Work and More Work

We've been working on our house and it just seems to never end. 2 days after I repaint a wall there are dirty finger prints, smudges, crayon, pen, ect all over it again! It's a losing battle. I have finished my awful utility room. I scraped the peeling paint off, painted the plaster that is still intact, and moved my rug in there. We also moved everything out and put it in our shed, so I have room to do laundry and I can open the freezer door all the way without tripping! Mike has been wanting to get rid of our living room rug, so you can see the hardwoord floors and that rug has been peed and spit up on for 4 years now, so it's probably ok to use it for the utility room now...I'll just have to get a new one, the sacrafices I make... We've also finished fixing the damage we did to our stairs, basically rebuilding the staircase at the bottom, had carpet laid, added more trim and put up a sliding door. I've included pictures of everything. Really, if we can't sell it, I love it, we'll be ok here. I'll just send the kids outside more often =-) I added several pictures since most of our family hasn't ever seen our house.



with the sliding door closed (we will add a handle to open it)

the door partially open

a closeup of all the work Mike did

living/family room

dinning room

weird view of part of my kitchen

half of our upstairs master suite - those doors are our bathroom and closet

the other side of the stairs is our office, small couch, and tv

two views of my new and improved utility room

Harvest, already?

So we've been eating out of our garden - really! It's growing like a weed. I keep thinking I need
to post about it, but then two days later it's grown some more. Everything is living and looks good, I keep waiting for things to die and they don't, so I have started to do a little bit of thinning, it's never going to all fit in that tiny raised bed! My peas that I bought as plants have died, but not before they gave us about 6 or 7 peas to eat (peas, not pods). It was crazy - they had these tiny little pods with anywhere from one to three full size, sweet, peas inside. The kids ate them and loved them! We've also had one strawberry to eat. The kids checked on it's progress 2-3 times a day until it was finally red enough to pick. They all took a bite and declared it tasty! I have three little green tomatoes that they watch faithfully - they want them to turn red so they can pick them. If nothing else, my kids are having a great time with this garden!

House For Sale

I hestitate to even post about this, since it may come to nothing. We have our house on the market, for sale, as of Saturday. It's kind of crazy. Mike is a realtor and is always looking at houses. We love to go to new home developments and look and dream and we know we can't afford them. We went to one the other day and were shocked, the prices were good and there is a local bank working with several builders to offer 3.99% financing for new houses until the end of June. These are fixed rate loans with no points. Just a promotion. We will never see such good prices and great rates again. There is one catch, they won't offer the financing unless our house has pended by the end of June, there is no contingency offers accepted unless there is an executable contract. So what it comes down to: if we can get our house under contract in 5 weeks we can buy a new one, if we can't sell our house, we stay. This is going to be a gut renching 5 weeks! We have worked very hard to get our stairs rebuilt at the bottom, get carpet, do the sheetrock, paint everything in the house, paint eveyrthing outside the house, fix the gutters, do something with our utility room (aka the bug room by the kids), finish up a few transitions, put up a little bit more trim, and a couple of other odds and ends that never got done when we renovated the house 2 years ago. We don't have all that done yet, but we certainly worked hard all week and we both have tomorrow off and we will have most of it completed by Tuesday. Maybe it's a good thing nobody has called to see the house, it certainly isn't ready yet. If you know anyone looking for a solid brick house with a slate roof, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and a sunroom in the Richmond area, send them our way! We are hoping to move up to a house with 4 bedrooms, a real office, a large playroom, a garage, and over an acre lot. We'll see what happens...I'm trying to not get my hopes up, but that is difficult to do considering how beautiful the new homes are...if we do stay where we are atleast I get everything finished and freshly painted for me to enjoy!

Mowing the Lawn

Calvin LOVES to mow the lawn. He loves to play with lawn mowers. We've had a lot of rain lately - which means that Calvin has not had the'lawn mowing' time he needs. He was outside playing one day and decided to play with Dad's lawn mower. He puts muddy water in his lawn mower's gas tank, so he decded to fill Dad's up with som too. A few days later, when the rain stopped long enough for everything to dry out and the 'grass' (read weeds) was up to our knees, Mike tried to mow the lawn. Funny thing - the lawn mower wouldn't start. That's when we went looking for Calvin. So, we explained to Calvin that muddy water is not good for Dad's lawn mower and it
was now broken. Calvin offered Dad the use of his lawn mower. We explained that his lawn mower doesn't really cut grass. Calvin retorted "yes it does, when I push it the grass flies up
in the air". We couldn't stop laughing. What do you say to that? We finally found a small engine
repair place and Mike dropped the mower off. A few days later I went to pick the mower up.
I don't mow the lawn, I dont' know what our lawn mower looks like. I took the one the guy loaded into my car. How was I suppose to know that we had a dark green lawn mower and that
I brought home a black one? The guy accidently gave us his loaner mower. He wanted to come by and switch the mowers, but I'd run an errand on my way home from the small engine repair shop and locked my keys in the car. Mike couldn't find the spare so he just picked me up. The guy had to come by later that night after we'd picked up the spare key, got the car home and unloaded his mower. Yes, that is usually how our life goes...what can I say? After almost 8 years, I am finally getting used to it. I didn't even get mad that I locked the keys in the car and had to wait an hour. A whole hour to myself without anything to do - how often does that happen?
Anyway, Calvin was out mowing with his dad again tonight. We got pictures of that 'flying grass' on his lawn mower, proof that a plastic mower without blades really does cut grass!

Lilah

Lilah is 7 months old today. She is growing up so fast! She can sit up all by herself
without any problems. She is pretty good at getting back on her stomach too. Mike has caught
her up on all fours a couple of times, but not for long. She still zooms all over the house in
her walker. The kids constantly complain of her running into them and over their toes.
She is eating her meals with us now and loves applesauce, veggies, and cereal. She can pick
up little puffs and freeze dried fruit with her hands and feed herself. She can't really use
her fingers yet, so it's a bit of a challenge for her, but she gets most of her food into her mouth.
I think she has finally adjusted to sleeping in her crib in Calvin's room. She has quit waking up in the middle of the night and early in the morning. Unless she has thrown it out of her crib, she can find her pacifier and get that back into her mouth on her own as well. Even though dealing with a pacifier isn't fun, I think it will be better then a thumb sucker - we'll see.

Strawberry Jam

For the past 3 or 4 years we have gone strawberry picking. Last year I started using the strawberries to make jam. This year I was smart and checked prices. It's 35% cheaper to

buy my strawberries at the store! Why am I spending all my time and money picking

strawberries? Yes, it's usually fun, but this year was looking to be more difficult then usual

with Lilah being 7 months old - can you see me and my four kids in a strawberry patch picking

enough berries to make jam? Right... So I made jam with Walmart strawberries - I think it

tastes just as good as the expensive hand picked strawberry jam from last year! I've made

2 batches and I'm considering going back for more berries and doing one more batch!

Success!

I think that Madeline is now potty trained.  I'm not saying we won't have accidents, but she

is no longer wearing diapers, night or day, so I think that qualifies for potty trained!  She has

been doing pretty good for a week or so, but only going if mommy initiated it.  Now Madeline

goes on her own!  So exciting.  I didn't think she wouild ever get there - but she did!  I realize

that I will probably still have lots of messes to clean up, but I also have no more diapers to 

buy or change (in her size).  Yeah for my big girl!