Holding Pattern

I am a bit (no I am extremely) frusterated at our lack of progress. It's not that we haven't been doing things on this house. It's that we haven't been doing things that can be seen. I am so tired of having my toaster in my living room, and not having a toilet downstairs, and not having a sink upstairs, and having frogs in my pool (yes I am still working on the whole pool thing).
Mr. Fix-It spent this weekend and the first two days of this week putting up gutters in the front of the house. I realize gutters are very important to keep moisture away from the basement, but they don't improve my quality of life. I want shelving. I want paint. I want knobs on my kitchen cabinets. I want a TOILET!
Well, I will stop complaining and go help my spouse put up some shelves in a made shift pantry. Sorry about my rant. I just had to get a few things off my chest. I promise my next post will be more uplifting. It may be a few months before I write one, but it WILL BE more uplifting. I hope you are enjoying a dry basement. I pray I will be in a few weeks.

Family Time With the Murches

I just wanted to share how we do family time in case any of you are thinking of taking on an enormous home improvement project you might want to think about things like this. Here is panoramic snapshot of our "Friday night family time".
Our big project this weekend was gutters (more on this later). In order to start the project we needed materials and what better way to kill two birds with one stone (or two parents with one trip) than to combine family time with a trip to a home improvement store (store shall remain unnamed because it is NOT Lowes and I do not like it very much). In order to make the trip extra fun and keep the children somewhat calm, we first stopped at Wal-Mart to get a giant bag of popcorn and paper bags lunch bags in which to give each child their individual serving of popcorn. I thought this was a great idea, but apparently my middle born was not very happy because the popcorn was not accompanied by pink lemonade.
We somehow managed to walk to the store from the car only having to yell at a child one time for not listening and running out into the parking lot and almost getting hit. So far the trip was really turning out to be a smashing success. We made it into the store when all three children started to whine and cry saying they didn't want to be there. Oh, I forgot to mention that my oldest wanted to stay in the car because there was a radio program on that she wanted to listen to. Of course we had to tell her no since we were all going into the store together to enjoy some quality time as a family.
I won't bore you with all of the details of the trip. The highlights I would like to give are that home improvement stores are great places to go shopping with kids. We've picked up a few tips in our many travels there. The aisle are great, so much better than a dept. store or Wal-Mart. They are wide enough, so that when a child is throwing a temper tantrum on the floor there is plenty of space for other customers to walk around your child. You don't feel like you have to apologise for taking up the whole area. These big improvement stores also have great industrial shelving. It is almost like having monkey bars, only there are usually very heavy and dangerous merchandise on these shelves that could injure your child. We have found a few safe place to let them hang and swing on them. The insulation aisle is good place to start. During the spring and summer months the kids like to go into the garden department and pretend it's a jungle. I see this as a cultural field trip of sorts. It's as close to the jungle as we'll get for a long time.
So you can see there are plenty of opportunites to turn you potentially boring trip to a home improvement store into an exciting family event to be enjoyed by everyone. We had so much fun doing it I don't know if I can handle that much excitement again for a very, very, very, very long time. I hope you enjoy your next family time as much as we enjoyed ours.
I'm looking forward to writing about the gutters. We're just hoping it stops raining long enought to have time to put them up. Oh the irony of it all.

A little Riddle...

What is green,

Looks like a pond,

Smells like a pond

But is not a pond?

.....The Murch's Pool.

I was so excited when we looked at this house and saw there was a pool. The conversations went something like this.

Mr. Fix-It: Oh, there's a pool. We'll have to tear it down

Me: TEAR IT DOWN? WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

MR. Fix-it: It will be so much work and we could use the yard space for the kids to play in.

Me: I've always wanted a pool. It will be so much fun. We can have friends over to play. WE ARE NOT TEARING DOWN THE POOL.

Mr. Fix-It: Okay, but YOU have to work on getting it ready.

And that is why the pool is still green. Actually, this shade of green is a great improvement on the brown that it was a few days ago. With MR. Fix-It's help I have been working on vacuuming, chlorinating , and filtering the pool over the past few days. Leaves and gross stuff are coming out at an alarming rate. I am also learning a lot about pool maintenance, so if anyone needs any help next summer....

Have a swimmingly good day today. I"m off to vacuum more gunk off my pool floor.

So Much To Say.

Where do I start? I'm asking that question both for my blog and my life in general. We stayed our first night in our house last Sunday! Woo hoo. It was not a lot of fun trying to find clothes and bedding, but we reached a huge mile stone by staying here and being able to walk on those blasted floors.
I cooked our first meal of pasta on Sunday. It really was pretty comical. Step 1: move box full of knick knacks from stove top. Step 2: find pasta (what box was it in?) Step 3: move box from floor so not trip over it AGAIN! Well, I'm sure you can see how the whole meal process went. We did make it through Sunday and started off the week with our Church's week long summer Vacation Bible School. I love doing VBS, but getting us all out of the house in matching clothes every day before 8:15 was nothing less than a miracle. We did it though and the kids and I had a blast.
We started to feel like we were making some progress for the first time today. We mowed and weed wacked our 1.4 acres with a push mower and a weed wacker. I helped out for about an hour and it took Dan a total of 4 hours to finish the whole lawn. If anyone sees a deal for a riding lawnmower please let us know. I feel it would be a worth while investment. We have started working on our pool for the second time. After three calls to our local pool and spa specialty store we think we might have a chance at swimming before labor day but we're not holding our breath.
Our day has not been without it's challenges though. While filling the pool Dan noticed that our water pump was turning on and off, so he pushed a button to put it on automatic. He says he has done this before. Well, this time when he did it is shut off our water. We currently have no water (aside from the algae infested pool water we are attempting to clean.) I am just looking at this situation as a great opportunity to practice being a patient and loving wife and not asking why he had to go and push that button WHEN IT REALLY WASN'T NECESSARY! Hmmm ...what else did we do today. We put together a dresser from Ikea. It wasn't exactly fun, but it did all come together and now Dan's clothes are not in various boxes and laundry hampers. All in all (except for the whole water incident) it has been a productive day. We are looking forward to having a break tomorrow and coming back at the house full force next week. I hope to get some more pictures posted, but it might be a few days. We have dial up internet service after having high speed Internet for five year. I didn't think something like this would upset me, but I am a little embarrassed to admit that it has. I guess it is just another opportunity to learn patience. Hope everyone is having as much fun as we are!

Home

It's a bit ironic that we own two houses and I feel homeless. I've been thinking a lot about what makes a house a home because right now neither of the houses are my home. Our "old" house is not my home anymore. My kids swing set isn't there, the toys are all gone,and I can no longer cook in the kitchen. I own it but it is not home. My new house does have ALL of my belonging in it and my kids' swing set is sitting unassembled on the side yard, but it is still not home yet. I walk into the house and I want to turn around and walk right out. If you glanced at my last entry I'm sure you can understand why. So what is it that makes a house a home? While I love decorating and having a "nice" house, I can live in a bit of upheaval for a time. I believe my previous pictures can attest to that. Home for me is a place where I can follow my routine. A place where I have the freedom to leave my coffee cup on the counter without fear of it being swept into the dishwasher, or deciding that Monday is pajama day without fear of judgement or ridicule. Home is where I can be myself, really be myself. Following that definition I believe I have made myself at home in many of your houses. If your place is one of them, thank-you for waiting for me to drink my coffee before you put my mug in the dishwasher.

I should be heading to our newest place of residence in the next few days I'll let you know when it becomes home.