Random cell phone pictures

Huh. I hate when this happens.

Alex and Daniel and I ended up going over to a friend's house tonight. Ok, so technically, she was my friend's sister-in-law or something like that, but the point is that we got out of our house and went to someone else's house and had lots of fun. The boys played in the sprinklers with a bunch of other kids, while I sat around and visited with *gasp* other grownups!

I didn't take my camera outside, but I had my phone with me, so I snapped a whole bunch of cute pictures of all of the kids playing.

I just hooked the phone up to the computer to transfer everything off of it, and for some reason, for the first time ever, the pictures that I took tonight didn't come out. Not like they're blurry, but like they're not there. They are blank images with some kind of an error message. I am not happy - and now I have to play around with it to find out if it was just a one time thing or if something is really messed up - which it had better not be, considering how close TMOART:2011 is.

But anyway, I did find some other cool random pictures that I never posted, so here they are...

Daniel at the dam in Halstead. I always forget that I have these funky effects on my phone.

Alex at the dam. See the kids fishing down below?

Sarah right after she got her ears pierced.

Daniel waiting for the dentist.

Quilts on display.

Now to figure out what's up my phone's butt. Sometimes technology really is a pain.

Another (almost) cleaning-free day

We finally made it out to the lake for a little bit today. We didn't stay for very long - only a couple of hours - but it was still nice to get out of the house for a while.

After we got home from the lake and got most of the wet nasty sandy stuff into the washer, a friend dropped her son off with us for the night. She is spending the night at Girl Scout camp with her daughter and she's watched my boys before, so it's nice to be able to help her out for a change. He's Alex's age, but unfortunately they haven't gotten to play together much tonight since Alex refused to eat supper and got sent to bed early.

I did have a slight crisis tonight while making supper. Stupid ceramic tile floor claimed yet another victim.

*sigh*

Going to work on getting them all to bed soon....need to get up at a reasonable hour in the morning, get the older 3 off to their father's house, get the extra one ready to be picked up by his mom, and then Alex and Daniel and I have some running to do all day tomorrow, potentially ending with a picnic in Wichita in the evening. I still need to finish putting the bathroom back together and clean the laundry room and clean off my porches, and then I can pretty much say that my house is officially ready for vacation.

6 days....

Bureaucracy and red tape...

Ugh. That's all I have to say.

Alex's Social Security card disappeared a while ago. A long while ago, actually. I've been meaning to get it replaced, but realistically, how often does a 5 year old need it? I was going to get it replaced when I got my new one after my divorce was final, but decided not to for whatever reason.

The kids started out the day with great attitudes, so we were going to go to the lake. Then the attitudes went to crap and I decided to torture them by making them go to Wichita and go to the SS office with me to get the new card, since of course we need it for school enrollment. I looked online, printed out the form that I needed, and thought I had everything that I needed to get it. So much for thinking...

We drove the 30 minutes there, and before we walked in the building I gave them the speech. "This is a federal office building. There are men with GUNS inside the door. If you act up, I WILL let those men deal with you. Do we have an understanding?" When we walked in, the guards basically gave them the same speech - the look in Alex's eyes was priceless!

Anyway, we sit, we wait, I get up to the window. Turns out that a birth certificate and a school ID aren't good enough to get a replacement card. Having the kid with me isn't proof that he exists. The lady's suggestion was that we "run home and get his shot records" - uh, lady, we live 30 miles away.

So rather ticked off, we went back out to the van (after the armed guard congratulated the kids on behaving so well while we were there) and started to drive off. Suddenly, thankfully, I had an aha-moment. Alex USED to go to a pediatrician who was part of a large chain of clinics - the chain is based in Wichita. I pulled up Google Maps on my phone (thankful for modern technology) and found an office within about a mile from where we were. We went there, and I threatened the kids again about behaving while we were inside.

We went in and I explained to the lady behind the desk that even though my kid hasn't seen a physician from this clinic in probably 4 years, I needed a copy of ANYTHING that they had on him - shot records, office visit, anything. She knew exactly what I needed and within 5 minutes I had a very outdated copy of his shot records.

Back to the van, back to the SS office - and another round of lectures about behavior. Into the office, sat back down, got to the window, presented her with his birth certificate (which she didn't even look at), his outdated shot records, and my driver's license, and voila...done.

I find it absolutely amazing that having a birth certificate, a school ID, and the actual KID with me wasn't enough to prove that he exists - but having an outdated immunization record would. And government agencies wonder why they get such a bad rap.

Now I have to wait 2 weeks for his card to come in the mail. Of course, we're leaving in a week, and his enrollment paperwork has to be turned in before we get back, but I'll figure that part out later.

It's always something.

And now I have a new bathroom....sort of.

I'm running on about 2 hours' worth of sleep (stupid insomnia) and I've been running with the kids all day today to stay out of the way of the contractors, so this is going to be short and sweet. It's only 7:10pm and my head is bobbing around because I'm so tired....

If you missed the pictures of my ugly bathroom before, go here.

Here are some in progress pictures....

One of the contractors stomped really hard and put his foot through the flooor.

Where the toilet was.

You know it's bad when the sink ends up on the porch.

Finally 8-9 hours after they started, I got the call that they were done. As far as I was concerned, if the floor was flat and sturdy, I'd be happy. Bare wood would even be acceptable after the mess that I had. But I came home to this....

The toilet is straight now, but it's trickling. I'll deal with that in the morning.

The linoleum is buckled, but I don't care. This part is under a shelf and my bucket of dirty laundry sits here anyway.

And a mess to clean up, but again, it'll be there in the morning.

It's far from a beautiful job, but it's functional, and it's better than what I had. If I had paid for it, I wouldn't be happy, but I didn't, so it's all good.

Happy Kitchen Day!

Continuing with my Pre-Vacation Cleaning Rampage...

Today I tackled the kitchen ... although it looked horrible to start with, it really wasn't all that bad. Once I got the dishwasher emptied and reloaded, it went pretty quickly. A lot of the crap on the table was trash, along with quite a bit on the counters. As much as I love to cook and bake, I seriously hate cleaning up after myself in there. It sucks.

The kitchen looks impressive size-wise, but it's not that great. There is not enough counter space and the cabinets are a nightmare. But, it works. The floor is actually ceramic tile, which I have decided that I hate and will never have in my own future house!

I do like the pantry cabinet thingee, but I just wish that the shelves were adjustable inside. No biggie on that one, and again, we make it work.

The fridge still smells like death, so it's going to be emptied, unplugged, and sprayed with disinfectant before we leave next week. I'm going to leave the doors open and just let it air out and hopefully get rid of the mysterious stench.




I still have to mop the floor, and I'm sure that I'll have to clean the kitchen at least a dozen more times before we leave, but at least the worst of it is done.

I'm seriously considering making cinnamon rolls for breakfast tomorrow - and if I do, I am going to clean up my mess afterwards! One thing about it, since I've gotten this much cleaned up, we've actually been keeping it cleaner in general. It's really been kind of nice.

The landlord did bring a couple of contractors over today to take a look at the bathroom, and starting at 7:30am tomorrow, the floor is going to be replaced! I am so excited about it - but not so excited about being kicked out of my house all day long. I figure we'll head to the lake in the morning for a few hours, shower when we get done swimming, and then maybe go to the library for a while.

Just to give you an idea of the nightmare that is my current bathroom floor, here are some shots of it....

Can you see how crooked the toilet actually is?

Kind of hard to see, but my foot is about 1" below where the level of the floor should be.

Another really soft squishy spot.

Isn't it purty?

Hopefully by this time tomorrow night, I'll have some gorgeous pictures of the bathroom to post!

One more area....and a project....

I didn't sleep last night...well, maybe for a couple of hours, tops. I was up late chatting with a friend (I know, my own fault) and then when I finally laid down, I could not sleep for anything. I know it was at least 5:30am before I fell asleep, and then the boys had me up at 8:00 expecting to be fed. What nerve!

Anyway, I didn't do much throughout the day. We ran a few errands and I checked out a shop where I might put some of my stuff after we get back from TMOART:2011, but I'll go into more of that at some other time.

I did work on this area this evening. This is sort of the Sewing Area Part II. The ironing board stays up most of the time, which is incredibly annoying, but it's almost easier to leave it up and in the way than it is to constantly fold it up and put it away. Plus, the kids pretty much know that if there's a project started on the ironing board, they may meet an untimely death if they touch it.

The bins of pictures (the green things) were straightened out somewhat and stashed in the furnace room - neatly, I might add. One of our post-vacation projects will be going through 40 years of pictures and sorting. Hehe.

Oh, and I'm not even going to go into detail about what I found on the sticky spider trap that was under Gramma's corner shelf. Let's just say that there was a total of 46 legs on it, and it has been trashed and replaced with a fresh, super-sticky one.

The stuff on the ironing board is the beginnings of another project, that in my sleep-deprived state, I seem to think I'm going to start working on tonight. This could get interesting....any guesses as to what it will be? I have no idea what it's going to look like, but if it comes out looking even remotely close to the image in my head, it's going to be really cool!

On a ticked-off-mom note, I've been watching my friends' daughters off and on for a while whenever they needed someone. I love these little girls and they're a joy to be around. But, their mother called me today to tell me that the older of her girls doesn't want to come over anymore because Alex is always so mean. *sigh* I am so ticked off right now - absolutely not at my friend or her girls, but at Alex. OK, not even at Alex, but at the way that he behaves. I've been trying and trying and trying to get him to behave appropriately, and I feel like I'm banging my head against a wall. He's loud and boisterous and rambunctious and can be downright rough and mean when he wants to be. I've been working with him and he's even been going to counseling to try to get things straightened out, and I feel like it's just not working. He's the type of kid that needs to be outside running every second that he's awake in order to burn off his excess energy, but I just can't realistically do that.

So I sat him down today and told him what his friend said - that she doesn't want to come over here anymore because he's mean. We talked about it and I tried to explain to him that if he doesn't straighten up and start behaving better, no one is going to want to play with him. We talked at length about it. I don't know if anything sunk in or not, but he and Daniel have actually been playing pretty nicely today.

Of course, they acted like total spazoids when we were running errands today. *ripping hair out*

Anyway, going to get the boys into bed and start working on my project. But I am NOT staying up all night. No no no no. I'm not. Midnight is my limit, if I even make it that long.

Uh huh. Sure.

Of course I couldn't go two days....

...but in my defense, I only did two small areas tonight.

I don't have a bedroom in this house, so I sleep on a futon. Which never gets folded up into the "couch" position, so there is almost always laundry piled on/around it. It's the perfect place to fold laundry, because I can watch TV at the same time. Stuff also seems to accumulate under it....

It's now clean, but I'm not folding it. As long as it's clean, it's good. The box under the left side is my quilting frame and the green thing is my duffle bag that will be going on TMOART:2011 so I just haven't bothered to put it back out in the garage with the other luggage.

The sewing area - which really didn't start out nearly as bad as it could have - or as it has in the past. This area can get pretty ugly in a matter of hours.

But, it's slightly cleaner now....and I even moved the sewing machine table and got all of the dust and lint out from under it. *sneeze* *cough*