First day of school 2011!

This year, both Rowan and Niall start in new classrooms at their school.

 

Rowan is a 4th year in the 4th-6th grade class, and Niall is a 1st year in the 1st-3rd grade class. Rowan has a few of his old classmates in his new class, but Niall says that no one from his Kindergarten class is in his same classroom this year.

1st grade and 4th grade!

 

Walking in

 Niall at his desk

 Rowan at his desk

I've been showering, I promise

But something around here must smell funky, because this afternoon we've had a visitor out there.

 

Yeah, that's just the thing you want to see when you're taking care of your friend's kids, right? Don't worry about what we'll do with ourselves all afternoon. We have entertainment here. We have a buzzard.

It didn't even move when John got home. It just sat there in the driveway, looking hot. So John, being the suburban mountain man that he is, tried to chase it off. 

With the garden hose.

Did the bird fly away? Oh no. Not a bit.

That fool bird walked around like it was enjoying the shower.

 

Come to think of it, maybe it's not so foolish after all. It's pretty hot out there, and the hose probably felt good.

But now it's out there, hanging out next to the mailbox, and it's not leaving. 

Maybe it's waiting for us to put the garbage out? It is garbage night. Maybe that's why it showed up in the first place?

I'm not sure, but I don't want to go out there. The mail lady came, but it was in the driveway when she came by. She still didn't leave any mail for us, so I have little incentive to go out there. 

Jenn will be here to get her kids in another hour or so. 

You could come over, too. You can't miss us. We're the house with the lawnbuzzard.

I haven't been keeping up like I should

I blame it on facebook. Now that mom is on there, too, I've been neglecting it here.
I'm sorry about that. I'll try to do better.

The house repairs are coming along and are nearly done! We have a new roof, new siding, new paint, the shed is back where it started and resided and reroofed as well. We still need a new door for the outside storage closet, but after that is taken care of - ALL of the tornado damage will be repaired!
The swingset got damaged when the tree people dropped a tree on it, but they took an appropriate amount off our bill so we can get that fixed. They never fessed up to it, but I don't care since they're doing the right thing.
We are still going to have the back door and floor in the kitchen fixed, too. That damage wasn't from the tornado, but since we have a contractor here anyway, we are going to go ahead and let them take care of it. The good news is that USAA paid us for our damaged iMac even though we're not buying a new one, and that money will go toward the repair in the kitchen. So that's nice.

What have we been up to? Well, it's been summer! We've had one visit to SC to visit (and get our dogs back, yay!) and Rowan has gone to camp at Victory Junction again. We've played on the wii, and got the pool back up and running for some fun there. We've had a few playdates with friends, and dressed up as cows to get free food from Chick Fil A.

 

So we've been keeping busy.

I've also been going to weekly childbirth preparation classes at the local hospital as part of my DONA certification to become a doula. That finished up tonight, so that's one more thing I can tick off on the list of requirements to a fulfilling career. Did I learn anything there? not really, but the people were nice and it wasn't a horrible way to spend my time. And it's good to know what that particular childbirth course offers to parents to be. It was an excellent class so I'm glad I went, because I can refer people to take it knowing that it's a great one.

Other than that... It's just the same old story. Eleri has given up nursing but is still clueless when it comes to the potty. Rowan and Niall irritate the living snot out of each other but love each other in spite of it - most of the time. John takes care of the fishes, and I fight entropy at home. Joe has been a welcome addition to our house, and we regularly joke about how great it is to have a Manny to help with the kids. :)

All in all... Life has been pretty good.

Progress!

It's going to look great!
The front and left side is done. The right side and back are still yellow.
I got the green matched today. :D

It's like magic

Magic that is poundy and thumpy and not all that immediate.

 

Shazam! New house color.

on my watch

 

Why yes, Mommy did take Sudafed today. Why do you ask?

Videos from Rowan's class

Rowan had his end of the year potluck today, and part of it was a music program. Here are videos.
The first two are songs in Chinese. Ms. Mei came this year to teach them Chinese once a week. He really enjoyed it.

Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes (in Chinese)

And a song medley they practiced over and over. (Be warned, it's nearly 5 mins long)

Oh Happy Day!

 

Rowan had his First Holy Communion this weekend. He was so excited and proud.
Our boy is growing up!

Kindergarten - bring your parents to school day

I love these days. It's so much fun to go into his classroom and see what he's been doing and how it's done.
Today he showed us how to use the stamp game to do addition.
I wish I'd learned this way when I was a child. It would have made so much more sense to me!
Of course, I forgot my camera, so I had to make do with crappy cell phone pictures...


Niall shows John the tiles. They are divided into ones, tens, hundreds, and thousands.


He does a math problem for us. Let me see if I can explain it...

First he got out the number of tiles he needed for each part of the problem and laid them out.
Then he started at the ones, and would pick them up and count until he reached 10.
Once he had 10, he would put those back into the box and get out 1 tile for the next highest group.
(So when he counted up 10 of the ones column, he put those back and got out one of the tens tiles.)
If he ran out of tiles before he got to 10, that was the amount he had for that column.


His answer. I love the backwards 5 that he crossed out and made right.

Since I was busy on Friday the 13th, it hit me today

Some of you might know my history with Friday the 13th. This year, I had my first job as a doula, so I was a little busy and then a lot tired for it.
Friday the 13th knew that, and saved it for today. Thursday the 19th seems to do just as well.
______________________________________________________

So I'm sitting at the table in my nightgown eating my egg and poking around on the internet, when
I hear a tapping on my front door.

??

It's not even 9am yet. Who could it be?
Why, it's the contractor and some other dude. The electrician. Contractor says he told John they were coming.
Okay.
Hello, I'm in my nightgown. My NURSING nightgown. And I don't wear a stitch of clothing under my nightgown.
Come on in, men who may or may not be getting an eyefull.

I scurry off to the bedroom to put on clothes. Call John on speaker phone and thank him for the warning.
He swears he didn't know.

Pixie is in her crib crying while I'm running around, so I grab her and notice she has a wet diaper.
So I put her on the floor and whip her diaper off.
On the floor, you see, because her changing table is piled high with her clothes because she plays in
her drawers, trying everything on, and I haven't put it all back yet.
Guess what? Surprise poop!
Not formed toddler poop, either. Peanut butter poop designed especially to leave a great brown smear on my bedroom floor.
The bedroom floor that the electrician will be seeing soon, because the breaker box is in our bedroom.
And also all of the laundry and things piled around because I've been slacking on housey things while I do other things.
So I go to grab the wipes. No dice. They're out in the diaper bag. The cloth wipes are all dry.
Toss her in the tub and wipe off as much as I can with toilet paper before running out to grab the wipes from the diaper bag.
Wipe her off and start the tub running at a trickle because she's highly insulted and crying.

Run out to the kitchen to grab a glass to mix a little Dr. Bonner's so I can clean the poop of my carpet.
At this point, the contractor is trying to talk to me. Whatever man. Hear the crying baby? Go away.
I get the Dr. B, check on Pixie, give her toys, leave her in the tub because she's not exactly sanitary.
Dump soap on rug, go soap up Pixie, go scrub rug. (Pixie can be seen from rug stain with a little leaning.)
Also pile laundry onto bed so it looks like I meant it to be that way.

Now I'm hiding here sitting on the toilet. There's an electrician here somewhere. I hear him skulking around.
Pixie is playing in the tub, but I hear the microwave beeping at me to remind me the butter I was softening is waiting for me.
Because I was making muffins before all this started.

*sigh*

Time to get back on the horse.

A little ambition

About a week before the tornado hit, we drove out to Broadwell's nursery in Angier and got some plants. We got a maple tree for the front yard, 3 little shrubs that I think are bayberries but I could be wrong. There are no labels at Broadwell's. And we got this twig that was supposed to be a blueberry bush.
That weekend, we planted all of it. The next weekend, we got a tornado. But wouldn't you know... all the yard damage was in the back. Not a single one of our new little plants took a hit. Not even the blueberry twig.

I call it a twig because it's really not a proper bush yet, but it's in a sheltered spot that gets lots of sun, so that will change. 

I didn't expect much of it this year, what with being planted and whipped around in a windstorm and pretty much ignored in all the mayhem. But then I went out to check on it, and what do you know? This little guy has big ambition.

 

I'm pretty proud of the plucky little thing.

What the adjuster said

John met with the USAA adjuster today to go over the house and property and see what needs doing. It will be easier to list this out in bullets, I think...

• The fence counts as property! That means they'll fix it. They won't replace the whole thing, but they will fix it where it got broken. Woo!
• Any trees that are affecting property (instead of just yard) is a tree that they will handle. That means the trees that are on the fence and the tree that moved the shed are ones that they will deal with. That leaves just 1 full tree and one large piece of tree for John to deal with.
• They will fix the shed and put it back where it started.
• They will completely replace the roof.
• They will replace the ceiling in the living room.
• They will possibly replace that entire wall that the fireplace was on.
• They will rebuild the chimney.
• They'll give us $$ toward any property that was damaged outside (clothesline, wheelbarrow, etc.)
• They will replace the siding. Does this mean all new siding or just patches? Don't know. We'll ask. If it's all new siding, I'm going to try to get a new color out of the deal.
• They'll replace the floor in the bathroom that the water restoration people removed.

I'm probably forgetting things. Frankly, it's all a little overwhelming still, but I feel a lot better having a plan in place. We'll have to go to one of those extended stay places while the work is being done. I have no idea when that will start. I'm hoping we have a timeline soon.

Tornado!

We had a close brush with Mother Nature on April 16, 2011.
John was watching out the back and I was watching out the front while we had the tv on showing the radar.
I could see that the storm's hook was going to go right over our area and was listening for that telltale wind hum,
but the thunder was constant so it was hard to hear.
I never saw a funnel, but did see the trees start moving in that way that anyone who has been through a storm will recognize, and my ears started popping and ringing, and the hair on my arms stood up, so that's when John and I went back to the bathroom with the kids and brought the dogs with us.
The house creaked and shuddered a bit, but we had the lights off so the light from our flashlight candle was steady.
The kids didn't really know how bad it was. We downplayed it big time.
It was over really quickly. I don't why people say they sound like freight trains. They sound nothing like freight trains to me. They sound like tornadoes.
That night we stayed at Jenn's house.

The next morning, we went back home to try to figure out what to do. 
The boys are on spring break, so we decided to pack them up and send them to Fannie camp. We drove and met Fran and Tommy in Concord and traded the boys for a chainsaw. Doing that took up most of the day.
We slept at home that night.

The 2nd day after the storm, (yesterday) the water damage and restoration people came out. At one point we had 2 large trucks and 3 smaller trucks crowding our driveway and cul de sac. They had guys on the roof putting up tarp and temporary shingles, a guy in the attic pulling out wet insulation, and a couple of guys figuring out how to anchor the chimney back to the house so a stiff wind wouldn't blow it down completely.
They put industrial fans all over the house to dry things out. They will be there for the next 3 or 4 days. There's a lock box on the door so the water guys can come check on it and make sure things are going as they should. There are also two very large dehumidifiers running. They have hoses to drain into our sinks. The floor in the vanity area of our master bathroom rated as very wet, and since it was parquet flooring the guy said it would swell and buckle, so they took it out so they could get the subfloor dry.
The bathroom is the wettest area, so they also brought in something that would heat the room to 120something degrees to bake it dry. I had to do a quick dump and dash to get all of our bathroom things that would be ruined by heat out of there. There is plastic up in the bathroom doorway to keep the heat and fan in there.
Once the fans are all on, it is very, very loud in there, so we took Jenn up on her offer to crash at her place. The dogs are going to go stay at Julianne's house and play with her kids and dog. I don't know what we'd do without friends! Well... I do know what we'd do. We'd have to put the dogs in a kennel and ourselves in a hotel. This is going to be a lot nicer than that. Life is better with good friends.

I have no idea what today will bring.

I'm taking pictures as I think of it. They'll all be included in the same set on flickr. You can find it here.

Hello Springtime

Is there anything better than mud on a warm spring day?

 

I don't think so either.

The Pixie and her Mamaw

Taking a picture of Mom is an exercise in endurance. She doesn't like to have it done, and even when she doesn't know that I have the camera on her she makes a face.
Remember that episode of friends when Chandler and Monica needed engagement pictures?

My mom is a Chandler.

That's why when I get a good picture of mom, I get really excited. She'll tell you that it came out because she's not looking at the camera, so you can't see her face. I think that every once in a while she's having so much fun that she forgets that I'm trying to capture her on film. She's really a beautiful woman. I love this picture of her with our Pixie.

Two beautiful girls

The whole set of pictures from our trip to SC can be found here.

Hey!

 

Hey, Mommy! Whatcha doing? Are you taking a picture? Can I see? Whatcha writing? Can I see? You can't be on the computer doing a blog. You have to play with ME! ME ME ME! I am cute and adorable and you have to play with me all day long! Right, Mommy? Yay!

Friday flick for Monday morning

Posting this late on Sunday for the grandparents to find on Monday morning.

Pictures of the kids

Taken today, Feb 6, 2011. A warm, early spring day. We had some good outside time.

Pinewood Derby

Rowan had his first run in the Pinewood Derby today. His wasn't the fastest car there, but this was his first year making one. I'm still pretty impressed at what they were able to make out of a solid block of wood.
His car was a boat, and we decided it was really a log flume boat, so the people riding it had to have their hands in the air because they were screaming. Please note the Harry Potter lightening bolt on the side. No car of Rowan's would be complete without some sort of reference to Harry Potter.
He got 3rd place, for Most Unique. Not bad for a first try. I'm sure he already has ideas for his car for next year.

Now we are 35.

Yesterday was my birthday. It was not a really birthday kind of day. The Pixie is still snotty and coughing, I'm still snotty and coughing, and we had to go to the school for Kindergarten night instead of doing a fun birthday type evening. It ended up being pretty fun watching Niall do his thing. He showed us how he uses the materials in his classroom to add 4 digit numbers together. It was very cool. Of course, I forgot the camera. John took a cell phone picture, so now we have to figure out how to get that picture off his phone and onto some sort of usable platform.

Until then, have a picture of one of my recent knits. It's the Hermione Hat, and I made it for Rowan's teacher, who is moving away to California this month. We are really sad to see her go, but she's starting a grand new adventure with her little family, and we know she's going to have fun.