Makeover: Floor Edition

"This project was supposed to be about replacing the carpet!" Clearly, from the pictures, it didn't end up that way. When we moved the furniture out of our room/laundry room/back entryway, the cheesy panelling was moldy and rippled. Ruined! We calculated the cost of drywall and insulation (because there wasn't any!) and took a trip to Lowe's.


15 sheets of drywall, 8 rolls of insulation, 9 strips of trim, a box of nails and a tub of spackle later, I would like to take this time to mention that I am the Expert Insulator (and I have the fiberglass grains to prove it!). I have also (almost) mastered the staplegun. I still kinda stink at hammering though. I still say it's because we only have right-handed hammers. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.



This is some of the mess that was scattered about the living room. We ended up laying our mattress down and sleeping on it for a couple of nights. Boy were we ever so glad to have the bed set back up in our room! The kids really liked having something to bounce on and play in. They especially liked the nice cushy bed when they were watching movies or eating goldfish crackers (pieces of which are still embedded in various parts of my body after sleeping on crumb shards).


Finally, last night, the spackling was dry enough to coat with primer and the primer was dry enough to paint. The carpet and linoleum were rolled out and the trim was smacked on. Now about that mess in the living room...
Today it snowed all day. I was intending to take a picture of the finished play ground, but the back door was frozen shut and there was no chance of me getting dressed just to walk to the back yard for one picture. Maybe tomorrow. ;)
Meanwhile, putting in drywall and such is not something for the faint of heart. We are both sore and with colds, smacked fingers, cuts, bruises and gritty eyes. No more projects! At least until the new front door comes in this week...

Done! Almost.

Today was supposed to be the finishing day for Le Grande Playhouse. We were almost finished. We started to put the ladder together and then noticed that there were no ladder rungs. Anywhere. We hadn't really paid too much attention to the metal parts, since there were piles of wood of varying lengths lying everywhere. Then there were no ladder rungs. I went inside to call the number on the front of the manual. The service rep was very nice and agreed to send it to us. I sighed. He asked for our address and I gave it to him. I said our town's name and he said, "Oh, that's great. Our office is in Siloam Springs! You can just come and pick up your parts and it will be a lot quicker." Yay! So we loaded up the car and drove to get our ladder parts. We got home and put it together. We had some drama putting the slide on because we wanted it to start farther back on the playhouse so no one would fall out before the high sides began. But we figured it out and then tried to put the roof on and the little window screen while both of the kids weaved through and around and over and under to go up the ladder, through the playhouse and down the slide as fast as possible. We finished and then sat back to watch.


Erin had to go in for a much needed nap, so she's not in these pictures, but rest assured, she loves the slide and can get up and down the ladder like a champ (believe it. I watched her go up time and time again and even change her mind and come back down).



What do you think? I think they like it.










For an added bonus, we opened the swing beam package and found several missing parts. Like swings. And the trapeze bar. And the swing chains. And a couple other things. We are on a first name basis with the sales reps now. Sigh. Now we can get rid of the rusty, squeaky old swingset and enjoy our new one. :)

Makeover Home and Yard Edition

For ye who are interested in the new mini-makeover the house got, here you go:


















The little border at the top was a huge thing for me, as I am not fond of clinging to a shaky ladder while Berry tried to climb it after me.















This is a bit of the leftovers of the Ice Storm of 09. The entire town has these huge piles of branches, sticks and bits of trees piled on the side of the road, waiting for someone to come with a chipper.















Buddy and Berry were very curious as to why I was standing in the middle of the street taking pictures of them. They were too cute to pass up.
















Meanwhile, Ian has been eagerly awaiting something else. From morning 'til night, ever since Nana and PopPop left.

















"We get my new playground today??"


















Finally, the day came and the heavy boxes were brought home. Then the fun began. Oh yeah, The Sorting of The Boards. It's almost ceremonial. And it was 35 degrees outside. But we got them all sorted into piles and marked with taped on sticky-notes. Those aren't all of the board piles. I kinda forgot to take pictures at first.

















But by Saturday afternoon, we had made a dent and had created a masterpiece. Ian began to get skeptical. He kept looking at the picture on the box and staring really hard at the poles.

















By Sunday afternoon, everyone was happy to be outside supervising.

















But I'm not sure. Erin might have been more of a distraction than a help, but she sure was happy to be in the middle of it all...


















This could be a picture of my HC hard at work, or it could be a very illuminating picture as to the present location of the tape measure and the drill bits....(ahem, Erin!)


















Finally, we were getting somewhere! Even Ian could see that it was not a cruel trick. There really was a playhouse in there somewhere.




















By afternoon, we were this far. My HC had to get ready for work at 4 and the rest of us were banned from going into the yard. For obvious reasons.

A big thanks to Nana and PopPop for helping us make our cool playground possible!

100 Days of Crazy

Last week, Ian hit his 100th day of Pre-K. They celebrated by doing a project that involved 100 items, either brought in or stuck onto a posterboard. You would be astonished at how many parents had problems with the number 100. I saw several posterboards that only had, say, 16 dots or pasted shapes, or 65 M&Ms. Interesting. Ian and I did a paper chain (yes, 100 loops). He cut out all of the strips and did color selection. I drew lines and stapled. He has it hanging in his room. But for this special occasion, the teachers made special "100" hats for all the kids. They are just too cute.



Erin, in the meantime, has been occupied with shoes. And socks. But mainly shoes.
She tries on everyone's shoes. She likes the slip-ons. Sometimes she likes just walking in one shoe. Even Ian thinks it's funny when she stomps around wearing his cowboy boots, since they come above her knees.


The weather has been wonky. Warm one day, freezing at night, warm with a really chilly wind, cool at night. But tomorrow, it is forecasted to rain/snow. Hm. We'll see. Though no one is as skeptical as they were before the Ice Storm.




I have been painting. We went to Lowe's and bought some red paint so I could redo the kitchen cabinets. My kitchen seems to have adopted an apple theme and I really like it. I've never seen myself as a theme type of girl, but I really like my Appley kitchen. So much that I painted my cabinets (4 on the bottom, 4 on top and one drawer) apple red. After a couple of days of double-taking, I'm starting to get used to it. But then I had all this red paint left over. Even after 2 coats on the cabinets. So I decided to do the kitchen door (to the carport) to match. My HC suggested that I do the little carport porch and storage door too. So I did. And then we thought it would be nice if we did the front house trim (the strip of wood under the roof line all down the front). So I clung, white-knuckled, to a ladder and did that too. And the carport beams. And the front porch railing. But I'm not quite finished with that yet. So that's pretty crazy for me. Normally, it could be accredited to a mid-life crisis or some other relevant life passage. It's strangely exhilarating though. Maybe like wearing a bikini at the beach for the first time (but without the inevitable sunburn or strange tan lines). There's a certain freedom in escaping from the beige doldrums and making your own vibrant mark on your street. Now it's not the little brown house, it's the one with the bright red trim. I would take pictures of the front of the house, but it's dark outside. No matter what, though, it sure does perk things up a bit. Now Ian is waiting for us to do the floors in yellow.

Ice Storm

On January 27, a storm swept through our little town and completely turned it topsy turvy. All our appointments were cancelled due to nasty icy roads and school was cancelled too. We lost power a little after noon. We were scheduled to go on our bi-monthly grocery trip, but had to postpone it too. It's really tough to be out of bread when you're stuck home with the kids!
My HC was called in to work and I resigned myself to a very interesting afternoon/night with the kids and no power. A lot of the town runs their heat on natural gas. We do too, so we weren't worried about heating the house. We still had water. Yay for flushing toilets! But we didn't have any hot water. And none of the usual activities that engaged the kids worked. No computer, no tv, no lights!
Another big yay for camping gear! We got out our Coleman lantern (battery op) and our kerosene lamps and about a dozen tea candles. We were in business. It was so cold outside, I couldn't get the grill lit. I don't know why, if it was the cold, or the ice that was starting to accumulate on Everything, or what, but I couldn't get it lit. I was very thankful that there was still some warm water left in the water heater. We ate sandwiches and had warm stand-up baths. I let the very grateful Buddy and the "This is GREAT weather!" Berry in for the night. I lit candles in the kids' rooms and we went to bed. The next day, we woke up to this:
















I don't remember what happened every day, but I do know that it wasn't much fun. The damage was very severe to our town. At one point, Ian and I stood on the carport and listened to the almost constant crack-the-whip sounds of icy branches twisting, breaking and falling off of huge trees. They fell onto houses, cars, sheds, the street and demolished several fences. Branches and entire trees, coated in over an inch of ice, continued to fall for several days. My HC got the grill working and we cooked on it and heated pots of water for more stand up baths. We went to the EMS building for a hot meal and a couple loads of laundry. HC got a hot shower because he had to go back to work. Fire and Rescue went door to door to make sure everyone was okay and had heat. Some went to a shelter at the Assembly of God. Red Cross came after a few days, held up by the person in our town who was in charge of Crisis Management and didn't think the damage was extensive enough to call FEMA. He is not well liked at this time. FEMA and Red Cross had been in Arkansas, 15 miles away since the first day.
The Street Department worked around the clock to keep the roads cleared, though I don't know who was fool enough to drive with all the ice and snow all over the roads.


















In the meantime, we went outside to play in the snow that fell over all the ice. It was very cold and we had to keep going inside to warm up. Ray from the EMS building let us borrow his camping propane burner, so we had some hot chocolate. The kids had a blast sliding on the ice, riding in Ian's Power Wheels, and inspecting the ice. We also saw a Channel 6 helicopter, surveying the damage. We provided them with some excellent footage of booty shaking and slipping in the snow just in case they were filming us.





















In the middle of this, my dad decided to make a surprise visit. He and Nana called from Alabama. "We have a bushel of oysters and about 100 lb of deer meat!" Uh....we don't have power. "We'll get some ice," they said. Boy oh boy, did we have ice. We put all our fridge and freezer stuff outside in coolers and plastic storage boxes. I beat ice off of the fence to put in the coolers. They did just fine until Saturday, when the weather got too warm.












We had a great visit with Nana and PopPop, who got a hotel room so we could all take hot showers and baths.
Our powerline had a large branch on it and it ripped the line out of the side of our house. We were very glad that PopPop (who is also an electrician) was there to help us fix it. He also replaced our sadly outdated 1950s fuse box with a safe breaker box.













PopPop and Nana also got us a generator, because boy howdy did we have some laundry piled up! The power came back on Sunday afternoon. And we've been cleaning up ever since. The town looks much better, but there's still a lot to be done.



















On the upside, when there's no electricity, the kids learned how to do other things.

My First Committee

I must now take a moment to feel completely weirded out by the fact that I'm a grown up and I was asked to be on my first grown-up committee. And it was for one of my favorite places. Yay!
I got an email from the Head Librarian at our library and she asked me if I would like to participate in the 2010-2013 Library Planning Committee. Lunch would be provided...the only catch is that it's a workshoppy sort of session (those are my own words) and that it would be from 1-5? (those were her words) and lunch was at 12. I immediately talked to my HC. Nrrrt! Scratch that. Insert "should have" in there somewhere. In a whirl of being flattered that she would even care what I thought, and elation at being on my first grown-up committee, I emailed her back and told her I'd do it. My HC didn't have to be at work until 4. He could watch the baby and pick Ian up from school and then I could keep them at the library for what little time remained.
Well, ha ha ha and fiddle dee dee. Guess who found out he had court at 1? And guess who, when I was busy sleeping in, woke me up at 9:30 to tell me that he had to go to another court session at 10:00 and he just found out? Well, he really did just find out, the courts don't do nice things around here like give notice. So I was left to work out the details of my afternoon. So I did what anyone would have done in my position. I loaded up a huge bag full of baby toys, snacks and a sippy cup. And I went to the library.
And it was a lot bigger deal than I thought it would be. Librarians from schools and other schools and educators and Friends of the Library and council members and the Regional Director of the Eastern Oklahoma District Library system from Muskogee. The local bank manager, the guy who processed our mortgage. The school superintendent. School board members. Biiiiiig deals. And real reporters from real papers (instead of my freelance library work). It was introduction time. Everyone had a big something to add after their name. Everyone looked at me, the youngest one in the room (by a good amount), who had brought her cute but noisy baby. I gave my name. Then I added a dazzling smile and said "Library Patron." Because by golly, my library card is the most loved and used thing in my wallet, other than the odd tissue. Everyone smiled and nodded. They moved on to the other movers and shakers in the room. And we got down to business. And boy was it a looooong business.
You know those huge drawing sheets, like the ones they used to use on Win, Lose or Draw on TV? The big ones that you draw on with smelly permanent markers and then tear off? Well, after groupthinking and commenting and discussing, the room filled up 5 or 6 of those things. Then we stopped for snacktime and I had to go get Ian from school.

I picked him up and went home to change a poopy diaper. I had forgotten wipes and thought it would be pushing the envelope a little too far to change the mud in front of those still eating spinach dip and carrot sticks. I told Ian we were going back to the library until Mommy was finished with the "boring grownup meeting." He was thrilled. He loves the preschool computer and the big blocks and the bean bags and giant books. He was a perfect gentleman and SueAnn, the head librarian went to get him so he could have snacks too.
You could just about see haloes over their heads and EVERYONE in the room commented about what good kids I have and how I must be a great mother. Wow. Well, we try. And we bribe with soda and sweets. But we're still mystified as to how everyone behaved for so long. Finally it was over and we loaded up and went home.
So wow. I was on my first grownup committee and I really think that I am helping to make a difference in our community. And it feels Good.

*For those interested parties, please note that this is one of the only pictures we have of Erin with her eyes open. Also note the red tint of the photo. I had my finger over the flash (which flashes 3 separate times!), which caused the discoloration, but led to open eyes. Sigh.

Bust 'Em Up Bowling

This past week was cold. Reeeeally, really cold. As you can see, Berry's water bucket was frozen over. And we had to get all bundled up to take Ian to school.

It even snowed once or twice, but only enough to completely distract Ian and make him not want to go inside the school building. But Ian has been counting down all week and wishing for it to be Saturday.
And finally, it was.
Saturday was our friend Tra's (pronounced 'Tray') 9th birthday party. It was the first time that Ian has been bowling and he loved it.


Brian and Girric were there also. Girric is Ian's friend and they love to play and fight with each other.






This is Tra. He's the birthday boy.





The first thing to do was to try and find a ball that Ian could pick up. He and Girric chose these great bright orange ones.




Then they put it in the ball return. Ian wondered why. He was concerned that someone else would use his ball. This is another example of how sharing helps smooth the way in the real world. This is where I stopped taking pictures. Here's why:



While trying to get the kids to sit and arrange turns, one exuberant kid dropped his bowling ball. It bounced, thank God, and then landed on my toe. It really really hurt. So I was relocated to sitting in the corner and entertaining Erin while another grown up stepped in and got the kids playing.


Then the grownups organized a game, which I watched. Turns out my big toe was just bruised, but it had a very vibrant mark on it and still hurts when I put weight on it. No high heels for church this morning.


Anyway, after a while, Ian got tired of shot-putting his ball down the lane (his legs are too short to granny-style it) and asked me for the camera. These are pictures that he took. Too bad Daddy didn't make it into any of them. He was too busy wowing everyone with his bowling prowess. :) I was still sitting in the corner with Erin. Yeehaw.
Oh well. Everyone had a great time. As you can see.