Go have an adventure! pt 1

That is what my Dad kept telling Eddie before we left on his first camping trip. And have an adventure we did!

I decided to break our trip up into a few posts because even though we were only gone 24 hours...we made lots of memories! The plan was to camp 2 nights with Mark's family. To leave Friday after Mark got home from his conference, but when Eddie had been off all afternoon and with the threat of rain...we decided to head out first thing in the morning.

Eddie woke up bright & early, feeling great and full of it Saturday morning. While I was re-packing, he was going behind me unpacking.


We tried to avoid camping in the rain Friday night, but it turned out the rain came Saturday morning.


We kept an eye on the radar and kept calling Mark's parents who were trying to stay dry at the campsite with Janna & Troy. When it became clear that leaving right away wasn't the best option, Mark built some shelves in the basement storage room.

Notice how nice and high they are?


While I pray we never have another flood, I don't care to see our Christmas decorations float by again.


Once all the red and yellow on the radar passed the campsite, we were finally on our way. Eddie was a bit unsure at first. I'm not sure if it was because Mark turned his seat around and he faced forward for the first time, or if it was because we were once again listening to Snacktime, and Mark and I were bouncing around and singing the popcorn song.

I'm guessing the latter and he is already realizing how crazy his parents are.


Whatever it was, he warmed right up to facing forward. He played a bit of hide-n-seek with his blanket, and started to laugh at Mark and me singing. I liked that it was so easy to pass him toys and drinks.


The campground is about an hour and a half away. Once we had been on the road for just over an hour we realized we must have missed our exit. We were looking for exit 30...and we saw exit 34. We looped back.

We couldn't find it.

Exit 30 didn't exist.

Once we finally figured out where we were and where we should have been...we were 64 miles off.

Mark had been so focused on a rest stop to make sure the kayak was still tied tightly to the roof rack that we blew right by our exit. We were in the wrong state.

Mark called his Dad who was able to find where we were in a road atlas and give us new directions.

I thought it was pretty funny, Mark did too after awhile. If we had taken the planned directions, we would have missed the giant (fake) pumpkin, some larger than life concrete lawn squirrels and some beautiful country side.


3 hours after we left home, we arrived. Just in time for dinner.

Our adventure should have just been starting, but instead it was an adventure just to find the campground! :)

They left their tools

The last time Maddie stayed with us, Mark began to call her 'Maddie the Wonder Dog' because of her ability to walk through walls. In reality Maddie was just walking between the studs in the basement because our drywall had not yet been fixed from when we had a bit of a water issue.

While Maddie is still wonderful, she will no longer be able to walk through our walls.

The drywall is going back up!
(can you tell I'm excited?)


They did not finish today but said they would be back on Monday. After waiting a bit to get on the schedule I was worried that 'Monday' really meant, at some point in the next few weeks.

BUT, upon inspecting the basement we discovered...


they left their tools! So now they have to come back!

I am already dreaming of play dates and movie nights that can take place once the basement is done.

Oh, and parking in the garage would be nice too! :)

A tour of Eddie's room

Yesterday Eddie was hamming it up by his tool bench.


He took off down the hallway to his room and I followed. Now that the last picture has been hung in his room, I thought it was time for before & afters. So here is Eddie's completed room...it's only taken 13 months. Actually I started planning it while I was still pregnant, so that makes it about 19 months. At this rate, we will never finish our home! :)


This is what it looked like when we toured the house. I don't have any other angles, because it was impossible to enter.


This was the night we moved in. I cleaned the walls and painted them before we moved in. We used it as a guest room until Eddie arrived. I couldn't find a more recent photo so this will have to do.


And here it is now. His room was re-painted and got new carpet to replace the stained one.



Eddie really likes the fan.

staycation and great friends

We have been looking forward to a camping trip with the 3 of us all summer. We planned to leave on Tuesday and had our campsite until Friday. Because we stay in a tent, we had been keeping a close eye on the weather. When Tuesday morning arrived, the radar was showing storms heading straight towards our destination.

After much debate, we canceled our site and decided to have a 'staycation'.

We are so glad that we did.


By Wednesday morning after watching the rain come down Tuesday afternoon and throughout the night, I became concerned about Eddie digging in his ear. A trip to the Dr's confirmed an ear infection. It would have been a loooooong trip in the rain with a sick child!

We stuck to our plan to spend our time together and had a lot of fun, despite a rather grumpy Eddie. (Who is now feeling loads better!)

Daddy and Eddie reading Eddie's favorite book...


Maddie came to stay with us for a few days...


Eddie wanted her by him at all times and when Maddie got sick of it, she would get up out of his reach. This was so cute because while she was trying to get away, Eddie was putting toys on the chair for her while jabbering at her.


Mark has been talking about putting up shelves in the garage and we figured now was a good time. While Mark was picking out lumber, Eddie and I went and played on the toys at Menards. Eddie found a pink shovel and carted it around until I had to pull it from his hands when it was time to go.


Here is the garage before...


We had a fun building the shelves together. Mark did most of the work, but kept telling me he couldn't have done it without me. Once the top shelf and the supports were up, it was basically clear sailing from there. Mark did almost take a chunk out of my arm when the drill slipped off a screw, but in the end we finished the shelves and did not need to make any runs to the hospital.


And the finished shelves. Look at all that storage!

(Please ignore the pile of junk in front of the shelves, the contents of our basement are still living in the garage.)


Even though we had planned a few fun filled days by the water, we had some wonderful days at home, just being 'at home'. While we did dive into a few projects, overall we were just together. And that is really what family vacations are all about.


Saturday Jim & Lisa came up for a visit. We had hoped for a nice day for a boat ride. When the day started off cold and overcast, we were worried, but decided to at least try for a cruise. It was a bit choppy when we first got on the water and really bad in the big lake. We left the big lake and decided a choppy ride was better than braving 5 footers. The longer we were out, the more the water seemed to lay down and we decided to try the big lake again.

Our second time exiting the channel we discovered the waves were now 3ft rollers. And SO much fun!






Auntie Em had come to play with Eddie while we were on the boat. I was SO thankful! I know the rollers would have been too much for him and I was glad he was having fun at home. Once we got off the water, our evening was spent having a cookout, playing games outside and staying up late talking by a bon fire.

In the morning we went out to brunch. Jim put a crayon behind his ear and Eddie thought it was a riot. When Jim put the crayon behind Eddie's ear...he was rather confused. Once Eddie caught on, a new game was discovered!


It was so great to catch up with Jim & Lisa. We met back in college and it is hard to believe that we've known eachother for 9 years! We wish we lived closer, but are looking forward to getting together with them soon!

Not Me! Home/Flooding Edition

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else has not been doing this week.

Between updating the kitchen and our water issue last weekend, these are not some of the moments that have helped break the stress and brought about laughs.

While the kitchen cabinet doors were off for 6 months, I did not get used to just tossing things into the trash. When the door went back up, but the piece between the sink and the doors was not back up, I did not begin to cram things into the empty space instead of opening the doors.


And of course once the missing piece was replaced, I did not continue to try and toss things in, only to have them bounce back out at me. This didn't happen on multiple occasions, and certainly not with diapers.


While I am feeling less stressed, I did not get frustrated when one of our smoke detectors started to go haywire and beep every 30 seconds...during nap time. I did not eagerly agree to my hubby's suggestion to attack it with a hammer. Nope. Not me.


Now that our stove and our refrigerator are back in the kitchen, there have not been times where I will automatically go into the living room to get a drink. Of course I remember that things have been put back.


I also was not used to throwing dirty bibs down the basement steps so I could scoop them up as I went to our washer and dryer. I have not caught myself about to toss them down. I know that our basement is empty. After taking a swim, our washer and dryer were not working.

My hubby met with the appliance doctor today and when he called to find out my opinion on getting the machines fixed or getting new ones I did not pause to think about it. In my pause my hubby did not tell me that the doctor said if we needed more time to think about it, he could come back in a couple weeks. My response to my hubby was not for him to barricade the door and not let the doctor out until our machines are working. I am not totally spoiled and missing my washer and dryer. I love doing my laundry elsewhere.

While trying to make a temporary office in the guest room amongst all of the items that didn't get wet...


...I did not figure that Eddie's birthday is close enough and moved his birthday present out of the guest room and into the living room. His birthday isn't until Thursday and he needs to wait. Oh, and he certainly has not been playing with his tool bench since I bought it off Craigs List a few months ago. Nope. I wouldn't ruin a birthday surprise.

a refrigerator AND a stove...

...IN the kitchen?!?

What more could a girl want?

Mark worked hard all day in our sweltering kitchen to get our floors ready for our appliances. He has a few more finishing touches...but it looks AWESOME!! He did such a great job! Hmmm...what project should we start next...just kidding!! Once our home is back together it will be a looong time before I start anything new! [Anything big that is. :) ]

Notice the empty 9x13 pan on the stove?

Julie made Mark 30 scotcharoos for his birthday and we have been giving them and pop to everyone working on our home. We had a new guy at the house yesterday and when he was offered one he replied...'these are the famous scotcharoos I've heard so much about!'

Thank you Julie for making us the house that everyone wants to go to!!!

What day is it...?

I keep asking that question. I will be mid-sentence and suddenly stop and say...wait...what day is it?

Today was the first day that felt semi-normal. It was nice. (And hot. The part that our heating & cooling guy was worried about corroding in our unit, did. We are on the list for a repair and hopefully we will see him tomorrow. We'll see. Lots of people are having problems.) Anyway, we've done all that we can do in the basement until it dries out. Because we do not have air conditioning, we chose to go out to lunch. First we tried to take a bit of a walk so Eddie could quack at the ducks, but it was too hot & he didn't feel like it.


In an attempt to cool down this afternoon, I thought it would be fun to get out Eddie's pool. He really wasn't in the mood. This was seriously the only smile I got. He didn't even want to sit in the water. He was content to sit in the grass and splash his lotion bottle in the water.


It didn't take too long to figure out why he wasn't in a playful mood. After a few of these...


...we headed inside. It didn't take long for him to fall asleep. Everything has been so off the last few days, I think he enjoyed a bit of a more 'normal day'.


After our wonderful dry-out company left, Mark was even able to get back to the kitchen floor in the hope of reclaiming more space.


While this hasn't been fun, I'm SO glad that the flooding happened during the summer and on a weekend that Mark didn't have class! It is so nice letting him deal with all the phone calls!

More rain is in the forecast for tonight, but hopefully it won't cause anymore problems for anyone. Mark has already made it clear that if we begin to flood again...we are moving to our parents' with air conditioning and without water coming up through the floors. He figures that they each have an extra room so we can rotate houses and no one will get sick of us!

Hooky

Half of our home is torn apart at the moment. It would be logical to assume that we would spend every free minute putting it back together. But instead...we've been having some fun. With Mark gone to Washington DC last week and having weekend classes we have been squeezing in some play time.

Yesterday it was introducing Eddie to his pool...


And today Eddie went for his first boat ride! He did so great and really enjoyed it! We were a little worried he would try to dive over the side, but he sat pretty well. Even loading & unloading went smoothly- it was perfect.


We still have been working on the house...because...well...we are getting sick of this chaos, and it would be nice to have a stove again. With the counter tops and back splash finished, the next project is the floors. Ripping up floors really isn't up my alley, so I got as much of the painting done as I could while Mark was gone. Now that he's home...the floors have come up.

Here is the old floor. It wasn't until the carpet was up that we learned that we have multiple layers of linoleum.

The before floor:


We have our current floor...a sub-floor...linoleum that looks very similar to what we currently have...the original linoleum and then it is the real sub-floor. I did tell Mark that if the original linoleum was in good shape...we could just go with that...it's awesome. Big brown flowers.

Mark put up plastic while cutting out the top sub-floor.


Eddie was still rockin' his sunscreen mohawk tonight after the boat ride.


Here is the linoleum that was under the sub-floor. Look familar? I wonder what made someone decide to put new linoleum over this...I totally understand covering up the brown flowers...but I wish when you bought a house you could ask questions like that. Or get a little book of stories to explain why they chose what they did. Like...why did they put carpet in the dining room?


With the flooring now underway, the fridge has joined the rest of the dining room furniture in the living room.


And here is the empty dining room. Without the table under the light...Mark smacks his head on the light almost everytime he goes in there. You can hear his 'aahh' everytime he smacks into it.


If all goes well...our home will be put back together this weekend!!!