

I took this picture of Colette a few weeks ago. I had layered her hair around Christmastime and had blogged about how it brought out some wave in her usually pin straight hair. I said I was going to put up a picture to show that better, and so here it is a month and a half later! I didn't do anything to it to make it more curly, just washed and brushed it and it sprung up like this.

I'll try to put up more pictures soon - all the flooring is in the works now - carpet, hardwood, vinyl. I just bought a washer/dryer off Craigslist. We've picked out a sectional and will order it once the carpet is done in the living room. And we're going to have a piano again! Some friends from church are moving so we're inheriting it. Now I can start teaching Adrienne. She has wanted to learn to play the harp since she was four. When she turned five and was still asking about learning to play the harp I called a harp teacher to find out what was involved. She said that Adrienne should learn piano first. I think that's an excellent idea because if she's still wanting to learn harp after learning piano then she will likely stick to it. When we were newly married I taught a girl from church piano for a year so I have a little teaching experience, but I will probably only be able to do about 2-3 years worth before she'll need a real piano teacher. By then I can start teaching Colette!

Okay, I'm off to bed!

My crazy day, and house pictures!

Oh my goodness, today was "one of those days." Going from one to two kids really wasn't that much harder for me. Two to three has been quite another story. With two kids there are those times when both kids need you at exactly the same time and that can be stressful of course. But that's not really the norm, usually it's one or the other. With three, that situation where two need you at the same time becomes a lot more common and when all three need you it can make your head spin. Here is an example:

The beginning of the day today is sort of a blur, except for getting Adrienne to school a few minutes late. While she was at school I was working on getting the floor in the house prepped for the hardwood layers who will be coming tonight. Today was early release and I did remember it, but when you're used to a certain amount of time 4 days of the week, that one shortened day can throw your body clock off as far as when it "feels" like it's time to pick her up. I usually set my alarm on my phone for 12:00 p.m. to remind me that in 20 minutes I'll need to pick her up. Since today was early release I changed my alarm to 11:10 to remind me that in 20 minutes I'd need to pick her up, BUT I didn't realize I'd left it on p.m. So of course the alarm never rang to remind me. I was sweeping away in the house and all of a sudden it dawned on me that it felt like it was almost time to pick up Adrienne and then I remembered that the day was shortened - I looked at my clock and it said 11:33. EEP! (Now keeping in mind that at this same time I was: Watching Colette outside, Edward was sleeping inside but I knew he must be awake and screaming by then, and I was just scooping up the pile of debris into the garbage and would be all done with the floor prep. I knew that after picking up Adrienne I would be finishing up on that floor because after that I'd need to nurse Edward, get the kids lunch, Colette down for her nap, and then start in on the long list of other things that always need to be done...now back to the story) So I made a mad dash for the van leaving Colette in the house and hollering over my shoulder that I'd be right back because I had to pick up Adrienne at the bus stop (at the bottom of the driveway). I'm running to the van, but just a little too fast and so I braced myself on the van: my left hand on the driver's side door, and my right hand on the body of the van, and with part of my right hand on the window behind the driver's door - but only my pinky actually touched the window and the window shattered! But I couldn't stop to do anything about it because I was still very late picking up Adrienne, so I got down there to pick her up, explained to the bus driver about not hearing my alarm (not realizing it never even went off) and headed back up the driveway with Adrienne wondering why she was sitting in the front seat and the window was broken. I dash back in the house and scoop up the pile into the garbage, take both the girls inside, grab Edward from Mike and then spent the next couple hours making phone calls about the window. It's going to be $250 and will be fixed tomorrow. Okay, now, the mess! Right about when I'm done making the phone calls my parents are taking off for Seattle to turn in the templates for the granite countertops, and Mike is leaving for work so I'm on my own. But it needs to be cleaned out because it's going in to get fixed first thing in the morning, and it needed to be done right away because there was about 4 hours of sunlight left in the day. Luckily I have a fabulous friend, Sarah, who has bailed me out of way too many sticky situations (and whom I will need to repay once the house is finished!) - she came and picked up Adrienne and Edward and while Colette napped I was able to get the mess cleaned up (mostly - still need to wash the car seat).

A very crazy day indeed, but through it all I stayed pretty calm and actually managed to be thankful! My first thought after breaking the window was "well at least we have a van", when Edward spit up all over my leg while making phone calls and I thought "I love this baby" and something to be very grateful for that Mike pointed out was that none of the kids were in the van when the window broke! The glass was all over the girls' seats and they would have been hurt pretty badly. As it is I cut my pinky, but it's fine.

And I was able to avert another major disaster tonight...I was outside just now with the hardwood layers (there's actually been about 2 hours from when I started this post to now) and Colette came out (that girl is gutsy, it was pitch black out there!) and she was wandering around the house, and wanted to see her room upstairs. I was standing on the main floor as she came down the stairs. She caught her foot on a step and started to fall face first toward the steps below. The railing is up now, but the rungs aren't in yet, and thank goodness for that! I was able to reach through and catch her right before her face would have hit the steps. It would have been really ugly. So we will have to have a talk with the kids about stair safety now that they are going to be a part of daily life soon!

Okay, well I know this has been a rambly post and I would go back through and try to make more sense of it and thin out the phrases I know I abuse ("actually", "at least", "So...", etc.) but it's either that or throw some pictures in here, and I think you would all prefer the pictures :-)

I have a bunch of other posts started in my drafts so I'll have to finish those soon. Oh...while I'm uploading those pictures I remembered something funny from this morning. When we were dropping Adrienne off at school Colette was commenting on the muddy snow in the parking lot. She says "That's icky snow" and I said something like "Yeah"...then she says "Somebody farted on it!" She had me giggling the whole way home.

Okay, on to the pictures:

The van with the missing window

While I was outside taking pictures of the van I took some in the house.
On the way in, check out the steps in the garage!

In the master bedroom - the color and like our pretty sconce? there's a matching on on the other side of the windows, and also the fixture in the bathroom is the same but with 4 of those cuppy things (yes that is the technical term for it).

This is the tub in the master bath. Just to show you the ring left after draining it out (I wiped the bottom or it would be pretty bad) - should give you an idea how disgusting that water was! I still have a sore throat a week later!


So, in this picture...You can see the color so much better than in the previous ones because the tape is off all the windows so it's in the natural light. You can see the railing and how the rungs are not in, as I described above. And you can see the hardwood acclimating in the study.

The girls' room with the radioactive pink. I think it will look a lot better when the wallpaper border is up and furniture and other stuff is in it. Speaking of furniture, I'll put in a picture of their bed I'm getting from someone on Craigslist - will be picking it up Saturday. Also in this picture you can see the roll of vinyl in the other bedroom. I got that from someone on Craigslist also and it was brand new in the roll, originally sold for $400 a few years ago and we got it for $100! It will go in the utility room and the kids' bathroom upstairs.

The bed - it was used as a guest bed for the past couple years, so in very good condition. That's including the mattress and box spring and I get the side table too ($250 for all of it - they were asking $300)

Also, I found a very adorable and perfect decorative item for the girls french bakery themed room. They're knitted desserts. This set is called "afternoon tea". They're sold by a shop in England. Perfect colors too.

I may be getting a full capacity stacked washer and dryer unit for the master closet from yet another person from Craigslist if the person will accept my offer - they're asking $500 and I offered $350.

Grossness

Well I can now top the baby throwing up in my mouth experience. I decided to drain the water in the master bath in the new house that's been stagnant for the last couple months. It had all kinds of grossness in it - mud from the sheet rock mudders, paint, nails, other materials that had fallen in the tub during the course of work, probably bugs, moths, etc. It smelled vaguely like poop, I have no idea why. There's a window right next to the tub going outside and we had some old hose, so I set about siphoning it out. When I went to suck in on the hose I told myself that as soon as I could feel or hear water flowing to pull away quickly! Uh...that water moved WAAYYY faster than I imagined it would and I gagged on the disgustingness and swallowed probably about a tablespoonful. Y-U-C-K!!! I tried to throw up, but couldn't, so I settled for 3 vitamin C and hoped that that much acidity would kill anything that might make me sick. Well, I don't know if it was coincidence or not, but I did get sick that night (Friday) and I've been sick through today. I'm starting to feel better now, which is a good thing because I have to hit the ground running tomorrow!! I was sick last Sunday too, so I hope I've had my share of bugs for this winter! I think Edward was vaguely sick too, his eyes were glassy and his skin was slightly clammy, but nothing too bad yet. So far so good with the girls and Mike. Well Mike always feels sick these days, but I think it's more exhaustion than a bug but I could be wrong. Not much longer on the house! I'll try to get some pictures up soon, but I'm not promising anything because we're just so busy trying to finish it!