Stay tuned for the conclusion...

I'm starting to feel like the host of American Idol's final episode when he says "We'll announce the winner when we come back" - and he says it like 20 times before they ACTUALLY announce the winner.  That's me today.  Still not in the house.  How long does the 'eve' of moving last? Seems to be about a three day eve around here.  I realize it's difficult to tie up all the loose ends, patch any tiny paint problems and address random things here and there, but come on already!!!

The cleaning crew was scheduled for the house on Monday morning, but they got tied up somewhere else and got moved back one day.  This put it rather close to the wood floor dude putting on his final coat of poly that night, but they were planning on it anyway. Turns out, floors were too sticky when they got there to clean - so it was put off again. The next day, we stopped over to check out the progress and view the dried floor.  My heart sank when I saw BUBBLES all over the place.  Teeny tiny bubbles were dried in the finish of the wood floor in almost ever room, and lots of em.  GREAT.   When I called the builder (in kind of a huff) to ask if he had seen the finished floor yet (he hadn't), his response to my report was this: "ohhh no..."  oh yeah!  I do have to say, one of the things I really like about our builder is it's impossible to ruffle his feathers.  The man is calm about EVERYTHING.  I think I could tell him part of our house got blown away in a tornado, and his reaction would be the same logical, CALM voice methodically listing step-by-step instructions on how to get back on track.  No biggie.  I guess why that's he's in the business of building houses, and I am not.  I'd be going "What?  Are you kidding me!? I'm gonna have that wood floor guy's ass in a sling!"  ha   

If all went according to the 'new' plan, the floors should be dry and perfect this morning. Wood dude was scheduled to come last night for his final FINAL coat on the floor.  Cleaning peeps were there yesterday, and the house is SPARKLING clean.  Yes!    Meeting grandma at noon to give her the kids for three days (WOO HOO!).  Final walk-through with the builder is TODAY in the afternoon.  Furniture comes tomorrow.  *whew* I can see the light!

An ode to the commode

As excited as we all are to move into our bigger and better house, we are at the same time feeling a teensy bit sad.  Even though this house is small, has only one bathroom and no outdoor seating... it holds a lot of memories - GOOD memories.   For each thing that drives me nuts about this house, there are another ten things I really love about it.

I first heard of the saying "Love Grows Best in Small Houses" from Ben several years ago. At the time he said it, I thought he was just trying to offer some sort of consolation for not living in a big house, but I think there's actually something to it. For example, having only one bathroom to share between five people doesn't exactly allow for a lot of privacy or modesty.  My baths and showers are constantly interrupted by someone jetting in to use the facilities, a little face peeking around the curtain or sometimes the dreaded 'accidental flush'.  I've given up on asking the kids to knock before bursting into the bathroom while I'm in there.  In fact, I've pretty much just given up on closing the door in general - it's just easier that way.  It is not unusual for four people to be in our bathroom at once, and our kids don't know any other way! I firmly believe (silly as it may seem) that sharing only one bathroom BRINGS A FAMILY TOGETHER.

our current bathroom

I first observed this phenomenon many years ago in Oelwein, Iowa after I started dating Ben.   I was in high school at the time and very accustomed to having loads of uninterrupted time in the bathroom, and would never dream of bothering a closed bathroom door.  Ben's cousins (the S family) were a family of five, and upon observing their single bathroom etiquette, I was in disbelief.  It was not uncommon for their Dad to be in the tub, the oldest brother on the throne, youngest daughter brushing her teeth while the middle daughter primped in the mirror - and all of this with an open door where mom stood visiting with them from the kitchen!  Good Lord!  But you know what?  After I got past the initial shock, I found myself starting to admire and even envy the CLOSENESS and openness between these family members.  Now granted, I am well aware that the wonderful family dynamic existing in this household was not the sole result of having one location to 'do your business'.  

BUT IT DIDN'T HURT either.  

Back to today.  

As we prepare to move into our much larger home, a little part of me is worried about losing that daily interaction in the bathroom.  I know!  It sounds crazy, but it's true.  I highly doubt anyone is going to come brush their teeth in my bathroom while I'm using the toilet or taking a shower.  (And even if they did, the toilet has it's own little room to shut the door, so I wouldn't know they were there anyway).  They big boys will have a bathroom of their own downstairs, and little Jakey will have the hall bath (that is, if he ever graduates to underwear and actually has a need for a toilet), and Ben and I will have master bath all to ourselves.  I guess my habit of not shutting the bathroom door won't have to change when we move - since there won't be a reason to!  Our kids will be busy upstairs or downstairs or outside or in the theatre room or the playroom or the bonus room or WHO KNOWS WHERE!   *ugh*  :-(

Am I seriously getting down in the dumps on the eve of scoring a sweet master bath and tons of space?  What the hell is going on!!!?!?!?!

Ok. Ok.  I think I'm just nervous about moving and about CHANGE.  This move is going to be AWESOME.  Even though we're going to have several options of where we can shower or watch TV or hang out, hopefully we'll still choose to congregate together for whatever we are doing.  And with all this space, we can have lots of family and friends over all the time, causing - once again - a line for the bathroom!!!!  

*I hope so*

The final countdown!!!!

I haven't been able to sit down at my computer much lately due to all the PACKING and  moving we've been doing.  Our house is almost done!  In fact, if all is going well today, we should be doing our final inspection tomorrow!!  I can't believe it!

YAY.

The fact that I might be sleeping in my new bedroom by the end of the week just hasn't sunk in.  

YYYYAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!

I'm a little excited.

Happy Trails to You...

We are down to three cats, and  I've got mixed feelings about it.  When we moved to our current house almost seven years ago, the only pet we had was our cat SCOOBIE.  We've had Scoob since we lived in Denver, and before we had kids - Scoob was our kid.  Scoob went everywhere with us.  She made countless trips riding in the car with us to Wisconsin and back. I even took off work once to stay home with her after a rough vet appointment.   After we had a baby, Scoob kind of took a back seat.  She stayed home when we went places.  And by the time we had three kids, she was pretty much non-existent.  It didn't help matters when she started peeing on stuff in the basement.  She also had a tendency to come up and bite us out of the blue, which was rather annoying - and painful.   Hence, she now resides outdoors.

This is Scoob:

see how happy she is as an outside kitty? 

Not too long after we moved into this house, we decided to let the boys each get an outside kitten.   Will and Charlie picked out kittens from the local crazy cat lady (actually it's an old man named "Frosty"), and our cat population grew from one to three.  Dale Earnhardt Jr and Macy turned out the be two of the best darned cats a person could ever ask for.  They followed us around outside like puppies and they enjoyed every minute of being held upside down, tickle tortured and squeezed from the kids.    When Dale got hit by a car - it was horrible.   We took him to the vet where they successfully treated his head wound and broken leg, and we sent out Christmas pictures featuring our kids and a cat in a cast (had the picture been taken a week later, it would have featured two kids and three-legged amputee cat).  

The boys with Macy and Dale:

I'll skip right to the bad part which is this:  Both of these cats end up disappearing - first Dale, then Macy.  Just up and vanished!  As you can imagine, the kids were devastated.  We all were! We distributed flyers all over the place and waited and waited and WAITED for someone to call or for Dale to come back......  and nothing.  *ugh*

Since then, my heart has really hardened towards our outside cats.  It just doesn't pay to get attached to them.   Don't get me wrong, I love our cats and we take excellent care of them, BUT it's impossible to prevent them from wandering into the woods or the road or wherever they wander to where an unfortunate ending might await.    As you might have deduced from some of my recent pictures, we recently had two litters of kittens.  We had EIGHT kittens here - yeah, way too many.  After they were weaned, I published an ad (against the kids wishes) for free kittens to good homes.  Even though I knew it would be hard for the kids to give the kittens away, I knew it was the best thing.  We're moving and don't have an outbuilding at the new pad yet.  Plus, it would probably take some time to find them all new owners.  Right?  Ha. The next day a farmer called who was looking for some nice farm cats... and he wanted them ALL. Okay.  I guess.  It makes the most sense right?  Then the kitties can stay together.  Right? 

During discussions with the farmer we decided to give him the mama cat with all of the kittens. I knew it made sense, but I was feeling really bad about it.   But if that weren't enough, at the tail end of the transaction, Ben decided to include Scoob as part of the deal!!!  SCOOB!  

Ugh.  I'm still not over it.  I know she's fine, and she's hanging out with her cat buddies (and now cows and chickens), and probably having tons of fun on a farm.  Right?  Yeah I know - it's tough to put a positive spin on this one, but I'm really trying.  

Sorry Scoob. :-(

All decked out

Let me just start out by saying that lounging around on a deck or patio was meant to be a part of my life.  Growing up, the deck at our house was the main location for any type of family or social gathering. Many parties were held on the deck, usually holding lots more people than it was built for.  My mom and I used to love sitting outside for no reason at all, and I have many memories of heading straight to the deck after school for sunbathing with my friends.  Even my house at college had a deck for Pete's sake!  (yes that was a lot of fun too) So, you can imagine the VOID in my life for the past TEN YEARS, since both houses we have owned have been DECK-DEPRIVED.  

Our first house had a large concrete driveway and parking area, which I often 'pretended' was a patio.  I did sit out there on a plastic chair once in a while, but I couldn't bring myself to buy proper furniture for it, since it really was.... well... a driveway.    Here's a picture of my bro and sis-in-law and Ben nine years ago enjoying our plastic chairs and driveway...

Our current house has absolutely nothing to offer as far as an outdoor seating area besides grass, grass and more grass (unless you would actually consider gravel a seating area, which I do not).  Last year at the end of the season, I finally broke down and bought some patio furniture, in the hopes that I would be able to set it on a proper surface sometime in the near future.  Since then I have once again been 'pretending' to have a patio, as seen in this picture below from Will's birthday...

So you can imagine my excitement last night as we headed over to the new house to put the patio furniture on the deck.  A real deck!  And while I did take a few minutes to oooh and ahhh over the fresh interior paint and light fixtures, I  really only had eyes for my new outdoor seating area!!!!  Look - there it is!  A deck AND patio!!!

Even though it started DOWN-POURING rain (of course) shortly after we got there, I was still able to enjoy the view and relish in the fulfillment of my cedar and concrete dreams.  Here's me taking shelter from the rain - but see how happy I am?  And can you see the patio furniture in the distance - see it? back there on the DECK?  

Now, one would guess the only thing left to do in light of the rain is to HEAD HOME.  booooo :-(   No Way!  This is the part where you head inside, crank the painter's radio and dance and play air guitar on top of ladders - OBVIOUSLY!!!!

Caution: Do not try this at home (especially the last part)

This video is a bit shaky - I was filming

from the front seat of a moving truck. But even  

 so, I think you can still tell that he was really

feelin the music!

"Hello Head, nice to meet you. I'm Truck Door..."

I'm thinking I might as well cover Charlie in band-aids before we even leave the house from now on, just to stay ahead of the game.   Thank goodness after the last dirt bike fiasco I bought new first aid kits for the vehicles, because we had to bust in to one today about .10 seconds after setting foot onto soil at our destination.  

Is it really such a coincidence that the same kid keeps ending up in the emergency room, has the most accidents and has probably lost the most blood over the course of his life in comparison to the others?  HE IS ACCIDENT PRONE!  I really think he is. Only Charlie could cut his head open on the truck DOOR.  Yup.  As he was crazily exiting the back seat, running before his feet ever hit the ground, his forehead collided with the opening driver door.  Who does that!  After hearing the 'THUD' and the initial scream,  I looked over to see a bawling kid sprawled out on the new concrete approach cupping his forehead, which was leaking blood.   All I could think was "you have to be kidding me!"  

Luckily for me, I've picked up plenty of tips from watching the ER nurses patch Charlie up in the past, so I got the gap closed pretty tight with some teeny butterfly bandages I whipped up. He calmed down significantly after he was cleaned up and bandaged, even finding pleasure in the fact he was the first one to drop 13 drops of blood on the new concrete.  Ah memories!  I had thought about having them put their hand prints or initials in the freshly poured concrete, but since we didn't get the chance, I guess I'll have to settle for blood stains instead.  Hey, you can't get much more personal than that!  

I'm just not a fan of the Beave

I'm probably going to offend some people here (sorry Mac), but I just gotta say - I THINK BEAVERS ARE ANNOYING !!!! *whew* Yesterday, we headed over to the new pad to check things out.  After scoping out the house, we headed over the hill and through the woods to ... a disgusting moat and a beaver dam? Ugh.  Our nice LITTLE beautiful *kid friendly* stream had been turned into a big, nasty, stagnant DEEP *kid hazard* of a beaver paradise.  

They built this:

and our stream went from THIS:

to THIS:

Yes, that is me wearing argyle socks and polka-dot rubber boots.  LOL

While the kids had a lot of fun trying to break this thing apart, I seriously do not know what to do about these pests!  The dam is so thick and everything is soooo backed up.  To make matters worse, I think they also have a couple smaller dams down stream.   I read somewhere that to get rid of the beaver dam, you need to get rid of the beaver.  Is that true?  How the heck do you get rid of a beaver?  

Between dodging the flying mud glops, steadying teetering kids, and scanning for ticked off beavers to jump out and bite us, it was an eventful afternoon.  The kids actually got some water flowing over the edge as you can see above, but I'm confident it was probably repaired shortly after we left.  (fuzzy jerks)  

More to come...

Back to Reality

I wouldn't want to shatter the utopian picture I painted for you yesterday, however - you knew it was too good to be true, right?  If I really thought my kids were transformed over night into law abiding citizens and eager do-gooders, I must have inhaled too many paint fumes.   This morning when Ben asked me to shop-vac up the rest of the scraped paint around the garage, I had my hesitations, but (against my better judgement) said I'd do it.  Normally, (like yesterday) when he asks me to do 'extra' things (like power wash the garage), I get a little irritated.  He usually acts like he cannot understand what the big deal is.  Sometimes he even takes the task on himself while watching the kids just to show me how 'easy' it really can be. Right.

I had to secretly giggle yesterday at an unfortunate incident which occurred while Ben was outside scraping the garage.  I came in from supervising Jacob for about 20 minutes to get ready to take Will to the dentist, leaving Ben to do his simple 'extra' job while watching all three kids.  I can't say I was too surprised when shortly after I departed I heard a lot of yelling outside, the screen door slam and saw a furious Ben stomping in the house, holding a kitten that had been freshly dipped in white paint.   I headed outside to assess the rest of the damage and saw a guilty Jacob sporting a fresh pair of 'white' gloves.  Oh boy.  As I brought him in the house to the sink where the kitten was being scrubbed,  Ben looked over and angrily stated "JACOB.  Look at what you did!  NAUGHTY."  At that moment, a wave of guilt washed over little Jakey and he sadly said "Sowwy Daddy"....  YEAH RIGHT!  Instead, Jacob looked over at his little creation and an evil smile slowly spread across his face.  Then he let out the lowest little diabolical snicker EVER, as if to say "you bet your sweet ass I did that, and it's pretty damn funny too!"  I think I saw Ben trying to hold back a tiny smile.

So today, as I said, I was asked to finish sucking up the paint scrapings.  With an optimistic attitude, I headed out, giving both older kids one CLEAR instruction: DO NOT LET JACOB GET WET.  Simple Simon.  So, again - why am I surprised that fifteen minutes later Jacob was soaked head to toe, Charlie was marching around with the bag of pretzels I told him NOT to take outside and Will's new shirt was splattered with white paint water?!?!?!   Seriously people!!!!!  DEEP BREATHS.  

Well, well, well... look what they can do!

power-washing....

vacuuming... 

more power-washing...

no comment...  

painting...

and yes, even mowing...

You can't make me!

I had a real eye opener last night after baseball.  It was the last game of the season, so we all headed into town for the team to have ice cream together. While sitting outside on the bench next to some other parents, we got to talking about our kids (gee what a shocker). Topics ranged from how crappy today's cartoons are, how to get kids to actually do what you tell them to and how to instill the value of a dollar.  

Growing up, I must have either done everything the first time my mom asked or I was just never asked to do anything at all.  I wish my memory was better, but I really don't remember any harping by my mother... but since I didn't even know how to clean a bathroom, boil water or wash dishes since I was in college or after... and the only memory I have of my bedroom is that of a disaster zone, I think I can probably extrapolate and come to the right conclusion .  Ben grew up on a farm where his mom and sister took care of all the 'inside' stuff (making beds, laundry and cleaning up after dinner) while he, his dad and brother did the chores outside.  That's just the way it was.  Ben was asked to do a lot of farm work (and he did) from a very young age, and I grew up being waited on... so we often find ourselves at odds with each other when trying to determine the appropriate responsibility level for the boys. We do however both agree that we want our kids to have a good work ethic and don't want them to be spoiled - ha.  EASIER SAID THAN DONE.

So, I'm sitting there last night listening to the man who poured our concrete foundation talk about his parenting philosophies, and I realize that he is a genius and that our kids have it wayyyyy too easy.   He's got two sons in Kindergarden and 2nd grade.  The 2nd grader is in Will's class, but since we started Will late in Kindergarten, Will's actually a year older.  While we were discussing how much all of our kids like Tom and Jerry, Concrete Guy says "Cartoons are okay in the morning while they eat breakfast, but after that the TV is off all day unless it's educational''.  Hmmm interesting.  He continued on from there while I took mental notes.  (um, could you repeat that part for me where your kid operates the skid loader?) Granted, these people live on a farm, but I could not believe the amount of help this 8-year old is able to offer to his Dad.  Chores (real ones) every morning and night, no matter what. This kid is asked to do 20 times what our boys are and probably dish out only a tenth of the whining.  When I found out that 8-year old helped his dad build fence two days in a row for EIGHT hours each LAST SUMMER, that was the topper.  All I could do was sit there stunned and think of my lazy, complaining and UNDER-WORKED crew of little men I have at home.  

When I got home and reported all of this to Ben, I of course got the 'I told you so' look while he started ticking off a list of jobs our kids could and should be doing.  Oh boy, did I open up a can of worms or what.  And excuse me sir - no they are not going to start mowing the lawn!!!!  Jeez.  What was I thinking even bringing up this topic?!  So, I've got some thinking to do on my own.  Right now, the biggest jobs our kids have are setting the table, feeding the cats and picking up toys.  And believe me, to get those things accomplished, I've got to tell them 564 times and listen to ten minutes of whining each time.  It's ridiculous!  I've tried the charts and stickers and points and all of that... it works for a while, but it's such a pain!  I might try money...  but shouldn't kids just DO what they're supposed to without being bribed?  *sigh*  I'm open for suggestions.