12 on the 12th

Wednesday, November 12th:

At church on Sunday somebody lost a ring. Jeremiah joked that the quickest way to find it would be to stick a couple of babies on the floor. Probably because no matter how picked up a floor is Ellie will find something to put in her mouth! Not saying that the floor was picked up this morning at all! But this is what Ellie does these days - stick things in her mouth.


Callie doesn't enjoy her homework so much when it's practicing her letters I don't think, but she was excited to do this homework - color the fish, cut them out & glue them to the fish bowl. Jack had got a hold of her paper before Callie started working on it & colored all the fish yellow. Callie was devastated! Thank goodness for copiers! Callie was able to start with a blank slate.



I can't remember what Jack's in time out for this time. Maybe it was coloring the fish yellow when he'd been told to leave her paper alone. Maybe it was for not getting his underwear on after going potty (and being told several times to do it). Maybe it was for torturing Ellie or Callie. The latter 2 are the most common reasons he gets put in time out.



So I made mac & cheese for lunch and it was the first time I'd "cooked" in more than a week! Sad, huh? That's the way it goes when you're doing improvements to one home & moving out of another. In this family you can't have mac & cheese without strawberry milk!



Picking Callie up from school. She loves her teacher & her classmates. When we ask her what she's learned that day she almost always says nothing or I don't know. But she likes to tell us about things that happened with friends. She also likes to sing the songs she's learning in class.

The drive to the new house, which we've been making back & forth several times a day. It's not at all conveniently located! It's 10 minutes from the old house & almost 15 to Walmart! I remember when we moved here from CA & people would complain about going to Golden Valley which is about 15 mins away & we'd roll our eyes since in CA it took 10 minutes just to go to the grocery store & about 15 to go anywhere else. But we've been here long enough now that yeah, it's a pain that we have to drive 15 minutes to Walmart! :)

How many times do I have to tell Jack (and Callie) to scoot back from the tv?! They just can't help themselves! I'm thankful anyway that my mom brought her tv/dvd combo to help keep the kids occupied while we're working.

Ellie has been a pretty good sport about all of this. She's spent quite a bit of time playing & napping in the Pack n Play over the last few days.

Today was a great day because our new appliances were delivered! Yay! Jeremiah's spent the evening working on installation & is getting ready to do the microwave. Thank goodness we don't have to do this very often!

The past few nights one of us has taken the kids home & put them in bed, but we both wanted to stay & work late tonight & the kids were tired enough that they crashed out on the floor. They are really being great for all that's going on.

So I really don't like cut in work! Mine isn't very good & then there's my mom's who's work looks completely professional. Fortunately she's done most of it in the kids' rooms. She's been the hugest help with this house! What would we do without her?

"It usually gets worse before it gets better" applies here. If you think this is bad you should have seen it yesterday morning! :)

Progress

Things are happening around here slowly but surely. Here are some pictures of our partially completed projects:

Jeremiah & a guy who's helping him do a lot of this stuff (Tim) framed in double doors & made a new doorway into the hall for Callie's bedroom. Tim also moved the lightswitch to be next to the new door.

I was ready to dive in & get the family room painted but I was having a hard time deciding on colors. So here are a couple I thought I liked. They look different on the little square than they do all over your walls!

My mom is amazing & built this closet from nothing! Can you believe it? Before it was just a blank space!

Wainscoting (which is basically any kind of woodwork on the lower part of the wall) that we're doing in Jack's room. Which by the way has brought a lot of debate because I wanted it tall & Jeremiah thought it should be shorter because that's standard. I've been in enough model homes to be convinced that there is no longer a standard height for wainscoting - it's anything goes. Whatever you want. But I am hoping that people don't look at my house & think "What was she thinking? Doesn't she know that's too high?" Maybe I should have gone higher to really get my point across. But it's too late for that - that stuff is never coming off the walls without causing severe damage to the drywall since we used liquid nails! It still needs to be painted.

Ellie's room waiting for beadboard on the back wall. Same argument about the height as in Jack's room.

House

We're working really really hard on our house right now, but it seems like it's going to take forever! It's a lot of work to paint or clean or do anything in the new house with the kids. They have toys & a tv/dvd player there and Callie & Jack do alright, but Ellie gets bored staying in one room. The previous owners had a cat, dog & bird & there was kitty litter & bird feathers all over in one of the bedrooms & it's gonna take several vacuumings (and a good carpet cleaning) to get it all up. I'm allergic to cats & the day we closed we spent a couple of hours at the new house & by the time we left I was wheezing badly & needed my inhaler! Fortunately my body seems to build up immunity after the first few exposures, so I haven't needed my inhaler again although every time I go in the cat/bird room for more than a minute I start sneezing & wheezing a little. Between getting used to it & getting the carpets cleaned I'll be fine soon I think. Today I finished cleaning the kitchen cabinets & tomorrow I have to paint. That's what I have to do every day! And I've gone through 2 different gallons in the LR & am still not real happy w/the color so I think I'll try a 3rd color tomorrow! Jeremiah has been really busy hanging lights & fans. So that's our update.

Oh, & I'm really really excited because we need a fridge & I found one on Craigslist a couple of weeks ago & called on it & got the model # & everything but it was the week before we closed & my husband didn't seem to think we'd need a fridge anytime soon so I didn't do anything about the Craigslist fridge. The next week I went to an appliance store in town & they had a fridge I liked but it was out of my price range so I went home & I'm not sure how but discovered the one I liked at the appliance store was the exact same one that had been on Craigslist so then we decided to definitely buy the Craigslist one if they still had it. I called & left a msg but didn't hear back so the next night I called again & left another msg & asked if they could at least let us know if they'd sold it (because I was so anxious). We didn't hear back so I was bummed that we missed out on it. Anyway, tonight as I was putting the kids to bed the Craigslist people called me (a week later!) and said they still had the fridge & Jer's picking it up tomorrow & we're paying $100 less for it than what they'd asked! Woohoo! I'm SO excited!!! Now we just need a new dishwasher & microwave. So we might as well throw an oven in there, right? There's a d/w there, but the people were apparently pretty bitter when they left and took the racks inside the d/w with them! It would cost $300 just to replace the racks & it's a junky d/w anyway. And I don't know if they did something to the microwave or what, but it won't heat up food (which would explain why they left the turntable & rack in it). They also took the racks out of the oven! This house is costing us a grip!

Election Day!