A Snoop Dog Easter

Yeah, religious holidays always get weird at my house. *sigh* This year it all began as we were driving home from a trip into town. We passed a church and Zorak sniggered, then quit trying to hold it in and he burst out laughing. "What's so funny?" said I... (I should know better.) He said, (or I think he said -- it was hard to tell between snickers), "That's foshizzle!" *blink* *blink* WHAT?!?!

He looked at me like I should get it.

"Didn't you see the sign?" He asked, thinking, perhaps, this would explain why I was so slow on the uptake.

"Um, yes..."

*chuckle, snort* " 'He is risen' That's foshizzle! Get it? 'rizzen' from the 'crizzizzle' "

Ah, yes, it all becomes so clear to me now... My husband's sense of humor is a good reason for me to develop a healthy aversion to lightning.

Did y'all have a good day? We did. We made it to church only three hours late, but since it's a special day, there was plenty left to go when we got there. Gotta love those liturgical churches.

Then we went to the quarry, where the boys had a nice time and Zorak nearly put the smackdown on an old lady. (He is phenomenally mild-mannered, so you can imagine just how far over her bounds she must have stepped.) We left early, as neither of us could relax, but once home, we hid eggs and had a grand time watching the boys find them.

Come nightfall, we broke out the Big Easter Treat: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. HUGE hit. The boys enjoyed watching it again, and somehow managed to stay up nearly to the end. Even Zorak liked it better than he thought he would. It's hotter than many colorful phrases in the house tonight, but we still couldn't resist the urge to broil ourselves under snuggly children. Ahhh. They are asleep, and we are trying to cool back down and keep the meat from falling off our bones. Emily's roasting, though, and she's ticked. So I'll sign off with some of my favorite pictures from today, and remind you as usual to Kiss Those Babies!

HAPPY EASTER!
~Dy

A Fabulous Visit!

Hi there! Sorry for the lack of contact the past few days. We've had such a lovely time, and by the end of each day, we were all ready to turn in. Our wonderful guests arrived Saturday afternoon. It was wonderful to see everyone. Gram looks great, and was in such joyful spirits during her visit. The boys were so good to her, and loved having their great-grandmother here to pamper and talk with.

We were thrilled to have Aunt Jo Ann (in the green shirt) and Aunt Linda come, as well. They are both such neat ladies. As you can see, Miss Emily thought the added company was pretty fun, too! (And yes, lest we mar the reputation of the South, I am garbed in my finest Appalachain Gardening Wear and an old undershirt. We wouldn't want folks thinkin' we were getting uppity, now, would we?) We spent most of our time chatting over plates of snacks and hot cups of tea and coffee. In between food breaks, we took walks, enjoyed the foliage, and caught up on life and events.

Everyone came back from the walks with treasures - pretty stones, interesting seeds, and tons of smiles. The boys found a caterpillar (named "S") while out on one of their walks. Great fun!

Aunt Jo Ann allowed us to tap into her horticultural skills, so the boys now have flowers planted and are awaiting germination! (The flowers are in pots for two reasons: the dog eats flowers, and this way the boys can identify what is a flower vs. what is a weed and they won't self-destruct their own garden once we get Balto flower-trained.)

We ate. A LOT. Salmon, shrimp, Honey Baked Ham (thanks, Aunt B! It was delicious!) Fresh fruits and veggies from the farmer's stand down the road... and, of course, pizza! (Thank God for Arrowhead Mills!)

And, of course, there was a lot of baby holding... :-) Miss Emily may never allow us to put her down again!

We took a trek to the Huntsville Botanical Gardens on Tuesday - a perfect day for an outing. We lunched at the little cafe they have there - delicious, and the greatest folks work there. Then we ventured into the garden grounds. We happened almost immediately upon Gigi, the world's sweetest docent, who gave us a wonderful tour of the gardens. She answered the boys' many (many) questions, talked shop with Aunt Linda, and just made us feel welcome, in general. If you hit the garden this summer, see if you can find her for a tour - she's spectacular!

You simply cannot spend four hours there without a picnic, so picnic we did! I can't tell you what a geniunely delightful afternoon it was, but it truly was.

This morning's departure time arrived far too quickly. I couldn't convince the Aunts to leave Gram here, and we have no place to conceal her for a decent Gram-napping, so we had to let them go. We did manage to skip off to Cracker Barrel for breakfast, and Zorak joined us just in time. So, we had one more lovely day together before they headed off on yet another adventure.

We so enjoyed having loved ones come to stay, and for a first-run, these were three of the sweetest, most easy-going, generous guests we could have hoped for. (I'm sure Aunt Jo Ann was thrilled to be the prototype tester for this monstrosity of a project! But she took it well!) Our kitchen was quite well-behaved and worked just as we'd hoped it would: easy to cook for many, plenty of space for helpers, and plenty of room for everyone to just hang out and talk. So, barring any reports to the contrary, I think the house is safe for company now. ;-)

Thank you for coming, guys! We love you and we thoroughly enjoyed having you here! The house seems awfully lonesome right about now, with just the six of us here (ok, so that's not something I ever thought I'd say! But it's true!) Know you're loved and missed!

Kissing our babies for you tonight!
~Dy, Zorak and the Kidlets

Quick Howdy!

Hi all!

Thanks for taking a peek at the bathroom. That was the second room we got functional, but the first one to get to a mostly-finished state. It felt SO good! We'll post more after shots later. For now, though, we are having a wonderful time with Gram and the Aunts.

It's been so much fun to visit and eat, take walks and eat. Then we come in and eat a little more. Aunt Billie furnished one of those wonderful Honey Baked Hams - oh dear, that's delicious! Aunt Linda and Aunt Jo Ann won't let me pamper them too much, but we all get to fuss over Gram, and that's so much fun. The Aunts are so helpful with the baby and the house that I feel like I'm the one getting a vacation! Felt kind of lazy the past two days. ;-)

The boys are thoroughly enjoying a whole new audience. They're quite enamored with each of our guests and do their best to share all the special things they love. James fills Aunt Jo Ann in on all his latest inventions, and guides Gram down the hall. John's enjoying the extra snuggles and someone who hasn't heard his latest jokes, as well as keeping the herd dog from herding the Aunts right off the trails. Smidge has found someone in Gram who will be enthusiastic over his beloved Thomas trains, and he's in love! It's just delightful.

I was going to post some pics, but Blogger's upload utility won't work right now, and everyone is back from their walk now, so I'm going to go. I'll try again later!

Kiss those babies!
~Dy

The Story of a Bathroom

Once upon a time, not so very long ago (although it seems that way for those who've been waiting for pictures), there was a bathroom. We use the term loosely, for although it was a "room", one wouldn't bathe in it. Or near it. Or, most likely, anywhere on the premesis. But, I digress...

It wasn't a bad bathroom. Well, no, scratch that. It was. It was bad. But it didn't have to stay that way. Enter our frog-kissing family, looking for their castle (castles, princes, work with me here, okay?)

They took one look:



And said, in a large and do-not-question-me-just-GO voice,

Boys, you need to go play outside while we look at the house...

And so, after a long period of cringing and whining, they set to work. The first thing to do was to get rid of everything. As it turned out, most of it (under the squishy linoleum, anyway) was already gone. Handy, eh?


(Interesting Note: if the floor feels spongy when you walk on it, this is what it probably looks like underneath.)

And now, it's done. We still need to put on the door trim and the baseboard (so please ignore that part, but that's going to be done all at once, when the rest of the rooms are ready. And there's no vanity mirror up, as we are hoping to find some great funky antiques to hang in there - one over each sink.

You can view the photo album of the transition if you'd like to see the bath from start to finish. (I spared y'all the plumbing and wiring shots because not only are they pretty boring if you aren't the one who put them in, but there was a lot of swearing during the wiring portion of this project. So this is a fairly glossed over version of what it took to redo the bath.)

However, it's done. And it feels very, very good!

And our company just rang - they're in town!! I'm going to go meet them at the market and bring 'em on in!

Kiss those babies!
~Dy

10:30 and all's well

Hey there. Well, the entire afternoon was wonderfully windy (got the linens washed!) and clear. We had a great afternoon, for the most part.

The HVAC guy came - he seemed okay, but he stayed too long and then lost us when he insisted that they do ALL the labor because "you don't have the tools to do the things that need to be done". Tools? Yes, tools. You know, to sweat copper pipe together and to make the vent holes. Uh-huh. And the vent you saw... the one we told you we built? The fact that we'd run new pipe - copper, black iron and PEX... and had showed that to you. Totally lost on ya, there, buddy? No, thanks. If he can't listen to something as simple as what we are capable of and what we aren't (for instance, we don't have the means to charge the system, and we are willing to pay for that, but we aren't willing to pay for one of his guys to come cut a hole in our roof when we can do it ourselves for far less), then we really don't want to be doing business with him. Anyway, he realized the sale had gone off the game plan when he asked us to let his crew cut the vent in the bathroom because we don't know what we're doing and will mess up that floor... you know, the one we laid. Yeah, brilliant. Fortunately, that was only our first quote.

We didn't hide eggs, as the boys spent the majority of the afternoon down at the creek. James caught a red wasp. *Sigh* They caught a cricket and a couple of moths. Smidge caught a piece of tree bark and three 16 penny nails. He was quite proud.

We're under a tornado watch right now. The Powers That Be have told us to get to our "safe spot" now, but that would be, theoretically, the basement... and in case I haven't mentioned it, we haven't done anything to the basement yet... I think I'd rather take my chances with the tornado than with a flash flood from the waterfall, or the missing sill plates finally collapsing down there. We'll stay put, though, and keep an ear on the radio. I'll blog later w/ an update. For now, though, the lightning is a little close for my comfort, so I'm getting off the computer!

Kiss those babies!
~Dy

This'll change your plans in a hurry:

COLBERT-CULLMAN-DE KALB-FRANKLIN AL- FRANKLIN TN-JACKSON-LAUDERDALE- LAWRENCE-LIMESTONE-LINCOLN-MADISON- MARSHALL-MOORE-MORGAN- 345 AM CDT FRI APR 7 2006
...SIGNIFICANT SEVERE WEATHER OUTBREAK LIKELY THIS AFTERNOON THROUGH TONIGHT...

A POTENT STORM SYSTEM MOVING OUT OF THE GREAT PLAINS...COMBINED WITH WARM UNSTABLE AIR AND VERY STRONG WINDS AND WIND SHEAR ALOFT...WILL SET THE STAGE FOR A POTENTIALLY SIGNIFICANT SEVERE WEATHER EVENT STARTING THIS AFTERNOON...AND CONTINUING THROUGH TONIGHT.

SCATTERED THUNDERSTORMS WILL BEGIN TO DEVELOP DURING THE EARLY AFTERNOON HOURS...WITH EXPLOSIVE THUNDERSTORM DEVELOPMENT EXPECTED TO CONTINUE WELL INTO THE EVENING. THE GREATEST THREAT OF SEVERE WEATHER WILL OCCUR BETWEEN 3 AND 10 PM...AS SOME OF THESE STORMS BECOME SUPERCELLS CAPABLE OF PRODUCING LARGE HAIL...DAMAGING WINDS AND POSSIBLE STRONG TORNADOES.

THESE SUPERCELL STORMS WILL EVENTUALLY CONSOLIDATE INTO A LINE OF STRONG TO SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS BY LATE TONIGHT. THIS LINE OF STORMS WILL MAINTAIN THE THREAT OF DAMAGING WIND GUSTS AND LARGE HAIL THROUGH THE OVERNIGHT HOURS. IN ADDITION...CONTINUOUS DEVELOPMENT OF THUNDERSTORMS OVER THE SAME AREAS WILL BRING A THREAT OF HEAVY RAINFALL AND POSSIBLE FLASH FLOODING FROM LATE THIS EVENING INTO THE OVERNIGHT HOURS.

I love the verbiage they use: unstable, explosive, potentially significant. This is not just any ol' storm system, it's a "potent" one! And "supercells" - storms with capes!

The coordinator of our homeschool group called this morning to cancel the party. She said the public schools will be closing at one today so that everybody can get home and get off the road before the bulk of the storm hits. I guess several of us are coming in from outlying towns and they decided it's not worth the risk. I do appreciate that. The party's been moved to Monday, which is supposed to be exquisite. I don't think we'll be able to go, as the family will be here then, but that's okay. There will be other get-togethers.

So, while I'm eyeballing a suspect tree in the yard and hoping it's not all that bad, I'm also ashamedly relieved that we don't have to go anywhere and I can do some prep work on the windows (not going to paint in this weather - it'd never dry). The boys will be bummed, but hey, I've got 48 plastic eggs and nowhere to go. Maybe we'll hide them around the house or make a scavenger hunt out of it.

Kiss those babies!
~Dy

Must Slow Down!

Oy!

Today was productive. Of course, it's nearly two o'clock on the next day, and it's just now winding down... at least nobody can say we aren't making the most of our time, right? *wan smile*

We got a lot done today - patched a hole in the hallway ceiling, primed the foyer ceiling, finally textured the closets (yay!) although the kids and I had to make an impromptu run into town for more joint compound. Stopped through Steak 'n Shake for a round of milkshakes (an appreciation gift for my wonderful little helpers) and then back for more work.

The weirdness factor has hit exponential values here with the boys. Smidge is really hitting his stride as a two year old. And I had to sponge the sand out of Emily's neck tonight because of it. James is, from what I've gleaned from other Veteran Mothers, Very Eight. Only, he's not Eight yet. I hope to God this means we will be experiencing an abbreviated version of Eight, because I do not think he and I will both survive the extended version. John is, proportionately, being very middle-of-the-road Five lately: irate that James bosses him around, and yet fully partaking in the bossing of the younger sibling at will. Somehow, those two scenarios are not connected in the least. Not in his mind, anyway. Add in Balto and the occasional mid-afternoon thunderstorm and this place is a regular dark comedy! Those are funnier when I'm not the one caught in them...*

There's only one chunk of sheetrock up in the foyer, but Zorak sent me into town just before supper to make a Lowe's run, so he got to run herd on the boys for supper and bedtime. He was a busy daddy! I got the stuff at Lowe's, and while loading the pickup, I remembered our homeschool support group has its Easter party tomorrow afternoon. Pot luck. ACK! So I had to stop and get eggs and stuff to put in the eggs (non-edible - sheesh, it would've been so much easier to buy candy!! But I was good... did you know books won't fit inside the eggs? *sniff, sniff*) Took three stops before I finally gave up on the local shops (all closed) and hit Wal-Mart. (Hey, I tried, right?) On the upside, however, we're good-to-go for tomorrow's breakneck schedule AND the boys (and Emily) now have baskets for Easter. Yay me!

Friday is going to be a good day. We have an HVAC guy coming in the AM to give us a quote, the party in the afternoon, and a whole lotta cleaning to get done in between. We'll touch base with Zorak at some point and switch vehicles so that we can pick up a bed for the guest room and hopefully hit Sears for a washer/dryer set (they're having a sale, and they have things in stock - although we've still not agreed upon what kind of washer to get, so I'm not sure how that's going to go).

I was *this close* to having actual after photos of the bathroom tonight (you know, the one w/ the Cheech and Chong sanitation in the before pics). Then Zorak and I rethought the towel racks and didn't hang them. We've since decided to go with our original plans, but it's too late to do anything now. But tomorrow, I promise, there will be pictures. I do, however, feel the need to add this caveat: the "after" pictures aren't going to look like normal homes' after pictures. We still don't have trim/baseboards up. We still haven't hit Pier 1 (heck, we haven't even hit the Dollar Store, which is probably closer to the truth). So they won't be all "Oooohhh, ahhhhh, what a lovely display", okay? However, the structural and architectural changes will be apparent. Then I'll need some serious decorating help from y'all!

* Note: they haven't ventured outside the bounds of normal envelope-pushing, and they're very good, very enjoyable children. It's just that at the moment, there are a great many envelopes being pushed all over the place, and that gets a bit chaotic.

And that, my friends, is about all I have the energy to say tonight.

Kiss those babies!
~Dy

Down to the Wire - Highlights

Sheetrock goes up in the foyer tonight! Gram and the Aunts may have to watch us paint the foyer, but it'll at least when they arrive it's going to look nice shortly.

Supper was roast chicken, mixed vegetables, baked potatoes, and wheat-free biscuits (LB - they were pretty good, but DON'T grease the pan! I essentially fried them in the oven - what a mess!) *happy sigh* We love our kitchen.

Miss Emily decided I needed some rest last night, and so... I accomplished diddly squat. But it was nice to sleep all night long.

The dog needs either another puppy (kill me now), one of those cone shaped collars (the humor factor alone might be worth it), or perhaps a partial lobotomy (better than killing him). He simply will NOT listen to the boys, and there are too many boys for me to be close enough to keep him from biting their feet when we're outside. It's constant. He's like a neurotic heeler. Yesterday was a banner day for him -- he managed to knock all three flat on their faces at least once. *sigh*

No clue where to start today. I stand in the hall and spin slowly in circles, trying to figure it out. So I'm going to finish this cup, stretch my legs and just start somewhere. We'll see where I end up! But, barring computer glitches, etc., there will be some after photos in the next 24 hours!

Kiss those babies!
~Dy

Oh! I forgot to tell you!

Sunday afternoon, as the boys and I were heading out, that guy came back! And he brought the blueprints to the house. Zorak spoke with him for a while, and told him to come back in about a month, that we'd have the money to buy them then. In fact, we do have the money now, but we'd like to keep a safe distance until all is said and done.

Zorak got the impression that yes, this kid really wants this house and property in a bad way, but that it's like we'd feel if someone outside the family bought Granny's ranch. The kid does know the people who lost it. Whether he's in with them on anything or not, we don't know. But we do believe that he's related to the man who built the house. That was a relief. When this is all over, we'd like to invite him in to see what we've done.

One thing that we both thought was very neat is the original kitchen. When we were trying to figure out what to do with the kitchen, we tried everything we could think of. Something definitely had to be done -- it was a narrow galley kitchen, and that layout is diametrically opposed to the way we live. We live in the kitchen, and we wouldn't all fit in the old kitchen! Anyhow, nothing we tried seemed to work: breakfast bar, peninsula design, partial wall... finally, I told Zorak, "This house wants that wall OUT." He put down his clipboard, turned to me (I braced for him to recommend medication) and said, "I thought the same thing." So. Nobody got medicated, and the wall came down. That one little change completely altered the feel and flow of the kitchen and living spaces. It was amazing.

Well, the original plans didn't have a wall there! It was an open kitchen, not a galley! How cool is that? Our house talks!

And on that note, it's telling me to get off my duff and cover it's receptacles. Show some modesty, for goodness sake, woman!

Kiss those babies!
~DY