Home Improved!

It took us a bit longer than we had planned but our laundry room remodel is more or less done! Those final odds and ends seemed to really add up with this project. We are very happy with how this turned out. Hopefully we're done with major home projects now.
This shot was taken in pretty much the same spot as the one I posted in November.

Tagged

My friend Jen has tagged me to write six facts/habits about myself and then tag six other people. It's kind of hard for me to think of six interesting things about myself that are current. (I've traveled the world and done many interesting things but that was all many years ago!)

But here I go:

1-I am a recovering country music addict. I listened to country music pretty much exclusively during college but now it kind of makes me crazy. I can't stand the annoying twang and heartfelt ballads about trucks.

2-I love to sing. I used to sing all the time but then got caught up in my mommy life and my singing moments were pretty much limited to hymns in church on Sunday. But in the past year I have kind of rekindled my joy of singing just a little bit. I volunteered to sing a solo in church (I believe that every so often you need to do something that scares you to death!), I've done several duets with a friend of mine (including singing at the funeral for a person I had never met), and I sing at home with my kids a lot more than I used to.

3-I am addicted to checking my email. I think I come down to my computer and check my email no fewer than ten times a day. It started last year when email was pretty much the only communication I had with my husband. But even now that he is back I still obsessively check my email throughout the day.

4-I love to cook. I love trying new recipes or experimenting with familiar ones. I don't like using ready made processed foods and mixes--I like to do things from scratch. I almost never use "cream of ______" soup in anything. Recently I have been trying to prepare more healthy foods and have been on a campaign to cut out high fructose corn syrup and MSG from our diet. I am much more inclined to use natural and organic foods these days. Thank goodness there is now a Good Earth store in my town!

5-I like to read but don't generally read novels. I like self-help books (I tend to need a lot of help!) and books about health. I faithfully read the news every morning (including the obituaries) and enjoy reading magazines.

6-I like to watch reruns of my favorite TV shows. I think I've seen every episode of Friends, Seinfeld and Scrubs. (But now that I think about it, I probably just watch these shows over and over because I don't have cable!)



Tag you're it: Emmie F., Annette L., Holly S., Taryn S., Sarah S., Kate S-B.

When your hobbies come back to bite you

Have you ever sat outside near a stream and listened to the relaxing sound of water spilling over rocks and splashing into puddles? That is quite possibly the most tranquil of all sounds.

Now imagine that same sound inside your house, only the water is spilling over a windowsill and splashing on the the carpet. I promise that sound is neither relaxing or tranquil.

Such was my morning yesterday. When I went down to my son's basement bedroom to wake him up for school I heard the alarming, yet undeniable, sound of water trickling in from the window. I could see that the window well outside had filled with several inches of water that was leaking into the house. Apparently the downspout from the roof was clogged and the rain gutter had filled up with water and then froze. So all of the rain that fell yesterday morning (and I guess the water from melting snow as well) had no where to go except out the end of the rain gutter and directly into the window well below it.

Don't you hate it when that happens!!?

As I frantically tried to mop up the mess with every single towel I own, my husband climbed up to inspect the downspout. The problem? A tennis ball.

Evidently one of the kids failed to report loosing a tennis ball on the roof last fall. The ball had rolled into the downspout and completely sealed it off.

All day yesterday I contemplated the irony of it all. I was so delighted by my newfound joy of tennis that I had begun teaching my children how to play. Everyone got new tennis rackets and we spent a few warm fall evenings at the courts as a family. We had a great time just being together. One time I even teared up a little bit as I watched my kids hitting the ball back and forth with their dad. The phrase "wholesome recreational activities" from the Family Proclamation kept coming to mind and I realized that what were were doing was a good thing. I knew that the side effects of playing a sport together--the relationships, the memories, the fun--would be worth all of the effort and hassle it took for us to do it.

So as I listened to my husband scooping bucket after bucket of muddy ice water out of the window well, while I was on my hands and knees sucking up water from a soaked carpet with a wet vac---I realized that this was a side effect of family tennis that I hadn't really bargained for!

To whom it may concern. . .

Today I did the most unfortunate of things. . . I went Christmas shopping at the mall. I can think of no other activity that kills the Christmas spirit quite like going to the mall in December! I went there to buy a dress to give to my daughter. In the first department store I visited I found the perfect purple velvet dress that I knew my little princess would absolutely adore, but it cost exactly twice what I had determined I was willing to pay. So I went to six other stores on what turned out to be a wild goose chase, looking for another "perfect" dress (heck, I would have settled for an "adequate" dress) and found nothing even close. As you probably guessed it, I ended up back at the first store and bought the expensive dress I had looked at hours earlier. I left the mall exhausted and grumpy and fiercely determined not to go back for months.

In the car on the drive home I composed the following letter in my head. This is not a letter I will ever actually send to anyone because I know it would never do any good, but I'm writing it here so that I can vent just a little bit!

Dear Manufacturers, Designers, and Retailers of children's clothing:

I feel it necessary to bring it to your attention that although little girls tend to exhibit an inordinate amount of sass these days, they are, in fact, NOT just short teenagers. Designing a dress for a five-year-old that could only be described as "sexy" is just wrong. Please allow little girls to be little girls. While your bold and crazy prints would be lots of fun on T-shirts, my child has to wear these clothes to church and a color scheme that looks like it is trying to recreate the view inside a kaleidescope is just not appropriate. Likewise, silky, clingy, skanky fabrics are just not suitable for items intended for young children. What ever happened to cotton? Oh, and sleeves would be nice. And no--covering up a sleeveless dress with a cheap little jacket thingy is not the same thing!

And while I'm at it, let me also inform you that my child has no desire to be a billboard. Must you plaster Dora, Tinkerbell and every other children's icon on all of your clothing? Is it too much to ask for plain fabric or a simple floral print once in a while? My kids are bombarded by commercialism enough as it is, they don't need to be constantly reminded of the most popular toys, TV programs or movies every time they look at their own pajamas.

Please consider putting the "kid" back in kids' clothing. Otherwise, I will be forced to learn how to sew. And I assure you, no one wants that.

Thank you.