House Guests

On Monday I picked the winners of my Bunny Mug giveaway.  Since I only had three comments, it wasn't too hard to figure out who my winners were.  In case you were looking for a big announcement, that would be reason #1 why there wasn't one.  I ordered the mugs, and emailed the winners for their addresses.  Now as soon as the mugs show up, which looks to be sometime between Monday and Thursday of next week, I will send them out.

Other than that, I've had house guests.  My mom to be exact.  She's been here since Monday and leaves next Monday.  Then on Wednesday, my mother in law comes.

Right before receiving house guests, I was able to get my tree up and decorate my mantel.

I got new stockings for the older two last year after Christmas at Target.  

They didn't have the little one's initial.  

Plus, hers is pink, and has monkeys, she's kind of attached to it.

There used to be this company called Christmas Around the World.  

They sold awesome Christmas stuff using the home party plan (like Tupperware)

Then they wen't bankrupt.

I was sad.  

These gingerbread houses are the last thing I got from them.

I was so excited this year that I finally had a mantel again 

and could use my "JOY" stocking hangers.

I opened the box they were in to discover that a snow globe had not survived the move.

Other contents of the tote were ruined, the stocking hangers were attempting to rust.

They were able to be saved, but I did have to put new felt under the J.

These hurricanes usually have candles in them.  

I took the candles out and filled them with little wooden ornaments my mom had given me

 from when I was a kid.

 That's about the extent of the decorating around here.  New lights were purchased for the outside of the house, but since they haven't been put up yet and the hubby only has one day off this week, I don't think they are getting done this year.

Giving credit where credit is due

After writing yesterday's post, I realized that I may have exaggerated ever so slightly about the fact that my husband claims he can build stuff and yet has only ever built me a mantel.  The mantel was part of a complete living room remodel.  I've got some pictures, but you're going to have to use your imagination for some of this story.  Unfortunately I wasn't so good about capturing this whole process on film.

This is what we started with.  A cute little house that we rented for three years before we purchased.  See those two floor to ceiling windows in the front.  Yeah, I hated them.  My couch backed up to them so I could never open the blinds without showing the neighborhood the back of my couch.  Plus they were drafty.  For three years I said, "If this were my house, I'd take those windows out and put in one (dual paned) window that doesn't go all the way to the floor"

Three days after we closed escrow on the house, the neighbors were invited over, beer was purchased and within a few hours those windows were gone, and in their place was a beautiful eight foot wide by four foot high dual paned window set inside brand new framing.

Now we needed to put up new drywall, texture, and paint,  

but we couldn't do that to just this wall,

 it wouldn't match with all the others in the room if we did.  

The entire room and adjoining hallway were re-textured and painted.  

By my hubby.

We said goodbye to the 1970's style popcorn ceiling too, courtesy of my hubby.

Then he brought the room into a more modern age by installing recessed lighting, 

a ceiling fan, and crown moulding.  You can kinda see part of the fan and one

 recessed light in the picture above.

He had never done stucco before, so he called a friend that had, and the outside got finished too.

Here's a picture I took before the final color coat of stucco went on.  

Somehow I never got a picture of the end result.

I found this picture from the following Halloween where you can see just a smidge of

 the decorative moulding and ledge that the hubby built around the new window.

Then there was that mantel that I referred to yesterday.  

Here is it's before picture.

This was the crappiest mantel ever, and another thing that I had said for three years 

I would fix if it were my house.  It was made out of 4 x 4's for the pieces that surround the 

brick and then sitting on top of that were two warped 1 x 4's.  Anything I tried to set on top

 would tip over either because of the warped condition of the boards or the gap between

 them that ran the length of the mantel.

Utterly useless.

I personally got to use a sledgehammer and a crowbar to remove this.  

Oh my was that fun.

I sketched out what I wanted the mantel to look like and my hubby built it for me.

It was perfect and looked just like my sketch.

Do you think I got a picture of it?

Sort of?

Here is a picture from the following Christmas.  You can see a corner of it.

The last step in the remodel was ripping out the old grey carpet and installing laminate

 flooring in the whole house.  As soon as the hubby did that, we decided to sell the house 

and move to Arizona.  I never got any pictures of the laminate floors.

Thinking about all this reminds me of how much more fun it is to live in an old house.  

I like to build stuff.  

And break stuff with sledgehammers. 

 I need another old house. 

And some wood.

And a new saw for the hubby.

Fall

The kids started school a month ago. New schools in a new town. Great schools. Schools that my kids love. This was one of my biggest fears. We'd move all this way and the kids would hate it. But they don't. They like it here, they really do. Not that they don't miss their friends in Arizona, but they aren't miserable every day, pining over what was left behind. Instead they are tackling each day with a smile on their face, looking forward to all the new and different things they can do here.

Aimee joined the swim team and started the year with a bunch of new friends. Kimberly is going to a real middle school, with lockers, changing classes, electives, and even having to dress for PE. Most of the kids Tiffany already knew from the neighborhood are in her class, plus she met some new ones.

Fall in Michigan has brought trees changing colors, and leaves to rake.

Surprisingly Kimberly LOVES yard work.

Give the kid a rake and she's in seventh heaven.

I hope the novelty doesn't wear off.

This is only the first tree to change.

The kids made scarecrows at our town's Harvest Festival

and decorated our yard with them.

A few nights ago, we got BOO'd.

The doorbell rang, and when we answered the door,

we found this adorable little guy attached to a bag of candy.

The instructions say:

1. Eat the CANDY!!!!

2. Make a copy of this picture to boo another neighbor

3. Leave a bag of candy and the copied piece of paper at their doorstep.

Remember to be sneaky.

4. Put the picture of the ghost in your window so everyone can see.

The kids thought this was the coolest thing ever.

I just hope that everyone enjoys winter just as much.

Summertime and Slimy Things

When we first arrived in Michigan this past June,

we stayed with our friend Alex.

Alex has fourteen acres of property.

And one pond.

In that pond were many different forms of life.

Algae, fish, leaches (eww),

and these...

That's a tadpole.

In a jar.

And here he is, swimming up to say hi.

We didn't let the kids keep the tadpoles in jars for very long.

They could look at them for an hour or so

and then had to return them to the pond.

Before long,

they weren't bringing tadpoles up to the house in jars any more.

They were bringing FROGS.

Big frogs.

No jars.

These were returned to the pond much more promptly.

I need a minion

I've always made lists. It's a coping mechanism I taught myself at an early age to deal with my ADD. Even though I didn't know that I had ADD until a few years ago, I knew I suffered from CRS (can't remember shit), so I made lists. Then in 2001 I was in a car accident that scrambled my brain a little and wiped out my short term memory, and I really needed my lists. Before the days of Blackberrys I had a day planner. I'd write down all my appointments and refer to it daily. It had a leather cover and I lovingly called it my Bible. If it were not for that day planner, I probably wouldn't have made it through college. Whenever I had something particularly important to remember, I would enlist the help of friends to give me a call to remind me to look at my day planner. Now I set my Blackberry to remind me. If I lost my phone I would be so dead.

We move in 32 days. I have so much to do, I have multiple lists. I made a big calendar of the six weeks leading up to the move on a poster board. I needed to be able to visually see where the openings were in my schedule with one look. There is a lot going on in the remaining 4 weeks. Forgetting the move for a moment, there is the stuff of normal life that usually keeps my days quite full. There are dentist appointments, doctor appointments, therapist appointments, orthodontist appointments. There is endless laundry to do and weeds that seem to grow back as soon as I pull them up. Then there are the things I have committed to doing such as the American Cancer Society Relay For Life, the school PTA carnival, and chaperoning my 3rd grader's school field trip. Once you add in the move, there is the trip to Disneyland with our cousins from California we are making because we don't know when we will be anywhere near California again, a going away party, and garage sales that need done. The car needs new tires, an oil change, and hopefully a DVD player installed. Have you noticed that I haven't even mentioned packing yet? Somehow I have to fit that in between all that other stuff. And I do mean "I", as in there is only one open weekend left on my big calendar and the hubby might show up at home a week before the move and the kids are in school all day every other day. Oh, and just for the record, we still haven't found a house in Michigan.

So I have lists.

A list of things we need to get/take to the Relay For Life

A list of things that need done to the car to make it roadworthy

A list of things we need to pack for Disneyland

A list of things I need to make sure don't get packed and go with me on the road trip to Michigan

A list of things I need to fix so I get my deposit back

A list of things we may need before we have a new home and therefore need to be on the ass end of the moving truck in case we need to access them while it's in storage

A list of what is not getting moved and getting sold in a garage sale

A list of the hotels we are staying on our road trip along with the touristy stops we are making along the way

Each day I make a to do list for that day. Each day I feel that things get added to my list faster than I can check them off. I need a minion to help me get this all done.

Homeward Bound

Today is my last day here in Hawaii. Most people would expect that I would be sad about going home, but it hasn't been beaches and mai tai's. The only water my feet have touched is in the shower, and I'm losing my tan from spending my days inside the hospital. It's been a rough nine days. Not only have I cooked and cleaned more than I ever do in my own home, it's been emotionally draining to be the only one thinking rationally in a house full of people grieving over a sick family member. My mother in law is a wreck. My sister in law is emotionally vacant. I worry about how they will cope when I'm gone. I've suggested they find some kind of therapy or support group so that they get the emotional support that they need when I'm gone. I hope they do, because they will need it, but I'm not holding my breath. I love them because they are my husband's family, but I miss my own kids and my own bed. It will be so good to be home.

Once I get home I need to get busy getting everything ready for school to start. There are backpacks and crayons to buy, doctor's appointments to attend, prescriptions to fill. Not to mention the meetings with the PTA to get everything ready to go the first week of school. I've got a lot to do over the next two weeks to get my house in order to start school. I still can't believe that summer is almost over. It feels like we haven't done anything.

Right where I need to be

Again with the writer's block. Blech.

It's been almost two months since I've posted. I just haven't felt like I had anything to say. Overall our summer has been pretty uneventful. Mostly I'm happy about that, but it does keep me from having fodder for my blog.

The kids start school in two weeks. I wonder where my summer went. Sure we've been to some movies and I'm rocking a pretty good tan, but I still feel like we haven't done anything. Our summers used to be busy with swimming lessons and other activities. The past two summers we've spent them mostly at home doing nothing. Not to knock doing nothing. It's good to relax sometimes, but I feel rather unproductive.

For the past five days I've been in Hawaii. Not for a vacation, but to help my mother in law since my father in law is sick in the hospital. A week ago he almost died. The doctors told MIL that she needed to call her kids. It was bad. My husband was conflicted, he wanted to be here to comfort his mom, but he also needed to do some work to provide for our family. I suggested that I could come in his place. And just like that my plans for the next couple of weeks changed drastically. Immediately I was packing and getting on a plane, putting my entire life on hold for 10 days to come out here and do whatever I can. The night I arrived I looked up into the night sky and saw the big dipper. So close and so bright I felt like I could touch it. In that moment I knew, I was right where I needed to be. The big dipper has always been my personal compass. Any time I've been at any kind of crossroads in my life, and wanted reassurance that I was on the right path, if I saw the big dipper in the sky things always turned out okay. This may seem silly to you reading this, being as how the big dipper is pretty easy to recognize in the night sky, but I can tell you, there are times when you can't. Whether it is a matter of the tilt of the earth, or clouds, or whatever, there are just times that it is not there to see. And it's not as if I go looking for it either. I just happen to see it while thinking about other things. Like this time, when I looked up to the sky it was just there, the only thing I could see in the patch of sky I could see between the houses and the trees that obscured my view. So for the last five days I haven't worried about all the things at home that need to get done, or the money I spent to fly out here, or anything other than helping my MIL. All those things will work themselves out, because I am needed here, so this is where I am.