no pictures

So, I totally forgot to take a picture yesterday of the hole. Can you just trust me that it was big? By the time I get home today HOPEFULLY the outside of my house will be perfect, totally repaired and all future leaks prevented. The inside of my house is yet another story. The insurance guy came yesterday and after only being there 30 seconds took one look and said "oh no, this is not covered by any home insurance policy. This is hidden damage from water and insects. There is nothing we can do to help you." This almost sent me into tears. But then he asked if there had been any inside damage. When I said yes, he told me that he could certainly help us with that!
His recommendation is for Sam's room to get new drywall (since huge sections of it will be removed today to repair the rotting exterior of the house), new floor boards, new carpet pad and carpet. YES NEW CARPET! And then in the kitchen where we had water leaking we will have the cabinets repaired, wallpaper removed, new wallpaper (we hate wallpaper, so we will paint) and cabinets painted. YES FRESH PAINT IN THE KITCHEN! The stuff in Sam's room we were not planning on doing but who doesn't love new carpet. This does mean that since we are replacing one of the two rooms that has ugly bright blue carpet I want to go ahead and replace the other room's carpet as well; whatever. But the stuff in the kitchen we had talked about doing anyway to update the kitchen a little bit now that we knew we would no longer have water coming in. So this was really great news.
Right now Sam is living in the guest room. The bad part about all of this is that the roofers will fix the exterior damage today and remove all the damaged parts of Sam's room (drywall on two walls and a large piece of the floor) but because we are not totally sure what the insurance company is going to cover we have to wait on doing the repairs. We will get a recommendation from them on a contractor to use, get the work scheduled and then have it fixed. It could be a very long time before Sam is back in her room. She doesn't seem to mind.
So that is the news on our house.
Happy Wednesday!

rain sucks

The roof is almost done. They will be back tomorrow to finish the gutter work, clean up and take away the dumpster and trailer. However when they leave I will still have a HUGE whole in my house. No, I am not exaggerating as I am prone to do. I will provide proof of the largeness of the hole tomorrow.
I believe I have mentioned the leak that we had in our roof/wall that led to water coming into our kitchen and into the floor of Sam's room. Well, as part of the new roof we asked the roofer to open up the section of the exterior wall that had been hit with water the most to put in additional flashing and cover the exterior wall with more waterproofing (this stuff they put on roofs called ice and water shield). When he pulled the siding off and started to look at the water damage it was much more extensive then we all thought could be possible. Whole 2x4s, sub-flooring, and insulation was completely rotten. They also pulled a fairly large bee hive out of the wall. Where there are bees there is likely to be damage from the tunnels they can create in wood. So the wood that wasn't rotten was chewed apart by bees! The rotting went all the way to the outer side of the drywall in Sam's room. The exterior half of that half-inch thick drywall was wet and rotting. This means that there is a fourth of an inch of drywall that is not rotten protecting my sleeping child from the outside!!
When I got home from work at noon today the roofer pulled me aside to talk me through all the damage. He said that this was much more rotting then what could have occurred in the last couple of years that we have noticed the leak. He thinks the water damage has been accumulating for at least 10 years! He said that I should probably contact the insurance company to see if the work would be covered because the labor, materials and expense of repairing all the damage would be extensive; oh wait I MEAN EXPENSIVE!
I tried very hard today to not let this whole thing upset me too much. As my dad would say, Shit happens! I chose instead to laugh it off so that I wouldn't cry. I am choosing to be glad that we found this now and not when the damage was much worse, when mold got into Sam's room or when the whole house caved in! Okay, that might have been an exaggeration!
Anyway, I am pissed that we have to spend more money on this stupid house on projects that do not make life easier or more fun (like a new beautiful, convenient kitchen). But I am praying that the insurance company will cover most of it.
So be on the lookout for pictures of the hole tomorrow. Unless it rains tomorrow, which since we now have a huge hole in our house I think it would be really awesome if it would rain!!

good stuff

Okay, first of all I WAS THAT CLIENT.
When Chris got home I went out with him to get the run down of the progress with the roofer. When he was finished and told us he would be leaving I asked him to ask his men to be more careful around my daffodils! I couldn't believe the words were really coming out, but they matter to me and make me smile and I do not want them smashed. So I did it. He was very understanding, apologetic and said if the guys were not respectful he would put buckets over the flowers to be sure that they did not get ruined.

Now on to the good stuff.
Sam has a new found love for scooting across the kitchen floor on her belly. It is so cute.


She also seems to enjoy spinning.




I also forgot that there were more picture of the weekend on my camera from last weekend. Some cute ones of Sam and picture that capture what the adults did most of the weekend (when we were kid free!), majority of the pictures were not postable, meaning that my friends and husband would have killed me if I had not deleted them. I did save a GREAT one of Holly just in case she doesn't get around to posting the pictures that she took...blackmail!

I want to be picky!

I want to be THAT client. I want to be THAT women that goes out of her house to complain to the roofers about the damage that they have done to my flowers, gardens and yard.
We are getting a new roof this week and because of on and off rain it is taking much longer than I had expected. The pounding is driving me nuts! I swear they are jumping from one level to the other, dropping tools on the roof as loud as they can and just plain stomping around simply for the joy of driving me, the dog and my non-napping child CRAZY! We live in a tri-level which means that every floor has at least some portion of roof directly above it; I cannot go anywhere to get away from the noise! So needless to say I am just a little irritated today and then I go out to see my daffodils bent over, smashed, and my hostas that have not even really come out of the ground yet (just the VERY tips) totally destroyed. Spring is just starting to come here and one of my greatest joys is watching the green plants bring new life to my brown and dreary yard. They have taken that joy and smashed it!
I also have to say that spending money on a new roof has to be the most annoying home improvement to have to spend money on. It's not like we really get to enjoy it, or show it off, or even look at it and say "wow, that just looks really nice!". They are shingles; they were there before and will look pretty much exactly the same. I suppose next winter when we don't have water running into the kitchen and also soaking a small portion of Sam's carpet I will appreciate the new roof but right now I am just annoyed at the whole process.
When I went outside to let the dog out and let Sam walk around a bit the roofer came over and told me that they would definitely be working all day tomorrow (awesome!), depending on the weather they would probably be working on Saturday (WHAT?) and then most likely would be back on Monday (HOLY SHIT, you mean I have three more days of this?)!

I appreciate what they are doing but it would really be much better if they could do it a bit quieter.

friends+kids+gorgeous weather = exhausted Monday morning

You know you had a great weekend when the alarm goes off and there is not one ounce of energy in your body that wants to pull you up off the bed to go get the kid that is yelling for you in the next room and get moving for the day. We had so much fun, played hard, sang to a game on the Wii way too much and loved every minute of having so many people in our house. Unfortunately we had an unexpected plumbing issue (I guess plumbing problems are never really expected!) which meant that the fun Mexican dinner I had planned for Saturday night turned into order pizza because I had no kitchen sink or dish washer. Hard to feed 11 people when you have to wash all the dishes by hand in your laundry room! I felt like a complete failure of a host but they were all great sports about it and the pizza worked out fine.
Sam loved having other kids in the house and was just enthralled with the older girls. I was also excited that she never showed an ounce of jealousy when I was holding Bryce, the adorable little man that reminded me just how much fun babies are!!
Okay, just a few pictures from the weekend. Not too many but hopefully Holly will be posting pictures soon and I can direct you all to more cute pics on her blog!! (better get those pictures up Holly you wouldn't want to disappoint the three people that read this blog! HA!)

Good morning!

Hello Friday Morning! You arrived way too early this morning when my brain decided to turn on and would not turn back off. We are having friends come to visit this weekend so of course I was thinking about all the things that I needed to get done before they get here.
My mind was also thinking about work, YUCK! At 5:00am I do not want to be thinking about emails that I need to respond to, mass mailings that need to go out and our Fall Conference that is in OCTOBER! Who lays awake worrying about something that it six months away. Only crazy people. I am a crazy person.
I am working hard today to get the house clean. Which really doesn't bother me; it is one of the things that I like about having people come to visit is that my house gets a complete overhaul. By 2:00 this afternoon it will be vacuumed, dusted, bathrooms cleaned, toys picked up and smelling like a dog DOES NOT live here!
I am excited for this weekend because we are having college friends come to town. Really, they are Chris's college golf buddies (are we too old to have buddies?). I knew them in college but was not really friends with them until after we graduated and we got married. And then to be even more honest I have not become close to Holly or Amber until the last couple of years I have really bonded with them through our blogs and facebook. Is that lame? Well who cares, I am excited to see all of our kids play together and get to hang out with people that went to Knox. I miss my college friends a ton so any chance I get to talk about "the good-ole-days" is great!

Well, gotta get back to work if I am going to make my 2:00 deadline!
Happy Friday! Hope you are having the same AWESOME weather that we are having and are looking forward to a great weekend!

best toy ever

Have you ever bought one of those musical cards? You know, the kind that plays music or sings when you open it. Well, I buy them for my nieces on occasion and recently we received our first one from my mom; an Easter card that sang the Easter Bonnet song. Sam LOVES that card. She doesn't seem to care about all the great hand-me-downs from my sister that were in the box, the awesome wooden animals that my mom sent (she has actually played with those a few times, but not nearly as much) nope, all she wants is that singing card. Although it is great to see her sit and entertain herself for a bit I must also admit that I am getting VERY sick of the Easter Bonnet song. So, if you need something to distract your child with for a while buy a singing card but get ready to hate whatever song that card plays!

Happy Easter!

This was an interesting holiday for us because I wanted to stay in town to be able to go to the church that we are trying to get more comfortable with but that meant that we couldn't travel to be with family. But we did our best to celebrate this wonderful day and make it fun for our family.
It began with an early morning poopy wake-up...awesome! But after that it greatly improved.
Sam loved her Easter basket and all the goodies that she got (puzzle, new barrettes, an animal for her farm, a new cd and an Easter book). But even more than that she loved walking around outside picking up Easter eggs to put into her basket! I wouldn't really call it an Easter Egg Hunt since Chris just placed the eggs out in the middle of the yard (and then when I complained that they were too far apart, that it was going to take too long and I was cold, he started kicking them toward her to make it go faster!!) but she loved it anyway.
Then we went to the church pancake breakfast to support the youth group. Sam ate her weight in sausage! Then church. They sang the Alleluia chorus which was WONDERFUL; I ususally only get to hear that on Christmas Eve at Emmanuel (my home church in St. Louis), so getting to hear it today was great. I sang loudly from my seat in the pews and Sam was in awe of the music.
The rest of the day we spent bike riding, napping, yard work, laundry and then a GREAT picnic lunch (it was really like a middle of the afternoon meal, but whatever!).

So, since I know you wanted to see every moment of our holiday...here you go!
She hated her new dress shoes and tried many times to tear them off of her feet.


Our picnic and fun at the park. We went to a place that has a frisbee golf course, mountain biking trails, hiking trails and downhill ski slopes. We went and explored the ski slopes now that they have no snow.
This is a Sandhill Crane that Polly decided she would try and chase down...she didn't catch it and ended up in the pond covered in muck! Sam at the bottom of the ski slope that we walked down.

Chris and Sam throwing tennis balls for Polly. Our Easter picnic spot!
Overall we had a wonderful day. Hope you all had a Happy Easter Holiday.

meal times suck!

Alright moms out there...I NEED HELP!
My daughter has become horrible at meal times. She is learning how to use silverware. If I put the food on the fork/spoon and then hand it to her she is pretty good at getting it in her mouth, when she feels like it. Sometimes the food gets flung across the room, sometimes the food gets rubbed into her hair and sometimes it gets thrown back at me. I can only handle playing the odds with the silverware on occasion; sometimes I just need her to eat a good dinner and NOT make a huge mess. But she doesn't like to be fed really anymore, if silverware is involved she wants to be holding it and doing it herself. If I try to force her to eat by me feeding her she flings her arms around and makes an even bigger mess. She also does not like to eat with her hands that much anymore and this method still makes a huge mess because no matter how much I discipline she continues to throw food on the floor (and right now she takes whole HUGE hand fulls and shoves them down inside her high-chair). So, right now after a 20 minute battle or so I am so frustrated and she is so disgustingly filthy that I give up, clean her off through her screams (for whatever reason she HATES to have her hands and face wiped) and take her out of the chair even though she has not gotten much of a meal.
I want her to continue growing but if this doesn't get better I am seriously considering going back to bottles and formula!!
WHAT DO I DO?

learned something new!

snake, slide and a sacrifice

What a great couple of days we have had. The weather is getting better here finally and we had a lot of fun stuff going on.
This weekend we went to a great surprise birthday party, a family fun fair kind of event, watched basketball with great friends and were able to spend time outside. Good days all around. The camera did not come out as much as I had hoped but we did get a few fun pictures.

Loved that the University let the Herpetology society bring the animals to the family fair for the kids to see. Yes, that is a snake that Sam is petting and yes, we washed hands afterward!
This is Sam hanging out on the slide not knowing exactly what to do now. We discovered the Central Wisconsin Children's Museum (they were partly hosting the family event) and it is much cooler than I had known! Lots of great indoor climbing stuff and good hands on activities for the kids.
Yes one of the games for the kids was throwing taped up toilet paper rolls into fake toilets! So funny. Friends came with us and Ethan, their son, was actually old enough to play the games. This was the one game that I pretty much forced Sam to play. She picked a duck! Wohoo!

And after a long morning of playing, Sam was ready for lunch and a nap.
Now for the sacrifice...
Remember that adorable squawking chick that Sam was throwing around in the video from the previous post? POLLY ATE IT! Oh yeah, the head is totally gone! The sad part is the poor thing still made the noise but looked just creepy so we had to throw it away. Sam was basically teasing Polly everytime she would throw it because we would always yell at Polly not to attack the chick. Well, Monday night while we had a babysitter Polly saw her window to go after the chick. No more chick. We have already asked Nana to try and find another one for Sam cause she loved that thing and it was so cute to see her play with it. Not sure if she will be able to find another one and really I am sure Sam doesn't even remember it now but I am sad that one of her first Easter presents was destroyed before Easter even got here!

new stuff

Sam playing ball with her dad...you will notice the natural born talent!!



Sam playing with Polly...they did this routine for quite a while today; they both love the new little chick that Nana gave Sam last weekend.




And here is Sam before we took Polly to the vet this morning. Notice her PERFECT pigtails! I mean really, I don't think I can do any better. It was pretty funny how much time I spent making sure she was cute and then I left the house wearing dirty jeans, a stained jacket and my Bears hat to cover up the unwashed and barely brushed hair. But who cares about me, my kid was adorable!

I did it

So I am going to take a moment to brag...
I made my pre-baby weight! FINALLY! It was a long road but the aerobics classes that I have been taking (thank you Traci and Stephanie for getting me off my butt!) are really working. And now when I can't go to class I don't feel as good, I miss it. This week has been rough because Sam has been sick, I have been tired, had to teach late and then tonight the instructor was a no show which means that I have not been able to do aerobics all week. It has sucked. I went running with Sam one day but it just wasn't the same. I tried to do my abs workout on my own, but it just wasn't the same.
So anyway, I am thrilled to death with what I have been able to accomplish. Even though my body does not look the same I am happy with where I am. It is a good feeling to like the way clothes fit again.
But the lesson that I learned from all of this is that after the next baby I will NOT give away all of my clothes thinking that I will never be able to wear them again because getting back to your original size IS POSSIBLE!

Okay, I promise tomorrow there will be pictures of Sam!