Monday, January 25, 2010

Hard Lesson to Learn

This weekend was a little crazy. I finally got Christmas put away just in time for a disaster to hit my house. Korby's project for the weekend was to add insulation to our attic. He got the insulation for a great price (one of those rebate deals) with the option of paying extra for someone to install it or renting the machine from Home Depot and doing it yourself. For anyone who knows my husband, you will know that if there is ever any option to do it cheaper he is all over it. Can you tell where this story is going yet?!?

I'm not even quite sure where to start. The concept was simple enough..... rent a machine from Home Depot, dump the insulation into the machine and pump it up into your attic. Easy~ right? Should only take about 2 hours~ right? The hose seals off to prevent too much insulation from getting in the house~ right? If you answered yes to any of those questions then you didn't guess correctly where the story was going!

The professionals have hoses long enough to have the machine (I have no idea what it is called) outside the house~ Home Depot did not. Korby's plan B~ put the machine in the upstairs bathroom and run the hose from there. Now my my upstairs bathroom is decent size, but there definitely wasn't room for the machine, 30 bags of insulation and a person to dump bags of insulation into the machine. So they (Korby and my dad) had to pile the bags at the top of the stairs instead. So much for cleaning my house. Obviously they needed access to the attic, so there was a ladder in the middle of my upstairs hallway blocking both the boys bedroom door and my bedroom door. Korby tried to prepare for the mess by laying down tarps, blankets and taping off the bathroom door~ it didn't help.

Then of course the machine wasn't working. What was supposed to be a quick morning project quickly turned into an all day mess. Korby had to make multiple trips back to Home Depot and make multiple phone calls to Home Depot as well. It took them about 5 hours just to get the machine to work. Since no one was expecting it to take longer than a couple of hours I didn't think twice about not having access to my room or the boys room. My mistake! The boys ended up having a tv day downstairs since all their toys were nicely cleaned up (in their room), Jackson didn't get a nap (making for an extra long day!), and I had to spend the day in my grimy work out clothes with no access to any of my toiletries or even my purse! Needless to say it was a pretty frustrating day for everyone.

By the end of the day everyone was tired, frustrated and my entire upstairs had a layer of dust, dirt, insulation on it. The pictures below really don't do it justice as to just how dirty everything was. When my mom saw the bathroom her mouth dropped open and she was speechless. It looked worse than when we were in the middle of our remodel~ which was pretty bad.


I was feeling a little like the fish from "The Cat in the Hat" when he gets mad at the cat for the mess he made and tells him to leave. No~ I did not tell Korby to leave, but I was pretty upset about the mess he had made. However~ just like the cat~ my husband it the BEST at cleaning up the messes that he makes. He worked longer and harder than any of us to clean everything up. And he had a good attitude about it.
Korby and I might not always agree on how to get things done, but he is amazing at following through with whatever he starts and he always puts 110% into everything he does. I'm still not sure if it was worth it. It was one miserable messy Saturday, but it did save us quite a bit of money and hopefully it will be beneficial in the long run to have this done. I love my hard working, determined, reliable, helpful and amazing husband!
The moral of the story~ NEVER let your husband blow in insulation himself unless he is a licensed contractor or you are going to be out of town!
Now I'm off to dust! (again)

Monday, January 18, 2010

Nothing...

I made a goal that I was going to blog once a week and I already missed last week. I'm not off to a good start. But it wasn't for a lack of thinking about it. Almost every single day last week I thought to myself... "okay, I didn't blog yesterday so I need to post something today." Obviously that never worked out since I didn't post anything last week.

So, here I am at the beginning of a new week and I still don't have anything to write about. Is my life really that boring?!? Do I really not do anything? Of course that's not true, I am busy all the time. I guess I just don't think that very much of it is blog worthy. I am pretty sure no one wants to take time out of their busy day to read about all the loads of laundry I did, how many times I had to unload the dishwasher, bills I paid, what I made for lunch and how many toys I picked up~ because that isn't very different from what your days are like as well.

Which leaves me with my dilemma of what to write about........ (5 minute pause as I stare absent minded out my window). Still nothing......

Well, at least I wrote about how I have nothing to write about. Which you can't complain about since my goal was just to post something every week, I didn't say it was going to be good! Now I have 6 more days to come up with something to write about next week~ I better get started!

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Excuses, Excuses

Well, it's the new year and along with that comes New Year's Resolutions. I am a little behind in making my resolutions, but I am really trying to take time to come up with ones that are realistic, ones that are important to me and ones that will help make me, my family and our lives better in 2010.

One of my goals, which will benefit all my loyal readers (haa haa!), will be to post once a week! I have definitely gotten out of the habit of blogging and I am hoping this goal will get me back on track. As with all goals, there are obstacles to overcome. One of the obstacles I must conquer in order to blog more often (besides my laziness, lack of picture taking as of late and leading a pretty humdrum life) is sugar!

Although real sugar is a problem for me (which is why every year I have some goal centered around not eating as much of it), when it comes to blogging my obstacle is Sugar~ my cat. I love my kitty very much and he is my baby. But for whatever reason, he assumes that when I sit down at the computer that my intent is not to actually type anything or look at anything on line, but to be completely focused on him. He likes to sit down right in front of the keyboard and block 3/4 of the computer screen so that I can not get anything done.

Eventually I get frustrated trying to type with 2 fingers or only being able to read portions of an article that I scoot him off. Which of course leads to me feeling guilty for being mean him, which in turn leads to me giving him a kitty treat (which might explain why he is such a big boy).

In any case, I am not going to let Sugar be an excuse for why I am not blogging anymore!

Here's to new beginnings and more blogging in 2010! Wish me luck!