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!

Christmas part II

Every year we are home for Christmas. It is just us and we don't usually have a lot planned. This year we were invited to our Pastor's house for fellowship on Christmas Eve. We were the only guests but had a fun time playing games and munching on goodies. Christmas day was pretty much no fuss. I wanted something relatively simple for the main meal and was going to get a beef tenderloin until I saw how expensive they are. We went with a pork roast instead. I put that in the crock pot with a shallots & mushroom sauce, a first time using shallots. Then we just had mashed potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce and rolls. We put together a gingerbread village and played outside in the snow. Later in the evening I rolled and cut out cookies while the kids played. Matthew helped a little but he likes decorating more than cutting them out. After church on Sunday we just took it easy and cleaned up a little bit. After nap time I made the icing for the cookies and we decorated a few. Matthew and Brian took some over to the neighbor and Matthew thanked him for clearing the snow from our path so we could walk :-) All in all we had a nice time. Emily's favorite gift was her new doll that makes noise when you feed it. She's such a little mommy with her dolls and stuffed animals! Matthew even likes her doll and tells Emily what to do when her baby is crying.

Something else we learned this past weekend is that Emily isn't quite afraid of snow anymore. Her first couple times out she was more timid with the uneven walking surface and she tended to get upset when she fell over. On Christmas day she was trying to climb the snow pile and when we'd take her to the top of the hill, she liked to scoot down it all by herself. She also enjoyed sledding and didn't mind too much when she fell over and got snow in her face. She actually got upset when she had to get out of the sled to take it back to the top. I think she's going to really enjoy the white stuff as she gets bigger and stronger! This is Matthew's first winter of not asking to come in before we tell him it's time. He and his daddy sure have fun and he's glad we found new gloves that stay on his hands the entire time. Thanks Auntie Denise for introducing us to them, we haven't needed to adjust the gloves a single time!

A family photo

Christmas & Such

I decided since I've been MIA in the blogging world lately, now is just as good a time as any to start up again. Emily is potty training. She's doing really well and we had 3 whole days without a single accident. Her fourth day was accident free except for being wet when she woke from her nap. Then we went out of town and that put a little wrench in progress but she still did well. Had a few accidents but part of that was our fault for not having her sit. Matthew still enjoys preschool although he usually says every Monday night & Wednesday night he doesn't want to go and sometimes again in the mornings when he's being woken up early to get ready. Once he's there he's fine. He's like his dad and takes forever to wake up and it is best to let him wake on his own, but he doesn't get up early enough on his own. It is something I dread because it is a constant battle, I don't want to think about what it'll be like having to do this every morning.


This past weekend we were supposed to have our family Christmas with my side at my brother's in Sartell. We knew a storm was on the way so Brian took Friday off so we could get there before the storm hit. We would have gone on Friday anyways to maximize our time with family but Brian would not have taken the whole day off. The storm hadn't started by the time we went to bed Friday night but it paid us a visit during the night. Saturday was actually not that bad. It ended up that we were the only ones to make it. It is interesting that we are the only ones with kids that had to travel, Brian had to take work off and our area got hit the worst but we were the only ones there. Our Christmas 2 years ago had worse weather and it is the only time every single person was in attendance. When we woke up Sunday morning I checked MnDot's site and saw no travel was advised for our area. We kept an eye on it and decided it was best to stay another night. If we had tried to make it home and hit really bad roads, we would have had to turn all the way around or stay in a motel, neither of which sounded fun. Having already been through this scenario before and not making it home, we didn't want a repeat. Brian had to take Monday off and we had good roads most of the way. There were areas we knew would not have been good had we come home Sunday since they weren't the best by the time we were on them Monday afternoon. When we got home we couldn't get in our side of the alley and it was interesting getting through the other side. We had asked a friend to blow out our parking area and when we got home we had a path to our house, the front steps were cleared out and the sidewalk was done. Not sure who all did that since our neighbor told us he'd take care of the sidewalk but regardless, it was GREAT to not have to spend time shoveling just to get everyone out of the car (we've had to do that before, too).

The kids had a great time playing with their cousins. We had a nice visit and good time playing games. This is what Christmas is about, spending time with family. Exactly the reason we went on Friday. If we're going to say spending time together is important than you better believe we will do everything we can to get there. One of the reasons Brian saves his PTO, which allows him to miss work and still get paid.

The words of Emily at 18 months

This is more for documenting purposes but I thought it'd be fun to write down what Emily says, that I can remember.

Hi, Hello
Bye-Bye
Morning (for good morning)
Uh oh
dat daddy! (that daddy)
hug
she can make a wolf sound
moo
boo
milk
dat milk back
NO!!!!!!!!!! (she'll also shake her head no at the same time)
ball
bowl
boat
bug
bed
bock bock or pack pack (backpack)
ut? (what)
um on (come on)
dat boat, while pointing to the river/lake (normally, it's a buoy instead)
mine!
no mine!
ah ooo (love you)
mama
if you point to her arm and ask what it is she'll say "ahm"
if you touch her head and ask what it is she'll say "head"
she'll hold out her hand and say "hand"
she thinks her legs are arms too
owe
dat daddy bye bye, while pointing to the door
mote (remote)
up
out
ont dem on (want them on)
when my phone rings she loudly declares, runs towards it and points yelling DADDY, dat daddy, DAAADDYYY! she sometimes does the same when Brian's phone rings :-)
dat mama

That's all I can think of right now.

She was in yesterday for her 18 month well child and she weighs 24.1 pounds and is 32.5 inches tall. She spiked in her height since her 15 month appointment. The doctor asks if kids can say 3 words at this age and the papers they give us say "may say 5-10 words," Emily passed with flying colors. She had to show off :-) We also scheduled an appointment with a Pediatric Cardiologist to check out her heart murmur.

Baby Dept open for business

Ha! The title of this post is misleading but I thought it was funny. By baby department, I don't mean my belly! I'm referring to the 20+ totes we have in our living room and diaper boxes filled with miscellaneous items that we're selling. I don't think it's a good thing that Matthew & Emily have the same number of totes with Matthew's clothes ranging from NB to 4T and Emily's are NB to 18 months! Anyways, I feel like I've been running a baby department store as I've sorted, photographed, repacked, uploaded photos and sent to potential buyers, had potential buyers visit my home to look through our stuff and met other buyers to drop off purchased items. We're having two people coming over today, two tomorrow, one on Sunday and meeting someone on Saturday to drop off stuff. Haven't had many problems and so far everyone has been very satisfied with what they've gotten, other than this one lady who has/is very difficult to arrange transporting the items. She negotiated price, agreed to buy them then admitted she didn't know where my city was or even how to get here, then said she can't meet anywhere because she takes care of a baby during the day then asked if we would ask our friends who work at Mayo to transport the items and meet her husband at Mayo, then after an arrangement had been made she decided that was the best time to ask questions about the items to see if she really wanted them. Part of me hopes something goes wrong when I try hooking up the music/vibration system that goes on the pack 'n play so I can tell her it doesn't work because she most likely won't want it anymore and I can just be done with her. Ufda!

Anyways, enough of my complaining. Things have been pretty normal around here with the exception of me spending 3 whole days going through baby clothes (and I'm not nearly finished!). We had our family pictures taken along with Matthew's four year and Emily's eighteen month pictures so I can't wait to see those! It's about time we'll have a framed family photo on our wall!

Matthew still likes school though I don't think he's a big fan of having to get up early. He's been dragging in the mornings and I usually end up having to help him get changed so we can get out the door so now he likes to tell me I have to help him all the time so we're not late, even when we're not going anywhere or have plenty of time. The days he is in school he tends to behave better at home, to some degree and he is usually pretty good about using his manners. On Friday I always ask myself why we didn't send him to preschool another day but remind myself I'll be happy not having to go out in the snow and cold on those days. Needless to say, Friday's aren't a lot of fun around here.

I don't remember if I mentioned we're replacing some of our windows. I talked to the contractor yesterday and he said the new ones were ordered and our install date has been pushed back slightly because they got rained out last week and then a couple of his workers were sick. Right now we're looking at the first week of November. I have set a deadline that our basement will be done before then and I'm not willing to budge on it this time. Hopefully we'll be able to make a lot of progress down there, soon. It doesn't help we have things scheduled 3 weekends in a row. We also have to figure out a way to pick up Emily's dressers then I have to strip the paint and repaint them before she can use them. It will be nice once the house projects are done for a while; I'm sure there will be something next year since we want to paint the living room, dining room and Emily's room.

Well, I think that's enough for now. We're expecting a lady to come pick up the changing table so I need to end my little break and get back to work.