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)

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!

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!

THE Kitchen

Finally..... here are a couple of pictures of our new kitchen! It is amazing and exactly what I wanted. With so much added space our table now fits easily (with the leaf in even), I have a ton of counter space, room to buy a buffet and so many half full and even empty cupboards! It is heavenly! The counter top is a white quartz~ there is actually depth to it. You can look down into the pieces that have been cut. It is beautiful. If you are in the area, you are always welcomed to come by and take a look. I can't guarantee that it will always be this clean, but you are still welcomed!

Shocking.... I know!

After about 3 months I am actually back to blogging. Wow! I wonder how many people have given up on me....... Anyway, things have been CRAZY in so many different ways that I am not going to count them all. And I don't even have any pictures to post because as I went to download pictures the other day (after finally finding my camera cords) I discovered a formatting issue that made my 1,002 pictures unrecoverable!!!! I am not quite sure what to do with that, but at least I don't have to do 10 posts in a row with a million pictures (or more correctly, a thousand pictures). So, here is a verbal recap of our lives...

Shayden~ started the year in the ALPS program at the same school she went to last year, but about 2 weeks ago we switched her back to our school. She loves being back with so many of her friends, riding her scooter to school and especially loves not having even a 10th of the homework she had before. After taking the summer off, she is back into piano lessons and is already practicing her song for their Christmas program. She is also in a musical program called "Up with Kids." With the addition on our house done, she now has her "own" room and she is absolutely LOVING it! There is also a new bathroom downstairs right next to her room that we have had to explain that even though her stuff is in it, that doesn't make it "her" bathroom. She loves reading, singing, playing with friends and helping in the kitchen.

Tanner~ started kindergarten!!!!! It is still hard for me to believe that my little boy is old enough to be at school 5 days a week. The year started out a little rocky for him. For about the first week every day when I picked him up I would ask enthusiastically how school was. He would get a mopey look on his face and say "so boring, all we had to do all day was sit in our seats." Luckily, he has made some great friends and now LOVES going to school. He is learning to read and it is so fun to watch him discover that there are words all around us and that he can actually know what some of them are. Another big step for him is not taking naps anymore. Yup, Shayden napped until she went to kindergarten, so we told Tanner the same thing. There have been a couple of times where he could have seriously used some extra sleep, but he is determined to never take a nap again. Ohhh.... how I wish someone would make me take a nap!

Jackson~ our little guy has started preschool! Yikes! I am doing Joy School with him (the same program I did with Tanner). Where a group of moms get together and alternate weeks teaching. He absolutely loves going! It is 5 girls and only 2 boys (and both boys are the very youngest of the group). But that doesn't bother him one bit. He thinks he is so grown up and loves having a backpack just like Tanner. We are in the midst of potty training and having issues with #2. I'm on my third~ you think I would have figured it out by now. We'll see how it goes....

House stuff~ well, they finished the house the end of September, about a month later than they thought (but we were expecting that). They had it written out in the contract that they are not a cleaning crew and would not be cleaning our house when they were done. So, I knew not to expect a homecoming like on Extreme Home Makeover where they hand over the keys to a pristine, clean, organized, decorated house. But it was still very anticlimactic and depressing when all of the sudden one day they stopped coming and I was left with a garage full of boxes to unpack, a backyard in shambles, and a completely filthy, dirty house in chaos. There are still some projects that we are doing on our own and a LOT of unpacking and organizing to do. But it is slowly coming all together.

Part of the reason for the addition on the house was that my parents have now moved in with us. They have both found jobs up here, which is amazing and everything is going well. It is nice to have 2 more sets of hands keeping kids quiet at church, cleaning bathrooms, making dinner, etc. It is working out great and we hope they stay for quite a while.

On to me... Well, the end of August I found out that I was expecting (don't get too excited) and was overly tired and sick. Everyday life was hard enough, on top of all the house stuff I had to do. I went for my first appointment the beginning of October to discover that I had a "molar pregnancy." I had a d&c about a week later and am still dealing with some of the issues that come with this type of pregnancy. It has been so long since my life has felt normal, that I think I am beginning to forget what it is like. I haven't given up hope though.... one of these days I will get everything under control again. One of these days.....

In the meantime, this weekend I am going to dress my kids up in their Halloween costumes and take pictures again (since I can't get the first ones). So, hopefully I will have some pictures to post next time.

Progress...

For the past week and a half we have been staying at Korby's mom's house and this is why:

Here is what has become of our master bedroom. Not pictured is the non existent wall that now opens up directly into the hallway and directly into the bathroom (minus the sink that is now currently residing in our bedroom).

Here is our combination laundry room and storage room with no access to the dryer. Notice the hanging blue light switch~ my kids think that is the coolest thing in the world! Oh.... to be 5 years old again and impressed by a light switch!!!

You might think we didn't really need to go through all the hassle of moving out for just that. No master bedroom, that's okay we still have 2 other bedrooms not being touched. No washer and dryer, that's okay too. I hang dry most of our clothes anyway. But here is what is left of our kitchen..... not much but a lose sink pipe that is so old and rusted that it doesn't shut off all the way. The solution~ shut off the water to the house until the new sink is in. As it turns our running water is something that is very inconvenient to live without these days!

Out the doors you can see the framing for the new outside kitchen walls!

Here is what it looks like from the outside right now~ a compound! I promise that we are putting in lots of beautiful windows and new French doors.

What do you get when you are "living" in Lehi (about 20 minutes away from our house) but have swimming lessons, karate lessons, singing lessons, art classes, gym classes, baseball games, doctor appointments, swimming, soccer games, dentist appointments all in Sandy?

Three completely exhausted kids and one equally exhausted mom!

I hope your summer has NOT been as crazy as ours :)

Start Framing

Today they started the framing. You can see where the bedroom window is going to go along the new back wall.

Yesterday they came and back filled the dirt around the foundation. As the bobcat started pushing the dirt in I thought the kids would be as excited as they were when the dirt was being dug out. However, this was Tanner's response....

"Ahhhhhhh (with a sigh and a shoulder slump). There goes Mt. Everest."

They also took out the wall between the laundry room and storage room downstairs.