Christmas with the sickos

Not Christmas with the Kranks, because we have loads of holiday spirit around our house, except for Adam who practices great forebearance with my four Christmas trees, garland bestrung railings, and Christmas music turned on full blast the day after Thanksgiving. But definitely Christmas with the flu. For those of you who were wondering about flu shots this year. YES totally worth it--hindsight is 20/20. And I was just informed by last night's NBC nightly news that this years vaccine matches up perfectly with the active flu strains running amok among the populous. AWWW, now you tell me! I lost my bet against the Russian roulette of flu season this year. So, I have been sick for three, count them 3, weeks of December. Not little hack, hack, runny nose sick either. But full on can't breathe, can't move, can't taste anything I put in my mouth sick. The kind of sick where you desperately want to sleep, but can't seem to get comfortable enough and then you find yourself drifting off during episodes of cartoons at 9 a.m. with your kids sitting on your lap. Aww, sleep at last!! To make matters even more fun, all three of our children came down with it on December 23rd. So Christmas morning at our house was not filled with the shrieks and squeals of excited anticipation being gratified, but rather a fairly lethargic, quiet affair punctuated by hacking coughs and noses being blown. I knew that in a few days they would recognize their gifts and begin playing with them, but at the moment No. In fact, we opened all our presents, Adam took us into the kitchen and fed us something (tasteless), then we all climbed upstairs and back into our respective beds. How pathetic is that? Brayden, who seems to have a fairly tough little immune system, was one of the first to recover and so kept Adam occupied while the rest of us spent most of the Christmas weekend in a drug-induced haze. Did I mention that Adam was the only one to get a flu shot and therefore was not ill and became the official nurse? He even made up a batch of homemade chicken noodle soup; very chunky and delicious. What a guy!

Now it's been a week since Christmas and the kids have pretty much recovered. Sabrina still has a cough, she has medication from her doctor to help her deal with that. And I, being seven months pregnant, seem to be somewhat immuno-compromised and therefore weaker than normal and still sick. To add insult to injury Adam came down with a head cold. I think it's all part of the plan. We were supposed to travel to Washington to visit Grandma the week after Christmas, but being sick we decided against it. Good thing, I guess, because a series of nasty snowstorms came through that week and we probably would have been trying to drive through snow-filled passes instead of hunkered down in our beds. But so much for a nice, restful Christmas vacation.

One great highlight of all this sickness: I was so ill I lost three pounds over the holidays! HA!! All that junk food was unappetizing because I couldn't taste it.

To recap: We had a nice, quiet Christmas. Everbody got what they wanted and we spent a lot of our time just hanging out together. Sweet.

Halloween 2010

Although many things have happened in our life over the past few months we failed to post them here. At any rate let me tell you about the past couple weeks. Today, we decided it was time to take down the trampoline for the winter. As Wendy and I were in the backyard we sent the girls to decorate the front door with little pumpkins. All of a sudden we hear a thump and Brayden (who was supposed to be taking a nap) crying. As we ran to the front of the house we quickly discovered what the fuss was about.

Braden had pushed the screen out of his bedroom window and took a head dive to the ground - 8 feet below! Wendy and I both said quick prayers in our hearts and checked him over. Considering we have a concrete flower box under his window we were extremely concerned. We count it as a miracle that he has nothing more than a couple bruises (and a whopper of a goose egg) on his head. Can you imagine, falling 8 feet from a window and falling through a bush with no sprained wrists, broken bones, scratches or even a concussion? We put an ice pack on his head and knelt down and said a humbling prayer of thanks. Brayden must have something important in his life to be spared such a fall.

Brayden decided it was time to take a nap at that point. We checked on him regularly to make sure he was still doing well. Miracles do happen. Quite humbling when they happen so close.

Since our neighborhood was doing its annual trunk-or-treat we dressed up and shared our breadsticks at the potluck. Here are some pictures.

Brayden is butt naked which is why he is not standing - potty training in progress.

Since we are sharing here you might as well know we are expecting an additional boy to the above photo round about March 1, 2011.

And Murphy strikes again. . .

Adam mentioned that we just bought a tramp for the kids. They LOVE it! The wonderful thing about having a tramp in the backyard is that when I tell the kids to stay in the backyard they actually obey! Phenomenal! For this reason alone it was worth the money, though we still got a great deal on it. It pays to shop around and watch ksl classifieds.

But life goes on and "Murphy" paid us a visit. (Not meaning any disrespect to my wonderful and adored cousins) For the past year or two I had noticed a hard-water bloom on the foundation wall of the house under the kitchen sink. So we watched it to see if it grew or subsided, it didn't do either. Then two weeks ago when my parents were visiting, my dad rested a hand against the wall of the downstairs guest bedroom while he put his shoes on and the wall just collapsed under him. Oooohhhh, that can't be good. Yeah, it wasn't.

We had a plumber over last week and he diagnosed the problem. We had two hairline cracks in the kitchen drain pipe. And apparently they're pretty old judging by the ruined insulation, wet drywall, and hard water deposits inside the wall. We had a few bids done by reclamation companies who treat mold, and a few calls into our insurance agent, to discover that the cost for said repairs is going to be at least over $1000 out of pocket, possibly more. One bid came in at over $2000. And mold repairs are not covered by most major insurers--those *%^#$*@ insurance companies and their fine print.

I'm reminded of an episode from "The King of Queens" where the Heffernan's find mold in the basement that would cost $12,000 to repair. And apparently Doug was informed of said problem by the agent/seller before closing on the property. When Kari confronts Doug about his "stupidity" he responds with the excuse that mold sounded like a good thing because mold makes excellent gourmet cheeses!

So now, I'm cursing the trampoline and the money we spent on it. Though honestly we didn't pay anywhere near that amount and we did promise the kids we would get them one when our family reached certain milestones. But it always works that way! Just when you save up and buy that more expensive item you're so excited about, "Murphy" sideswipes you with an emergency that hits you in the gut. Not that I'm complaining, it really could be a lot worse. Fortunately, none of us have symptoms from toxic mold, so I'm hopeful that the repair won't be too bad. Here's to calling in the plumber sooner than later.

In a Jam . . .

Our local grocer had a spectacular sale on red raspberries and blackberries so we picked up a couple flats and made about 18 pints of freezer jam. Some raspberry, some blackberry, and some mixed. All of them are good, but the blackberry is outstanding. I never realized how good blackberries are. We are looking forward to the raspberries in our yard to ripen. I can see that they are loaded this year.

By the way, this is what our backyard looked like a couple weeks ago. I will take another picture in a few weeks. With all of the rain lately our garden has been growing quite well. We also added a trampoline at the kids repeated request.

Where we've been

We put our rental house on the market for sale or rent (cue the Boxcar Willie music) this past week. We have had two different families in that house over the past 4 years so it has needed a little sprucing up. Fresh paint, a good washing, new carpet and some flowers make a house just like new. At least we hope so. We haven't minded having renters except when they fail to pay or leave the house unclean. Of course, Wendy and our friend Malissa have cleaned every last inch of that house now. It is amazing how much dust can accumulate over a short period of time. I guess we need to stipulate in our next contract that your cookbook must have the deep fried recipies removed prior to moving in to the house. You would think people consider oil an essential vitamin.

At any rate, here are some pictures of the place.

http://www.utahrealestate.com/949232

Busy Busy Busy. . .

What's been going on the last two months? Well, let me tell you! Christmas was divine, we spent it quietly at our house, enjoyed Christmas dinner (Adam's favorite ham), and played and relaxed. We spent time trying out the new sleds the kids got. And did some fix it projects. In fact, Christmas Eve Adam had all the equipment to replace some baseboard and re-tack some carpet in one of the basement bedrooms that had leaking water last summer. He pulled the baseboard off and noticed some mold growing so he started cutting out the bad drywall. The further he went the worse it got until he had pulled out the bottom half of one whole wall and ripped out all the insulation. Yikes. The verdict is that it looks like we may need to have someone come in and replace all the studs before we can put the wall back together. Adam suspects that water from the roof or sprinklers is pooling against the house which means that he will find himself digging all the dirt away from that foundation wall this summer. Just please don't disturb my favorite lilac bush!! The damage may have extended itself to the bedroom next door meaning that my lovely green guest room might get torn apart as well.

Anyway!! Since that project had to be put on hold I put Adam to work painting our family room a lovely light brown. It is not as dark as the kitchen but in the same color family so it really is pleasant. It makes the whole room brighter. We spent Christmas night painting the family room. Had it all knocked out in about 3 hours. And no taping off. (Man we're good!)

Fast forward to January. We started doing some initial research/preparation for selling our rental house this spring. We know it's not the height of the market but we know it's the right time to do this deal. We spent about three weekends in a row putting tile in the entry and one of the bathrooms. There is more work to do but it's easier to do some things without tenants underfoot. We have scheduled new carpet to be installed the first week of March and plan to have the house ready to go on the market a week later. This has been such a HUGE (and I mean HUGE!!!) learning and growth experience for us. We've learned the most from our mistakes and are grateful that we did enough things right through sheer naivete to keep us from being wiped out like many friends of ours. I recently read "The Richest Man in Babylon" which I have had in my library for years but never got around to reading it. Wow!! The reasons we succeeded in this investment are all outlined in that book. Nice to be able to finally identify what those are! Here's a couple that were pertinent: 1)Set aside ten percent of your monthly income for emergencies, 2)Live within your means and use a budget, 3)When investing don't take on more risk than you have emergency funds to cover, 4) Never invest in things you don't understand or with people who are unscrupulous or naive about the investment. There's more but I don't want to put anyone to sleep.

Now onto February. Our brand new (to us) van started having problems a few weeks ago. Since it's so technologically advanced, the security system is tied to a microchip in the engine deactiving it when the alarm is active. For some reason the alarm has been going haywire whenever we unlock the door meaning that we couldn't start the car. Up til yesterday we've been able to shut off the alarm eventually (after ten minutes of humiliation in a parking lot) and start the car. But not that day. We finally had to disconnect the battery, call a tow truck and have it hauled to a dealership to have the blasted thing repaired. This morning they called and said that the problem was an after-market car alarm that a previous owner had installed. It was messing with the original wiring and causing it to go off at random times. They removed it and the car worked like a charm. YEAH!!! So here's a bit of advice to anyone out there who is thinking about installing some nifty gadget to their car. DO NOT PIMP OUT YOUR CAR! YOU WILL LIVE TO REGRET IT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WALMART PARKING LOT WITH THREE KIDS WHO ARE TIRED OF WAITING FOR TWO HOURS!

Stay tuned for more CREZY adventures . . . !