This week has been nothing but sick kids. Carter has been sick all week. He had a fever of 103.5 on Wednesday night. He has a fever of 101.5 right now. Will too has been sick. He has been lucky to not have the sickness as bad as Carter.
Will fell off the couch and landed on his hand very hard. We found out he has a slight buckle hairline fracture in his wrist. He doesn't have a splint or cast on it though. The doctor felt he was okay without it? Yeah. Weird.
Logan has been fine until Friday when he started complaining of his head hurting and stomach feeling gross. Then he threw up and went to bed.
Samantha was the one who brought this home and has been sick for just over a week.
Phoebe is not sick, knock on wood, because I need her to stay healthy. We are trying to schedule a surgery for her to get her tonsils out over Christmas break. Hopefully we will have it scheduled tomorrow.
And because we are awesome and strong, despite all of this week's obstacles, we finally put our tree up and decorated it on Friday. Also, we put up a lot of drywall and Trevor hooked up a few more electrical circuits and put in some salvaged light bulbs. We pulled back some of the mesh covering on the "insulation" and found out that the insulation guys cut a few corners and didn't foam between the cracks around the windows where there is a mess of 2x4s. We foamed it in and when Trevor got out of church today, he ran over there to check on things and took a few photos for me. We still don't have heat over there, because the hvac guy has not come back. We hung blankets on the doorways into the boys bedroom, and turned on two heaters in there. It gets it warm enough that the kids can hang out in there all day with their coats and snow pants on and stay pretty warm. It's better than sitting in the car all day.
Where to start...
Phoebe was baptized this week. It was awesome! It was simple and sweet and casual and the spirit was strong. I wish more family could have made it, but it was so last minute that it just was what it was.
Both sets of grandparents made it, as well as Aunt Laura, Aunt Megan and Mia, and Aunt Alysa and her kids. Phoebe's best friend also came with her sisters and dad. It was small and perfect.
The next day we slept in and then went to the house and finished the rest of the drywall on the ceiling. You would have thought that it wouldn't have taken all day, but it did. We finished just before 10pm. The ceiling that was left to be done was all of the more intricate cuts. It took forever. Now though, we can say the ceiling is 100% finished upstairs.
And did I mention that the insulation is in??? Oh yes. The upstairs walls are insulated, my friends!!
Now let's see if I can find photos of all of this...
It's 4am.
I just woke up having slept for 3.5 hours.
It's because my sleep has been a restless one...
Full of nightmares about drywalling...
And one weird dream about blowing the house up.
I just want to sleep a deep, dreamless sleep,
And I'd like to write my dad a letter:
Dear Dad,
You are my hero. There's nothing you can't do. You are amazing. How can you go at the pace you do, as old as you are? I'd like to spend a month with you just tinkering around with you and gleaning knowledge off of you. I love you so much, dad. You are so kind hearted and loving. You have a way of making me feel like no one is as special as me. You have been a great support to Trevor and me as we have built this house. You stick with us when you could and maybe should have just thrown up your hands and walked away. It's been frustrating and irritating and dumb at times, but you always seem to be able to put a positive spin on things. How will we ever repay you and mom for all the ways you have served and helped us? I'm feeling overwhelmed with the burden of it.
I love you, Dad! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
You guys, the house has ceiling!
this next picture is from tonight after we got home from working all day. It doesn't show it very well, but I'm covered in insulation and drywall dust. 
Hello, faithful readers, whoever you may be.
We have had a full week.
I'll start with my eye update. It's still healing. It's been swollen and goopy every day, but also less and less of those things every day. I guess eyes take a bit to heal.
My vision in that eye seems to be a bit blurry, but I attribute it to the extra goop in there. The rocks in my eye feeling is also less and less every day.
Today at the house we finished wiring every single fixture possible. We hooked up all the grounds and neutrals in every plug, light, fire alarm, switch and whatever else we could hook up. My fingers are killing me. Electricians have strong fingers my friends. It's all ready though. We are passing the inspection this time.
Today, we started having a problem with the van. It's a pretty significant one, where I start the van, no problem, and then as soon as I push on the gas to move, it dies. Every time. The blessing is that we can still drive it by gunning it, and it may have happened at a good time. Trevor may have time to fix it, depending on when we can schedule the insulation to go in.
And lastly, I want to show you my kids' Halloween costumes. They were so proud of themselves. We went ultra cheap this year and used what we had and a little bit of DI and other thrift stores and did a lot of remaking. It was so much fun this year!
I'm sure you can all guess what this post is about, given the title.
We failed the electrical inspection.
Actually, it sounds worse than it is.
We didn't fail anything that we had done, but we failed because we hadn't grounded any of the wires.
We didn't know we were supposed to do that. I mean, don't you do that when you hook up the fixtures?
So there's that.
Trevor has half the grounds run in the panel already. He did that last night while I was writhing in pain in my bed.
The good news, and the blessing part of all of this is that we don't need to fix any wires or staples or anything like that. That could have gotten very expensive. I'm very grateful it's just grounds.
So even though it's not exactly how we wanted it to go, our prayers were answered and we didn't have to shell out any more dough.
The end.
But not really.
The end will come next week, hopefully.
To be continued...
I'm not well.
I got hurt yesterday while working at the house.
I couldn't find the safety glasses before cutting tile, so I just went ahead without them.
A piece of tile flew into my eye while cutting.
I couldn't take it out immediately because I had mortar all over my hands.
It stayed in for well over an hour... or so ( I wasn't keeping track of time).
Why was it in so long, you might ask?
Because I wanted to finish what I was working on.
I finally was able to rinse my hands off, and then it got bad because it wasn't coming out of my eye.
I poured water into my eye and that didn't help and it was getting painful at this point.
This story is long, so let's fast forward.
This morning my eye was gooped closed.
It is very swollen too.
I can see just fine.
I have a slight headache.
It feels like I still have stuff in my eye.
The end.
There are times I feel as if we are barely getting enough air. It's like we are almost drowning, but somehow not.
This week we tackled more electrical. We got to the point of being done running wire, but then remembered that we have to run smoke detectors and a doorbell. Who needs those? So we have a little hick up in our plans, but honestly it's nothing new. We will run those wires this week, and be on our way to an inspection.
We passed the plumbing inspection by the way....... *applause *
Trevor's parents came with a truckload of supplies on Saturday. They brought tons of carpet and a pellet stove which is the perfect size for our house. And hey- we may have to use it to heat the house sooner than later since Mr. Hvac man hasn't yet returned. Ha. Ha. Ha. (This is me not smiling). And then, to return to my story, Trevor's parents raked up our yard, which is no easy task given the size of the tree that needs to be removed.
I'm very grateful for all the help we have received. I can't believe anyone would want to drive up here in the middle of nowhere just to help us out. It baffles me. People must really love us to want to help us. Really. And I'm forever grateful. Truly. I'm so very thankful!
So let's talk about this carpet. The carpet came from their house which was in the bedrooms and living room. It is in amazing shape. We are going to put it in the kids' bedroom upstairs, and then the rest in the basement.
How would we have been able to do this house if not for the donations of our own private re-store? I'm serious. Thank you everyone who has donated to us!
We were supposed to drive to Idaho Falls on Sunday morning for my nephew's farewell talk, but we had a few hick ups like the kids waking up with the flu, and me remembering I had a photo shoot. We ended up not going.
I would have much rather gone to Idaho Falls to be with my family than stayed home. I went to church with Sami and Logan and Trevor stayed home with the sickos. At church, in primary, one of my cute little sunbeams, who was sitting on my lap, kept leaning into me and then eventually spewed forth vomit all over herself and me. I ran to the bathroom and set her on the counter, thinking that we needed to clean her up, and she leaned over and puked about 6 more times. Talk about gag-o-lah. Her mom ran in about that time, so I let her take over with her daughter while I assessed my own damage. Puke in my hair, puke from my lap down to my ankles. Awesome. I washed it all out as much as I could, and went back to class and taught for the last hour.
After church I ran home, changed my puke clothes, and ran to my photo shoot. I still had puke hair. At the photo shoot I found out that their family had the flu and had been throwing up that very day. In fact, one of the boys was about to hurl at any moment. Oh joy.
Immediately after that shoot, I got a call to go to another shoot, so I ran and did that one too, all the while my hair kept blowing into my face.
Heaven help me and keep this flu from my house.
Brad, the hvac man, never came back. But never fear, he's invested. He put ducting into the house, and we haven't paid him a dime. He'll be back. It's just a matter of when...
The house keeps moving forward. Trevor worked on electrical over the weekend. I worked on finishing up the loose ends. I did lots of cutting and nailing, fixing small things that had been pushed to the side over and over. I patched the small stucco areas outside as well. There were about 5 small areas to patch, and I did it in made from scratch stucco, which was a pain. But hey, it's done now.
This week: The plumbing inspector is coming back. Yay. We hope to finish the electrical.
Hopefully Brad comes back. We are ready for him. It is cold here.
So yeah. I'm feeling anxious about getting the electrical done. I'm feeling anxious about Brad coming back. Both of these things are things I have no control over. Nope. I know nothing about electrical.
I just want them done so I can move forward with insulation and dry walling the rest of the ceiling. Then mudding and taping.
I've been thinking.
If anyone is looking for ideas for Christmas presents for my family, because... I don't know. Maybe you are?
Well, have I got a good idea for you!!
All I want for Christmas is food storage for my two littlest boys. It worries me so much!!!
So all I'm asking for is freeze dried bananas and maybe, if there is such a thing, almond milk powder. Also, they could eat white rice and freeze dried meat and eggs.
So yeah.
Just some thoughts I've been having.
We had a miracle.
Actually, we had a lot of miracles.
The hvac guy came on Saturday and began installing ducting!!
We passed the building inspection.
We installed the second window well.
We installed both basement windows.
We failed the plumbing inspection.
We fixed the plumbing.
We got most of the outside painting done.
We fixed the front door.
We have a ceiling in the master bedroom and bath.
We installed a ridiculous amount of wiring.
I use the term "we" loosely. My brother in law and sister (Jeff and Wendy) and family came and helped us, along with sisters Alysa and Suzette and brother Kevin. Also my parents came. You should have seen my mom out on a ladder painting my house! Yep. It was an amazing sight to behold.
That was on conference Saturday last weekend that they all came and helped.
Since then, my Dad has been here helping us and we have been moving mountains to get stuff done. We are an amazing team!
I'm so grateful to have such a kind family, who puts aside their own lives to come and help us out. I'm so so so grateful! It's amazing the turn the house is beginning to take.
I don't have pictures of Saturday, but I do have a few pictures of the changes.
I made four more pots of tomato sauce yesterday and have two more boxes of tomatoes left still.
It's like the boxes keep multiplying!!!!
I think I've done about 100 loads of laundry this week. That keeps multiplying too.
I waited for four hours yesterday for Brad the Hvac Man. He never showed. I'm going to do the same today. Except maybe longer. It's frustrating waiting on someone to show up having no idea if it will even happen.
So I think I've got plenty to do today. I'm gonna go get started on those tomatoes so I can get over to play the waiting game at the house.
Toodles
This week nothing has been going right. The hvac guy is not responding whatsoever to me. I only texted him twice over the course of a week to see where our quote was that he had promised us within on day. He knew we were on a time crunch too, but apparently I must have scared him off because he seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth.
I then Googled "how to hire a reluctant contractor" and surprisingly it worked and brought up a few very helpful articles. After reading for a while, I felt a prompting to attempt to contact the very first hvac guy, Brad, to see if I could get anything from him.
HE TEXTED ME RIGHT BACK!!!!!
I know. Surprise, surprise.
So I have a meeting with him tomorrow, maybe. These contractors are slicker than snot.
And then, we got a knock on our door randomly and when I opened it, there stood a guy with three pumpkins in his arms. I met him last week when he dropped off some extra tomatoes. Word flies in a small town, and apparently the word is that I need everyone's extra produce. So this guy gave me the pumpkins and asked if I wanted more produce. I reluctantly said yes, because I just can't pass up more work. I got Carter and Will and drove to his house where I met his amazing kind wife.
They spoiled the boys and were so kind and amazing to us. We were there for about an hour and a half in which I asked them if they could be our surrogate grandparents and then thanked them profusely and gave them both hugs when we left.
Do you believe in Angels here on earth? I do. I needed that sweet couple on that crappy day and I felt Heavenly Father's love for me through them.
Today I've been trying to get a handle on all of the produce people keep bringing us. It's out of control, but I'd be stupid to let it go to waste. We need all the help we can get right now. So I've been canning, in between homeschooling and working at the house today, I also figured out dill pickles. Hallelujah! I had to stop with my tomatoes because I ran out of fennel and they don't carry that anywhere in town! Can you believe that?
But anyway, I'm pooped.
I hope you notice I've been blogging a lot more lately. It helps me feel less anxious about life to talk about some of our struggles.
Don't worry, I'm not telling you everything. There is still some mystery here.
P.S. still waiting to get that quote...
I had this thought last night and it won't leave my head this morning: Man! I've had a selfish couple of weeks!
I hope we get this electrical and hvac stuff done so I can focus on someone other than myself. I'm feeling pretty icky about it actually.
Do you have thoughts like this too? Or is it just me...
After we left the town house last night, Trevor stayed to work for a few more hours. We have no light, so he was working by headlamp. Just as he was getting ready to leave, the Law showed up shining a giant spotlight into the house to see what was going on in there.
Trevor went outside to talk to the officer and thank him for watching out for our house. Meanwhile, I was calling and texting Trevor to see why he was so late coming home.
I should mention that Trevor is friends with almost every officer in town, so it shouldn't be a surprise that he stood outside talking for over an hour, all the while I was worrying at home.
Funny thing, I almost called the police, which the call would have gone to that officer... heh heh... but instead I got in the car and drove to town to check on Trevor who was still talking to the officer when I pulled up. Urgh!!!
He got a piece of my mind!
Nicely of course, because I was so relieved he was okay!
Our town house neighbor called Trevor last night at 10:30 to see if he was walking around inside the house. Good thing it was him, and thanks to her for watching out for us.
Trevor has been rock-starring it at the town house pulling the electrical this week. It's frustrating having the kids in school and not being able to help him as much. Tonight we went to help until just after 9. Pulling wire in the dark is actually not that terrible.
Still waiting on more hvac bids. I'll update you when I know more, but please continue to pray for a good price for us!
I wanted to say one more thing:
After my second to last post, I had a good cry because the hvac guy's bid was $8000.00. I don't think you could begin to understand what that felt like or even why it was such a big deal. We have sacrificed so much to get this far. This has been so draining emotionally and financially. We made a goal to be finished by a certain time and we have been killing it to make that goal happen, but we did not budget that much money for the hvac. So I had a good cry, and then had a strong impression to call my sister and talk to her about an hvac guy that we had used to replace my parents hvac when we lived in their house. Long story short, my sister called the hvac guy and he was able to give her the names of a few guys who would be much more reasonably priced. It's funny how quickly you can go from hopeless to hopeful. I was also feeling so upset and overwhelmed about winter coming so fast, but I feel calm about it and after bawling my eyes out, I feel like everything will work out and we are doing everything we can to just keep moving forward. Everything will work out the way it's supposed to. We only have control over ourselves and what we are doing to get it done. The rest just has to be put in the Lord's hands.
Waaaaa! I just wrote the longest blog post and it deleted the whole thing!!!!
I don't have it in me to rewrite the whole thing
This is the wood floor I'm redoing. I stained the left different than the right. That's one of my tiles there in the middle. This wood is a sampling of all the different kinds of wood we pulled out of the house. Some of it was water damaged, some covered in glue, and some just regular. I think the stain makes them look pretty uniform. I'm in love.
The end.
Sorry.
I think it's fair to say that I'm stressed.
Homeschool is kicking me in the rear end this year.
As is this house.
The hvac guy will not call me back. I've left him so many voicemail it is ridiculous.
I give up.
I met with a new hvac guy today.
Now I'm waiting for the bid. Please pray that it will be inexpensive.
Is it even possible for anything having to do with hvac to be inexpensive?
Well anyway, I'm stressed about money.
I'm stressed about my time.
I'm stressed about life.
I'm going to go have a nervous breakdown now.
Another Saturday bites the dust.
Yesterday we installed one of the window wells in the morning. The second window well can't go in yet because the hole is not quite the right size. It's close though.
Then we went to the lumber store to purchase some lumber, and came back and Trevor spent the rest of the day building the last of the basement walls. We now have an office nook, a bathroom, and a furnace room. The basement is complete, except for the doorways into the rooms. So it will be complete as soon as two doorways are built, but heck, that's still pretty good!
I worked up in the bathroom again. I finished cutting and installing the drywall and then mudding and taping it. I also worked outside on patching the few places that we needed to fix the stucco (where the old electrical mast was, the new faucets, the old dryer vent).
I'm still up in the air as far as which finish to do on the walls. I don't want to regret picking something that will take 1000 hours to complete. I'm kinda thinking that the knock down finish sounds really good. I'm already going to have to spend a lifetime texturing the ceilings. Hmmm, it's a quandary.
I didn't take any photos yesterday. I know, I know. I should have, but it got dark very fast, and then it was too late.
We are still sick. I'm still quite sick, and every time I move I can feel it in my teeth. Lots of pressure in my head. Pretty much all of my kids are sick too, and Trevor has still managed to get away free from it all. He's so lucky.
Alright then. I'll try to remember to take some photos this week.
Yo. I've just been learning about drywall finishes.
Let me tell you about a level 5. Level 5 is the most expensive and sought after finish, because it is completely smooth. Yeah, as in NO TEXTURE.
Pretty cool, right?
I'm thinking about doing a level 5. What are your thoughts? Have you ever thought about texture, and what do you like?
The girls started school this week. It's been so good for them to get back into a routine. I can tell they are much happier too. We are sad having them gone, but the house is a whole lot quieter, and that's kinda nice.
I've been sick all week. I'm so over this, but colds have always stuck to me longer and harder than most normal people. Get lost sickness!
Hi everyone.
I've been killing it lately. Tooting my own horn there...
But it has caught up with me, and I've been in bed sick all day today.
I hate having to stop when I'm on a roll.
I can't remember where I left off last time, so I may repeat myself. Sorry if I do.
I've been putting in the hours at the house, with full days of work until dark pretty much every day. Trevor has been joining me there after work every day too. It's a family effort.
I think I left off with cutting out the basement window. Since then, I've been up in the basket of the forklift scraping off old paint and painting all the upper sections of the house.
Trevor framed out the bedrooms and closets in the basement, and all the exterior walls.
I moved on to the small bathroom upstairs. I really want a bathroom at the house soon, because all the trips to McDonalds are getting really old. I finished tiling the bathroom and then built the shelves in the corner by the toilet.
Meanwhile, Trevor has been working diligently to finish all the little details of the plumbing. The permit is expiring in a little over two weeks, so it's go time on that.
We have water at both spickets now and the washer and dryer and one toilet, not that any of that is hooked up right now, but I think that is all that is capped off at this point.
I called our hvac guy who you remember we talked to back in April. I haven't heard from him all summer. I left a message for him to call me back, but it's been almost a week and still no return call. I'm ready to give up on him. We have GOT to get heat installed before the weather turns now that we have water in the house.
Anyway, I've got to stop working at the house so much now because the kids are starting school this week, and we won't be able to push so hard any more. Sad.
I think my fever is returning now, so I'm going to sign off. -later
I. Am. Tired.
What a week!
If I could have, I would have stayed in bed all day.
I wouldn't have slept the whole day, but maybe.
This week we:
Had more reinforcements come to help with my big brother Jon and daughter Nat and her fiance Kaden (sorry for spelling that wrong, if I did).
They, along with my dad, put nailing strips in the ceiling in both bathrooms and then drywalled the guest bathroom.
Meanwhile my mom watched the kids while I went to the house with my sister Laura and picked out a second color for the upper part of the house. Then we painted. It was good. I actually really love how it turned out and am glad we didn't use all one color.
On Tuesday it was just my parents and me, so Dad and I hung the rest of the lights and started electrical. We were both pooped, so we quit early and called it a day.
Wednesday I went to the house and sat in the newly drywalled bathroom on a lawn chair trying to figure out how to build the shelf that I'm going to build in there for a couple of hours. These things take time. I took some measurements and drew some lines on the walls planning out where to hang the mirror and light fixture. Then I went up in the basket on the forklift to finish calking and painting the vent.
Thursday morning I had a photo shoot and was gone all morning with the kids and got back to town around 2:30ish. We went to the house and started building the shelf in the bathroom. I built it twice because the first time I used 1xs and the second time I used 2xs. I like the feel of the 2xs better, but only built the very bottom of the shelf. THEN I got the tile out and layed it all out and moved it around a bunch until I liked it, and then started cutting it. Then back to the basket Trevor and I went to calk the new siding on the side of the house.
The next day we layed around the house all morning, then got up and went to the house and started laying the tile. I'm not a good tile layer. The thinset was too thin. Lol! That's funny. Think about that one for a minute. The kids and I frantically worked to free the tile we had already layed down. We got it all cleaned up and tried again, this time getting the thinset to more the consistency of toothpaste. We got the tiles layed down only to find that we had run out of tile!! We probably need about two more tiles, but that's my fault because I cut at least two wrong. So oh well. I didn't need to go up in the basket this night because Trevor was killing himself digging in the window well.
This brings us to Saturday. We will refer to this day as the day of horribleness. You will see what I mean in a moment. Saturday morning we took a couple hours and hooked up the water main and a few other pipes. Then Trevor went outside and turned the water on to the house. The water swooshed through the pipes in the basement and.... nothing leaked!!! We went outside and turned the spicket on and water came out!!! Yay! Trevor is a genius! Then we got out the cement saw and put on masks and ear protection and went to town cutting the second window. This part went on and on. Trevor cut with the saw, Logan or I took turns following him spraying water to keep the dust down. No one could breath or see. Your lungs burned and your eyes burned more. About 5ish we finished with the saw. Then fine tuning with the air hammer and grinder. On and on. I hate.... HATE cutting out windows. I cut all the lumber for the window and we did a couple test fits and more fine tuning to the lumber and window. Finally we got the window opening square and shot the lumber in place. Then with one hour until sunset, it was back into the basket to finish painting the new siding on the side of the house. We brought a jar of that peanut butter and jelly mixed stuff and a loaf of bread to the house so we wouldn't have to stop for anything. We were so tired when we got home. Tired and smelly.
The end.
If you made it this far, you must really be interested in this house build. You deserve a medal!
I now have two priesthood holders living in my house.
It sounds so weird, and I definitely don't feel old enough, but I'm so happy for Logan!!
It was a good day today. Both sets of grandparents came, and even Aunt Laura!
Let's talk about what happened at the house yesterday. Two of my sisters and brother in law came to help, as well as two nieces and two nephews. And let's not forget my dad. So this huge group of people converged upon the exterior of my house. They calked and painted sealed and built stuff and ripped stuff apart and dug and raked and were just absolutely amazing.
And then they went home at dusk. !!! They gave me their whole day!!! Talk about a sacrifice!
