Light - let there be light!

This past week I've been perfecting my crock pot cooking skills.
Like, almost every night I crock potted.  Scary since we're still only in June.
We had a few crazy storms last week - one waking us all at 1:30 am.  Truly window rattling thunder and lightening.  Our pool was so full, we had to pump it twice.

Due to my husband's slightly tempermental  - "who knows what is going on?" I've been working hard to have dinner on the table when he gets home, and to keep things a little more orderly - just trying to keep down the stress.
He did tell me I needed to pace myself though as we had guests for dinner twice last week.  He's probably right.

The girls are signed up for free bowling at two alleys.  As such - they are bowling a lot - up to 4 games a day!  (What?  C'mon..our pool is malfunctioning and waiting for parts, and it is HOT and humid outside with afternoon showers!)
We watched a bunch of youtube videos on bowling techniques on Saturday.  Can't wait to see how the girls improve.

We got caught in a monsoon downpour on Friday coming out of the bowling alley.  Just running to the car drenched us COMPLETELY.  Came home and snuggled into jammies and blankets and had a family Harry Potter movie fest.

Backtracking to April, my parents were in town and wondered what I wanted for my upcoming birthday.  I asked if my dad could help install some overhead lights/ceiling fans.  He said sure and went to work.  I'd watched some youtube videos and read some books - it didn't seem too complicated.  Except that there was no existing wiring, and he had to wire most of the attic for it.  (Who knew?)  He wasn't able to finish before they headed back home.

Fast forward to now - my husband has been working on the attic wiring/lights campaign now since April.  Everytime he's gone into the attic, he's gotten sick.  Last time sending him to the ER.  So...it has been a little bit of a sore subject.  I wanted to just hire someone.  He wanted to finish the project.   (Need I say more?) So, during the HP fest, my hubby got a little bored and decided to putter around some more.  He went into the attic with a promise that he'd only be there for 5 minutes.  When he came down, he was sick again.  There must be something in that attic!  He would take a few minutes, then putter, then rest a few more, then putter.
However.....Wala!  After 2 months, one ambulance ride, ER visit, Dr. visit, and CT scan we now have working overhead lights in three rooms!  Here they are:

I couldn't take pics of the whole rooms - they weren't finished being cleaned yet.  

 Yay!  Now we can start re-thinking the electric green that came with this bedroom.  

This one is in my music room where I teach.  It SORELY needed something overhead.  I specifically got this one since it has 4 bulbs.  No more students squinting to see the music!

The moral of the story is...contracting with Eddy who would have done it for $200 a pop back when we were moving in, may have been cheaper than just the ER and CT scan themselves.

And the question that begs for an answer is: Who will be installing and wiring our light/ceiling fan for our master bedroom?  LoL  

I think I'm okay taking a sabbatical on the lighting for a bit.  

Our daughter is headed off to girls camp this week, and apparently the cinnamon rolls I handed out last year at the meeting point were requested again. So, I'm off to bake cinnamon rolls and crack the whip for two girls who SHOULD be cleaning their rooms.  

  

A week

It is absolutely amazing how much can happen in a week. 7 days.

We started out last week with some company for dinner and family home evening.
We had our musical Tuesday  - where we are in lessons all day long, my kids either in them, or me teaching them.  The girls and I had some pita chips and hummus and were just hanging out - trying to reload after lessons (aka. 4:45 lunch) when my husband came home from work.
He went up into the attic to do some work on some fans we've been installing.
Came down, asked who wanted to go to home depot.  No one.  So he headed off on his own.
Came back, sat on the couch, and sent the girls to their bedrooms.
Then he collapsed onto the floor and started shaking, and asked me to call 911 because something was wrong, but he didn't know what.  He hadn't been feeling well since Saturday, but had made lots of improvement by Tuesday.
I called some neighbors -   couldn't get hold of anyone until my 5th try.  Really - where were all of my friends at 9:30 at night not answering their phones?  Our neighbor across the street came over, and so did the ambulance and fire truck.
They loaded him up and took him to the hospital.
The kids spent the night across the street with our neighbors.
I headed to the hospital where we hung out for several hours, and did tests.  And then sent us home with no idea of what happened.  We went to the Dr. the next day.  He sent us for a ct scan the next day.
Still no idea.
But, life goes on.  We are chalking it up to perhaps an anxiety attack?

The girls are enrolled in a free bowling program this summer, so we bowled on Friday night, stopped by the pool shop - (where we found we can get a salt cell for our pool for $200 more than we can find it on Amazon), and then we went to a wedding reception for our friend's daughter.  They had a cookie bar - I sent my sour cream sugar cookies with roses on top.  It was fun to walk into the reception and find some of our friends (one who we'd met as a missionary in Colorado) there.  We didn't know we had the mutual friends.

At the reception, we ran into a friend who has offered to teach us surfing - once the waves are right.  We headed out early Sat. am to meet him - and while the waves were rough - our youngest was able to get up in the white water a couple of times.  Spent most of the day at the beach, and then my husband and I had a father's day shopping date.  Bath and Body works semi annual sale - where I had a coupon and gift card so it cost us $0.00.  Then we found some dress pants for my husband for work.  Amazingly, we found a pair of pants on clearance $19.99 stuck in with the $149.99 pants.   While we were sure it was wrong, we jumped at it!  We asked if they had any more, and they weren't sure, so we went back in and found a couple more pairs, but only one that he wanted.  It was a score though!

And then we fed my husband's addiction.  Wings.  Yep - he loves them.  L O V E S.  The kids don't though, so it's a great date.  My favorite part is watching him try to towel off all of his sweat that breaks out while he's eating wings.  He literally DRIPS.  It's pretty gross, but so funny - cause, who does that?

This week we've got bowling, hopefully no hospital trips, maybe some beach, some families from our ward for dinner a couple of evenings, and a much put off visit to the post office.  

Pictures and walls

When my husband and I were first married, I came across this print, and my father in law built a frame for it from an old playhouse that my husband and his brothers had helped build as children, as a surprise for my husband's birthday.

During our last move (and probably all of the others in between) - (yes in October), the frame was damaged.  We propped it against the wall in our formal dining room, (where it reminded us on a daily basis), and it has waited very patiently to be addressed.

Today was a lucky day.
I pulled out my Kreg Jig.  It's a tool thing.  It's really cool.  If you don't have one, you should get one.  I've used it to fix lots of things.  Including this picture frame.  It is made specifically for joining pieces of wood together - things like picture frames.  

So I pulled out my drill.  I pulled out my kreg jig. I pulled out my staple gun, paper towels, and glass cleaner.   I found all of the pieces, and went online and watched a tutorial since it had been a while since I used it.  Then....drumroll.....I fixed it!

Yep, good as new.  Er - as new as a frame made from an old weathered childhood playhouse could be.  Sturdy.

Granted, while this in itself really isn't very exciting (I can acknowledge this), what is exciting, is that after finding a home for this picture, I was able to find homes for a bunch of photos I had enlarged and framed last week, as well as a painting from Guatemala that waited 9 years to get framed and on a wall.  Yep - almost a decade.  

We've been looking for a specific painting - zealously - since December.  We know we will find it someday. In the meantime, our walls have started to look like we've finally sort of moved in.

Update from my sabbatical

Today after church a new friend told me she'd found my blogs and had been reading up on our lives.  I chuckled as we drove home because I realized she may know me/us better than most of the people from church just from reading my blog!  Hah. 

Then I wondered, 'just what in the heck have I blogged about recently?', and then I got home and checked (just before falling into a sleep coma) and realized that I've blogged about nothing for almost three months.  How is that possible? 

Then the thunder woke me up.   Awesome, house shaking thunder.  Which I'm very disappointed, that it hasn't accompanied any rain yet.  But since it is Fast Sunday, and since dinner isn't for another 30 minutes here's my 3 month catch up. 

• Spring break (while daddy worked) in Tarpon Springs, Florida.  Such a unique place - a complete Greek fishing village.  We enjoyed sight-seeing, taking a boat tour to Anchiote Island, our first Deep Sea Fishing (it was amazing) excursion where our youngest cleaned up on the fishing, and a little Easter dress shopping. 

• Easter - with our traditional taquitos and trifle.  And yes, Easter was back to back with a birthday - totally not fair on the parents!  
• 3 birthdays (happy birthday us). 
• Oh, I hit the big 40.  Now I can complain when my body starts falling apart - there's a reason to pin it to.  :)
• That living healthy challenge - I lost 20# between January and April.  Go me.  
• 2 straight weeks of house guests/company.  4 different families came to visit us.  We loved spending time with them - but would thank the airlines to kindly space out their amazing pricing better through out the year so we can enjoy everyone one at a time.  
• 3 Disney trips - one for my birthday with my parents, one as a chaperone to my daughter's school's chorus group (chaperoning 12 kids and dealing with a bus that forgot to pick us up made for a long day!), once with two women who I work with at church just for fun - and it WAS fun...
• 2 weeks where I sort of started to grieve and really struggled with a deep depression.  Very unlike me, but whoa was I in a funk.  I think it was the first time I really had to maybe begin my post miscarriage grieving process, when I finally had a window when I wasn't running crazy everywhere.  Regardless, I'm glad to be re-surfacing after that.  It was pretty miserable.  
• 1 crazy week of organizing a string group to play for my daughter's school, the last cub scout pack meeting of the year pot-luck, organizing a community & ward bike ride/run/walk, taking care of sharing time at the last minute, family and their in laws for dinner, planning Memorial Day activities for the ward breakfast, my daughter's birthday, party, and last day of school all on the same day.   

And NOW.... it is summer.  We went to the beach yesterday - a friend said he'd teach us how to surf.  But the water was all wrong, so we enjoyed the sand and the sun and watching colonies of tiny mussels or clams or something burrow into the water and re-surface over and over again.  We helped a friend move, and then took our kids to a Chinese buffet (because we love our kids, and they love Chinese buffets), and because today was Fast Sunday.  We enjoyed church, and naps after church, and I have enjoyed my absolution of having caught up on my blog in a mere 20 minutes, and thus highlighting our most recent, and previously undisclosed adventures.

Our summer plans you may ask?  Well.... they mostly involve bike rides, children bowling for free, swimming in our pool, and as much stress as we can avoid, oh, and don't call on Tuesdays.  They are our lesson days - mine and the girls'.  I'll be teaching alot that day with 6 new students, and fitting in lots of playing during the rest of the week.