Our life continues to revolve around unpacking, getting settled, and all the fun surprises and frustrations of a new (old) house!
The first week we were here, my Dad cracked a rib trying to install the stove. He didn't completely stop working on our many projects, but had to be selective, and it's slowed things down. Thankfully, he's feeling better, or at least says he is, I keep worrying that he's doing too much/too fast, but he doesn't like it when I try to do the heavy lifting instead of him.
The second week, we discovered that the hot water heater needed to be replaced. I'm beyond frustrated that the inspector, that we paid a LOT of money to, didn't catch this! He told us stupid, obvious stuff, like the fact that there's not a railing on the stairs. Yup, I saw that, I'm good with that! (Dad will be building bookshelves where the railing would go, when he has time, until then, we just repeatedly remind Little Bit to be careful), but then didn't catch that the control thingy for the hot water heater was bare wires, held against the contact point by insulation!!!! SCARY!!!! Dad discovered it when I asked him to turn down the hot water heater a tad. He came up and told us we were 100% without hot water until we could get a new one. So that became the priority project. THEN once we got the new one, and Dad started to take out the old one, he FURTHER discovered that it was wired with too small wiring. ANOTHER thing the inspector SHOULD have noticed!! So that slowed things down even more.
Last weekend we celebrated a belated Christmas with Rodney's mom. Little Bit was excited to get her first Legos, though I think her favorite part were the tiny tools (hammer, drill, etc) that came with the set she got. The big girls can't wait for warm weather so they can try out their slackline!
Last week, we didn't have any unpleasant surprises, so that's something . . . We went to IKEA and determined that the bed we were hoping would work for the girls' room, wouldn't work (IKEA mattresses are shorter than normal mattresses, so buying an IKEA bed to work with existing mattresses doesn't work, sigh . . . ), but I did get a chair for the living room that fits in the space better than the oversized recliner we had there (the recliner is currently a very cushy cat bed in the basement LOL), a bookcase for the living room, and lots of the small things that IKEA is so wonderful for. It warmed up briefly last week and POURED rain. I guess we can be thankful that we didn't get all that as snow, we'd have been snowed in until March! But soo much rain coming soo fast and hard on top of a thawing top layer of ground and a still frozen, underneath, meant lots of flooding. We'd anticipated, and planned for some water in the basement, and it came through pretty much like I expected it to. We had everything up, or in plastic tubs, so it was inconvenient, but not a big deal. We hadn't expected water to pour down the driveway into the garage, but again, just as a precaution, we had most everything either up or plastic bins on the bottom layer. More amusing, the bridge across the creek in the back yard washed downstream a ways. The girls were pretty fascinated by that. Since it was a rather scary little bridge, and there's no real NEED to cross the creek, it's not a big deal. Sometime when life slows down, helping to build a new bridge will be a great project for the girls.
As we settle in, we're figuring things out. When my parents were here on Friday evening, we decided not to try to all sit around the table for Shabbat. So we left the table folded down and just lit the candles on it, then everyone sat around the living room, like we typically do during the week. While we'll probably try to eat around the table most weeks, when it's just us, I did like the way the candles looked on the folded down table.
The big girls have invented their own school project for the time being. They decided to start a newspaper. It is only delivered to this house, but they "sold" subscriptions to all of us (at 2 cents per month). Now they are learning typing, creative writing, spelling and grammar (Word helps with the spelling and grammar, since it marks things that it thinks are wrong LOL), time management, etc. . .
Mama and Little Bit made cookies last week. As you can see, Little Bit has a very interesting cookie-making outfit. Actually that's her most-worn outfit (unless we're leaving the house) lately, silly kid. .
So that's what we've been up to around here.
1 comment:
That is so awesome that they started their own newspaper and she is just adorable making her cookies!!
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