Unorganized

WARNING!!!  THIS POST HAS GRAPHIC SCARY PICTURES.  NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART.

I would like to start with my list of excuses.  I was on "take it easy bed rest" for several months.  I had a baby 5 weeks ago.  We aren't doing school, so I don't really care.  Now that excuses are out of the way, we can move on to confession time. This is how our school room looked for MONTHS.

This is the lovely view people would get when they came to my front door.  No wonder we don't get repeat visitors.  Its scary.  If I acted rude, when you came... its not that I didn't want you to visit me.  I was just MORTIFIED that this was the view from the front door. And, Im not even showing you the 8 large boxes from the UPS guy that were stacked in the entry way.

Very nice, innocent neighbors would come to visit us.  This is what they were greeted with.  Most of the time, neighbors would come while the kids were playing computer games in this filth.  I would like to say we don't usually live like this.... but I guess we have been.  Its been a few months that the house has fallen apart and the kids have been allowed to play computer games a lot more than I would care to admit.

I show you these pictures so that you can appreciate the "after" pictures.  Please, do not pick up the phone and call DCFS.  This is just to show you what happens when a mother does not clean the school room for months.

I was in survival mode.  Usually, I run from one disaster to the next... but the disasters aren't this terrible.  Im embarrassed to even admit these things.   Now, 5 weeks after having a c-section.... I FINALLY got things cleaned up.  We are supposed to start school in a couple of weeks. I can not teach school in that kind of chaos.  Im pretty sure the kids can not learn in that kind of environment.  It has taken us a couple of days, and a few trips to the store (thank you IKEA) but things are looking much better.

 Now, I feel ready (almost) to start school.  We are missing Jakobs books.   They have not been shipped yet. Hopefully we can get them on his shelves soon. I am not nearly as embarrassed to open the door when some one comes to visit.  As long as you do not want to use the bathroom..... you are welcome to come see us!  (we will tackle bathrooms tomorrow).

Mr. Fix It

You have to know something about me.  My house feels like its a disaster most of the time.  The one thing I really enjoy cleaning, is the kitchen.  I really go kind of crazy if my kitchen sink is full of dishes and if the counter has stuff all over it.  I have learned over the years that the dirtier the kitchen is, the less patience I have.  Last night (a Sunday night) at about 9:30pm my kitchen faucet died.  Or rather, it leaked water all over under the sink and floor. It has been dying slowly, but of course it really died on a Sunday. Because it was close to 10pm by the time Keith called the death of my kitchen faucet, he wasn't able to do anything with it to fix it.  Keith has worked one week out of the last 4 at his day job.  As a family, we have decided we enjoy paychecks. Keith HAD to return to work this morning. Unfortunately, he had to leave the kitchen looking like this:

 Disgusting faucet guts were left on my kitchen counter.

 Keith promised to fix it as soon as he could get home from work. I knew that would be another 12 hours. Today was the first day I would be alone with 5 kids. I knew that my patience level could not tolerate a kitchen looking like this.  For the safety of all the children, I knew had to do something.  Oh, forget I said that. I ment to say: Because I love my husband, and I know he works so hard for our family, I wanted to do something to ease his burden.  I decided that Jakob and I could take on this task.  I figured all we needed to know could be found on you tube.  We went to Lowes and got a new faucet.  Jakob and I make a pretty good team. I read instructions, and Jakob does what I tell him.  We only had one problem.  I was  using words like "thingy" and he did not understand what I was talking about. He was using words like "gasket" and "nut".  I did not understand what he was talking about.  Once we worked out the communications kinks (by pointing to the pretty pictures on the instructions), we did pretty good.  Look at my boy!

We (ok, mostly Jakob) did it!!  Check it out!  I have a new beautiful faucet.  It doesn't leak ANYWHERE!

It even works.  The hot water makes hot water. The cold water makes cold water. It works!!  Corrine doubted our abilities and was rather worried about this home improvement project.  She was afraid that we were making things worse and Keith would have to come home and re-do the entire thing. I'll admit, we were flying without a net.  I will also admit that Keith has not come home from work yet to inspect the project. I do not know what his reaction will be. Hopefully he will be glad we fixed it, he doesn't have to, and that we did it right. But, to prove to you..... here is a picture with actual water coming out of the faucet from the place water is supposed to come out of. There was no water leaking anywhere else.

My patience level has returned.... a little anyway. I can now make dinner with out feeling grossed out by having dead faucet guts laying around.  Jakob learned an important lesson.  I wish I could say that I had planned this lesson and that it was one of my main motives.  It wasn't.  Sadly, it was just a side effect.  But, its an awesome side effect.  While Jakob was crawling under the sink, fighting with tools, and having water drip down on him, he had a realization.  Jakob said that he did not want to do "this kind of work for the rest of his life".   Jakob learned that it is probably better to find a job that allows him to use his brains and not his back as his primary source of income.  I apologize to any plumbers out there.  But, admit it... if you could have a nice desk job instead of sticking your hand in toilets or dealing with faucet guts.... you probably would take it. Im just glad my son learned that lesson at 14.  If he starts to forget, I've got all kind of disgusting manual labor jobs I can have him do.  Thank you Jakob for fixing my sink for me. You have no idea how many warm fuzzies I have right now.

Summer Vacaion

For the last 2 weeks, we have been enjoying our summer vacation.  Keith took the time off work.  Mike and Julie and their family came to visit.  In this post, I will try to sum up the entire 2 weeks of festivities.   First, and most important, cousins came to stay at our house.  This is probably one of our very favorite things.   Around here, the Hales family coming is better than Christmas.   The boys play lots of computer games.

The girls play lots of computer games.

There is the bounty harvest from our garden.

We must have fireworks with cousins on the 4th of July.  Surprisingly, we did not set anything on fire.  We did scare the Angus right out of the black Angus beef cow.

When Mike and Julie come, we try to have a terrible home remodel project that Mike can work on.  Im sure its exactly what he wanted to do on vacation.  This year, we had him install 2 ceiling fans and a new back door for us!

Here is the before picture of the back door.  Our back door has been a piece of garbage since the day we moved in.  It leaks like crazy.  I would have to put a towel on the floor when it rained or snowed.  It got to the point, that it wouldn't even shut any more.

Here is a picture of the door removal.

Hayden was trying to eat breakfast during construction.  It was loud and very cold.  The one day that it was cold and rainy is the day my construction crew decided to take the door out.

This is a picture of no door and a tarp.  The tarp and no door did much better at keeping the rain out of the house than the old door did.

Here is a picture of my finished door!  Good news is it actually shuts, has built in blinds, and it even keeps the rain out!!  I KNOW!!  What a concept.  Thanks Keith and Mike for fixing a door that has bothered me since the first 5 minutes I have lived in the house.

When Mike and Julie come, I try my best to be sick so that Julie has to do all of the cooking and cleaning.  I did not disappoint this time.  I had a baby 3 weeks ago and my c-section incision got infected. Nanny Julie to the rescue!   Because I was sick, and had a new baby, I was not able to do all of the fun vacation things every one else did.  Because I did not go, pictures did not get taken.  Just so I can prove to my kids that they did have a summer vacation, I will do my best to document all of the fun they had while I was home.

What they did:  Go to a Utah Symphony Concert in the park. Im imagining it looked something like this.  They also watched fireworks afterward.

What I did: Recover from something that looked like this:
Ok, I tried to find a really disgusting picture of an infected c-section. I couldn't find one.  Imagine it.

What the kids did: Go to Thanksgiving point to see the dinosaur museum.  I imagine it looked something like this: (notice all the kids are getting along)

What I did:  Hold Kate.

What the kids did:  Go to Seven Peaks Water Resort.
I would show you a picture, but what I imagined is lots of people not dressed modestly.  I also imagined my beloved children drowning.

What I did: Sleep.  Oh, and recover from an infection.  Im sure I mentioned it.  And, I hung out with baby Kate.

What the kids did: FISHING!  They all caught fish.  They have never done that before.  What I imagined:  what I remember from fishing as a kid.  My dad running from kid to kid adding worms to hooks and untangling fishing wire.  What happened: Keith said I was exactly right.

What I did: fold laundry.

All in all, we had a great vacation.  The kids had a great vacation.  I wish I could have had some pictures to share with you.  You get the idea... infection, newborn, sleeping, laundry.....

Real life starts again tomorrow so I will be back into the picture taking, errand running, cooking mode that I usually find myself.

Happy Summer Vacation!

Hayden is 5!!

Hayden turned 5 on July 9th.  I can not believe he is 5.  This particular birthday really caught me by surprise.  I am not ready for Hayden to be 5.  I am not ready for Hayden to start Kindergarten. I just can't believe how fast time is going.  All Hayden wanted for his birthday was his cousin Samuel from Michigan to be here.  He got his wish!  Apparently his wishing powers are much greater than any one else.  We all wish for the Hales to come when we have a birthday.  I was very sick on Haydens birthday.  My c-section incision got infected.  Because I was so sick, Aunt Julie made Haydens cake.  Because it was over 100 degrees, Julie make the cake in the solar oven.  Her chocolate chocolate cake was so good!!  Thank you aunt Julie for doing so much for us while on your vacation!

Hayden wanted a chocolate angry birds cake. 

Hayden wanted every thing angry birds.  Corrine, Anna, and Sariah made angry birds decorations.  I think they did a great job!

Hayden got a slip and slide and water gun stuff for his birthday.   After presents, the kids went outside for a water fight.

Keith kept the hose close.  Smart man.

Happy Birthday Hayden!!   We love you.

Kates Blessing

Kate was blessed Sunday July 8, 2012!  I feel bad because I did not get a ton of pictures.

Aunt Jaci made her the cutest bow for blessing.  She did wear it for her blessing... I just didn't get any pictures of her in it.  The only pictures I got of Kate in her dress were the pictures I took for her birth announcement.  

There were a lot of people and things were crazy!  I also had my c-section incision infected and so I felt very sick the entire day.  Normally, we would have waited until the baby was bigger and I was more healed to bless her.  But, we had Grandma Schramm home from New York and Mike and Julies family here at the same time.  We decided we needed to bless Kate while they could all be here.   Here are the few pictures I did manage to take.

This is Kate with Grandma Schramm.

Here are some pictures of crazy cousins and a few friends that came to the blessing.

This is Aunt Jenny with Wesley.

Here is Isabelle with Grandpa Cain.  I think she likes him!

Here are our very good friends the Nyes.  They are our friends from Clinton. 

We had so many people come for her blessing.   We are so blessed to have so many good friends and family.   We love all of you and we are so grateful you are all in our lives!