The adventures that keep life not boring

Carolyn makes friends well...she got a 1 pound gummy bear the week of Valentine's day. Never seen a gummy bear that big! It's gone now. (She had help eating it.)

We went to visit my grandparents for my birthday weekend and we spent time hearing and recording Grandma telling about her life and stories from her childhood. (I love those stories and now I have them on video to save for generations. She's got a storytelling talent!)

We thought spring was here...

Forgot to have them rinse and when the pollen hit town, it coated all the streaks on the van. oops!

But no, it's back to winter again. We even had snow on Sunday! (Not that it stuck to the ground, but it fell for over 3 hours.) And it's been cold all week (but getting warmer).

Carolyn just wanted to ball up and stay in bed rather than get ready for church.

Everyone else wanted to run outside and "play" in it.

I'm content to just look at it. (Funny to see our tree that blooms for only a few weeks each spring full of blooms with snow falling all around it.)

Before our little winter spurt....
Natalie and Alee helped Rob with his projects in the garage this month:

How many 7-year olds do you know that want to (and get to) use a power tool?

The project they were working on there was the spice rack Rob built me for my birthday.

Alee came home from school one day last week to tell me that her tooth had been really wiggly at lunch, so when they were all sitting on the carpet before the next activity, her friend suggested she just pull it out. So she did. And a visit to the nurse's office to get a little tooth box and clean up the little bit of blood was her next activity instead.

Alee's art was chosen to be on display for the district art night. I suppose it's an abstract from when they learned about lines? (She was disappointed she only had one...which is all anyone had of those chosen at all.)

Love craigslist.com! Got this crib used for half the amount we had budgeted. yea!

And I'm getting fatter...boo (too fast for the "supposed to gain weight" scale).  Well, it is what it is. Hope this is a hungry little baby so I can nurse it all back off! Here's 5 months pregnant:

I did put a thick sweater over my thin shirt before going out into the "blizzard" that day for church.

Carolyn suggested we have a week of breakfast. So I took her up on that, and we did!
Saturday: IHOP (yea gift cards!)
Sunday: Omelets, hashbrown patty, and bran muffins
Monday: Pancakes, eggs, and turkey sausage
Tuesday: Breakfast Casserole and cinnamon rolls (probably the best I've ever made)
Wednesday: French toast with cinnamon apples and bacon
Thursday: grits, eggs, sausage (and leftover bacon), biscuits

Friday: back to our usual pizza...but Friday is a story in itself....
We then had breakfast burritos last Saturday b/c it was the only thing I had energy and time to make after our crazy few days. (read on) And still no one is sick of breakfast! We had waffles last night. (Wednesday)

Last Thursday we had scheduled a tree company to remove the annoying looming gum ball tree and 2 stick-dropping river birch that were very close to our porch/house.
The 3 youngest (who had an early release from school were trying to organize and clean up the back porch while they worked).

They did great....that stump was ground up to bits later that day.

However, when they took down the 2nd river birch, its roots were intertwined with the sprinkler lines and wires. :( So it broke that part of our line, and in trying to deal with the broken pipes, the wires got cut too.

The rest of the story....

Unfortunately, our sprinkler line didn't have a back flow thing that would keep it separate from the house, and the only shut off valve for the system could only shut off the half that wasn't broken! So, in order to get the water to quick gushing from the pipe coming up out of the ground we had to turn off the water entirely.

We managed at first (that was the end of cleaning up the back porch for sure - can't hose off pollen if you don't have water). We used the bathroom as sparingly as we could at home (using some stored non-potable water to flush the toilets and wash hands), but mostly we tried to use the bathroom anywhere else we went that day - the school, the library, dance, etc.

I used water storage (bottled water) to make the grits, and everything else didn't need water. I thought we'd have water back on by that night. I had someone coming, so the tree guys left. Unfortunately, the company that had dealt with our sprinklers before didn't care that they had done a poor job last time, resulting in this mess, AND they couldn't fix it this time at all. Just said, "this is too complicated" and left...while we were split between dance class (with 3) and at a school function (the other 2) and it's too dark to call someone more competent!

My sister-in-law (at dance class with us), offered her house for showers, so as inconvenient as it was for both parties, at least we were clean, and we went to bed with water bottles and toilets refilled (and all my supper-crusted dishes sitting on the counter not soaking in water). It was the fastest shower night ever - 40 minutes for all 7 of us!

It took ALL day Friday to get the part installed so that the house water line can run independently of the sprinkler line (and to cap off the problem temporarily.) They finished getting our water back on after 7 pm. Needless to say, after shopping all day and standing around outside several times talking with the guy working in our yard, my ankles were killing me and we still had no water....we ordered pizza!

They (the better more knowledgeable irrigation guy and his help) will come back tomorrow to repair the broken part of the sprinkler so that it's usable again.

Glad the crib and the trees costed less than we had expected because the water/sprinkler repair certainly wasn't part of this year's tax return spending plan! Kind of a blessing if you look at it the right way?

We also had multiple offers for help from in town friends to out of town relatives, but when you need to sleep at night in your own bed, you just want your own toilet to work!!

How grateful I am for running water! (We have a bunch of deer park gallons of water for drinking and a bunch of old laundry detergent bottles, vinegar bottles, and emptied deer park bottles that were all filled with tap water that we were able to use for flushing toilets, washing hands, and stuff like that. Still grateful for running water!)

We did get the back porch organized last Saturday.

Another shorter story:
Last year when we had a little girl living with us for 2 months, we had to have our house inspected for child safety. I remember the inspection lady having a concern about the dozen or so bottles of laundry detergent on the floor around washer/dryer where a child could reach them. (My first thought was, what child that has the dexterity to open a bottle doesn't have the understanding not to drink it?? By the time mine could open a bottle they knew what they couldn't drink.)

Nevertheless... I store mine up high anyways; I've heard the child warning.  I pointed out those were not bottles of detergent, but they were bottles refilled with water. The only have detergent residue in them. She looked at me like that idea was the strangest thing she'd ever heard of.

Well, Strange-Looks-Woman, those bottles of water were what allowed this pregnant woman to use the bathroom for 36 hours with no running water!

Anyways - on to this week. I used to do cute meals for insignificant holidays, but haven't had the time/energy to deal with that much this past year, so I started afresh - with Pi Day (3.14 - March 14th).

And I'm slowly getting my house back organized...how does it get unorganized? 

Must have little dis-organizational elves living here...??

After I organized the bookshelves yesterday (according to Carolyn's plan to organize chapter books by author's last name), I took a picture of both sides. 

Then, being the slightly obsessed organizer that I am, I labeled the pictures and ordered them printed so I could post them beside the bookcase in some insane hope the kids keep them this way. 

I know, I know...I'll be doing this all over again next year. But doesn't it look good?? (You should have seen it before - it looked like the bookshelves had thrown up books and toys on themselves!)

I also decluttered to the give away pile about a box of picture books, activity books, coloring books, and nonfiction books I think they won't notice. ;)

And I've started scrapbooking again. I had planned to make this a project when they all got into school last year, and in the past year and a half I have only gotten Alee from no scrapbook to age 1. There's no way I'll catch them all up this year, but at least if I can put in books the boxes of pictures I've already ordered and have sitting around, that will be progress.

I guess I can adopt my mom's goal: get each person's done before he/she graduates high school!