So with the 40K in free upgrades from our builder, we got a very nice kitchen, including a faucet that comes out like a sprayer. It makes it so easy to rinse the whole sink and wash large, weird things like my 2ft X 3ft bread board or my huge stock pot. Until today.
The other day I noticed that a little water was squirting out of the part that connects to the hose. I gave it a couple of twists and the water stopped so I assumed it was fine. This morning I stepped on my floor mat in front of the sink and it was wet, so I assumed the kids spilled something. Later I stepped on it, it still wasn't dry, in fact it was MORE wet. I lifted it up and it was SOAKED (it is that thick foam mat from Walmart) underneath, and there was a puddle dripping out of my cabinet under the sink. Crap!!!
I opened the cabinet and tore everything out of there and the box of trash bags disintegrated in my hands. Thank goodness for home warranties! I called the builder and they came over ASAP. Technically it was homeowner maintenance that I am supposed tighten that faucet on a regular basis.... Umm, great, you think you could have mentioned that in the numerous walk-through's for the house??? I know what every little random pipe sticking out of our house does but I didn't know to tighten the sink.
Fortunately, they seem to like me and they sent over the drywall guy to remove my toe kick and thank goodness!! It was soaking wet and the drywall behind the pipes is wet. So right now there is lots of banging, and vacuuming and they are going to leave a turbo fan to dry out the drywall....
All this because my upgrades are smarter than me. My mother will be so disappointed after all the years of teaching me maintenance. *hangs head in shame*
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Packing
Well the movers come on Monday and I have been going along thinking that this was going to be SOO easy since I don't have to do any of the heavy lifting. Not so much.
I realized that since I am not going to be able to supervise every item at every moment (there will be 3-5 movers and from past experience, they split up) I have to PRE-organize everything so they don't pack things that need to stay.
Oh and then comes the tricky part of renting out our house. Our property manager wants us out so it will rent faster, but we can't pay rent in WA and pay our mortgage on an empty house. SO we are staying here with my SIL until it rents. Until it rents. I really hate not having control. So in my pre-packing, I have to separate the very basics that will fit in our car but sustain us for an unspecified period of time... are we going to be living out of suitcases for 3 weeks or 3 months??? The darn dog kennels take up nearly half of the back of the car, so we just half of the back of the minivan to fit very important papers, Gregory's medical records, clothes and school books. I have tried to minimize it as much as possible but how do I plan appropriately for an undefined time period?? Oh and don't forget an oxygen tank to get Gregory through the high elevations of our trip... Is it wrong to strap a kid or a dog to the roof??? Maybe the husband???
So this is what my piles break down to:
The problem lies in where to put these piles. Mentally I know the order of all things, but how do I adequately separate or label these things for movers?
This is what still needs to be done:
I realized that since I am not going to be able to supervise every item at every moment (there will be 3-5 movers and from past experience, they split up) I have to PRE-organize everything so they don't pack things that need to stay.
Oh and then comes the tricky part of renting out our house. Our property manager wants us out so it will rent faster, but we can't pay rent in WA and pay our mortgage on an empty house. SO we are staying here with my SIL until it rents. Until it rents. I really hate not having control. So in my pre-packing, I have to separate the very basics that will fit in our car but sustain us for an unspecified period of time... are we going to be living out of suitcases for 3 weeks or 3 months??? The darn dog kennels take up nearly half of the back of the car, so we just half of the back of the minivan to fit very important papers, Gregory's medical records, clothes and school books. I have tried to minimize it as much as possible but how do I plan appropriately for an undefined time period?? Oh and don't forget an oxygen tank to get Gregory through the high elevations of our trip... Is it wrong to strap a kid or a dog to the roof??? Maybe the husband???
So this is what my piles break down to:
- Stays with the house
- Stays with us
- Goes to SIL's house
The problem lies in where to put these piles. Mentally I know the order of all things, but how do I adequately separate or label these things for movers?
This is what still needs to be done:
- Pre-pack stuff that might "fall off the truck"
- Take down stuff like artwork, curtains, charts and visual aids in school room
- Schedule services to be turned off (on hold for hours, faxing copies of military orders to break contracts, having to explain our random living situation on why we can't transfer service to WA right away)
- Repaint wild colors of my rooms
- Clean house
This is on top of the regular tasks of kids, schooling, meals, dogs and my own college class and Greg gets to be blissfully un-involved in San Diego.
There is an upside though, the kids are getting old enough to actually be helpful. They are able pack simple things like DVD's. And the questions they ask about what is staying and going are funny. Hannah wants to know if our plants are going with us (we just did the landscaping in October). Gregory wants to know if we are taking the doors and the paint that is actually on the walls. He was quite mad that "Grandma's paint" (the marroon in the guest room) was staying!!
Mi Vida Loca!
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Got carrots?
So I have a 5lb bag of carrots and they are nearing the end of their life. I made a chicken potpie variation in the crock pot but still had more. I don't know what got into me, but I got a hankering for carrot cake (low vitamin A levels??). I haven't eaten any since I was kid and we CERTAINLY never made it unless it came out of a box.
So out came the cookbook (Betty Crocker to the rescue!) and my new favorite aid, www.allrecipes.com. Finely shredded carrots didn't work out so well, there was more on the counter than in the measuring cup and a little bit of my skin. The blender did a fabulous job of grinding up the carrots to the perfect consistancy. I really should use that thing more often, I think the last time I used it was in San Diego! So dry ingredients mixed in and in the oven it went. It took longer than estimated to cook, but it came out AWESOME! My sister is bringing over the cream cheese so I can make the frosting but there is going to be a bit of a hole in the cake.
So what do you do with too many carrots? Make carrot cake!
So out came the cookbook (Betty Crocker to the rescue!) and my new favorite aid, www.allrecipes.com. Finely shredded carrots didn't work out so well, there was more on the counter than in the measuring cup and a little bit of my skin. The blender did a fabulous job of grinding up the carrots to the perfect consistancy. I really should use that thing more often, I think the last time I used it was in San Diego! So dry ingredients mixed in and in the oven it went. It took longer than estimated to cook, but it came out AWESOME! My sister is bringing over the cream cheese so I can make the frosting but there is going to be a bit of a hole in the cake.
So what do you do with too many carrots? Make carrot cake!
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Others views on homeschooling
So last night I watched the new episode of Wife Swap and the guinea pigs were:
1. A superficial family obsessed with looks, baby beauty pagents and winning 1st place.
VS.
2. A feminist doctor and her stay-at-home husband who unschooled the girls.
It is always interesting to see what types of views mainstream society has about how "backwards" and "socially-inept" homeschoolers are. Granted, there is always some extreme cases (which always seem to make the news) but if you want to run to the other side of the school spectrum, look at all of the school shootings in the last several years.
Is THIS what we are supposed to be striving for? Conform or become a emotionally scarred social leper who will eventually act out to the point of killing people? I don't know, that seems like a pretty scary ultimatum to me.
Anyway, the superficial father said something along the lines of, the only homeschoolers he had ever met where unable to interact with the people around them and were uncivilized. However, this man stuttered every other sentence, didn't seem to understand sarcasam and was visibly intimidated by the feminist who expressed her opinions on a woman feeling obligated to clean the house in "hooker boots".
The scene that took the cake was when the feminist-mom was forced to enter superficial-baby (13 months old) into a beauty pagent and when she did NOT win first place, the 7 year old brother and FATHER were to the point of tears?!?!?! The 7 year old said, "If you aren't first, you are a loser".
At the other house, superficial-mom decided to enter feminist-girls into a beauty pagent. She primped, trained, and dressed them to the hilt. The big day came and they competed, lost and above all had FUN. Superficial mom had a light-bulb come on and realized that winning and looks are NOT the most important thing and cried over her behavior towards her son. She would yell at him and tell him he was not good enough when he lost. Way to bolster your child's self-worth there!
The interesting thing about this show is it seems like the people who are most interested in trying to change others to be just like them really end up seeing the flaws in their own life. Maybe they feel insecure about their own choices and safety in numbers gives them a false sense of reassurance that they must be doing an okay job if everyone else does it.....right?
The other interesting point is that this show definatly seeks out the most extreme families and homeschoolers do make it on quite frequently. So does that mean that main-stream society views us all as crazy, or there are more of us out there than we really realize? But kudos to them for finding a family that isn't uber-religious or under-educated hippies. Not that there is something wrong with them; it is just that they aren't the ONLY type of "crazy" homeschooler out there :-) Because remember, after our children have learned to eat, walk, talk etc and then turn 5, we suddenly become too stupid to teach them anything else without the "experts".
Okay, well back to the letter of inquiry I am trying to avoid!
1. A superficial family obsessed with looks, baby beauty pagents and winning 1st place.
VS.
2. A feminist doctor and her stay-at-home husband who unschooled the girls.
It is always interesting to see what types of views mainstream society has about how "backwards" and "socially-inept" homeschoolers are. Granted, there is always some extreme cases (which always seem to make the news) but if you want to run to the other side of the school spectrum, look at all of the school shootings in the last several years.
Is THIS what we are supposed to be striving for? Conform or become a emotionally scarred social leper who will eventually act out to the point of killing people? I don't know, that seems like a pretty scary ultimatum to me.
Anyway, the superficial father said something along the lines of, the only homeschoolers he had ever met where unable to interact with the people around them and were uncivilized. However, this man stuttered every other sentence, didn't seem to understand sarcasam and was visibly intimidated by the feminist who expressed her opinions on a woman feeling obligated to clean the house in "hooker boots".
The scene that took the cake was when the feminist-mom was forced to enter superficial-baby (13 months old) into a beauty pagent and when she did NOT win first place, the 7 year old brother and FATHER were to the point of tears?!?!?! The 7 year old said, "If you aren't first, you are a loser".
At the other house, superficial-mom decided to enter feminist-girls into a beauty pagent. She primped, trained, and dressed them to the hilt. The big day came and they competed, lost and above all had FUN. Superficial mom had a light-bulb come on and realized that winning and looks are NOT the most important thing and cried over her behavior towards her son. She would yell at him and tell him he was not good enough when he lost. Way to bolster your child's self-worth there!
The interesting thing about this show is it seems like the people who are most interested in trying to change others to be just like them really end up seeing the flaws in their own life. Maybe they feel insecure about their own choices and safety in numbers gives them a false sense of reassurance that they must be doing an okay job if everyone else does it.....right?
The other interesting point is that this show definatly seeks out the most extreme families and homeschoolers do make it on quite frequently. So does that mean that main-stream society views us all as crazy, or there are more of us out there than we really realize? But kudos to them for finding a family that isn't uber-religious or under-educated hippies. Not that there is something wrong with them; it is just that they aren't the ONLY type of "crazy" homeschooler out there :-) Because remember, after our children have learned to eat, walk, talk etc and then turn 5, we suddenly become too stupid to teach them anything else without the "experts".
Okay, well back to the letter of inquiry I am trying to avoid!
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Washington
As we prepare to move to Washington state, I have been exploring the world of craigslist. The best part is it doesn't cost money to post on it like ebay does. I found their "farm" section and they had everything from horse saddles to rabbits for sale on there! I found these cute pigs, chickens and even goats and so now I am trying to find us a rental with some land so I can do more than just garden. Washington is great, I can rent a house on 2 acres and several outbuildings for less than I pay for my mortgage here in Las Vegas! Oh my goodness, "heat waves" of 80 degrees and cheap property, I may never come back here!!
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Time on my hands
While my life is full of my children (including the husband), dogs, house and college. Most of my days are spent at home with a 5 and 6 year old to talk to. (My college classes are online). I often have random musings and so I thought it would be nice to start a blog and just throw it all out there!
Here are some thoughts before bedtime:
I realized my house is either cleaned or de-cluttered, but not ever at the same time.
My dogs are like my kids: They will fight over the same bone/toy even though 5 other identical objects are lying right next to them.
Why is it doctors can cancel an appt or even charge you for showing up late but you can't return the favor when they blatently overbook and run behind?
How do some of these ads for horror movies get past the sensors? I am going to have nightmares from some of those images!!
Here are some thoughts before bedtime:
I realized my house is either cleaned or de-cluttered, but not ever at the same time.
My dogs are like my kids: They will fight over the same bone/toy even though 5 other identical objects are lying right next to them.
Why is it doctors can cancel an appt or even charge you for showing up late but you can't return the favor when they blatently overbook and run behind?
How do some of these ads for horror movies get past the sensors? I am going to have nightmares from some of those images!!
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