LifeTrain

Can't Do It Justice

...but I'll try.

The past few weeks have gone by without me posting much of value. Our family has been through some big things and I'll do my best to give a picture-heavy entry to play catch-up. In truth, I could probably write entire essays on a few of these experiences- but many of you would be bored with detailed descriptions of my emotions and thoughts, I'm pretty certain. Anyway, here come pictures and words. I'm not promising anything profound, anything in order, or anything complete.

Our friends Travis and Amy are now living back in Nashville after being in Birmingham for roughly 9 months. We're glad to have them back, but wonder slightly why we went to all the trouble of a Goodbye party. :-) Oh well. Eric was able to get him a job again at HMS, though not exactly the same position. It all went pretty quickly, and before we knew it (like, overnight), the women in the Button family were up here trying to get Amanda into school. They stayed with the Kelsos a bit, and with us a bit while waiting for Travis to join them and secure an apartment. I felt really bad for them since they stayed with us during the most unorganized time our house has seen to date.

We bit the bullet and decided to tile the bathrooms upstairs on Labor Day weekend. They are the only full bathrooms in the house, leaving just a powder room downstairs. Both toilets were removed and showers were out of commision at various points. So, at any given time we had 9-10 humans in this house sharing one toilet. One day, we only had the garden tub in the master bath accesible so we all took baths. I haven't taken a bath for cleanliness in years! I'm a shower girl (although I love baths for relaxation) and this was one of the things I wasn't looking forward to at all. But, Amy was sweetly positive and thankful about the bath. And it wasn't as bad as I thought, either. I think the thing I have issue with (although I clean my children in a bath all the time) is rinsing myself in the dirty soapy water. In a shower, you are continually rinsed in fresh water.

As far as the tiling job goes, I AM SO PROUD OF US! Eric and I are far from what you would call handymen. We haven't tackled too many home improvement projects. Many of them are frustrating because we lack the skills. For some reason, though, I really wanted to try this project and (for some reason) he agreed to do it with me. I envisioned us getting mad at each other and frustrated about things not working according to plan, and (worst case) us having to call someone out to fix our mistakes. Most of the project has gone off "without a hitch" (as they say). And we've only had two points of severe frustration that we have made it through. We're still married and I'm in love with him as much as I've always been. Friday night after work, Eric, me, and a co-worker Doyle got started at 7:00p.m. and installed the backerboard flooring on top of the old linoleum. We finished at about midnight. I had trouble sleeping because of the dust and climbed into bed with Dean. Eric woke me up about 1:30 a.m., saying that he vaccumed and dusted and changed all the linens in our room. This gave me that squishy twitter-paited feeling and I happily joined him for the 4 1/2 hours of sleep we'd get that night. Yuck. Saturday was tiling of the master bathroom. We marked out the pattern with chalk lines and pre-cut all the tiles and had them adhered to the backerboard with mortar by about 5:00pm. Doyle joined us for a few hours again that day, but never got to see the finished product. Day three was reapeating day two on the kid's bathroom. Much smaller and we knew what we were doing by then= mush faster. Monday was grouting and that felt so easy and was done rather quickly. I think the hardest (or maybe just longest) part was all of the measuring and cutting. So much cutting!- the small bathroom had only 5 full tiles...all the others had to be cut. And since then, we have sealed the grout, re-installed the toilets, sledged out two miscut tiles and replaced them, and painted the walls (okay, Eric single-handedly did the painting). Still to accomplish is replacing the quarter-round moulding, hanging a medicine cabinet we bought, and getting a professional out to tack the carpet back down at the transition points. I am so pleased with the tiles and the paint color. Such a difference from the builder grade vinyl flooring!


So, I'm trying the whole imbedding of photos thing again. And I'm just not happy with it. Things are going slowly, and it would appear that the next image has an error. So, the rest of this post will be written out, and I'll just use hello to post all the other pictures after I'm done writing. For a non-computer person like me, I had better just stick with what works!



Anyway, we survived the house guests and the tiling, ins pite of being sick through the whole process.

We seem to be slightly sick still. Grant and Dean were seen at the doctor's office (as I previously mentioned), but part of the cold is just not responsive to the the anitbiotics. Really, they were only meant for the lung infection portion of th cold, so all the other bits still remain.

But, Grant was able to go for his first day of kindergarten on Friday morning. Eric went in late to the office, so we were all able to walk him into class. The night before, I told Grant that we'd have to be quick in the morning and get out the door rather early. Everyone cooperated and we were out the door on time even with me having set the alarm for p.m. accidently and waking an hour late! In fact, we estimated for more rush hour traffic and arrived 30 minutes early. Better early than late. It was especially sweet how excited grant was the moment he woke up. He shot out of bed and kept saying "today is the first day of school!". On the way to school in the car, we also heard an extremely funny exchange between the boys.

Grant: I'm sorry I won't be with you today or eat lunch with you guys since I'll be at school.
Dean: It's okay.
Grant: I will miss you, Dean.
Dean: Oh.

Grant wasn't nervous at all and Eric and I quickly left after a few photos because we couldn't really figure out what other purpose we could serve. He was ready to learn, the other kids were arriving, the teacher was showing him where to sit and helping him tuck away his lunch box. He didn't need us there. We'd done our job and he was ready. I dropped Eric off downtown at the office and went home with Dean and Lael. The house was extremely quiet and we had a lovely day of book reading, lunch, and cake baking. Rarely do Dean and I get so much time together without interruption, I cherished it and look forward to more days like that. He took a short nap and woke up excited to go get Grant from school.

Saturday, Grant had his first baseball game at Rotary Park. Kris and Mary and Owen came to watch my son be completely clueless. I love him dearly, but I also can be honest- he has a lot of learning to do! At the very end of the game he was able to run to home base with a lot of coaching on the side regarding where to run and when to stop. This league is commited to taking the game seriously, though, so I'm sure it won't be long before he's hitting and catching with all the other kids. Two practices a week (2 hours long) and 1 hour, 45 minute games each weekend. Yikes. What have we signed up for?!

Sunday was football game watching and church and Life Group.

That covers at least some of the basics. Next I'll get some pictures up.