Still here

There hasn't been too much going on around here that is all that exciting. We started demo in the basement and withing 30 minutes found the first unexpected hurdle. That hurdle happened to set us back quite a bit, mainly because of sore muscles. When Brian was ripping up the carpet, he pulled up the pad and discovered parts of it were glued down. It is glued about a foot all the way around the edge, plus everywhere there was a seam in the pad and for an added bonus they must have poured an entire bottle in the closet. Most of the glue came up after only one application of the stripping agent but some areas have taken numerous applications. We also discovered the floor slopes about 1/2 inch so we'll have to fix that too. After doing some reading it sounds as though we should seal the concrete, too. So, our goal of having the floor taken care of and the sheet rock torn down in the first week was not going to happen. I was hoping to start hanging sheet rock this week but the old stuff hasn't been torn down yet. This leads me to the part I'm not real happy about. It was recommended we finish the demo part and get the floor taken care of without laying the new flooring and then leave it until late spring/early summer so the snow can melt and the grown thaw to see if we have any problems. This suggestion is probably the best route to take but it doesn't mean I like it. I suppose I would be even less happy if we replaced everything and then discovered a crack in the foundation and had to rip it all up again so I'm trying to convince myself that a few more months isn't that bad considering I've waited 3 years already. We will decide our plan of action once the sheet rock is down and we look behind the insulation. Waiting will put other projects on hold since they relied on the toys & my sewing stuff getting taken out of their current locations but some things we can do in the mean time.

Otherwise all four of us had different flu like symptoms in January but that was pretty short lived. Brian traveled to Michigan for four days for work and has a couple more trips already in the works over the next couple of months. Matthew still likes school and is starting to get a little better about getting up in the mornings. I started making one meal a week that starts with his letter of the week. So far we've made homemade pizza with pepperoni, pineapple (a few other ingredients) and pudding parfaits and this past week I made Quesadilla's. He thinks that is pretty cool. Emily is well, Emily. She goes wherever I go and likes to get her shoes, jacket, hat and mittens on and then tell me we are going to go some place, even if she's still in her jammies. She loves to sit in Matthew's chair at the table when he's gone to eat her snack or draw. If you say you can see the moon (or anything for that matter) she'll say that she sees it too or she wants to do the same thing that you do, at least most of the time. If rocking a crying "baby" then dropping it on the floor to feed it are characteristics of a good mom then she's a great one! She also likes to sit on her babies like she does Matthew when they're tickling each other; probably a sign that it's good we don't have any real babies around here. She is also miss independent and declares "I do it!" or bosses her brother around, but he does plenty of his own bossing so they're pretty even.

So for now we keep chipping away at the basement and keeping up with our normal activities. Looking forward to the snow melting although I know that will mean even less motivation to get work done inside.

Christmas round 3

We had our third round of Christmas over New Year's weekend. Since it is only a Saturday afternoon to Sunday afternoon affair and a long drive we decided to visit a friend who lives about the half way mark. We were going to leave Friday afternoon but the weather was looking yucky so we left early. We had gotten most of our stuff ready Thursday night so we could leave on a moments notice if needed. We enjoyed our time, ate dinner, visited, the kids ran around and then we played some Wii which was a first for Brian and I. Saturday morning we headed out for Brian's dad's. We got there around lunch time and once everyone else was there we had sloppy joes and a bunch of other goodies. The kids played a little, Matthew found comfort in reading his Tag books while the older kids were off doing their own thing. I think it was hard for him being one of two boys and not having much in common with our nephew. He handled it okay and tended to stick by the adults but he enjoyed having the attention too. After the kids opened gifts we had a light dinner and eventually headed to the hotel. The kids got to bed late but it didn't last long. I finally fell asleep around 11:30 and Emily woke up around 11:45. Brian got her calmed down but she was up again at midnight and things went downhill from there. She would fall asleep for a few minutes at a time and would wake up just as I was starting to doze. I noticed she felt warm so took her temp around 3:00 and gave her some Tylenol. During this time I also had to move Matthew 3 times because he was all over the place in his bed. He wasn't sleeping well either. I finally told Brian around 3:30 to go lay with Matthew (or somewhere else) so one of us had some sleep to drive us home. Sometime after 6:00 Emily fell asleep for a longer period of time and I was finally able to sleep too but from then to 7:30 I was up at least 3 times. We decided it would be best to head home. I told Brian he and Matthew could go to church and I'd stay with Emily but at that point the longer we stayed, the harder it would be for him to stay awake to drive. So he took Matthew to his dad's house to pick up some of our stuff and say goodbye.

This trip had 3 things that didn't quite go our way. Upon leaving we discovered our car doesn't heat up while idling and blows cold air if stopped long enough. The hotel didn't have our reservation but thankfully they did have a room for us. Emily having a fever and me getting very little sleep 2 nights in a row was not fun but we survived.

We are both so glad to have left on Friday. I think the kids actually had more fun than they did the rest of the weekend because they had room to run and got more attention. The drive Saturday (which is the most boring of the entire trip) seemed so much better because it was a lot less time in the car. We definitely hope it works out to make that stop in the future!