Leaking Again!

The weather has been above freezing and slowly melting, so the roads are nice and clear, except what's piled up on the sides. I noticed a wet spot at the bottom of the fireplace bricks near the front door. I got lower to see up close and the floor was wet also. I looked up at the ceiling but didn't see anything that looked wet. I called Curtis and while on the phone I checked Jack's room and the family room to see if there was any water leaking through the foundation. There was a lot of water melted from the snow in the front yard the day before, but it had soaked into the dirt. I also checked under the stairs but didn't really see anything that looked for sure wet. After going back upstairs again I looked at the ceiling above the wet spot and then I saw a drip come down about 5-6 inches away from the corner. We thought we had gotten this fixed last year. Ugh! Curtis had to come home from work and cut a small piece of ceiling out to air it out and check how much had gotten wet. He also got on the roof outside to check it and it looks like it might be coming from the North end of the fireplace by a valley. I don't think anything was done in that area when it got fixed last year. Fortunately, we caught it early and we didn't have to cut out a huge piece. It's weird because it's fine when it rains. It only leaks when we have a bunch of snow.

The spot on the bricks. I was so confused as to how it got wet before I saw the dripping.

Made a little mess.

He pulled out the wet insulation and broke off wet sheetrock. It was piled on top of a towel. 

And now we have a hole in our ceiling again, but at least it's small.

There isn't much else we can do until the weather warms up but at least it can air out and dry now. I haven't seen any drips since Curtis cut the ceiling. The snow on the roof is pretty much all gone today and Curtis had cleared it away from the chimney while he was up there yesterday.

After I cleaned up the floor, I decided to use the rag I used for the floor to go finally wipe off the speckles of texture that were still on our bedroom door and bathroom door in our master bedroom. There's still some on the closet door as well but my arms and fingers were tired of doing that after the other two doors and doorways. One reason I thought to do that was because Curtis keeps talking about needing to paint those doors. I haven't quite got in the mode of wanting to paint again yet, but wiping it down is a step in the that direction. February seems to be the month to start painting the last two years in a row. Painting our house in Idaho and then painting our basement here a year ago. I'm looking forward to relaxing a little more this year.

Curtis had mentioned his concerns about the weight of the heavy snow damaging the pool canvas cover by stretching it and that the pool has too much water in it already. So, I decided, even after doing my morning workout (before Curtis came home to check the leak), and then wiping the doors, that I was going to go scoop as much of the snow away from the pool as I could. I was able to scrape some of it off of the cover as well, carefully. That snow (or should I say slush) was so wet and heavy and it made me pretty tired, but not as tired as I thought I would have been. It took about 1-1 1/2 hours. I think my exercising might be helping, even if it's not that much. I made sure to stretch a lot after shoveling as well. It felt good to get that done. These pictures were taken yesterday and today it's nice to see the cement around the pool starting to look dry. The pool is still very full and maybe after the snow finishes melting, Curtis will drain some with a hose. He had to do it once already. To think, last year when we opened our pool, there wasn't enough water in the pool for the pool guy to vacuum it up in one go. This year we have way too much water. There's been a lot of rain and snow this year. We don't want to leave it too full because we're already worried about the liner in the pool that is peeling up in a couple of places. Hopefully it won't cause too much damage. We can't afford a new liner this year.

I was almost halfway done when I took a break and got a picture.

All done and cleared away.

Our next activity days is on Monday and Sister Gale had said the girls wanted to do some sewing. The problem is trying to do something simple enough that we'll have time in our 1-hour slot for so many girls to finish the project. I looked up ideas for simple sewing projects for kids and found a cute heart shaped hand warmer project that uses fabric and rice. There's also a little tag that comes with it that says "Hand Warmers, warm hands, warm heart (Heat in the microwave 30 seconds)." Sister Gale liked the idea and so we're going with it. She texted me this afternoon to see if I could come help cut out the hearts. I was over there for a couple of hours. It feels good to be helping more since I'm one of the leaders now. It's getting me excited to try more crafty things with my girls here at home also. 

Officially Celebrated!

My birthday gifts finally arrived and so we officially celebrated my birthday on Monday. After Curtis got home from work and we ate dinner, he took the girls to the store with him to get a few things for my birthday. They came home with a balloon, a small carrot cake, three flavors of ice cream, and a couple of gifts the girls helped pick out. We considered that our FHE.

We didn't have a "4" to go with the "1". We joked about doing "31" or "51" but I said lets just use the "1" by itself because I'm number 1 right? LOL

Getting all of the kids to pose is still a chore. Ha ha.

Each of the kids took turns sitting by me while I opened a gift. This one is a new phone case that has a metal flip stand on the back so I can stand my phone up. It's plum colored.

The girls helped pick this out. It's a 2,000 piece balloon puzzle. Yikes! I have my work cut out for me but I'm excited for the challenge.

I love me some dark chocolate with almonds. Good choice for birthday snack. Love my silly Jack.

Curtis picked this out. Well, he picked out most of the gifts, of course. "Raising my Husband is Exhausting"

Finally, a new nice watch that I can wear on Sundays or special occasions. I've been wanting one for a long time. 

Alice made sure I got a picture with all of my gifts because that's what I do with the kids. Love this girl!

I was happy to finally celebrate my birthday officially. However, this week, my family sabotaged me for the biggest loser competition with cake, ice cream and chocolate! Well, I'm deciding I don't really care. I felt like I was never going to win anyway. I'm still trying to be good but at the same time I'm enjoying my treats. 

Also, earlier that day, the Relief Society President dropped by to give me a late birthday gift. Because of the weather last week, it was late. She's also one of the friends we invited over on New Year's Eve (Megan Benedict). She decided to have a Bunco night on Feb 2nd for a girl's night out and invited me. I told her I have the Bunco stuff from when I played in Idaho and so she is borrowing it. Glad I kept it and that it will finally get used again! I'm looking forward to playing again. It's been several years, so I don't remember how to play but I know it's simple enough.

Here's what the Relief Society gave me. Such a cute idea!

And here's the card I got from Laverne and Dad. I don't know which day it arrived because I haven't been checking the mail every day because of the weather. I love the cute cards she makes.

 

It was a pretty good birthday this year!

Snow and Ice!

Thursday afternoon is when our big snowfall decided to come. It started while the kids were in school in the early afternoon and snowed almost non-stop all night. I didn't measure but we probably got about 5-6 inches by Friday morning. Thankfully, we found out Thursday night that they were canceling school on Friday. Perfect timing since it's the weekend! I warned the kids that we were going to be shoveling the driveway and sidewalks in the morning. Curtis had braved the wintry roads to drive to Moses Lake for a work trip, so he wasn't there. Before we could get out there to shovel, our neighbor, Paul, beat us to it with his snow blower. I was so thankful and I'm sure the kids were too! It took him about 30 minutes or so to get our driveway, walkway and sidewalks done. It would have taken us hours to do it by hand with shovels. I had to shovel a little bit of snow anyway and it was heavy! We have awesome neighbors on both sides of us!

This is what it looked like Thursday evening. The girls and Milo were having lots of fun.

This is looking out our front window Friday morning. All tracks covered and you can't see where the grass meets the driveway.

And the back porch. All of the footprints were covered from the night before where the girls and Milo played.

Our neighbor, Paul, snow blowing our driveway.

Standing in our front yard and ready to do some sledding!

I really didn't want to, nor did I think I would need to drive that day but of course Jack needed a ride to a friends' house so he could go sledding. I drove the truck instead of the van. After I dropped him off, I tried to get out of that neighborhood and got stuck when trying to go up hill. So, I tried to back up and turn around to go the other way but got stuck again.  I knew I had 4-wheel drive but wasn't sure how to get it on exactly. I was able to talk to Curtis on the phone and he helped me figure it out. Thank goodness! As soon as I got it switched, I was able to get right out.

I had told Charlotte earlier in the week that maybe she should invite her friend Ashlee over to hang out on the weekend. Well, with it being a snow day, Charlotte wanted to do some sledding or playing in the snow with her. Her youngest sister is friends with Alice. Since they are friends from the ward (McShanes) it turned out to be a family thing, at least for them. We walked across the street to the middle school because they had some hills to sled on. Our neighbors who live behind us happened to be walking over to do the exact same thing. So, Charlotte got to sled with two friends, Ashlee and Stella. 

Sledding on our own little hill while waiting for friends to come over. We'll never have to build a slide in our driveway again!

Milo was loving the snow, but I had him on a long leash. He made me drop my phone once while I was trying to take pictures.

Sledding at the middle school.

I let Milo run free here, but he kept getting in the way and nearly getting hit all of the time. Silly puppy! I left the long leash on him and sometimes he would pick it up and carry it in his mouth. It was cute.

I didn't get as many photos as I would have liked at the middle school because I was busy taking videos and just enjoying watching the kids. After playing in the snow for about an hour I invited the McShanes over for hot cocoa and cider. They accepted and came to hang out for a while longer.  Curtis even made it home and walked over to the middle school right before we were done sledding. When I say "we", I mean the girls. Ha ha. By the end of playing in the snow, Alice's boots had slid off twice and on the 2nd time I discovered that she had a hole in the bottom of one. Those boots were getting worn out and falling apart on the inside anyway, so it was time to get new boots for her. Alice and her friends had also gone to our backyard ahead of everyone else and Alice climbed our tall chain link fence and ended up tearing her snow pants up. Time for new pants also! I don't know why she was climbing the fence. Saturday afternoon I did some looking at Goodwill and Walmart for boots and pants. I was lucky to find any her size, but I did find some boots at Goodwill and pants at Walmart. It was slim pickings but we got what he needed. 

The boys also had a D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) game session on Saturday. It's the first one they've done in months, so they made it a long one. They played for about 6 hours I think (11-5).

Saturday morning, we were asked to chaperone the youth stake dance that night but a little while later a message was sent out that it was cancelled due to dangerous driving conditions. There had been a little melting of snow during the day but then by evening it started to rain, freezing rain, and that equaled ice. By the time we were going to bed Saturday night, we got news that our church meetings for Sunday would be cancelled as well. The kids didn't find out until Sunday morning after we fixed them a nice breakfast of bacon, scrambled eggs, hashbrowns, toasted bagels and orange juice. Then we warned them that we were still going to have church at home and told them to be dressed and ready by 10:30. We met in the front living room where Charlotte gave her talk that she was going to give in primary and then I taught them "The Iron Rod" from the hymn book. Curtis then led a little discussion, and we all took turns reading verses from 1 Nephi 10. 

After our home church was done, we all went to have some free time. That's when I finally did my last two blog posts before this one. The girls played a matching game with Curtis and the boys took naps. No surprise there! After dinner that evening, we wanted to play a game and it ended up being hide and seek in the dark. We haven't played that game since before we moved, and it was a lot of fun! Milo sometimes gave people away though, ha ha. One time he hid with me behind the recliner but then he took off when he heard Curtis coming. I was found pretty quick that time. After that game, we settled down at the dining room table to play Life. Garrett was done and went to his room though. I didn't really want to play Life and since we had too many players, I doubled up with Alice. She did most of the work because I had a word game I was playing on my phone. The kids like to help me with that game also. It made for an unusually fun weekend!

Snow for My Birthday!

Sure enough, the snow started to come on Wednesday. just in time for my birthday. The boys also had their early release and Alice had a dentist appointment. I only drove when I had to and normally the girls ride the bus home but to make sure they would get home in time to go to Alice's appointment, I picked them up that day. I wasn't sure if the bus would get slowed down by the snow. I actually do not remember how much snow we got on Wednesday, but I know it was enough to be a little slippery and slushy.

The first half of my birthday was actually pretty boring and uneventful. Curtis and the girls remembered it was my birthday and said something before going to work and school, but of course the boys forgot and didn't say anything. The most that happened during the day was picking up the boys from school early and then reading birthday wishes on Facebook. We hadn't even talked about my birthday and if/when we would celebrate it. Since it landed on a Wednesday, I just assumed we wouldn't do anything because the boys go to mutual. When I left to go get the girls, someone had brought over a round loaf of bread (I think it is artisan) and Garrett didn't know who it was that dropped it off and there was no card or anything. I didn't know who to thank for it, but it was yummy! I'm pretty sure it was someone from church but just not sure who.

I then took Alice to her dentist appointment to get a couple more fillings done. Once again, she was a star patient and the type every doctor wishes to have. We still have one more appointment to finish up getting her cavities filled.

Chilling out watching Bluey again.

After we got home, I was trying to decide which meal to do for dinner but then Curtis called and said he wanted to take me out for a bite to eat that night. He would skip mutual, but the boys could still go while the girls and we would go to dinner. I also got a surprise delivery of Crumbl Cookies from my in-laws again. They did that last year. I told the kids we would wait until after we went to dinner and after the boys got back from mutual before eating them. The funny thing is, my mother-in-law is also doing the biggest loser challenge with us, and we joked that she is trying to sabotage us so that she can win. I talked about freezing them for later but of course I did not. I wanted them and of course I ate more than I should have. The sabotage worked! lol 😂 Over the next couple of days I kept telling myself that I could because it's my birthday. 

It so happened that the girls' school was doing a fundraiser with a restaurant that night at a nicer burger place called Hops N Drops so that's where I decided we should go. Because it was our first visit to their restaurant, they gave us a free basket of potato chips with dip. They were so good that I asked for the chips as my side and so did Alice.

Charlotte is trying to eat healthier also, so she ordered fruit instead of fries or chips to go with her chicken strips. Curtis had a bunless burger and salad.

I ate a buffalo chicken wrap and chips. They were good! I had to stop myself after eating one of the halves. I had the 2nd half the next day for lunch. Alice had a corndog and chips.

Since the boys weren't there with us, we told them we would pick them up a burger and fries on the way home. This restaurant was a bit expensive, so we got their food at McDonald's. They didn't complain. They also got a soda with it. We then sang happy birthday without candles and ate some cookies. Curtis wasn't ready to celebrate officially since my gifts hadn't arrived yet from Amazon. The weather must be delaying them. So eventually we'll celebrate it officially but at least we had a little celebration already.

The girls also took time to make me some cute cards for my birthday. I love how they want to do things like this.

The card on the left is from Alice, the one on the right is from Charlotte. My favorite colors right now are yellow and purple, so they both made cards with those colors.

Here's the insides of the cards.

And the backs of the cards. Charlotte was so nice to add pictures of herself and Alice.

This is another one that Alice made.

This is the back of that one. She found this picture in the garbage at church a few weeks ago. I'm glad she saved it and used it!

Charlotte made this yellow snowflake.

Charlotte took my picture and wrote on it. I have never actually done that before, so it was cool that she figured it out on her own.

The first half of my birthday was not so good, but the 2nd half made up for it with all of the surprises and I'm glad I didn't have to cook on my birthday. I also had a phone call from one of my best friends, Monica Wilmot. We try to call each other every year on our birthdays. It was actually her call that boosted my spirits before Curtis had called. So, it still ended up being a good birthday. How am I 41 years old already?!

Friends, Food and Activity Days

One of our goals this year is to go out on more double dates with friends so that we can get to know them better. With that in mind, we made plans to go to dinner with Bronson and Wendy Brown from our ward. I specifically wanted to go to Applebee's this time because it was close to my birthday, and I wanted the Sizzlin Butter Pecan Blondie.  It's a blonde brownie that comes out on a hot plate with ice cream and pecans on top. It was so good! I was willing to share but Wendy and Curtis only took one bite each and Bronson declined, so I got the rest. Happy early birthday to me! I did really good on my eating that day so that I could have my dessert. 

Wendy and Bronson Brown. He is a counselor in our bishopric. They are also one of the of the people who gave us a boat ride last summer. Super nice people!

One nice thing about having a glass screen door on our front door is that even on super cold days, we can open our front door but leave the glass door closed when the sun is directly coming through the glass, and it will help warm our house up. The girls, Sage and Milo all hung out on the stairs after we got home from church last Sunday. 

Reading their new books that someone gave away at church.

Milo loves to sit on the stairs even when there's no sun.

Monday was my first official day as an activity day leader. There are now 3 leaders which is great because there are so many girls! We have 15 on the list and most of them came on Monday. A few of them brought friends, so we had our hands full, but it was fun. Since no one had school because of the holiday we made it an hour longer because they never seem to have time to finish everything they try to do. We started this activity out with the girls painting their own picture frames where they will hang little affirmation notes. On the back they attached an envelope with more notes so they can switch them out. While the frames were drying, we played a game. Curtis helped me make a "Get to Know You Bingo" game. They had to go around the room and ask the other girls if they did something that was written on the Bingo card and then write their name down for whoever has. After they got a Bingo and got at least 5 different names on the paper they won a treat. When the game was done, we all went to the kitchen to have a snack and then I grabbed one of the Bingo sheets and just went over each one on the paper to see who had done each thing by raise of hand. We had some extra time, so the girls went back to the gym to play some other games.

Here's Alice with her frame.

And Charlotte with her frame.

I'm not sure what we're going to do for our next activity but that will be a week from tomorrow. I'm sure Sister Gale has ideas already and I'll have to ask her. 

Tuesday the kids were back to school, and I saw in the forecast that we would be getting snow, possibly 5-8 inches by the weekend. The first snow was supposed to arrive on Wednesday, so I decided I better get a dinner menu made and go shopping. I was able to go after the boys got home and before it got dark. I went to Costco first and then to WinCo. It feels so much better when I have a dinner menu made and shopped for instead of winging it all of the time. And I feel better to have food ready for when the weather gets bad, and I don't want to drive in it.

Winter is Here!

The new year has started off good. Our church time switched to 9am. While we enjoyed sleeping in last year, we both actually like having 9am church. We feel like we have so much more time afterwards to do things. We just have to make sure we get to bed early enough the night before. I decided that since we had so much time, I was going to do some baking for neighbors and friends since I didn't get to do it before Christmas. I haven't done this in years, so I decided to do the mini loaves of bread as gifts this year. Everyone loved that idea, even our Indian neighbor friends. We are going to get together with them soon hopefully. They are actually from India and their names are Harish and Rijuta. They live right across the street from us in the newer neighborhood and are super nice people. I made a dozen loaves but gave some families two because one just wouldn't be enough! I also made some big loaves for our family. I am enjoying baking again!

Sunday was a nice day. The sun was shining, and we took Milo on a long walk and stopped at the school track for a bit. I got a couple of cute pictures of him.

Curtis doing some training with him.

Charlotte and Alice did lots of reading in the Book of Mormon on their own Sunday afternoon. They must have been motivated by their teachers at church. Charlotte also drew a picture that she was quite proud of.

I finally got a picture of Alice wearing her other new outfit and had her wear it to school on Monday.

My mom (Marsha) said that she has been reading a really good book by Gordon B. Hinckley called "Standing for Something". I have heard of it before but never read it. I love Gordon B. Hinckley and decided I wanted to read it also. Walmart.com had a used copy that I got for $4 and it has a hard cover. I have been wanting to read something but most of our books are still boxed up in the garage because we don't have a bookshelf for them yet. We left the old bookshelf in our house we sold because we wanted a different one. So now I get to read this!

Wednesday morning, we woke up to snow and messages on our phones that school was going to have a two-hour delayed start. I think that was a good idea. The roads were a lot better waiting two hours. However, the boys were disappointed because their early release got canceled. They get out at 10:30 on early release days (usually once or twice a month). Because of the delayed start, they changed it to a regular school day. I let the kids sleep longer since the girls have been fighting coughs. They got bundled up before school and played in the snow with Milo. Curtis was awesome and shoveled the driveway and sidewalks before he went to work. It would have just melted off later but I was glad he did it since he usually doesn't because he's usually in such a hurry to get to work. The snow was mostly gone by the end of the day.

It looked like we got about 1-2 inches.

One bonus of living by a school is they scrape and sand the road in front of our house.

Playing in the backyard.

Now in the front yard while waiting for the bus.

Milo loves playing in and eating the snow! He found a stick and loved that too.

I have been going up and down on my diet and weight loss. Sometimes I do a good job at watching what I'm eating and then sometimes I don't. There are times I just need to force myself to eat healthy and then I'm glad I did. The other day I made a nice salad and even boiled some eggs to go on top and had a side of celery and peanut butter. I had planned to eat some leftover soup also but was full after the salad, so I stopped! One of my problems in the past is not stopping when I know I'm already full or satisfied. We only have a couple of weeks left in our weight loss group challenge, so Curtis and I are trying really hard now to be good so that we can reach our goals. We're both so close now. 

The temperatures did a crazy drop of over 20 degrees in one night on Thursday night. It was really windy on Thursday and then Friday started the freezing temps where the high was around 18 degrees! Today it was 0 degrees when I first woke up and I've only seen it get up to 10 degrees. Brrrrrrrr!!!!! It is so cold I have to wear lots of layers when going outside, which isn't unless I have to. And I had to make sure the girls dressed warm enough for school. I warned the boys but it's up to them how warm they dress. They don't go outside much at school. Thankfully, the school doesn't let kids go out to play if it's 20 degrees or less.

I was so stressed out all week because we had been planning to go to Nampa to attend Blake and Ellie's double wedding reception and we weren't sure what the weather was going to do. I kept looking at the traffic cameras on I-84 and the forecast. Some days the roads would look fine and other days it wouldn't. After hearing of another storm coming through over the weekend, I was really nervous about traveling. Curtis wasn't nervous and thought we'd be fine. I told him I didn't think we were prepared for winter driving, even in his 4-wheel drive truck. To ease my mind, he finally went and bought chains Wednesday night. We were planning to leave Thursday after school and then come home Saturday morning because we had other commitments here at home. Well, after seeing the news reports on the weather channel about this next winter storm coming through over the weekend and seeing the low temps predicted, we finally decided to pull the plug on this trip. It was a very difficult decision to make and I am so sad that we missed both of the weddings and now the reception. That's a new challenge with living in Washington, being farther away from Idaho and Utah family. I was relieved that we made this decision though and feel vindicated by seeing how the roads looked Thursday night and Friday. Also, Nampa got dumped with snow as well. I'm so glad we did not take the risk! 

Today, Curtis decided it was time to try out our fireplace downstairs because even though the temp is comfortable upstairs, it was still feeling a bit cold downstairs. I was nervous because I wasn't sure what to expect, hoping the fireplace was still in good use. So far, so good and we love the smell of burning wood! I haven't had a fire burning in a fireplace at home since I was a kid. It's kind of fun! We saw smoke coming out of our neighbor's chimney as well. Curtis says we still need to get an insert for the one upstairs.

Curtis also has been working on caulking the bathroom tub and finished up today. We're so glad to have that finished finally! He's been wanting to work on little things here and there and I just haven't felt that urge again yet. Maybe I'll get the urge to paint or something in the next month.

I was also officially sustained on Sunday to be an activity day leader for the girls. I will be helping Sister Gale. The girls are so excited that I'm one of their leaders, especially since Alice gets to join this year. The year the girls turn 8 is when they start. Her birthday is not until December but she still turns 8 this year. She's so happy she doesn't have to wait. Our first activity will be on Monday.