Quilting, Christmas, and Cabinets

This was not my choice, but my kids have been watching Christmas movies non stop. I think its comical. And not even the Hallmark ones. The Santa Clause, Home Alone, etc. All of the trilogies. It’s fine. I don’t mind. It’s been fun watching with them. A few of the kids are sick so what else besides sleep are they to do?

While the movies have been playing I have been tying quilts.

I figured that using an embroidery hoop is way easier than setting up a ginormous quilting frame that takes up the whole room. And I get to sit in the comfortable chair. I got the tying done and just have to sew the end up real quick and I’m done with it. One more quilt to go.

Quilting was a good activity for the day for me because my back was killing me. Well, my kidney were the culprit. It usually just lasts a day and just feels like very sore muscles so I wasn’t too worried. Just upped my water intake and went on with life.

Back to the movies, as we finished one my oldest son and I were reminded of Its a Wonderful Life. He got really excited, “Can we watch that tomorrow?” I love that he loves that movie. I never appreciated it until last year. I told him it would be a good movie to watch on Sunday. So that is our plan.

We still haven’t put away the fall stuff and taken out the Christmas stuff yet. I did that early last year and was just so tired of it by the time Christmas came. I love Christmas but kids messing with the tree just aggrivates me. They pull off decorations and they get put back on skeewampus and it bugs me. So I will wait until the traditional Sunday before Thanksgiving.

Speaking of tradition, pie week is next week. For those who aren’t aware of this, it is something my husband started early in our marriage. He loves pie but on Thanksgiving we are too stuffed to eat much of it. So he made up pie week. Thanksgiving week we have a different pie every single night. That way we get a variety and aren’t stuff so we can enjoy it. We’ve got them all planned out. I wish I had my new kitchen to bake them all in but we’ll make do.

Speaking of kitchens, we got the plans all done to our specifications and contract signed and down payment paid. The cabinet guy even held our place while we made up our mind and changed things around. So we should be done with this whole deal hopefully by the end of February.

I was looking at what needs to be done and I think we can squeeze all the drywall and mudding and painting in between when the electric gets done and the flooring goes in. I’m hoping to do that so we can rent a paint sprayer and get the paint done fast without worry of getting any on the new floors.

That’s about all that’s going on in that part of my world. Just a lot of huffy up and wait. Id seems to be that easy gir a lot of life. Oh well. I’ve got plenty to do in the meantime.

I Just Needed Some Time

Yesterday was a day. It was Saturday. I woke up around six and decided to go watch Mulan, the new one, before the day started. Sam was awake and wanted to watch it too since he’d fallen asleep during the movie the night before. We started the movie and before the movie had ended all the kids were awake and watching with me. Alex was still asleep.

The kids talked and wiggled and switched places and got up and down and argued and sat in me and fought over me. The whole movie was spent telling them all to be quiet. Then I had to pause everything and take Michael to the church to help with the food drive.

When the movie ended the messes needed to be cleaned up. I got a new vacuum this week because mine broke and sounds scary when I turn it on. I’m going to try and fix it (again) but I do like this new one. I vacuumed the room three times at least yesterday and the amount of gunk that got sucked up was insane. Gross.

The kids were noisy all day. They even went outside several times but came back in a cacophony of kid noises. Can you tell I was at my limit? I was ready to take off and take an overnight vacation alone. That sounds heavenly right now.

The new neighbor boy came over. The kids say he’s a but mean so we’ll have to work on that. He’s absolutely hilarious though but not on purpose. He came over wearing his Sunday clothes. “Wanna know what I’m dressed this way? It’s because I am a spy agent today.” I giggled. He roped Sam into it and Sam can never find his Sunday clothes on Sunday but yesterday he found them all and was dressed in five minutes.

Elizabeth came up to me a little later and asked where the boys were. I told her that they are off somewhere playing spy agent. She rolled her eyes and said with more attitude than a kindergartner should have, “Ugh. They sound like idiots when they talk like spies.” I am still laughing at that one.

Later the kids came in from snowball fights for some hot chocolate. The neighbor boy asked Lauren to blow on his hot chocolate to cool it off as he was a guest. She told him “You know how to breathe.” He asked me to cool it off for him. I replied the same. “You know how to breathe.” Rude, maybe, but he’s old enough.

Alex offered to take my out to dinner since we hadn’t had a date this week. I jumped at the chance for some silence. My sanity was hanging on by a thread. We were only gone maybe an hour but it was necessary and a good break to talk without any interruptions.

When we got home the kids were watching the cartoon Mulan. They like it better. They wanted to compare the two. As I watched I tied Elizabeth’s quilt that I started last year. I’d figured a new way to do it and I was done in a few hours. Well, I still have to sew up the end but that is a ten minute job I’ll do on Monday.

She was really excited to have it. Lauren said I should have waited for Christmas to give it to her but I wanted her to have it now. I have Evangeline’s almost done. Now that I know how fast it went together I’ll finish hers this week. I’d wanted to make patchwork quilts for years and now that I have done five of them I might have gotten it out of my system. Maybe. Matching all the fabrics is hard, I understand why they sell prematched stacks. And sewing and figuring out the pattern is tough. I tried to randomize this one and it looks okay, I think.

One of the main reasons I decided to pull out and finish the quilt was that I needed to do something that would stay done. Cleaning and cooking are repetitive. You turn around and have to do it again. It never ends. But the quilt will never have to be done again. It is a good feeling that I needed.

We finally went to bed (late) after eating a little ice cream and watching about half of a funny movie. Evangeline joined us the whole time and that girl is turning out to be quite the personality. We laugh so hard at her antics all the time. Where our Elizabeth is hilarious in what she says, Evangeline has the physical comedy and timing down. She had her head in Alex’s arm ready to fall asleep when she made a weird noise, I commented on it and she ran with it. We were in stitches and when she was done she crawled over to her bed and went straight to sleep.

It was a good end to what was an overwhelming day for me.

Many More Messes

Apparently my mind and body just refuse to sleep in anymore. I woke up a bit before six this morning. The porch lights were left on so the light filtering through the curtains looked weird. Alex had left them on. I usually go to bed last but on Fridays I let the kids stay up and Alex and them watch movies, last night was Mulan. I went to bed.

I had had a long day. The kids had no school so that added to the usual chaos and noise. Every once in a while I realize how much noise eight kids and a dog make. So much non stop noise. I was eating breakfast, looking at the disaster of a house (spilled milk, dirty dinner dishes, leftover food dried on plates and the table, papers and crumbs, clothes and toys all over the floor and furniture) and I was overwhelmed. Where and why should I even begin? It seems futile even though I know it is not. Just as I was looking for motivation the phone rang.

An answer to an unuttered prayer.

My sister called me. *Cue angelic chorus* I can’t just sit and talk on the phone, I have to be working. It is a good thing. My sister and I cleaned our kitchens and talked. We were doing dishes at the same time. I got it all cleaned and wiped and mopped. It looked wonderful. Then lunch happened and later when most of the family had gone to play soccer I went down and got a bit depressed because it looked like I’d done nothing. But, my in laws had shown up and I had tp get it cleaned up so they didn’t think I was a pig all the time. Michael, Benjamin, and I got the whole basement cleaned up, dishes done, all wiped up and the pizza made. Nevermind that we weren’t done until nine and had a late dinner when soccer was over and Alex and the kids came home.

Earlier that day Alex and I had fixed the kitchen ceiling. We spent a lot of time deciding where and how many lights we needed and wanted in the kitchen. When we moved into the house there were two fluorescent light fixtures. Drop ceiling, school/office light fixtures. We eventually took them down and had two LED lights put in. It was plenty. Then the electricians said we’d need at least four lights in the kitchen. So we listened and planned for four ceiling lights and two pendants over the peninsula. We were thinking yesterday and if two lights was plenty then six was overkill. That’s not including all the lights going into the adjacent dining room. We did some measuring and put two lights where we wanted them and drew where we wanted the three others. Then we installed the sheetrock.

Aren’t you jealous of the mess?

We had to take down more insulation, hence the full tarp in the photo, but notice the ceiling? No more drop ceiling and no more insulation dropping down or drafts coming in except for that one access hole we left but will cover today. And cleaning. I will be cleaning up the mess today. It never ends.

Just a Bunch of Stuff Going On

The past few mornings I have woken up at around three or so and not been able to get back to sleep. It’s frustrating. I never felt tired, which was the weird part. Since the sun sets so early now, about five o’clock, we can end the day early. Seven feels like midnight. We start getting the kids wound down around 8 so we can be in bed by 8:30 or 9. It’s been strange getting so much sleep and maybe our bodies are rebelling against the new schedule although last night I managed to get back to sleep after I woke up to tend to the baby. It was wonderful.

Yesterday I had had it. I had spent the week getting renovation stuff done so contractors could do their job, emailing and phone calls to iron out schedules and changes and budgets. I’ve also been working on Christmas shopping. I have the lists of what and have bought most of them. On top of it all is the usual overwhelm if housework and letting myself get bombarded with news. And the kids have been taking turns being sick.

The construction is going well. I got almost all of the flooring taken out and ready to go. It has quite a bit of damage so I am hoping that the flooring guys can make it work. The gas guy put the line in and now I’m waiting on the electricians in two weeks, the flooring guy in three weeks and the sheetrock, mudding and painting we will do between the two appointments. Add in four birthdays, a baptism, and a play into that time and it’s going to be busy.

I got the total for the cabinets and we tried to figure a way to get the cost down without compromising too much. I am trying to think down the road and see what I can live without and what I will regret. There were a few things I changed that didn’t change much aesthetically but should cut the price down a little bit.

As for Christmas shopping, I am hoping it will go well. It might sound strange or wrong or weird, but this year I decided that each kid only gets one present this year. They have given me their lists and I’ve tried to get exactly what they want. And the lies I’ve had to tell, the omissions, the avoidance of the truth when the kids ask what they are getting or say they wish they could get such and such. I have to keep a straight face or laugh or say, “That’s really expensive, I couldn’t get that,” when I reality I did manage to get it because of a really amazing sale. It had been a blessing and some small miracles that I have been able to get a few of the gifts the kids really want. There is a fair bit of family gifts to make up the difference, games, movies, puzzles- stuff we have to do together.

I’ve probably said this before and I’ll say it again, I am usually a horrible gift giver. I get the list of what they want and for some dumb reason get them something else. I think God has blessed me this year because after a pretty bizarre 2020 the kids could use an amazing way to end the year. Let’s hope it works.

And as for the sickness that’s been going around, we don’t know what it is. I’ve gotten all sorts of things over my lifetime and I don’t know what this is. The kids have had headaches. A kid will get a headache and a low grade fever for about 3-4 days and then they are good and then the next kid has gotten it. I am not going to have them tested because it will do no good but to let me know what it is. There is nothing to be done about it but ride it out. I’ve been checking my temperature when I check the kids and I’ve had a low grade fever for about a week now. Hasn’t slowed me down but it is weird.

So I am taking a break this weekend. I’ll avoid the news, not shop, maybe work on the house just for an hour and enjoy the snowy weekend with my family.

Where Do You Come From

I was awake early and check the family messenger to see what had been happening. My sister had gotten into family history stuff and was posting about famous people we are related to. It’s fun to see who your distant cousins are; celebrities, authors, presidents, etc.

A couple weeks ago at my parents house for Dia de los Muertos we had a family history day. No, we are not Mexican, but I can appreciate the customs and traditions. We made family and ancestors the focus of the day and looked up our family tree we found and told stories of our ancestors we knew and decided to check out Family Search and the pedigree chart and go back as far as we could. When you hit a royal line you are in luck. There are quite a few that we found. We managed to go back all the way to 500 b.c. on one line and about that far back on another. There are so many different lines.

In exploring all the different lines it can get overwhelming. But one fun part is finding where your family comes from. I am a conglomeration. Americans here from the start coming over on the Mayflower- my kids have 14 relatives that came over combined from Alex’s and my side. There are lots of Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Scotish, Welsh (we found kings on the Welsh line we followed), Ireland, England, Germany, etc. I even found Jewish ancestry as well as Native American 11th great grandparents.

Alex’s dad is Guatemalan and so his line has native Guatemalan and Spanish ancestors on one side. His last name is Basque- that’s an area on the northern border of France and Spain. He’s of European decent in his mom’s side. My kids genealogy is all over the map.

In looking over the families I love to think about what they did, their motivations, aspirations, loves, losses, jobs, daily life, stuff like that. I love that we are the culmination of so many lives lived. And they all are so different and so beautiful. Are they perfect? No. They had they successes and failures but they are the reason that we exist.

I love that so many decided to marry outside of their culture and their set community. I actually kind of followed in the tradition, I guess. I married a man from a different background. Well, halfway. Alex is only half Guatemalan. He lived there, so close enough.

I think it is all beautiful. People tend to fear or back away from differences. It can be hard to understand other people sometimes because we can be so different but really, we all, for the most part, want the same basic things that our ancestors wanted, too. Family, love, safety, shelter and a full belly. We all have amazing stories to share and learn from.

Deliveries, Scheduling, Budgets and Kids Stuff

I heard a faint knock on the door yesterday. It was the second one that day. The first one was shoes that my sister ordered for my son’s birthday present. The other giant box was for me. The kitchen sink came! They didn’t have the one I wanted at the store so online order it was. I should open it to make sure it will work but how would I know because the kitchen is still bare bones.

I had two different visits from the worker bees. Well, the quote bees that schedule the worker bees. I got the gas line install scheduled for next week. The electricians are going to come either Thanksgiving week or the week after. Yay! The cost is more than I want to pay but it includes the lighting and electrical connections in the living room and hallway as well as the kitchen, dining and laundry room. Go big or go home. I’m hoping the number they quoted me will be less because they did a quote as if it was new construction. We have the wires all up there and they only have to pull a few new ones. And if we put all the lights and connect all the outlets ourselves after we drywall then it knocks off 20% of the price. I’m willing to work to save 20%.

I sat down and figured the money for the renovations and *gulp* it is scary. Does anyone really like to spend that much money all at once? I keep telling myself that it is like we bought a slightly more expensive house, that is all. And in the end our equity will just go up because a finished and updated house will sell for more and faster than a broken mismatched one, if we ever decide to sell. I don’t see myself as a house flipper anytime in the future, but you never know.

I thought about it and to save money where I can I am going to not add lights to the living room or hallway. It cam be done another time and isn’t necessary anyways.

I had fun with the kids today. Evangeline and Noah and I watched the tree trimmers swinging from the branches of the neighbor’s tree. I guess they were thinning out the dead, crowded branches.

I made some peanut butter chocolate chip cookies for an afterschool snack. They are my favorite, not the kids, apparently. Some of them ate some. Lauren and Michael both came up to me and asked if we could take some to neighbors. How thoughtful of them! We took some to two neighbors and there wasn’t enough for the third one but I’ll make bread for the other one another day soon.

After a dinner of spaghettios for the kids (they begged for a few days) Alex and I had sausage and sauerkraut, we helped the kids with their homework and then the kids all piled on Alex and me. They chose to watch Disney’s Robin Hood. I worked on some stuff on my phone as I had seen the movie hundreds of times.

We read scriptures and said prayer and the older kids started asking questions. They wanted to know about the election and what was at stake and what each side stood for. It also brought up questions of what is the difference between fascism, socialism, Marxism, communism, capitalism, etc. Big questions for 15, 13, and 11 year olds. I went to youtube and found some PragerU videos and it explained it all pretty well and in a condensed way so we weren’t up all night.

Well, I had to stay up because right before bed a child let’s me know they need their dress clothes for a choir thing the next day. The clothes are dirty. So I stayed up to wash two loads and woke up early to dry a load. I do make my kids do their own laundry sometimes because they need to know how to do it but with my laundry room in chaos it’s just easier for me to do it. The past few days I have not been able to vent the dryer outside because when we moved it to where it will go the vent hose wasn’t long enough. Alex said he would vent it to the outside for me later today. So I’m grateful that normal is coming soon.

Election Day and Disappointments

Yesterday started out weird. It was election day and probably the most important election of our lives thus far. I was a nervous wreck for some reason and was having a mini panic attack. I decided to turn off the news until evening and just do some fun stuff in the meantime to take my mind off of politics. I read a bit of a book, I watched a show I’ve been hooked on these past weeks or so- Genealogy Roadshow (It’s genealogy buy the history that you learn with it is fun)- and I played with the kids and watched a show with them. What really got me out of the nervous state I was in was reading the scriptures. It calmed me down enough that the knot in my stomach and the nervous wring my hands and my thoughts racing a million miles a minute left and I could function.

Soon it was time to run errands. We hit Walmart first and I am so glad we did because I didn’t have the mental capacity later.

We ate lunch at the park in the van while Evangeline slept in her carseat. She woke up just in time to the meeting about the cabinets. We met with the guy and in five minutes that’s when my heart sank. The timeline we are looking at with the cabinets is February. That is three plus months away! Add another couple weeks onto that for the countertops and we’re looking at sometime in March. I’m not happy about it. There isn’t much I can do but hurry up and wait. Everyone else is in the same boat as me, I guess. So many renovations going on.

Do I regret starting this whole process? No. Have I learned a ton? Yes. I would do things a bit differently if I had it to do over again. Will I ever do this again? I don’t know.

I drove home with a milkshake in hand to console myself. When I got home I decided I needed to get stuff done since the kitchen was off the table for the day. Winter is coming this weekend. It will go from 64° F Friday to inches of snow on Saturday. I have a lot to clean up. I got the rake out, put my headset on and raked the yard. I’ve never raked the yard this late in the season. The leaves were super dry and it didn’t take long and only filled two bags. Giant bags, but whatever.

I still have a bit of the yard to do today and then construction messes to clean up. All the giant 2x10s, 2×4, pipes, and some sheetrock are sitting on my back patio and it needs to go to the dump. We also need to finish the bike shed to keep the bikes out of the snow. We have left the bikes out, covered them with a tarp, done nothing, etc., and they get buried and frozen in the snow and ice. This year I planned to make a shed so that the bikes would be off the ground and out of the elements. I’m running out of time.

Alex came home early from work to finish taking the vent out and patching the hole it left. He had to come home early because the time change put him home at dark. No one wants to do roof work in the dark. Today I get to pull out the mess of leftover pipes and vents. We’ll see how far I get.

When Alex got done with the roof we went to vote. We finally found our precinct and waited for about five minutes, voted and that was it. Then it was off to the house to watch election coverage. It was insane and nail biting and event6we went to bed hoping to wake up to results. We woke up and the numbers had not shifted. We stressed all night about it, sleeping fitfully, at least I know I did. I saw that Alex had woken up and was checking his phone at 4. I woke up at 5 to grab my phone and check. He said don’t bother, nothing had changed. You’d think with all the technology, the world at our fingertips, that this would be done and tied up in an hour. Nope.

So I’ll get busy keeping myself preoccupied while waiting to see the fate of the world. And hoping that my kitchen is done months earlier than everyone says is possible.

Plumbing, Presidents, and Appliances

I actually got out of bed early today. Last night my oldest son asked if I could wash his clothes as he had no clean shirts to wear the next day. I agreed and put a load in the washer last night. I could do that because the new plumbing was all in place and Alex set the washer up and leveled it for me. Yay! I told him I needed it set up. It wasn’t a want, but a need. So this morning I got up and put the load of clothes into the dryer at 5:30.

I was going to go back to bed but heeded the still small voice and went and quickly made breakfast for my husband. I should do it more often. I probably gave him heartburn though because breakfast was eggs and sausage on some jalapeno cheddar bread that I made yesterday. I was craving it so I made some.

Today is the day. Election day. Thank goodness. I’m tired of the ads, I’m tired of the predicting, I’m tired of the suspense. Alex observed this morning that it is more energized and contentious and divided than he’s ever seen in his lifetime. I feel like it’s either a tinderbox ready to explode or it will dissipate in a puff. Two ways it could go. We all hope for the latter but feel like it will be the former. There’s a weird vibe in the air.

So today’s objective is to do laundry, get groceries, meet with the cabinet guy, take the vent out of the roof or cover it, and vote. Doesn’t sound like much but they all have a big impact on the future. Even if it is just picking a color of cabinets I will have to look at for a long time. Or a president.

So the night before I tossed and turned and fretted

I was stressed about a laundry sink. For real. I want a landry sink but don’t want it cramped and shoved in a corner. I started to think and thought wait, is there even enough room for one where I want it? I had Alex help me measure once he was ready to leave for work. I hemmed and hawed and did some more research and stuck with my original plan. I hope it was a good decision.

Then I realized that I think our new fridge is too big to fit through our doors. I started to panic. I went and measured all the doors and openings. Too small! Ahhhhhh! I went and did some research and if we take the doors off from the fridge, and possibly the front door off its hinges, it will fit through the front door. Or the back. Whichever. I’m still slightly panicked in the back of my mind. Seriously, all the details that need to be kept track of. All the rest of the appliances will fit perfectly. Dang small doors.

I probably better go see what help the kids need to go to school. I had a few of them home yesterday because they had a horrible sounding cough. Hopefully all is well today and they can go without scaring everyone at school. Halloween is over but people are still leery of coughing.

Check!

Plumbing is done! I can check it off my list! Well, mostly. The plumber came and hooked all the stuff up. We have old plumbing capped off, and new plumbing ready for Alex to finish off. Whatever we can do ourselves saves money and I am all for that. We have to remove all the old pipes but that is easy enough and once we have the drywall up we can hook up the rest of the sink plumbing. But hey, progress! I can kind of see the light at the end of the tunnel. It is one less contractor to deal with and schedule. Yay! It makes me happy.

Now that this part is done Alex and Benjamin will get up on the roof and patch one last hole that the remaining now unused vent will leave when we pull it out hopefully tonight.

I have two more meetings scheduled for this week and that will tell me more details on the timeline.

As we drove home last night from an impromptu visit to my parents house we were about to dive past Alex’s work and I said that we could be home in five minutes rather than the forty-five minutes we had left to drive if we moved down closer to his work. As I thought of it I just had a feeling that we were supposed to stay put. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, I love my house. It’s a mess of a house but I love it and all that comes with it.

I was on Instagram today and a gal I follow just put her massive dream home on the market. It boggles my mind how big the house is and they will probably go bigger. She has eight children younger than my eight and needs more room. Really? Really. I had a little bit of a jealous moment, I won’t lie. But I again thought that I didn’t need all that and that even though my house needs a lot of work, it really is a blessing. It keeps us warm and dry and safe. Well, more safe once the electrical work is fixed. 😉 what more do I need? Is it my dream house? Nope. Not a chance. But a blessing nonetheless.

Halloween at it’s Best

Today turned out pretty great.

We slept in this morning. Alex and some of the kids stayed up late last night watching the first episode of season two of The Mandalorian. I tried but didn’t make it and went to bed. I woke up earlier than most of them but what else is new.

When we finally got a move on we had the kids cleaning the family room whilst I cleaned the kitchen. Six to one. Guess who got their room done first. Yeah, I have more experience but the room they were cleaning I had cleaned twice the day before. It shouldn’t have taken them that long. I did dishes for 20 minutes at least.

Alex and I then headed outside. I enlisted Benjamin to help with the rood because just watching them climb the ladder gave me anxiety. I was shaking while holding the ladder for them.

Alex and Benjamin took about two hours to patch the holes the vent pipes left behind. It looks pretty good. There is still one pipe yet to be taken out and hole patched but Alex can get to it next week after the plumber comes on Monday.

After I had supervised the roofing crew I got it into my head to clean the van. When stuff comes out every time the kids get out then you know it is time to clean it. I swept, vacuumed, wiped with a bleach solution and mopped the whole van. Vinyl flooring in a fifteen passenger van is so nice. I mopped the floor! I ran out of time and didn’t clean Alex’s car but I did clean the steering wheel on his truck. It was pretty gross. Now it shines.

It was finally time for dinner and to get ready for trick-or-treating. We had the traditional chili and then then kids got into their costumes. It was perfect weather but the little kids only lasted a few blocks and we circled around and let them stay home with Michael. When we started for home the moon was coming up. It was the biggest moon I’ve seen since I’ve been here. It was huge and orange and the perfect moon for Halloween.

While we had gone trick-or-treating Michael had stayed home and carved a watermelon. Yes, a watermelon. When we’d passed the watermelons in the store Michael thought it would be funny.

Not only was it funny, it smelled good and I got to eat watermelon when we got home.

A couple of my kids went and hung out with their friends. When I went to pick them up there were so so many kids running all over the place. It made my heart so happy to see them out and about having fun and being normal. It is one of my favorite parts of living in a small town, it is just feels like time has passed and nothing has changed and it was a good old fashioned Halloween.

We all were home and the kids sorted through their candy and ate and ate until they didn’t want to anymore while we watched Halloween movies and played music and danced.

As Elizabeth said, “This is the best night of my life!” It does seem that way sometimes. I’m glad she enjoys life to that degree.

Happy Halloween!