Our House

Someone mentioned to me the other day that I never posted any pictures of the house.  I guess because it's still a work in progress.  But here is a video from when the house was listed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpNapDbzxOs

Since we have been in the house the A/C has gone out 3 times (twice downstairs and once upstairs), the heater has gone out (but not really, it ended up just being that the squirrel cage was loose), there was a leak in the master shower which caused us to have to completely demo the tile in the shower and replace the drain pan, and just yesterday we had to replace a water heater.  All of this has been so frustrating!  It's not like this house is that old!  Why can't things just be built right and built to last?  I was talking with a coworker who just built a house a year ago and has had nothing but problems ever since, so I guess it doesn't matter how old a house is...sometimes these happen.  In my frustration yesterday I realized, though, how blessed we have been.  Each time the A/C or heater went out it was only on 1 floor, so we at least could live on the other floor and be ok.  And with the water heater going out, we didn't have hot water in 3 bathrooms, but we at least had it in the 4th bathroom and could still shower/bathe.  I also think about how fortunate we are to be in a position to be able to fix the problems when they occur.

We have also done a few projects here and there.  Jeremy built some shelves for the conservatory.  I really love how this room is coming together.  I really wanted a room where the girls could read, play board games, play music, etc., and it is exactly that.

There is normally a small table in between the chairs.  Had to move it for the kid tree (which has two sections of burnt out lights).  Also, I don't know why the walls in the hall look yellow.

You can see all the pictures I have lined up on the floor waiting to be hung.  One day.

From the stairs looking down.

The kitchen.  Complete with chili cooking on the stove. ;)

I didn't take any pictures of the upstairs or master bedroom or anything.  Jeremy did build another huge window seat/toy chest like he did in the old house, and that is so nice to have to put all the girls toy in.

Despite the issues we've had with things breaking, we are overall happy here.  Love having friends close by, being closer to stores, and having a layout that works so much better for us.

Claire is 8!

Just as soon as all the laundry and chores were caught up from our Thanksgiving trip, we packed up and headed back down to Louisiana for a whirlwind trip for Claire's baptism and birthday party.  It was another exhausting trip, but worth it to see family.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was exhausting.  We left the Sunday before and headed down to New Orleans.  We decided it would be easier to drive 8 hours on Sunday and have me work in the office Mon-Wed, and have Jeremy hit up all his clients in New Orleans that week, so that we then only had to drive and hour and a half to Hattiesburg after work on Wed, rather than drive 8 hours on Wed after work and get in really late.  Not gonna lie- it sucks to keep three kids cooped up in a hotel room for three days.  The girls were troopers though and stuck it out.  We were able to go to the Saints game with our best friends, and even though the Saints lost, we had a ton of fun.

Thanksgiving was good.  Lots of cousins playing and lots of good food.  That about sums it up.

Thanksgiving Crafts

The Friday before Thanksgiving break was chaotic.  I had volunteered to help with Joey's class party, and Shelby ended up being "Top Banana" (star student) that week, which meant I also had to go to her school to help with a craft and then eat lunch with Shelby.

On top of that, it was an insanely busy day with work.  So I woke up super early and worked for a bit, then headed over to Joey's school.  I love the way her teacher does their parties.  She sets up tons of different stations, each with a different craft or activity, and we can just go through as we please and spend as much or as little time at each station as we want.  They made turkey headbands, Indian vests, made and ate turkey cookies, had a treasure hunt, did some turkey bowling, made playdoh Mayflowers, and made butter.  It is fun to see Joey with all her friends.

Then it was back home to work for an hour, and then back over to Shelby's school.  I had been torn over what craft to do for her class, since by this point they had already made a ton of turkeys.  Thursday night I finally decided that they would make butter just like Joey's class was doing.  So we prepped all the baby food jars and I brought everything to her class.  I started by reading them a story, which they really got into.  Then we each got a jar, filled them halfway with heavy cream, and got to shaking...and shaking...and shaking.  The kids' arms were getting tired, but it was great because at each stage I would stop them and show them how if we stopped after the first little while and added sugar and vanilla, we'd have whipped cream.  But if you keep going it gets thicker and thicker and turns into butter.  It was also great since they have been talking about liquids and solids in science.  I also talked about how the pilgrims and Indians had to make all of their own food- they couldn't just run to Walmart and pick up a tub of butter.  Anyway, they all really loved it, and it was fun to see Shelby with her friends as well.  If only I had pictures from her class!

Scary

We had a scary Saturday.  It started off with me being scary and yelling and threatening kids if chores didn't get done.  I am not a happy camper when the house is a mess.  I need order.  Thankfully everyone eventually cooperated and we were even able to unpack the last 2 boxes from the move that have been sitting in our room.  Hooray!


Then, later as we were leaving the house, we had just gotten to the end of the alley and were about to pull onto the street and Jeremy jokingly asked, "Uhhh, is that guy dead?".  I looked up and saw a man lying on the sidewalk across the street.  At first we kind of chuckled, not knowing what to think.  But then I told Jeremy he should hop out and just ask if he was ok.  As soon as Jeremy got close and saw the man, I could tell something was really wrong.  I hopped out too, and ran over to the man.  He was very confused, bleeding, and shaking.  He couldn't tell us his name or address.  Jeremy called 911 and we tried to just calm the man and reassure him that everything was going to be ok.  Jeremy thankfully had the good sense to look at the dog's ID tags which listed the man's address. I hopped in the car and quickly drove over and got his wife.  Apparently he is diabetic and began having seizures when he was walking.  As we waited for the ambulance, he started seizing even worse.  Another woman stopped and had just been to the grocery store and bought some juice.  She grabbed the bottle and we tried to give him some, but he couldn't swallow.  He got really bad and it was pretty scary.  I ran back to the house to grab some towels for the bleeding and when I got back two policemen had shown up and started helping.  A few minutes later the ambulance came.  They ended up taking him to the hospital.  We offered to drive the wife (didn't want her to drive when she was stressed and worried) but she said she was ok.  The whole thing was scary, but we were so thankful he was in the spot he was in- right in front of where we pull out of the alley- and that he got help in time. 

Halloweenies

We couldn't let Halloween pass without carving our pumpkins, so Thursday night while Jeremy was gone, the girls and I got to work.  They loved reaching in to pull out the slimy guts.  I loved letting them do it and not getting my hands gross and sticky...until I had to scrub pumpkin guts off the walls. Haha!  This year I let Shelby do a lot of the work on her pumpkin.  She stenciled the whole thing, then carved most of the design, but saved the tricky part for me so that it didn't get messed up.  It was hard for me to not do the whole thing, but I realized I have to let her do big kid things at some point!

Her crazy hair is fitting.  She is a wild one these days.

Joey had been looking forward to Halloween for along time.  Not just for the trick-or-treating, but because I was able to help with her class party.  She had so much fun going from station to station.  They had a photo booth, painted paper plate pumpkins, ate spider donuts, played with pumpkin pie play-doh, had a spooky treasure hunt, did a cute Halloween experiment, played candy corn bingo, and played ring toss.  It was very cute to see Joey with her classmates.

That afternoon we headed out to the HOA party at the park.  The girls had fun playing and looking at all of the costumes.  Then it was back to the house for pizza and trick or treating.  Lucy LOVED trick or treating,  She wasn't so great at saying "Trick or Treat", but she always said "thank you" as soon as she was handed a piece of candy.  Trick or treating in our new neighborhood is so much nicer than our old neighborhood.  Everyone was out, either walking or driving around on their golf carts, and everyone was so friendly, just enjoying each other.  After we went down our street (and I got stung by a wasp), I brought Lucy home to help me hand out candy.  She might have loved that part even more.  She would race to the door and tell the kids "hi," then scream "BYE!!" when they left.  There was a minor incident when Lucy stood up on a chair to reach some candy and slipped and fell, hitting her mouth on the table on the way down.  There was lots of blood and tears, and now she looks like Bubba from Forest Gump, but it hasn't slowed her down any.

Two Anna's and an Elsa

All in all it was another great Halloween!