Farewell flies...

After our 4th of July block party our house was inhabited by lots and lots of flies. It was not bothering me too much but my mom was a little annoyed when she would go downstairs to our guest bedroom to find numerous flies. She was not amused and did not want to co-sleep with the flies. My grandmother asked us where we kept our bug spray and much to her shock we did not own bug spray. D told her that we do not kill insects. This is proof that when Nathan sees a fly in the screened in porch he comes inside grabs some Tupperware and takes it outside in the hopes of catching the fast flies. Then once he catches it, or I catch it, we take it outside to let it go. So we were in a dilemma about how to dispose of the flies in the basement so that my mother could sleep soundly. Well tried the old sticky tape theory of which D was pretty successful at but my smashing them with a shoe box was a faster way to get them. We probably ended up getting about 20 flies from our basement. The next night we had the same number of flies return. After my mom left I was not too worried about them but on Friday the flies started to annoy me. So what did I do? I took out my vacuum and attacked them with the nozzle. I think I sucked up at least 20 new flies. I did the first floor and then tackled the basement. So now I am sitting here at my computer, in the dining room, and I am no longer annoyed with flying flies. I feel very satisfied and I do not feel guilty that I sucked up lots of flies. My thinking is that this is my house. If you are in my house then I can suck you up in my vacuum. I will not kill bugs outside since it is their domain. This was my same theory in Knoxville with the overly biting mesquites. Those black bugs just irritated me so much that I hated going outside because I did to want to put bug spray on my body and I hated the sound they made by my face. So I always got extra irritated when they came into my house and started biting me in my territory. I had zero sympathy and killed them as fast as I could. Die mosquitoes and flies.

Anyway, enough of that. Nathan has been doing an excellent job with being potty trained. He had one Hersey squirt of a poop in his underwear one afternoon and that was it. I think it probably slipped out. He is still getting used to what a poop and what a fart feels like so maybe this was one of those times. Our house has gotten back to normal since our crazy past two weeks with family in town. Mallory started safety town and she loves it. She is with her cousin and other friends from her preschool so that made it a little easier. Julianne starts an art camp next week. This will be the first activity that Julianne has done all summer. We have actually had a nice summer with little activities here and there but not too much. Julianne is so much nicer to her siblings and likes to play with Mallory more since not being in school. It just proves my whole theory that school is very stressful and busy for Julianne. And when she gets home she breaks down emotionally and physically. I can tell that now that she is not in school is better able to control her emotions and able to enjoy herself more without feeling anxious.

This was D's first weekend without having to study for his license test. He was much more relaxed and was able to enjoy his weekend. He took the kids down to see his mom and I got to mow the grass and enjoy a little free time.

I have not had too much time to blog lately because my "free" time has been spent filling out crazy health insurance forms. Since D is going to be an independent worker we have to get our own insurance. Those forms are crazy and ask us our health questions from about 10 years ago. The one was so specific to ask us our medication and how much dosage we had. I don't remember all that stuff nor do I have the information for all that. Well I did find most of the stuff and they seem to be satisfied with what I gave them. So we will see. It looks like we will be paying $500 dollars in premiums for not a lot of coverage until we meet our $3,000 deductible. So that sucks. Oh well. I guess that is what we have to do.

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-Have mom and grandma stay with us for a couple of days.
-A good vacuum
-A fun Saturday night with hubby drinking "Bitch" wine
-Seeing Billy Joel and Elton John in concert with a good friend.
-Not having to fill out anymore Health Insurance forms

Red, White and Poop?...

We had a great 4th of July holiday full of Red, White and Boom and poop. Nathan pooped in the potty for the first time on Friday and has not second guessed his decision. He has been in underwear for two full days and he has surprisingly done very well. We have not had any poopy accidents and only one half pee accident. The only negative is that he as been waking up from his nap screaming, "Pee". and he wakes up in the morning screaming his head off saying he has to pee. I repeatedly tell him that he has a diaper on and he can pee in it if wants, but I think he forgets or is over peeing in a diaper. Who knows. I have had to start telling him he does not get a spacial treat every time he poops in the potty since he has done it so many times. Anyway, so that is our good news on that front. I am just really happy to not be cleaning out any poopy diapers anymore. It has actually been really nice.

So we went to the Red, White and Boom festivities on Friday night and the kids loved the fireworks. Nathan was not too into them until the end of the show. He sat on D's lap the entire time with his head in his shoulder. Of course D did not mind and he was so cute laying with him. On Saturday we went to the local parade and enjoyed a real 4th of July parade complete with floats, horses, bands and old cars. The kids really enjoyed it. After the parade we got ready for our neighborhood block party. It ended up being a lot of fun with lots of neighbors. We had about 60 adults and 30 kids. Our backyard is a mess as a result of water balloon activities and fights. I think everyone had a good time and it was great to meet some new neighbors and their kids. My brother, SIL, my mom and grandma also came to the party. I am glad that they came and it was great to share that with them. My mom and grandmother were also very helpful in putting back my messy kitchen.


Julianne and Nina filling up the hundreds of water balloons for the party.


Red, White and Boom patrons

Nathan in D's shoulder during the fireworks

The kids getting ready for the fireworks.

This was in the parade. I loved this and thought it was very creative.

This was one of the best part of the parade. This little contraption was very cool and fun.



These were a couple of the floats in the parade. They were very creative and I can't imagine putting one of those together. The theme was "There's no place like home...".


Nathan and my friends son were not liking the loud cars and fire sirens.

Water balloon activities

Some of the neighbors.

On Sunday my mom and grandma made their annual sleeping rotation to our house for a few days so it was nice to have them visit. I know the kids loved having them stay here. My mom and grandma helped out in the garden and we had plenty of time to talk and catch up. They left this morning and now we are getting back to our regular schedule.

Nathan is having a hard day today. He started his regular asthma episode on Saturday with a runny nose and a fever. Yesterday he had a dry cough but he did not have enough coughing or labored breathing to give him a treatment. This morning, however, when I went into his bedroom I could tell right away that I needed to give him a breathing treatment. He was breathing harder and had a lot of mucus. So I gave him one it did help a lot. It is now lunch and his breathing is becoming more labored so I will probably give him another one. This episode has been different from his other allergic ones since he is worse on the 3rd day. Usually the 3rd day is better but this day was surly the worst day so far. So we will see. It seems like when I finally get a pattern down for these episodes it changes on me. Oh well. I guess it will never be predictable, but I will still try to make it predictable, even if it is not realistic.

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-D finally taking his test. I know that taking it has been a big load off of his chest.
-Having my grandmother and mom in town. It would be nicer if they lived closer and we could visit more often.
-My brother and SIL coming to the cook out.
-Nathan being potty trained.
-Refinancing our house at a 4.8% interest rate for 15 years.
-Not having our old house
-Not paying utilities on a house we did not live in.
-Not owning two houses
-Not having to pay a landscaper for landscaping our old house we never saw, especially since we never hired a landscaper when we lived there.
-Not wishing or wanting someone to buy our old house
-Being able to go back to looking at houses on the MLS with a more positive attitude.
-Never having to clean poop from a cloth diaper again (well I guess for now).

Farewell to our old house

Well we officially are a one house owner family. Thank goodness. We closed this afternoon and I couldn't be happier. It has been more than two years, minus a 6 month renter, of worrying about the house being damaged, broken into, copper plumbing stolen, flooding, weather damage, frozen pipes, and animals taking over our house. None of this happened but I lost many nights of sleep because of my worrying. It has been a long road and for awhile I was very patient knowing that our house was hard to sell but after awhile I kept asking myself why this was happening to us. I really do believe that things happen for a reason and I was patient but I was beginning to question my beliefs but now my beliefs have been reaffirmed because this is our time. I was willing to wait awhile to sell the house since we could technically afford having two houses and others in our similar situation could not so I was willing, in my mind, to justify my patience. Anyway, that is over. The house is sold.

I really did love our house even though it was not the most attractive updated house on the block. I do love rehabbing houses and I do believe that suburban sprawl would not be as big of a problem as it is if more people would be willing to redo older outdated houses. We don't all have to live in prefect, brand new, customized houses. If we are willing to live in a little outdatedness in order to redo it at a later time then perfect houses would not exist. Plus, resources and materials were already put into older houses so updating them saves resources and materials that help preserve our environment.

The previous homeowners lived in it for 47 years. So of course everything was outdated. We updated the bathrooms (we hired a contractor to update the upstairs bathrooms), tore down wallpaper (it was on every wall and ceiling), took down outdated bookshelves, installed a new fireplace mantel, opened up a gallery kitchen, sanded floors and added storage. When we first saw the house I was not thrilled with it and thought that it needed a lot of work but it had loads of potential. There was a lot of space. It had a great room/dining room/TV room with lots of space for the kids to run and play. There was a deck off of that that was great for eating out or enjoying our back yard. Our back yard had issues with a pond at the bottom of the yard and lots and lots of landscaping. I always thought that we would take out most of the landscaping and the pond and put in grass for the kids. The basement would have been great as a playroom and for the kids to play games when they were teenagers. There was a great library/computer room with a fireplace and an outdated sun room. Sure the floors were all different but we were planning on updating the main floor and redoing the kitchen and putting in new floors. There was plenty of entertaining space for my book club and D's poker nights.


Here is the front of the house. I loved the planters on the brick wall. They were like concrete bowls but more natural looking. I also had a great big lavender plant in the bed by the house that was huge when we left. We had a hummingbird feeder outside of the kitchen window that was visited by two regular hummingbirds. I always tired to get pictures of them but failed every time. We spent many hours sitting out here in the chairs by the doors watching the kids ride their bikes in the walkway and driveway. I actually liked that the driveway sloped downward so that kids would not spill out into the street.


These were the pictures of the great room after our show "Material Girls" redid the room. I loved the room after they redid it. It was a large space and they divided it up into the TV area, the kids area and the dining room area. We love everything that they did. I loved the color of the wall and the curtains. The light in the room was amazing and the windows were great. It was like you were outside. This room was a pain to paint. Before the show we took down all the wallpaper and primed the walls so that it would look like we started with white walls. The show painted the walls one coat and we painted the second coat that first night of the show. It was really hard to get in the corners of the tall ceiling. I remember when D was putting the primer in the corners of the wall at the windows. He was on his tiptoes of our tallest extension ladder and his mom and I were watching and I was nervous and she was definately more nervous. The only wallpaper that we kept in the house was this grassy paper behind the kids toys. I actually liked this wallpaper and thought it added some warmth to the room.

This was our computer room. We took off the outdate bookselves to reviel this lovely firplace with green marble surround. We put in the new mantal tore down the wallpaper and painted it this color. This room was nice becasue where was not a TV in it and it was really quiet and away from the TV room. There was a sun room in this room and it was alright. It made the house pretty warm and I would have love to do something with that. I was thinking we would have keep the windows and maybe take out the ceiling windows and install a roof.

This was our lovely half basement. I say that because it was not totally underground. In fact we had full length windows that looked out onto the backyard. Plus there was a slider door that led out to the backyard from this room. I really loved when we moved this carpet down here from the Great Room. It made the room warmer, since it had dark panelling and cork floors. It was fun for the kids to wreslte and have fun on this carpet. It was a great space that was pretty much left open due to the fact that we did not have a lot of funiture. I also liked that it had a fireplace and this cute stove that you could cook on. We did not cook on it but it added character to the basement.

This is the kitchen that connects the Great Room to the computer room. The cabniets were the worst cabniets ever. They were formica and you had to push them in order for them to open. It was like those old glass stereo doors that you push in oder for them to open. They were loud and ugly. The island used to go all the way up to the ceiling and thus there was a gallery to the great room and a small enclosed kitchen. We wanted to compuletly up date the kitchen and blend it into the great room but we spent our money on the bathrooms so we cut down the wall and added title to the top to make it a bar/island. it opened up the room and let in a lot more light to the walkaway. It was the best we could do to that room with the least amount of money. The kitchen had great appliances, Decor and Bosch, so that was nice. I loved the stove it worked really well.


This was our master bedroom. I was not too fond of the floors but it grew on me. They were light and hardwood so that was enough for me. This was the second room that we painted and we learned from doing Julianne's room, D discovered this, that we could just pull the wall paper off and sand the glue off. With Julianne's room we scored the wallpaper and sprayed that stuff on it but D got tired of all that mess and just started pulling the wallpaper off. Sure enough it all came off by just pulling it and then we took a electric sander and sanded off the glue. It was so much faster and less messier. So we wanted to flaux paint this room and it took us awhile to find the look that we wnated. We really loved it and it was a fun room. I made the duve cover. drapes and the pillows so it was a room that were were pround of. We ended up painting the room a neutral color before we moved out since it was not everyone's taste.

This was our master bathroom. This bathroom and the girls next to it were a disaster when we moved in. There was a door between the two bathrooms and only one large tub. So there we really only 1.5 bathrooms upstairs and we made it into 2 full baths. So this bathroom does not have a lot of space but I think we made the best of the space. We had the contractors put in a corner sink so that we would have the most room for tolietires and we made the shower the focal point by adding clear shower doors. I really loved the blue tile that we picked out. It was very soothing and I also like the color of paint that D picked out.


This is the girls bathroom which was D's favorite room in the house. We picked these terra cotta tiles out and painted the walls the same color. We put in a cast iron tub and the vanity was handmade so that it would be bigger that the smallest standard size for the space. We put in the pocket door so that the door would not take up any space.

This was the downstiars bathroom. We redid everything in the room except for the toliet and the floor. When we moved into this house this was the only shower. So we had to go downstairs to take a shower everyday. This shower was a wreak. We had Bathfitters come in and redo this shower. They did an excellant job and it was a nice guest bath. I put in this vanity and hooked up all the plumbing for this sink. The wallpaper in this room was had to get off since it was different wall paper from all the other rooms. It was a pain.

Anyway the house was great and we saw the potential that it had. I think the new homeowners can also see that (the husband is an architect) and are willing to put in the work. I am glad that is is sold and I had such great memories in that house. I am glad that it is out of our hands and in the hands of another family.

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-not having to ever pay two mortages again at the same time.
-my husband for dealing with the day to day hassles/emotions with our realtor (it stressed me out knowing how many showings we were having and what people were saying about our house). He filtered all that information for me so that I would not worry too much about it and wonder. If I asked he would tell me. He did a great job and I am thankful mostly for all his work and decisions he made on behalf of our old house.
- someone loving the house as much as we did.
-being able to really save money for the future.

Family togetherness week

Well we had are annual "family meeting/reunion" this week and it sure was a busy one. We had meetings on Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning. All the guys went golfing on Thursday afternoon and on Friday the kids went to the Homeless Families Foundation to serve the kids White Castles. Then we were at the zoo for the evening. The kids, well I guess I should say Julianne, enjoyed the Homeless Families Foundation. Julianne was in charge of giving the kids cookies and Nathan handed out plates. Mallory for some reason was not into it and just hung onto me or her aunt. The kids at the center really enjoyed us coming to their school and I heard several comments saying that it was the the best day ever and that they loved White Castle. I talked to a couple of kids that said they did not like WC but they really liked the chicken rings we served and the cookie. Either way it was fun and it was great to get the kids out in the community. Here are some pictures of the event.





My friend Jessica just dropped off my share of the CSA for this week. Well actually I think it is the entire share since she is going out of town. I think she left me the entire share but I have still not heard from her so I am not sure if it is or not. Either way it is a lot of veggies. We have two heads of romaine and a green leaf lettuce, six heads of kohlrabi, two zucchini and some green onions. I really have no idea what to do with the kohlrabi but my friend Jessica has already experimented so I am going to use her Asian salad recipe and make that. I guess the kohlrabi is a type of cabbage so I can use it in the Asian salad.


Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-visiting with my entire extended family
-getting out in the community to do some service
- Nathan saying his favorite part of the day was sharing ice cream with me

Not much going on

There has not been too much interesting activity going on in this household lately. I am also in a blog funk. There has been a lot of "what are we going to do today?" going on. Most of the days have consisted of either going to work out and then swimming, going to the library, hanging out with friends, and mostly just hanging around the house and enjoying the summer. The kids have been on each other nerves lately more and I guess it is because of the extra time together. The past two Monday have been crazy with Julianne 's extra emotional outbreaks and the girls just fighting with each other. The other days have been better. We had to remind the kids of the rules of the house and the rules with each other. So there have been extra consequences given out lately and lots of time-outs and kids up in their rooms. I am guessing that it is because of the change in the routines since they are not in school anymore. The girls have been sleeping together in Mallory's room since school was out. They used to sleep in Mallory's room together on the weekends but since there are not any school days they have been together ever since school was out. So that has been nice for them to reconnect at night and they seem to not fight while they are in their room together.

I have also been working on a quilt. This will be my second official quilt and hopefully I will be able to finish this one. The last one is mostly quilted and just needs to be finished. However, it needs some seem striping in order to get the puckers out of it before it can be finished and I am so over working on it I don't even have the desire to finish it. So I have abandoned that one for over 7 years and now I am finally able to move on. I know that my sewing skills are much better now and my knowledge of quilting has grown over the past 7 years. So we will see. The one I am going to work on is Amy Lotus Brick Path Quilt which was a free download off of Amy Bulter's website. It seems pretty easy and I can quilt in the ditch so that will help me out tremendously. However with any large quilt project there are a lot of cutting steps. I have to cut out 196 "bricks" and I have already done 130 plus so I am almost there. I had to order new fabric and the back so I was waiting for those to arrive for me to finished cutting. I finally got the fabric yesterday so I am going to work on it tonight.


Here are all the fabric choices I am using for the quilt

This is the backing.



This is Nathan trying to blow bubbles. Kids really just do not get it that you have to hold the stick away from the mouth and not spit into the middle. I tried to keep telling him that but he forgets. It is a cute picture and that I why I like it.

This is our neighbors dog. Mallory and Nathan go over to see it almost everyday. I just heard Mallory say, "Molly's out." So they run over to the next yard and pet Molly. Mallory and Nathan are great with the dog. Julianne is still getting used to it and it depends on the day if she likes Molly or not.

Some outdoor playing.

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-emerging from of my nasty mood for the past week.
-seeing Julianne's progression in her reading skills
-shopping for Father's Day

Our first CSA share

Well we just got our first portion from a CSA, community supported agriculture, co-opt that my friend and I are sharing. We get a portion of the crops each week from now until the end of the growing season. This week we received some green onions, strawberries and peas. So we have already eaten the strawberries and half of the peas, and I put half of the green onions in our salad. It will be good for me to participate in this since I seem to get stuck eating the same food, especially veggies. We used the peas in my tortilla pasta dish that does not call for peas but I added them in. I am a person who goes by the book or follows the recipe and is not really willing or creative enough to deter from it or add to it. So this will be good to try new veggies and to add them into my dishes. It will also be good for the kids to see us buying from a local farmer and supporting a good cause.

The first few days of summer have been busy and somewhat long. We had a few issues on Tuesday with "what are we doing today" but today was better. The girls played better today, yesterday they were yelling at each other and not playing with each other. So it was a better day. I have a few ideas of one day road trips that we will take so that will be fun and we tried to go to the strawberry patch but it was closed for strawberry picking. So I will just take it one day at a time and see how it goes.

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-Support local agriculture
-getting better sleep
-not having my heal hurt right now, I think I have a heal spur and I have been on ibuprofen the last few days

Weekend retreat

Well we just got back from our short, too short, weekend retreat. D and I drove the kids to Mimi's house and headed to a local state park for some rest and relaxation. There were no TV's, no phones, no cell phone reception, just a lot of lounging around and enjoying the local scenery. We even had to use the Inn's public phone. When was the last time you used a public phone. It actually cost 50 cents now. I brought a quarter with use and was astonished that it cost 50 cents for local calls. Too funny. Mimi ended up not being local, even though it was within the same area code. So we did not have enough money and ended up making a collect call. She was a little taken back when she got a collect call from us. I think she was actually worried but we reassured her that everything was OK we just did not have cell phone reception. We also did a zip line tour and had a lot of fun. It was scary at first being within the trees on a platform and zipping down the cable. I did have several moments that I thought that this could possible break and I could fall down but that fear subsided after the first couple of zips. D and I got to reconnect, spend some quality time together, and to relax so it was terrific. We played Yahtzee, Backgammon and made a 500 piece puzzle.

The kids had a ton of fun at Mimi's and it was nice to have them back. Julianne ended school on Thursday so it was a nice time to get away and to have the kids go somewhere else other than our house. On Thursday we had our neighborhood end of the school year party. The kids had fun in the slip and slide and the sprinkler and the moms got to relax and enjoy some adult beverages.


These are from Julianne's school party


These are from our neighborhood party

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-being able to take short mini vacations with my husband
-having Mimi there to take care of the kids. She is great!
-seeing deer, other animals, hearing birds, crickets and other natural noises
-not having anything to do