Crazy Crazy Crazy

Life's been nuts since school started back up. I've been hitting the gym every morning which has been making me feel pretty good. I've already been able to go 25 minutes on the arc trainer (a cross between a stairmaster and an elliptical) which is up from barely 10 minutes last week. I'm still not able to lift much on my strength training days, but I haven't been doing that as often so that'll take a little more time. I'm just excited that I'm taking this step and Jacob's told me that he's proud of me. That's enough to keep going.

I had signed up to be Daniel's co-room mom this year. I don't really mind being the co-room mom because the responsibilities are very minimal. Anyway, I go to the big Room Mom pow wow last week and came out of it being Hannah's head room mom and Daniel's co-room mom. Luckily, Hannah's teacher is fairly easy going and doesn't need me to do too much but I don't know exactly how I'm going to be in two places at once (their parties). I can't stress out about it.

I'm sad because a note came home about Girl Scouts for Hannah and I just can't do it this year. If we could add a few more hours to the day, we could add it in but I just don't see how we can do it right now. She seems to be okay with the fact that she'll join in first grade. Hopefully.

Jacob is now old enough to join the orchestra at school. He has decided to learn to play the violin. Luckily, it's all during the school day. Mike doesn't understand why I find it so important that all of the kids play an instrument. I just think it makes you such a well rounded individual. Anyway, he'll be starting that in a couple of weeks. He's excited.

The basement is killing me. It's taking way longer than I ever anticipated. It would have gone faster if I had used latex paint instead of oil based. I will be using latex paint on the main living part of the basement. I'm really looking forward to getting it done. I've been given an unofficial deadline of Saturday and I think I just might pull it off. Fingers seriously crossed. I am excited about how it's turning out, though.

I reunited with a college friend, Melisa, on Facebook a couple of months ago. She's way out in Oregon now, but her parents still live in the Kansas City area and she came to visit this past weekend. We were able to get together for lunch on Friday. It was really awesome to catch up with her. It was like we had been in touch for the last ten years, which we hadn't. Yet another reason to love Facebook.

Photos for Bobbi

Here are a couple of photos from the first day of school yesterday.

The kids before leaving for school
Hannah gets ready to do her first bit of work as a kindergartener.

First Day of School

Today was the first day of school for the kids. This has to be the first time that I've ever seen a school start on Monday. Love it! Anyway, we got to the school a little early so that I could drop the kids off at their classrooms.

Jacob wouldn't let me walk him in...I guess he's too old for that now. Daniel was fine with me walking him to his class until we actually got there. At that point, he pretended that he didn't know me. Oh well. I then walked Hannah to her room. I wasn't prepared for the reading of The Kissing Hand by Hannah's teacher and walked out of the school in tears. She was so excited and looked so happy when I left and I can't wait to hear how her day went.

After dropping the kids off, I headed over to meet Mike at the Fitness Center. I couldn't get an appointment to actually join until Wednesday so I went in on a visitor's pass. One of the trainers took my blood pressure and heart rate (both good!) and showed me how to use some of the machines. She then let me go on my own. I managed 40 minutes on the treadmill and 10 minutes on the elliptical machine before I was done. I'm excited because they'll put a nice plan together for me so that I can work the areas that need help. I'm excited and I hope that I can stick with it.

I Was Heading To Bed...

and I decided to check on the monarchs. I found this...



Can you see the others hanging there just waiting to come out? I can't wait until the kids see in the morning!

Here We Go...

We had lots to do up at the school today. This morning was the PTO registration stuff. Unlike last year, they didn't have the class lists posted which was kind of obnoxious. We picked up our school supplies (our school lets you order them through the school so you always have exactly what you need and it's all wrapped up together so there's no rushing around to pick it up), signed up for a couple committees (of course) and headed home. Jacob had Ambassador training at 3:30 and we picked him up 45 minutes later. They finally posted the class lists at 4 and we got to see who they were going to have this year.

Two years ago, Jacob had Mrs. G for 2nd grade and Daniel had Mrs. T for kindergarten. This year, Daniel has Mrs. G for 2nd grade and Hannah has Mrs. T for kindergarten. I think that's pretty funny because there are 3 kindergarten and 4 2nd grade teachers. I've heard great things about Jacob's teacher, so I'm hoping he has a great year.

This evening, they held the back to school fair. Jacob was working as an Ambassador for the first quarter of it so I took Daniel and Hannah into the gym for a little while (it was raining so they brought some stuff inside). I'd seen some of the Ambassadors lined up in the hallway so I went out to see if I could find Jacob. I found him coming up the cafeteria stairs. I went up to him to say hello and he stopped, looked at me and said, "not now, Mom. I'm giving a tour." It was really cute.

So, I think we're now set for the school year to start on Monday. I still don't know where the summer went.

Last Week of Vacation

This is the last week of vacation for the kids (I can't just say the boys anymore since Hannah starts too!) The only one of the three that is excited is Hannah. The boys desperately want me to homeschool. LOL! They don't realize that actual homeschooling is different than the couple of worksheets I've been having them do this summer.

I have to admit that I'm torn on sending them back to school. As crazy as things are now, they're going to get worse once school opens back up. Cub Scouts and MOPS start back up again...Hannah switches to Tuesday evening gymnastics (you'd think they'd have a Saturday class!), Jacob starts Wednesday evening Hebrew school and we continue football and TKD. You know what, though, I've always liked having a lot of things to do. Aside from a football game for Daniel on Saturdays, our Friday through Sunday is clear (okay, so there's Sunday School).

However, I do get to start Mike's gym on Monday (right honey?) and I'll have more time to really bang out the basement (I'm about 1/4 of the way through the playroom). And maybe, just maybe, I'll actually get this house clean. Here's a picture of the playroom with one coat on...

Anyway, Daniel's loving football. We'll see just how much he loves it once they switch to practice with pads on. They've been doing conditioning practices up until Friday. That still makes me laugh.

Hannah had TKD testing on Saturday. She's going for her high green belt. It was strange that the boys didn't test, but they can't go until October. Once they get their mid brown, they can't test again until February. If they get their high brown at that point, it'll be at least another six months (so next August at the earliest) before they can go for their recommended black belts. My guess is that Daniel will sit at high brown for a long time while Mike and Jacob get theirs fairly quickly. Who knows, though.

We had our block party on Saturday, too. It was fun but it kind of bothered me that there were so many people that aren't on our street that came. Instead of neighbors hanging out with neighbors, our neighbors hung out with the people they brought. We had also been invited to Stephen and Roxanne's for the UFC fight, so we left the block party early and headed over there.

It seems that we never leave their house before 1AM and Saturday was no exception. Mike had TKD friends there, I had Jiu Jitsu friends there and the kids had Quinn and Jett to play with. I love hanging out with them. Good wine, good food, great friends.

Almost a Week

Since the big flood of '08. We're all dried out and now we have to figure out how to put everything back together. I'm not interested in putting carpet back down there. I've seen how much work carpet is when it floods and I don't want to have to go through that again. Actually, I don't want to have to worry about the carpet every time it rains. So, I've sort of convinced Mike to paint the concrete floor instead.

I've been talking to my friends about it and many of them have done similar things themselves. I have one friend that stained her concrete to look like terra cotta tiles. She put grout lines in and everything. Anyway, they say that it's pretty easy to do and the results are great. Plus, we wouldn't have to worry about carpet. If it floods again, we just suck up all of the water and put down some fans. I like that.

I've been given the playroom as my way of showing Mike how good it can look. The first step is an etcher (which sounds scary but you just paint it on), then you primer it and then paint. The last step is putting on a top coat that makes it all shiny. The kids and I have decided to paint the playroom floor white and put down circles and "swirlies" (Jacob's word) in primary colors. We'd then put down some Flor carpet tiles to give the kids a soft spot to play. In my head, it looks awesome. I just hope Mike likes it.

I got my first Jiu Jitsu stripe last night. I'm now a little over 1/4 of the way to my blue belt!! It's amazing what a little black piece of tape will do for your confidence level. I can't believe how much I'm enjoying it.

For My Crafty Sisters...

Okay. Jacob brought home a tie-dyed shirt that he made at camp. I haven't done a thing with it because it's freaking me out a little. Jacob swears that they said to run it in apple juice and vinegar before washing. A lot of what I've read says you should just use vinegar. Some sites say just wash the thing in cold water, then in hot water.

HELP!!!! I have no idea what to do and he'd like to wear the thing before he grows out of it!!! Any suggestions?

Surprise, Surprise!

Daniel's football practice was cancelled tonight because of the heat. They won't practice if the temps are over 95 degrees or if the heat index is over 105. I think it's saying something when the practice was called at 12:30 and practice wasn't even scheduled until 5:30. It was crazy hot today. Fortunately (or not), TKD never gets cancelled for heat, even though Dave never seems to run the air.

Tonight, before Mike went into his class, he comes out with a nice flower arrangement for me and a card with Maroon 5 tickets inside!!! I love Maroon 5 and he'd heard from someone at work about how to get tickets. It's funny that Mike felt that he had to give them to me in front of everyone at TKD. Stephen was proud and impressed. He even said, "you hang out with us long enough and it's bound to rub off!" Roxanne offered to watch the kids for us that night, too. That made little Quinn so happy. He immediately began making plans for where everyone was going to sleep and what they were going to do. Now, I don't know if it'll be an overnight but it's good to know they'll probably have fun.

Finally Friday

It's been a long week. A very long week.

Not even an hour after we got back from the surgery center, the water guys came to dry out the basement. There were a couple of boxes in the safe room that they wanted me to go through (otherwise, they just pitch it because of the water) so I did. I was able to rescue a good deal of my old teaching stuff and some random other stuff when I stumbled upon a box of Mike's comic books (the majority were safely in a bookcase in the playroom). They box was still sealed from the move and was completely soaked. Dripping soaked. I didn't hold much hope for saving anything in that box. So, I sighed hard and grabbed my scissors to cut through the tape. I was pleased to see that the first few comics were unharmed. Okay. I pulled them out of the box and put them in another, partially filled, box. As I continued through the box, I realized that I would be able to save about 95% of the comics after all. I called Jacob down to help me bring them up to the dining room as a safe place. He spent a good deal of the afternoon going through the comics. I put the destroyed ones on the kitchen counter so that Mike could see the ones he'd need to replace if he wanted. What's really interesting is that there were no in-between comics. They were all either soaking wet or completely dry. Strange.

At some point, I realized that they were trashing the carpet. I really freaked out and called Mike who talked to one of the guys. They did take me downstairs to show me exactly why they made that decision. It was clear that the backing was peeling away from the actual carpet. Okay.

Even though the carpet was disappointing, there were a few good things that happened. We didn't have insulation in the walls so they didn't have to cut into drywall. When they popped off the baseboards, there was enough space between the floor and the drywall so they didn't have to poke ventilation holes in it. They didn't have to remove any of the doors or door casings. Aside from the carpet, the damage was light.

They had told me about a house they'd been to yesterday morning that had 8 inches of water in the entire basement. They said they'd never seen anything like it. 8 inches is catastrophic. They said the cleanup on that house would take forever. Our dry out should take several days.

Without the carpet and with so many fans and dehumidifiers, the basement looks very industrial. It's funny to see the notes contractors left on the floor. It's also clear that they painted the baseboards down there because there are white stripes all over the floor. It is very sad, though, to see our once beautiful basement looking so unfinished now.

Two of our neighbors also had their basements flood. Amy's house is a split level and her basement is her living room. They had a lot of damage. She said that she's not going to recarpet but is going to put in those spongy block things so that she never has to worry about it again. That's what our floor at TKD is made out of. I'm curious to see if she actually does that.

On another note, Hannah's doing well. Around 4 yesterday afternoon, she was in a lot of pain and was in tears. I called the ENT and he called some Tylenol with codeine in for her. One dose was enough to knock the pain back enough for her to rest. She fell asleep rather early and today she seems to be, pretty much, back to her normal self.

Daniel starts football tonight. This should be interesting.