Gardening

I learned this year, I really do love gardening (except the whole pulling weeds part).

I started by going to Lowes and buying a million flowers to plant, have no idea what I was doing. We bought a few rose bushes and some annuals. It looked a so pretty when we got them all planted, but I had no idea how big they would all get.

Here is me, showing off what I accomplished!

There are my roses we babied along all year because we broke them in

1/2 when they were being planted.

My grandma brought me a box full of daffodil bulbs, so we'll see what my yard looks like next year. I feel successful in my "keeping plants alive" skill.

Oh, and for those of you who are wondering, I did finally get some tomatoes on my plant! It just took all season for them to actually get big enough to produce fruit :)

Updates

Wow it's been forever since I've been on here.

Here are the few updates in our lives. We are finally living a "normal" life in our house again. We have a couple of things to finish up before it's all put back together, such as baseboards, the toe kick under the cabinets, and actually put up a back splash in the kitchen. We were supposed to finished a couple of those things today, but Anthony is down with a cold so we'll wait til next weekend :)

I thought it was hilarious we had the toilet outside for a few days!

Working hard to get it done!

Ta-Da! All finished!

I love the counter tops even more than I thought I would!

Random fact: My parents gave us Molly's old cat bed because she never used it. We just move it around the house because Sirus just sniffs it and walks away. Last weekend Ruth magically got Sirus into the bed, and now it's his favorite place to sleep (2 years later). I think it's precious to see him all curled up in a bed.

I'm sad that those were the only updates I could come up with. Nothing really exciting has been going on around here. House work pretty much keeps us busy all the time and when we're not working on the house, we're at school busy busy busy. Parent/Teacher conferences were this week. Anthony is exhausted! I was able to come home and have the house ready for some friends to come over and vent after a long week of parents! I enjoyed being able to invite people over again. Remember, I love to entertain!

Other than that, things have been pretty mellow.

Venting...

I need an outlet...so here it is....

We spent the morning running errands and picking up supplies for the house. Once we were there I had no motivation to do anything. Anthony and I both took about an hour nap before getting to work. We spent the afternoon stripping the old, stuck on vinyl which actually came up easier than I thought it would. I took out most of the tack strips while Anthony finished the kitchen. The neighbors came over and had an mis-hap with their a/c unit so we tried to help them get the water out of their attic. We chatted waiting for the vinyl installer to show up so we could show him the problem areas in the house we were worried about. He said we could just screw the subfloor back down and all would be well.

Anthony and I went to dinner, came home, and I realized how much crap we still have to do. In order to get ready for the vinyl, we have to screw down all the floor, every 4 inches, we have to get all the crap we scraped up thrown away, and edge around the walls still. In order to start the hardwood, we have to move all the kitchen contents....somewhere else, and get all the staples removed from where the pad was tacked down. We still need to rip off the rest of the baseboards and finish pulling up the tack strips. All while trying to get ready for school next week. Needless to say, I spent the evening crying in my bedroom again, feeling entirely overwhelmed and frusterated to not have a place to call home. I can't stand this "living in 2 places" anymore. All I want is to move back into my put-together house. I want to leave for 3 days and come home to it all put back together. Thinking off all the work we have to put in next week, I just don't see how we're going to come out alive. I know it will all work out and life will be fine. It's just another one of our adventures. But, I just can't see it all actually working out in the 8 days we have left in the hotel. To make things EVEN better, we have no quote from the insurance yet, and we're still waiting for a quote to start on our counter tops. Uhg!

Waiting is the worst part of all.

If you're still reading, sorry...had to get it all off my chest

Good News....Finally

Thinking we fixed it...then, good night, we went to bed....

Every footprint is water...lots and lots of water...

I wish this picture showed HOW much water there was....you also cannot tell that the vinyl is floating on the other side of the kitchen table all the way into the pantry.

yes, please, save the carpet (it's gone, no worries, not putting THAT back in my house)

I think I now know more information....

The Estimator is very happy because we got all we asked for. We're getting money to fix my floor (not replace it). We're having our cabinets ripped out (which is good, because we can get the floor dry underneath) but we are able to save them and put them back in. We are getting money to replace the counter top, and shouldn't have to rip up too many walls. I'm officially out of my house for a month, but it could be as little as 2 weeks.

We have enough time to rip the house apart and do some repairs ourselves. We are hoping to put in woods floors (thank you Rob and Ruth), new counter tops, and possibly paint the walls while we have no floors in. I can see light at the end of this tunnel and the world is no longer crashing down on top of me. I'm enjoying being able to stay in a hotel with my family (including my cat), being paid to drive the extra 30 miles, and dinner included when we decide not to cook dinner.

Thank you Jeff for being an awesome helper and working for us, and making my life so much easier to manage, knowing I have someone to trust through this whole process!

Why Even Plan?

So, the plan was to take all my summer projects and put them into a lovely post this week. But...instead of that, I'll be moving out of my house, into a hotel, and watching my new house be ripped apart and (hopefully) put back together.

In the process of summer projects, we were putting up more shelves and hit a water line. After about an hour and $10 later, we thought we had fixed the problem and could patch the hole back up and just laugh it off. Morning came, and this was not so...no more laughing.

I had about an inch of standing water in my kitchen, and my living room carpet was completely soaked. The vinyl came up easy because the hot water had melted the glue. We ripped up the carpet, got rid of the pad, mopped/sucked up the water and had fans running all night.

I got a call from a friend last night who has gone through this twice now and gave me the number to for a company that can help. We called him last night, and after coming over this morning, we were told we're moving out for a few days. It's going to take 3 days to get all the water out of the house. We had about a foot of water under our house and some of the flooring is going to have to be removed. All my bottom cabnets are coming out and some of the top ones. I'll have walls ripped out. And, at this point, I don't know what else....

Please pray this goes by quickly with no more issues. Thank you for everyone's concerns and offers to help. I'm not sure what we're doing, so I'm not sure how to help. Keep you updated...

out of stress....you get no pictures yet....

Vacation!

I was going to wait until I had all the coast pictures before posting this, but I'm getting impatient.


The first day it was foggy until we passed over Neahkahnie Mountain, then the sun was out. So, before even being at camp, we jumped out of the car for our first photo shoot :)

Day 2 - hike up Neahkahnie Mountain

Day 3 - CRABBING!!!!

Before we left, it wasn't very warm...

Anthony and David throwing out the small crabs

I had fun playing with the tiny ones. I needed some entertainment.

MacKenzie really didn't like it at first...

Almost finished.

We caught 5 all together. But Jeffery and Vincent were by far the biggest.

Yes, we named them all.

Still day 3...

We went to Short Sands and took pictures in front of the waterfall.

These pictures are about 20 min after we started, I was getting bored of normal smiling.

As cute at this picture is...it's really awkward to hold a kiss while people are taking your picture.

Day 5

Octopus Tree!


Day....I don't know what day we're on anymore...

Tillamook!

Not only do they have a cow to stick your head in....but delicious ice cream too!

On top of Neahkahnie Mountain again. This is the bay where we stay almost every year.

We had a great trip. The weather turned out ok. The last 2 days were the best, the sun finally came out.

There are pictures somewhere proving I DID get in the water, but only shortly. I know Oregon has cold water, but it was exceptionally cold this year. I showed Anthony how to body board correctly haha. At least that's my excuse for being out there. Until next year.....

Why do I love my house?

I love my house for lots of reasons:

1 - I have lots of space to keep all my crap

2 - It's mine

3 - I can turn up the music as loud as I want.

But at this moment I 'm loving my house because my utility bills came today and I can afford to heat it in the winter and keep it cool in the summer. I'm very very happy with paying bills this month!

Hooray efficient house!!! How I love you!

Obviously an old picture...because I'm sure I have a yard, fence...and trees...