This Week at Our House #9 A Conceivable Disaster

What a week!!! We started the week off happily enough with a video chat with Ruth. She has now almost completed the last week of her mission. Today is the last day she will be proselyting. Tomorrow, she goes to the mission home and Tuesday, she leaves London at 1pm.

The first tragedy of this week revolved around more house issues. Our kitchen floor had been warping and feeling quite wet. Because some water came in the front door during the hurricane, we have money to replace the whole floor. I thought given the kitchen floor always feeling damp and beginning to warp it was time to start that and to

Where the dish washer used to be and where the subfloor will be replaced

upgrade to a waterproof laminate floor. We lucked out and got flooring that was 50 cents cheaper per square foot because of a sale. The morning I planned on shopping and picking up the new boards for the kitchen floor, I decided to investigate and found water underneath the broken dishwasher. I dried it up, and went to run my errands. When I got back, it was wet again. The next day, we pulled out the dishwasher and the floor. There was water under the floor boards and under the moisture barrier because the broken dish washer has been leaking slowly, probably for about 2 months. I could be wrong, but it seems like the drain from the kitchen sink was pushing water into the dishwasher from the drain hose that went from the dishwasher to the drain connected to the sink. We pulled up a lot of flooring from the kitchen and into the dining room and have been drying the floor with fans. We watched videos and we are getting prepared to replace the subflooring in front of the dishwasher. I have primed the dry subflooring and painted all the kitchen cabinets.

The waterproof wood laminate

John and Johnny pulled out the dishwasher and John and Adam were the main kids helping to take care of the floor. Kate seemed generally annoyed that we would be doing more house projects. I  can't help that, though. We are doing it out of necessity, not out of desire.

Tomorrow, we will get the new floor in the laundry room and half the kitchen. Then Thursday or Friday we will replace the portion of subfloor that needs replacing and put in the rest of the new floor.

I am so glad that we already had money from the insurance company to take care of this, and we had

Kate made a cake for her half birthday per tradition  

already decided to get the highest quality floor and underlayment for the kitchen and laundry room. Because the water proof floor is expensive, we plan to put in a divider, and put the cheap laminate back in the living room and dining room. It's not ideal, but the kitchen really needed a better floor and we don't have enough money to put the best flooring throughout. But, oh, not a good time for another big project. The floor project has put the painting of the bedrooms on hold, and the mess was bad enough that I told my parents and my sisters to postpone their trip to meet the baby and see Ruth one more week to give us more time to get things repaired.

two seasons of ducks

The second tragedy was the death of one more duckling with another getting injured and another falling ill. Kate and Rachel cried for hours over that little duckling that died. Kate had been feeding her by hand and doing all she could to keep her alive. The afternoon she died, she was running around and acting very healthy, so her death came as a surprise. We still have a living injured duckling, a living sickly duckly, and five healthy ducklings. The kids have spent lots and lots of time praying for these baby ducks.

The rest of the week was fairly normal. School went well. The kids are definitely back on track

We are expecting nature to get us more ducklings too

knowing that they have to get up and do their work. Arwen and Josh did their work without complaints and without taking the whole day. Both Arwen and Josh have begun to finish off some of their curriculum, so school will be getting shorter and shorter for them until we end the year at the beginning of May. The kids are all doing a lot better with their Spanish. They are starting to use Spanish phrases daily. Adam and Joseph are learning computer programming. They have begun to like enough that they are doing it without being reminded.

Gideon started going to sleep closer to midnight, rather than 2am, and while some nights he wanted to nurse all night, I was able to sleep feed him. Gideon has been much happier too. This morning, he smiled at me again and again. He is also starting to answer us with coos. He has a very deep baby voice, which is cute.

By the end of the week, I noticed that my energy has begun to come back up. I am doing more in a day now and on less sleep than I did the whole pregnancy. I am really grateful for that.

Our cute kid stories are:

I recorded a fit Sam was having and then showed him the video of him rolling around crying and saying, "no, no, no." He thought that was funny. He quit crying and started laughing at himself. When I recorded him some more, he cried again, though this time it was performance for the camera.
"Mom, I do not think hens say, 'cluck'. It does NOT sound like, 'cluck'".

Suzy sat on my lap while I was playing skipbo with Kate. She counted the cards in my hand, "1,2,3, 100! Mom you have 100 cards." Everyone paused and looked at her confused. I said, "No, Susan, there are only 4." She looked down, and carefully counted, "1,2,3,4" and then continued to count her fingers over and over again.

Outside with Arwen, we heard a rooster crow. Arwen said, "I don't think that is a rooster. It is not saying cock--- a--- doodle-- doo. It just sounds like a weird bird." I told her that it indeed was a rooster and cock-a-doodle-doo is just the words we use to describe the sounds roosters make, like hens say, 'cluck'. She looked at me and said, "Mom, I don't think the sound hens make sounds like 'cluck'!"

While Kate and Rachel were sitting in my room with John, holding the dead duckling and crying, Arwen came and sat next to me. I asked her if Kate was crying and she said, "Yes. I looked at Kate and she is crying quietly. Rachel is crying and making all the noise. I don't like it. I am going outside." Then she got up and went outside.

Anya holds Gideon more than anyone else, and when I am holding him, she comes up and kisses him and coos at him and tells him how cute he is.

That's our week. I am astonished that we are already to March. Ruth comes home on Tuesday. The year is moving swiftly by!

More Pictures

I love this little dimple