When it rains it pours.

The last few months have been just a snow ball of stresses leaving Mr. Sloth and I saying it only gets easier from here, right? The answer is no. It can always be worse, in fact it's my motto.

It started with natural stresses of life, long winter, four young children, colds and stomach flus chained together. Then Mr. Sloth took over the reins of bill paying which was a big of a mess as I thought it was. Then the business hit a hiccup, a big, giant, serious hiccup. And from there our stress snowball has picked up speed. It seems like it's one thing after another. Many things I won't name here, but  this week it got even worse.

Friday-My dad has emergency surgery to remove a bowel obstruction
Monday-Mr. Sloths car dies leaving the choice to fix a paid off car with 200,000+ miles on it or replace it. Replacement is not an option.

And then today happened. As I am teaching vacation Bible school this week I had to pretend to be a "real person", with a "real job".  I have been getting up between 4:45am and 5:30am everyday. Today I woke up a little late at 6am. I did the  usual, turned the shower on cold.....because our water heater only makes enough hot water if you run it on cold for a LONG time. (fun stuff) Grabbed a cup of coffee and said my morning prayers and did some morning web surfing before jumping in the shower. I was in the middle of shaving my first of two legs (in case you didn't know how many legs I have) when I heard. "BANG,BANG,BANG".  I knew right away that it was Mark, and he was serious. So I turned off the shower but it didn't get quieter. I jumped out of the shower.....and into a GIANT puddle of water. GIANT. MASSIVE. 5 INCHES DEEP. STILL POURING OUT OF THE TOILET ,WATER.

WHAT. THE . WHAT?

There was no clog in the toilet or anything, just started overflowing. As it was early the only people were awake were children. It was Prophet who discovered the sopping wet puddle outside of our bathroom and woke up Mr. Sloth.

This is where it gets worse.

It was RAINING in our kitchen. RAINING.

In all honestly the next hour wasn't more stressful than usual. (For all you non-parents out there put that into perspective, having children is like having your house flood every morning with an unstoppable disaster. ) In fact I think the excitement of the flooding house kept the kids occupied. I often heard Rooster in the background saying "Can I swim, Momma? I swim?"

Ah. Laughter.

Today we began demolition. All of a sudden the real mess of everything is starting to hit me. Thankfully insurance is covering us stay somewhere else. We haven't left the house yet though. After Vacation Bible School I dropped off another little girl at her home, picked up Mr. Sloth so we could all go out an eat. Then drove him to the dealership to pick up his car. Did I mention his car died on Monday? Fun stuff. And then headed back to the house. As of right now there are two ways to get in the house. To get upstairs you have to go through the front door to get to the main level or basement you have to go through the garage.  Right now Mister is sleeping and the rest of the bunch is in the playroom in the basement. Sooooo to check on Mister I have to go upstairts through the construction site, out the garage, around  to the front door and then upstairs. Did I mention it's raining? Because it is.


In order to keep us sane throughout this ordeal I will be starting Operation Bright Side. This should help remind me that things could always be worse. Always.

My list so far.

We were home when it flooded, not out of town.

It was a small flood, not a fire.

We didn't lose anything of value that cannot be replaced.

We get new floors and carpets, and possibly new table, chairs, and bathroom. (crossing fingers I can get a new shower!)

My dry dusty plants are finally getting a nice refresher sitting in the rain outside.

I didn't like Demands purple carpet anyway but it was fine condition, not being replaced anytime soon.

The kids may get to go swimming for a few days.

We are leaving on vacation next week anyway.

The playroom, tv, and kids rooms are completely useable which makes living easier.

We have three other bathrooms.

It's not winter. 


Here's out living room. Our bedroom is right above so a lot of the leaking happened here.

Kitchen took the biggest hit as the bathroom is right above our kitchen table.

Here our my houseplants getting a refreshing pick-me-up. The rainy day hopefully helps to wash all their dust off.  I trimmed the two on the left of dead leaves and such, haven't gotten around to the other one yet.

My homeschool room/ house bar. You can see all our drinking glasses lined up on the kids table and liquor bottles lined up on the floor.

Ending Project Week

I turned on the heat today. It's June 6th.  Laura Ingalls Wilder ain't got nothing on this Long Winter. No wonder my kids are going bonkers.

As I mentioned in my last post I am trying to spend this week working on house projects and getting some long over due spring cleaning done. (It's finally spring....in JUNE!)

Next week is vacation Bible School where I somehow found myself volunteering to teach preschool. Right. Because that went so well for me in the fall. Ugh. Why do I do this to myself?? Two weeks ago a friend asked me to make her sons graduation cake. Even though I had a stressful week including working two days at the Homeschool Conference I thought it was a fun idea.  So at 11:30pm the night before the conference I finished the cake two days before the party. Personally I'm not totally happy with the cake, but everyone seemed to love it.

Clearly there is foundation issues with the corners sloping down. I could have fixed it but chose to let it go. Humbly, let it go. I also want to point out the messy kitchen in the background. Did I clean it? Heck no. I had a glass of wine and caught up on the new Arrested Development. This is why Mr. Sloth dislikes my cake making hobby.





Then I had to work the Homeschool Conference. I say had but really I volunteered, sort of. The science curriculum we use is really expensive and the last two years I received one for free if I work the booth during the conference. Which is great, saved us $600 over the past two years but I miss out on a lot of the conference. While I set up the table a herd of women and their rolling suitcases bolted for the used book sale at the opening of the conference. I wanted to bolt like cattle too. (super sad face)  Then again, since I was working and our supplies were late arriving I actually sneaked over to the used book sale before it started and filled my suitcase at the first table!  I found a TON of wonderful things. American Girl book sets, chapter books for Demand, early readers for Happy, and I even found Level 1 & 2  of Demands Latin curriculum. Saweet!  Mr. Sloth and Demand are so excited they can't wait until the new school year to start it together. I figured since Latin is an extra curricular subject and Mr. Sloth has taken Latin before it would be a great activity for them to do in the evenings whenever they have time. Not every night but here and there.

When I showed Demand all of the books I bought at the conference she asked if she could sell them in her toy sale. Yeah, no.


 

After the Homeschool Conference ended on Saturday I met Mr. Sloth and the kids at our friends house for the graduation party. It was a much needed break, and they had Buffalo Wild Wings. Score!  Mr. Sloth called from the van before arriving and asked if I could take the kids while he ran to the Cathedral for confession. What we didn't know was that the priest who was doing confessions was hammering down some wings at the party before rushing off to the Cathedral. If we had only known!

So that was last week now you know why I didn't want to leave the house this week.  Next week we have vacation Bible School Mon-Friday from 8:30-12pm.  Then we head off on vacation. Friends of our who have almost the exact family except their baby is a girl and ours is Mister, they won the use of a duplex at Glacier National Park. So we are driving out there and taking our sweet American Road Trip time doing so. We can't wait to take the kids to Mount Rushmore, the Badlands, Custer's Last Stand, Wind caves, Walnut Grove.  In fact next week, when I'm not teaching VBS I'll be assembling a travel treasure hunt for the kids to take with them.

Today was much like yesterday. I wanted to get projects done and the children wanted to fight. By 8am. 8AM!! Rooster was throwing all out screaming temper tantrums. It is almost as if getting up before the crack of dawn doesn't benefit his mood at all. I'm already getting up at 5:15am I cannot get up any earlier to be the first one awake. I decided that I needed back up. By mid morning I had locked down a mother's helper. I could come and get her anytime, if only Mister would wake up from his morning nap. (taps foot)

(taps foot.)

(taps foot)

Finally at noon he woke up and we picked her up. It wasn't a perfect solution. My house was still a disaster (aside from my bedroom which is still loverly) but at least the kids were happy and not being yelled at by mom. I was able to finally organize the laundry room closet. It looks so purrrdy now.

This is the humble before. It became our, if we can shove it in and walk away without an avalanche-it works closet.

I made the curtains last summer when I was learning to sew. This is what I made with some of the left over fabric.

I desperately want a counter top for the washer and dryer. Grains of detergent get jammed under something and when I moved it horrendous metal scratching sounds are heard and felt. Plus the tops are all scratched up (I wonder why) and uneven and uninviting. Look how much brighter just trying these two white boards from the garage make the room look. I could fold all kinds of laundry on a counter top Mr. Sloth. I could I could. I also envision a bright blue vase filled with white or pink flowers. And a basket of sorts for a natural element. It will be grand. Someday.

 

Here's how the closet turned out. I only allowed myself an hour to work on it (having already started sorting and purging the night before) . So it's not done, done. Mr. Sloth was concerned by the lack of labels.

Two $5 bins from Target, some scrapbook paper, and viola! A new pretty closet. Up top we have a bin for rarely used items like bread making and beer making items. With coolers on top (unseen) of the container. Then our meat slicer (surprisingly handy) and our ice cream maker, and no Rooster we are not having ice cream today.  Below we have our new griddle on top of our picnic bin. This bin has paper plates, cups, utensils, napkins, foil containers, etc. Then clearly we have our newly stocked paper towel supply with my cooking-candies bin below. Don't tell Mr. Sloth there is candy in there.  Below that we have our roaster and our bin of tupperware.

That's what I was able to accomplish today. I think I'm getting the mothers helper again tomorrow. Other than planning out VBS I'm sure I'll just get general cleaning done. That will be nice.

Are you nesting? Say WHAT?!?

The long winter took a real toll on me. I never really got out of a rut that started in October, and now here we are "the last day of school" and I don't know what to think. Are we done with the school? Nope. Do I care? Nope.  It's first grade for goodness sakes. We'll continue to plug away throughout the summer, not every day but when we have time.

I recently pulled together a new schedule drawing from the ideas of Managers of Their Homes. I haven't really implemented it as of yet, but I will soon. This week I am focusing on the house and the many projects, or half done projects that need to be taken care of.

Today I re-evaluated our homeschool room. I don't mind that we spent so much time in the dining room this year as it was a loooooong winter and we needed the Vitamin D, but I would like to make the homeschool room just a little more inviting.

While I was thinking about some changes that could be made I stumbled upon the perfect desk for Demand and the kids.  It was a HUGE white desk, very plain for only $30 on Craiglist.  65 x 30 inches! Before I knew it I had arranged for Mr. Sloth to pick up the desk and had ordered two shelves from Target.  The desk is so deep I had room for two four foot shelves to sit on top of the desk with plenty of room for books. My wheels were spinning I have a fellow homeschooling mom who hasn't been feeling the wrath of reproductive hormones over the past two years who loves to decorate and organize agree to paint the new desk for me.  The desk will be either orange or teal. If you notice in the picture of our shelving system we have bins with colorful polkadots on them. I wanted to take one of those neutral bright colors to bring more life to the room. Besides, bright colors are "in" right now. I may spraypaint one of the folding chairs that never seems to leave our house (???) instead of buying a new desk chair. And then a fun desk lamp should round off the look. So excited! Mr. Sloth has already picked up the desk so now I just need to wait for my friend to paint it and for my Target delivery to show up. I don't know why I waited so long for the Target Card. It's comes out of checking ( because we don't use credit cards) and I save 5% EVERYTIME I shop at Target and I get free shipping online. SAWEET!  So not only are those two shelves coming to my doorstep, I don't have to pay the $40 for shipping. Yippee!!


Here's the current bookshelf. I may sell the armoire on left and line that wall with the same shelving system.
 Demand is rooting for and blue desk while I am leaning towards an orange one.

 

 This is where the desk will go. This is Demands pile of stuff to sell at her toy sale. I'm going to sell the faded couch as well. We never sit down here. And I'll give away that swing (sniff, sniff) as we replaced it with an electric one with Mister. It's also been on my list since last year to make a curtain for our under stairs storage and to recover my chair, maybe this will be my year.




Next on my list of random projects was our bedroom lamps.Since we've moved in we've only had our ceiling fan light in our room as our former night stand lamps looked great in our new bedroom and we never got around to replacing them.  Last year I found some really nice Pottery Barn lamp shades at a garage sale in the perfect red for our bedroom. We were in no rush to get lamps however as little Mister, Mister was soon to become our bunkmate. As we knew so well there would be no reading in bed for sometime.  Even though Mister technically sleeps in our room (he falls asleep in our room) and then gets moved to his crib after his  wild brothers are asleep) we can actually sit and read in our room now. Hypothetically...if we wanted to....it could happen.

So last week I was motivated enough to buy the lamps to go with the lampshades so we could read in bed. Brought them home to find out they were incompatible with our lamp shades. (wan-wan) After thinking about it for a few days and studying the design of the lamps I decided there must be a converter of sorts out there. On one of my many daily trips to Target I discovered in fact that there WERE lampshade converters. I eagerly brought two home, put them on the lamps bases, put the lampshade on and then  Mr. Sloth declared that the lamps were too big for the shades. ARGH!  Today I exchanged the lamps for smaller ones and was finally able to put lamps, with pretty lampshades, on our nightstands so we can read. Theoretically. And nothing motivates you to clean your room like something new and pretty now does it?

Ta-da!









 Little Mister enjoying the new clean floor to explore.





I also did a lot of random things like changing light bulbs, cleaning showers and toilets, and finally getting around to hanging the coat hook in the boys room. But you don't know about the boys room because I have been off line for months thrashing about in that horrid winter. Blah.  Mr. Sloth asked me at dinner if I was "Nesting" I scoffed and said, "I was trying to fix all the damage that was done to my nest over the last year. "

Here's to hearing more from the Sloths!