Me vs. The Tree

We bought our Christmas tree the other day, but it's been sitting out on the front porch in a bucket of water, waiting for the living room to be clean enough for it to fit somewhere. So today, while I was down to only one kid, I decided to at least get the tree inside the house.  Of course, that involved cleaning the living room, and pretty much completely rearranging anything that wasn't already bolted to the wall. Seriously, anything that's more than about 3' tall in this house is bolted to the wall because the entire house is...... wobbly. Plus, I have kids (in case you didn't know that). Actually some stuff that was bolted to the wall got moved too, now that I think about it.

Then it was time for battle. I have this really bad habit of buying really big trees - but with the amount of ornaments that we have, it's pretty much a necessity. And besides, I like big trees.

Doesn't look that big while it's just laying there...

Photography by Daniel....

The fight was on.

My head got eaten by a tree!

Still fighting....

And about an hour later...

No, I will not buy a fake tree. Yes, I understand that they are easier. Yes, I understand that they save money and natural resources and create much less of a mess to clean up after the holidays are over.

Know what? I don't care. I like real trees. I will always have a real tree. I've heard all of the arguments and I've even looked into buying a fake. But, no. I won't do it. Period. End of story.

Once I got the tree upright, I decided to go ahead and get the outside lights put up, since it was warm outside. Stupid weather.

How many moms does it take....

They're up - isn't that good enough?

Weird. My kid was outside playing in the leaves
without wearing a coat while I was hanging
Christmas lights.

Ghetto-tastic. Now if I can just get the second string of lights fixed,
I can do the same thing on the other porch too.

I'm going to attempt to get the lights put on the tree in the next day or so, but we won't be able to actually decorate it until at least Friday. The older 3 kids won't be back until Wednesday, but they have church. Thursday, we have basketball. So Friday is really the first chance that we have to do it as a family.

However, nothing's stopping me from going through the boxes of ornaments between now and then to *ahem* reduce the number of ornaments that the kids feel must go on the tree. Some of them are just downright ugly - but I keep them for sentimental reasons. Weird, I know. Don't judge.

For now, I just have a ton of cleaning and laundry to do (go figure) since I worked on the living room and the tree most of the day - and then I have to plan out my week. Too much to do, and too little time. As usual.

Getting down and dirty with The Dude

After I spent the entire morning running around the house like an idiot, cleaning and doing laundry, I went over to The Dude's house. We had plans to get down and dirty.

And we did. Well, he got dirtier than I did. But I helped. A little bit.

He had to replace a wheel bearing on his van. So we went and got the part and then got to work. It was a little harder to get it taken apart than either one of us thought that it would be, and so there was a lot of swearing and yelling and sweating and grunting and growling. I helped him for as long as I could, but then I had to leave to go get the boys from school and all of that fun stuff, so he had to finish on his own.

Although he did finally get it done, some of his tools didn't quite survive. Oops.

But the important thing is that it's done. He took it for a test drive over here (with me following him) to make sure that everything was ok, so now I don't have to worry about him driving it around anymore. I made dinner for all of us (and him and his mom) and we hung out for a little while before I sent him home to get some rest. After yesterday's beautiful weather, it was much cooler and windier today, and being outside in it all afternoon was a little more than either one of us liked.

And just for good measure, here are a few pictures of the final way that I rearranged everything in the front two rooms, after I got everything cleaned today. I still need to get fabric to make a curtain to divide off my "bedroom" but I'm not too worried about that. I might work on that over the weekend while I'm stuck in the house (see below for explanation)...

And...why I will be stuck in the house all weekend...

I sort of touched on this on my facebook page and mentioned it last night in the blog, but I didn't really go into details. I had Alex at the doctor the other day to talk about the constant bowel incontinence, and it was determined that he has a condition called "encopresis". Basically, he has a really big blockage and that is creating the majority of the issues. So, starting tomorrow after school, he will be getting massive doses of laxatives to "clean him out", so to speak. I already bought pull-ups and wipes and I am prepared for the worst. But, once we get things, uh, 'flowing' again - hopefully things will smooth out. I've talked to him about it, he knows what's going to happen, and so we are going to stay home and tough it out. I'm dreading the amount of poo that I will most likely be dealing with this weekend, but I want him to feel better and to be able to get this fixed. I feel horrible for punishing him for the accidents, now that I know that he couldn't control it all along. But, we're going to fix it. It's just going to suck in the meantime.

Rearranging

I mentioned on my facebook page that I was doing some rearranging in my house today. There's a story behind it.

Without going into too much detail, suffice it to say that sometime in the next 24 hours, I will have 3 more people staying here. A friend and her kids are coming to stay with us for a bit while she deals with some personal issues. It's going to be cozy in here, but with the way that I moved the furniture around, I think we can make it work temporarily until a more permanent solution is found.

I've been thinking about creating a bedroom for me for a few months now. With the way that the "living area" is set up, I figured that I could take the front part for my room and just keep the middle part as the living room. I need a really big curtain to divide off the two rooms, but I'll deal with that later.

Before...

After. The towels under the desk were so that I could slide it across the floor without destroying the hardwood.

Before...

After...I haven't put away all of my sewing stuff yet and I need to get rid of the pile of crap on my futon.

Before...

After...just ignore the mess in the kitchen. I'll deal with that in the morning.

Before...with a body.

After.

Before...

AFter...this is the doorway that will eventually have a curtain hanging in it.

So while it's not done yet, the big stuff is moved and it's somewhat organized. I still have random piles of little crap to get put away, but that shouldn't take too terribly long to do once I get up and moving and get the older 3 kids off to church with their father in the morning. Not knowing what time my friend and the kids are going to get here, we probably will skip church - not to mention that my entire body hurts from moving all of this stuff. I tried to take a kneecap off by dropping a nightstand on my leg, so my knee isn't terribly happy with me either.

So on that note, I am going to crash early and try to get some sleep. I have to finish the cleaning tomorrow and get the rest of the stuff organized before they get here so that it'll be easier to get their stuff in and settled. They are going to be tired from traveling to get back here so I need to make this easy for everyone.