31 days in July

What a busy, busy month! I may be too tired to think in complete sentences... but somehow I can still count.

1 red-white-and-blue Independence Day parade

4 forts in Nana's living room

1 inspiring local homeschooling conference
6 fun afternoons at the park with friends

5 long-anticipated tickets to “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2.” (We took my dad and left Littlest with his Nana.)
1 lesson in leverage

3 parties to celebrate friends' birthdays
At least 20 games of chess, checkers, Battleship and Dinopoly

4 weekly cello and violin lessons
3 days (for the professional) to hang and finish the drywall

Lots and lots of 100-degree days
A dozen evenings at the pool

1 day to move our living and dining furniture into...
2 Uboxes while Scott refinishes the floors
1 teary farewell to dear friends moving to North Carolina

4 rooms to paint (including ceilings)
11 days of prepping and painting

3 cans of Behr satin Cornsilk
2 cans of Behr satin Rainwashed

2 cousins visiting from New York
3 delicious dinner invitations 
1 visit with friends to a children's museum

1 lesson in using a table saw for Eldest

3 days to lay the new tongue-and-groove floor in the kitchen and laundry room

14 days until Daddy goes back to work his easier paid job as a teacher

The Kitchen: Progress!

It's hard to believe it's been a full month since we started remodeling our kitchen.

It has been an arduous, tedious process. And since the chimney removal, it's also been mostly a one-man show -- definitely a labor of love by my Love, who has graciously refrained from reminding me repeatedly that this was not his idea.

In the last three weeks, Scott took out all the soffits...

He tore out the studs between the dining room, kitchen and pantry, making it one giant open room (temporarily)...

He removed the vinyl flooring and particle board subfloor. (It took 8 hours just to chisel the particle board out of the laundry room because of the way the last remodel was done!)

And then, while the boys and I were off at the beach, he got strep throat.

Between the 105-degree weather outside, the giant hole in the ceiling letting in the heat, and the constant dust, he definitely needed a break to rest. (This project makes teaching geometry to teenagers feel almost like a vacation.)

This weekend, after four weeks of peeling back layer after layer of old remodel and original structures, he finally crossed from demolition to construction!

He put in the first new wood to repair the old floor and subfloor, and he built the new wall above and below the new peninsula!!

This was a seriously momentous occasion! A turning point! A cause for celebration!

I've seen Scott get a new surge of energy and motivation for the project in the last few days, working longer hours after school, spurred on by the visual evidence of his efforts.

Both the subfloor and the old pine flooring need more repairing and levelling before the new flooring can go on top. He has to finish framing the new broom closet before the drywall can be done -- but, oh! Won't that be amazing to see?!

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual.

A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week.

A simple, special, extraordinary moment.

A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

The Kitchen: Date with a chimney

There's nothing like a good game of catch-the-brick to test the quality and strength of Trust in your marriage.

This afternoon, the boys went off to see Soul Surfer with friends, and then UberDad and I got intimate with an old chimney to work.

I held the flashlight while he chinked out a rough curve in the bottom of the chimney, which ends just above the space in those studs in the picture, about 7 feet above the floor. We suspect the hole originally led to a fireplace, furnace, or wood stove in the dining room, where the rubber trash bin is in the photo.

Once the bottom was cleared, I held the extension ladder, and Scott braved the 130-degree attic. Then I donned my respirator, took my place at the bottom of the chimney hole, and waited for the bricks to fall.

We were hoping they'd land in the trash bin, and many of them did -- except when they flew too far, bounced backward, or got stuck in the curve. Then I had to use a mallet to nudge out the brick before he could drop another. We got into a nice routine of mating calls... "Clear!" "Incoming!" "Hold on, it's stuck! ...Clear!" "Incoming!"

We were both sweaty and breathing hard through our respirators by the time we carried the last bricks out to the dumpster. Not your typical date. But certainly a trust-building one. Lucky us, we get to do it again tomorrow.

The Kitchen: A week's worth of demo

Last week was... somethin'. Crazy busy, exhausting, amazing.

Vacation Bible School wore me out every single day, and I fought a bad attitude for much of the week (and eventually realized I was PMSing). But I knew it would be worth it in the end, and it was. I got to be a blessing to some sweet, rowdy, special little kids, and they blessed me right back. I was so glad to see most of them at church again on Sunday!

We also celebrate several birthdays this week, including that our of very own Littlest boy, who turned five on Friday. My baby turned FIVE years old! He deserves his own post, don't you think?

The kitchen... well, let's just say that if demolition is supposed to be the fast and easy part of a remodel, this is going to be a really loooong project.


It took us most of the week just to get the cabinets out, between waiting for the plumber to come back twice, and having parties to plan and attend.

But on Saturday we could finally start knocking out some walls. The big boys were very excited to show off their kung fu strength.

And then... well, we found a little surprise...

A chimney, hidden in the wall above the old broom closet, and hanging a foot below the ceiling right above where I want to put the new bar. So very inconvenient.

It reaches through two ceilings (the newer 10-foot and the original 12-foot) through the attic just under the roof. That's a lot of bricks.

Removing it, brick by brick, is going to add a few more days to the project (and we're already behind), but we're keeping our spirits up! The electrician made some good progress today, so we'll just keep at it.

And when I say "we," I mostly mean Scott. I'm pretty good at sweeping up, carrying out trash, and staying on top of meals and laundry. But the physical labor is all his. Thanks, Love!

Sunday afternoon science: Bottle rocket!

Sometimes it's nice to do the fun things when Dad's home.

On Saturday, Scott and the boys got out the baking soda and vinegar "Meteor Rocket" kit my grandmother gave them for Christmas. He helped them cut out the balsa wood aft fins and attach them to the liter bottle in the kit, which also included a nose cone, a fuel tube, and a screw-in plug.




Yesterday, even Papa was around to join in for the trip to the park launching pad.

They measured out the baking soda into the tube, carefully poured in the vinegar into the bottle, inserted the tube, gave it a quick shake, and...

Nothing happened. Well, not exactly nothing. The mixture fizzed a bit, and we got the attention of all the kids in the park.

Rinse and repeat.

Still no lift-off -- and then my camera battery died. By take 3, I remembered I had my iPhone in my pocket!

And, BLAST OFF!!

A few seconds after it was set on the ground, the rocket shot about 20 feet into the air, then fell back only a foot away from the launch site.

HOORAY!!!  The crowd was ecstatic!

Take 4 shot sideways because it tipped over when Scott set it down. Take 5 was a dud. Take 6 was in the air again. And then the photographer had to go home to make dinner.
 
This is a good explanation of what happens between the vinegar and baking soda to make the bottle rocket fly.

You don't have to have a kit; there are lots of homemade bottle rockets online. This one is very similar to ours. You can also do mix the two reactive ingredients in a film canister, if you're able to find one. The small size of the canister makes for a much higher launch.

Another version of the bottle rocket uses water and a bicycle pump. A more dangerous version uses a small amount of rubbing alcohol and a match at the end of a 2-liter bottle. Scott tried that one a while back, but no luck.

Have you done this before? Let me know if you decide to try it!

Lucky Number 13

See this handsome man? Thirteen years ago today, he left behind the possibility of moving to Tahiti to spend his days sipping margaritas and flirting with babes in bikinis...

...to marry me. (He's a very smart man, so I really can't tell you why he would do such a thing.)

Twenty-seven months of pregnancy, three children, 126 cycles through PMS, 18 weeks of postpartum abstinence...

Five bedroom swaps, three flooring projects, one chicken coop, one 4,950-mile road trip (plus countless stresses having nothing to do with me) later...

We are still married.

This, my friends, is not just a miracle, but a testament to the commitment, endurance, and sheer determination of the man I married. That, and he seems to actually love me.

And I absolutely adore him.

Happy 13th Anniversary, my Love! I am so very lucky to be your wife! And marriage is so not obsolete.
 

A visit to Mineral King

Up and down the brook I ran,
where beneath the banks so steep,
Lie the spotted trout asleep.
--Whittier

 "A brook is undoubtedly the most fascinating bit of geography which the child encounters and yet how few children who happily play in the brook -- wading, making dams...or watching schools of tiny minnows -- ever dream that they are dealing with real geography. The geography lesson on the brook should not be given for the purpose of making work out of play, but to conserve all the natural interest in the brook, and to add to it by revealing other and more interesting facts concerning the brook. A child who thus studies it will master some of the fundamental facts of physical geography, so that ever after he will know and understand all streams, whether they are brooks or rivers."

--Anna Botsford Comstock, "Handbook of Nature Study," p. 736

Scott took Eldest and Middlest up into the mountains on Saturday, to see what the fishing was like at Mineral King. If it had not rained just before they arrived, the plentiful fish may have actually bitten. Instead, they enjoyed the view, ate their lunches, and then rushed back to the dry car when the skies opened up again.

While the rain drizzled down on the slow, windy road home, they caught glimpses of both a brown bear and a mountain lion -- which made up for not catching any fish!