I'm doing really really bad at taking photos over at the town house. My phone is almost always dead.

This week was spent catching up on homeschool, editing like a madman, cleaning my house, and not working at the town house at all during the week. The weather was terrible and windy, rainy and cold. Sorry. No dice for me. The good news is that I'm almost caught up on housework, if you are waiting for pictures from me you may or may not be getting them soon, and Logan is caught up on his work... in fact he is ahead!! School for Logan is over mid-May!!! Isn't that awesome?!

And as for what we accomplished yesterday, the brick is all done!!!! The drains are going in, and the hvac guy can come in and do his work any time now. Yay! This house won't beat us. We have no life, no friends, and no fun, but think of what we will be able to say when we are finally finished some day. I can't wait. Things are looking up, and I'm able to breath again for the moment.

Toodles.

Hiro the steam engine

Whoah! My head is spinning from the last two weeks. I mean, seriously I am in survival mode right now.

I just read that last paragraph over again and laughed out loud. It was the survival mode sentence. We've been in survival mode for the past year and a half, so if that could get more crazy and hectic, it's truly saying a lot.

Here's the thing, it's hard to remember it all. My brain is non-functioning at this point. I'm on auto pilate. But just know that we've been running from dawn to dusk with things crammed here and there and everywhere. School work until midnight, making deadlines with minutes to spare, and barely having time to do normal things like housework.

Oh yes, it's stressful and I'm exhausted. I had a breakdown at church last week during both of my temple recommend interviews. I was bawling and just so tired of the load. I don't feel like there are many people able to see the stress that is my life right now.

Ho-hum. That's just so depressing. Let's move on.

Here are some highlights from the past two weeks:

We met with our hvac guy Brad to go over things and see what he thought about what we have planned. He gave us the thumbs up. Just waiting on a bid from him now.

We layed hardy-backer board in the kitchen, laundry, and bathrooms. It only needed to be layed down in a few places for plumbing, but hey, why not just do the whole thing.

Trevor got to work on plumbing today and took the pipe out of the pipe. Lol! I don't know how else to describe this. Where the sewer drain leaves the house, there was a mess of pipes coming together. When cast iron pipes are joined, they would use lead and this weird sealer putty stuff that I can't remember the name of. Anyway, Trevor needed to remove the seal that joined these two pipes together.  It was a hugely long job that took most of the day. It smelled badly of poop and cast iron, which smells and tastes like blood. But he got them apart, and no harm came to the cast iron which would have been really really bad.

I got the windows mostly bricked up. I have one last course of brick to do and then I'm done.

After weeks of indecision, I finally made the call to put our cat Kitty down. Ugh. It was so hard, and we all bawled like babies.

I have had a huge influx of last minute senior pictures this year. It has been crazy. Also family photos and newborns have been more active as well. This is normally slow season.

Ok, I'm falling asleep now, so I guess it's time to wrap this up.

Katchup

I have this one memory from second or third grade where it was my turn to read the lunch menu to the class in the morning. We took turns for a week at a time, and it was the first day of my week. I remember it well: Hamburgers with lettuce, tomato, pickles and Katsup. As I read that last part, the whole class burst into giggles. I got so embarrassed, as if I had done something wrong, which I hadn't. I simply read what had been written. Katsup. I hate that word. It's ketchup. 

Funny how one word can jog a memory loose. I was going to write catch-up. Oh man. Yeah, it's a stretch, but it jogged it loose. 

It was a rainy, soggy, muddy mess this week. Nevertheless, we trudged on. We spent the first part of the week helping a sister out, and the last part of the week putting bricks in the empty window holes. We got a second window done, only to find out that half of it has to come out and be redone. I totally rushed it. It was pouring rain and hailing off and on as I put the brick in. It ended up not being straight. Ugh. I'm kinda mad at myself. It's just that once you pull all the old stuff out of the hole, you can't go back. It was a clear day when we pulled it all out, and then the rain started and there was no going back. You can't just leave a huge hole in the side of the house for people to climb into and steal everything, so I was stuck laying brick in the rain. 

On Thursday, Trevor got the remaining chimney stack in the basement down. It's a pile of bricks now. Yay. 

On Friday, Trevor dug into the Jeep to see what was wrong. He worked late into the night, and got it mostly done. 

And then, on Saturday we pulled the bathroom floor up to see why it was flexing down badly when walked on. We cut out a huge patch of wood and built a frame underneath the floor to support it. This house has two additions, so everything does not work fluidly together like a house that was built all at once would. It is frustrating at times. Anyway, the floor got layed back down and screwed down, and has no flex in it now. 

We got our laundry room sink on Friday, so we spent some time laying that out on Saturday as well. 

The hvac guy is coming on Saturday to talk to us about the project.  I'm excited to see what he says, and maybe get him moving on his part. 

The basement layout is a quandary. We spent a few hours down there trying to figure out how to get the most space out of it. It's frustrating being stuck in someone else's wall constraints. Finding enough room for the bedrooms, the utility room, the bathroom (which has to be in this one particular spot), and fit an office and family room too. It's a lot to squeeze out of 1000 sq. feet. 

Someone else thought it was a cool idea. 

I've got this hangup with a jack and Jill bathroom design that Trevor is none too thrilled with. It puts the tub and toilet into its own room, and then two vanities on opposite walls in an adjoining room. I think it's awesome. Trevor thinks it's stupid.  I think that we have kids growing up who will appreciate the separate space. Hopefully he will go for it soon. Lol. 

my bathroom amazingness. Those are sinks. I never said I was an artist.
 

Mr. Squeamie and the basement woes.

Well hey there, everyone! Another week, more drama. Well, not really drama, but you will see what I mean in a second.

First up in the news department, I got a black eye this week. I got it by opening the passenger side door of my van while Carter was throwing a massive fit. Unfortunately I was paying more attention to what was going on with Carter ( I was giving him a stern talking to) instead of what was going on with the door,  and I hit the corner of the door squarely into my eye.

Yes. Yes it did hurt. Yes. A lot.

The house is moving forward. Logan and I knocked out an old basement window and tried our hand at laying bricks. Guess what? We got mason blood running through us! Haha! Logan took the inside of the basement to clean up the mortar on the inside wall, Sami manned the mortar keeping it stirred and adding a little water here and there, and I figured out how to lay brick, somehow managing to get mortar everywhere. The most important thing though is that one window is bricked up. Yes!

Meanwhile, we are getting the basement knocked out. Trevor tackled the knock-down of all the ceiling and walls down there; and it was no easy task. There were TWO layers of drywall on the ceiling (because these people were just so so so dumb. They were dumb!).  I know it was hard, because that's what I was trying to knock down when "the accident with Logan" occured. The ceiling was riddled with years and years of mouse poop. It was THE. MOST. DISGUSTING. THING. I am not kidding. Ugh. One particular time, Trevor pulled a huge chunk of ceiling down and the dust and mouse poop was just so thick, some of it went into his mouth. He couldn't hold it together, and the vomit spewed forth. Trevor was out for a few minutes, but luckily when I say he "spewed," he made it into a trash can, so Sami and I cleaned it up and a few minutes later we were all back to work.

So now that brings me to my other news: We are still not able to drink our well water. Trevor hooked up a hose bib to the main water line in the house in town last week, and then I had it turned on for the very first time since we bought the house. It was exciting to have water there. We are filling up lots of jugs and whatever containers we have, and they just sit on our kitchen counter all week while we drink out of them. It's actually very annoying to brush your teeth out of a cup.

Oh yeah, and more news: We are flooding out here again. The river is overflowing, and since last night, it was about a half of a mile away from us. I'm hoping that we will be out of its path, since it would have to come up a slight hill. Only morning will tell what happened while we were sleeping. Yesterday the water traveled about a half mile overnight.

Man! I'm ready for a break now. I told ya, a lot of crazy drama out here.