Another day...

Doug came home last night, which usually results in an awesome nights sleep for me.  Last night wasn't the case though.  I kept dreaming he overslept so I kept waking up in a panic and I apparently worried all night in my dreams that he was going to kick my one leg that I scrapped up good last weekend.  I'm a little groggy this morning and I have two extra kiddos here today.  I think today shall be a coffee day!  

By the sounds of it non of us in the this house slept great.  Marissa had some wild dreams last night.  Have I ever mentioned how much I love listening to dreams in the morning?  Probably makes me the worst Mom ever, but I know Mom will understand me when I say listening to her dreams are like listening to Jonathan's!  LOL  I know I should take the time to sit and listen to them and enjoy the fact that she wants to tell me.  I'm working on it.  On the outside I'm doing better, but on the inside it's still a major battle!  Oh the joys of growing!  

I'm looking forward to another good weekend!  Hopefully, if everything goes well, I'll have picture of our finished master bathroom on Monday!  I've realized just how spoiled we are when I can not wait to have my 2 bathrooms back.  Doug and I keep telling the kids that we both grew up with only one bathroom.  The first day we had to shower in their shower, I thought they were going to blow a fuse.  Till I realized that they thought we were all going to shower together!  LOL  The girls still shower together for the most part so apparently in their heads, us showering in their shower equalled at the same time as well!  LOL  They have been fine with it since.  I'm definitely anxious to get ours done though and see how it turns out.  You can't mess up tile right?  Haha  The guy at Home Depot that helped us out told us that you really can't...anything is going to be better than what we have.  Which is very true!  See you all Monday!  

Hope you all have a great weekend as well! 

God is good!

Remember how our bathroom project was on hold, waiting for the new underlayment?   I got the FedEx tracking for the Ditra and it was due for delivery on the 17th.   We were both a little bummed since we can't do much on the bathroom with Doug being gone  during the week, and the project was going to stand still another weekend.  Yesterday during school, FedEx pulls up and carries our new underlayment to the garage!  What a blessing!  Now we are free and clear to press on this weekend! I'm still not sure what happened with their delivery date, but I'm so thankful that God brought it here early! 

(P.S.  Sorry this is late Dad!  I had it written this morning at 6:30 from my phone, but I must have not hit publish.  It took me a while to realize my mistake!)

Spring is just around the corner!

After a long, super cold winter, the sun is shining and the snow is melting!  It's been one of the coldest winters in history and I'm super thankful for the warmer temps.   Warmer temps mean camping season! This summer is the first summer I have taken off from watching extra kids ever.   We decided this year that I would take it off and use my time to follow Doug around as often as we can.  I'm excited for a good road trip!  I'm even more excited to be together :)  I'm so thankful that God made it possible to get the camper.  He sure is good!

A new project for the girls....

The girls got these looms at Christmas from Grandma Benedict.  This isn't their first project on them, but its the first one I can blog about! ;)  They have been working very hard on scarves here lately and seem to really enjoy the time they are putting into them!

They are so soft and really turned out cute!  Madalyn can't wait to get hers done!

Home improvement, take 1 :)

Both of our bathrooms are in need of new flooring....hey who am I kidding, our whole house is in need of new flooring.  We needed a good place to start since we don't have the money to do the whole thing right now.  So we decided to start with the bathrooms.  We spent a few weeks tile shopping and final decided on one.  We bought all the rest of our supplies and demolition started Saturday.  Here is our before picture....

Our shower door frame needed some re-calking done so that was part of this project as well. 

Doug told me to take a picture from behind the toilet. His mom helped me paint the bathroom and he said she missed a spot ;)

Of course during any home improvement job, as you fix one room, another becomes a mess...I had to take a deep breath on this one!  LOL

 When you watch videos on how to tackle this project, they make this job of taking up old press board so easy!  Maybe it is in some houses, but ours was glued and nailed down.  

We finally got the majority up, but had to use a tool to get up the glue and stuck pieces. 

All set and ready for tile....

...and here is were our project came to a screeching halt.  Some of you may know that we have in-floor heat in our home.  Doug (and I) were both concerned when we first started researching flooring with puncturing our pipes.  We had 3 choices of underlayment options for the tile.  Durock cement board, Hardiebacker Cement board and Schluter Ditra.  The first two options recommended a 1 1/4 -1 1/2 inch screw for securing the board to the plywood.  That made both of us nervous.  The Schluter Ditra is a role out option that you put a thinset of mortar under, lay the Ditra, and then put another layer of mortar before you lay your tiles.  It came highly recommended to us and calmed our fears of hitting our in-floor pipes since we didn't need to screw anything.  In the end we were really happy with our decision.  Once we pulled up the old underlayment, the tips of our hangers from our pipes were poking through the plywood just a tiny bit.  So Doug went down and measured the screws and we didn't have enough room in flooring depth to use the recommended length that we were told.  Praise the Lord for impressing on Doug and giving him a gut feeling!  So anyhow, after we got everything cleaned up and demolition was done, we laid one of our tiles on the floor to see where we were sitting for depth.  Our old underlayment was ridiculously thick.  We were lacking quite a bit in height now.  The Ditra is relatively thin, even with the thinset layers.  Our two options were find a way to make our new underlayment thicker, or repaint the bathroom so we would be able to move the trim boards down.  I hated the thought of repainting so I was all about the first option.  In the end we found out that we could get the Ditra in a thicker version.  So I ordered it, since Amazon had it for $85 cheaper with free shipping than Lowes or Home Depot and Doug will take our other stuff back to Home Depot.  So our project is on hold for a bit and hopefully the Ditra will come in by Friday and we can start tiling Saturday! 

In the meantime, Doug caulked our shower and put everything back together for me.  He also moved all the supplies into the bathroom so I could have our bedroom back and not go crazy all week.  He is pretty awesome!  

Stay tuned for more on this project!

And another one bites the dust...

Marissa got hit with the puke bug around 2am this morning.  Thankfully hers is very mild.  She only puked twice and was done by 2:30am.  Since Doug is coming home today and I'd like to avoid him getting this, we are in full cleaning mode today.  The kids are laying low and I'm lysoling everything, doing laundry and vacuuming.  Hopefully all little bugs are gone by the time he walks in the door.  Madalyn took a shower today and said she feels amazing after that.  I'm still working on getting myself to that point! ;)  Hope you all have a great weekend and that you stay well!

We have been hit...

Madalyn came down with the puke bug last night around 7.  It came out of the blue and it was nasty.  I'm praying that she kept that all to herself.  After a rough night, she is eating and drinking tonight and having no issues keeping everything down. 

 Blogging should continue as normal tomorrow.  :)

Home improvement!

Saturday, we went shopping and got all our supplies to start laying tile in the bathrooms.   Plans got all messed up for last weekend, so we haven't started yet.  This weekend we have a full Saturday, so in kind of guessing we won't start ripping and tearing another week.   We will see.   I'll take tons of pictures.   Hopefully we can pull this off!   Most everyone we have talked to says we can do this no problem, but there is always a small amount is doubt!  Unfortunately, I have more I want to post on this but I'm lucky I got the two seconds to wrote this post.  I'm being paged, so we will continue this tomorrow!   I hope you all have a great day!  

A night out

Last night Doug was out of town and Doug's mom called me.  She was alone as well...Dad had gone to the Syracuse Basketball game with Kenny and Laurie.  So she asked if we wanted to do dinner in Lowville with her.  Of course we said yes!  If anyone knows me, cooking dinner for my family when my husband is gone is hard for me.  I'm not really sure why since we are only down one person, but regardless its something I struggle with.  So we jumped on it.  We picked her up and headed out early.  It was really nice!  We didn't have to wait for a table or anything!  We had a great time and had an awesome dinner.  We made a couple pit stops on the way home and got home in plenty of time for the kids to get ready for bed.    

I spent the night on the couch, enjoying some quiet time, cuddled up with my pups :)

Tonight is Mom's night for the homeschool group so I won't be bored tonight either!  I love it!!!

Back to the drawing board...

Sunday, after the morning service, we came home and got ready for a road trip.  We dropped the dogs off at Doug's parents (so thankful for their willingness to help out!) and headed to Rochester to take Piper for a play date with Ruby.  I'll admit I was pretty confident about it.  It was so perfect and I just felt God's hand was in the whole situation.  We took the two dogs for a walk when we got there.  Ruby was pretty unsure right from the get go, but we got them walking well together so we decided to test inside.  We spent 2 hours there and pulled them apart at least 5 times.  I tried every dog training tool I know, but in the end there were a lot of factors that made it a poor decision.  She would have been loved and cared for there for sure, but it was not in the best interest of Piper or Ruby to let their issue play out.  So we are back to the drawing board.  It was really nice to see Ruby again and spend some time with her.  She is well loved and spoiled rotten ;)  THAT makes me happy!  So it wasn't a complete loss.  We left disappointed for sure, and there were tears shed on their end because Ruby just wouldn't have it.  We prayed about it, they prayed about it, and in the end it just wasn't God's plan.  So she is sticking around for a while.  As of right now we have no game plan.  I added her back to my website as available.  We have a vet visit for some vaccinations next week and I'll be letting them know where we are sitting so they can keep their ears open for me.  For now she has a great home and is spoiled here.  We just have to be patient and wait for things to play out.  

Unfortunately due to how things went yesterday, we are going to have to be careful that it didn't cause a fear in Piper with other small/medium new dogs.  Fear can lead to aggression and that is definitely something we want to avoid.  So we have a new training thing to work on with her and some socialization to continue so that we don't end up with a fear aggression.  

I've always liked a challenge ;)