I think the room is finished!

I left everything set up last night. I couldn't tell if the trim paint was going to cover the teal in one coat. The door frames look fine, but I put two coats of wall color on them as I was painting the walls. The window frames will need another coat of white, but as we were painting, we noticed that they also need some caulking, so I'll do that second coat after the caulk. The only question at the moment is the back of the door. I forgot to check that when I was up there.

Samuel is working on a rough draft of an essay on peregrine falcons. After that he wants to run up to the dollar store to buy some glow sticks for his scout campout this evening. Apparently the boys use them to play something akin to capture-the-flag in the dark. (And then they come home scratched to pieces after diving into brambles to get the other team's glow stick.) A cold, rainy night is not my idea of a fun night for camping, but I'm not a twelve-year-old boy. Thank goodness they have adventurous adult "boys" to take them adventuring!

Now that much of the snow has melted, James hauled four wheelbarrow loads of firewood to his wood pile. He has discovered that red bud wood is HEAVY! I'm thinking we need a larger yard to hold James's firewood. Since he can't give up his habit of collecting free firewood, we're going to build a hot tub with a wood-stove heater on the back patio this summer. I love my husband!

Almost finished!

So, when did I tell James that we'd have our room finished??? I can't remember if I said it would be done before Kyle got here, or if we'd be moved back in before Kyle's arrival this weekend. At any rate, the color coats are finished. All that is left is to paint the trim and inside of the door white. (Yes, Mother, bright white! And my walls follow the rule you taught us-all walls should be painted just off white-NOT gold of any variety!)

Hey, siblings mine. Did I mention that rumor has it someone (or two someones) intend to paint the walls of their house in Florida ANTIQUE GOLD??? Who is she, and what has she done with our mother????

Guess I ought to go find something productive to do. But it won't be painting until after dinner. I have to let the walls dry a bit. The I/we will do the trim and start the clean-up. (Although I hear James pulling down the masking tape from the ceiling as I type.) I want to scrub the floor while the room is empty, and then we need to move the dresser & chest back into the room. I can carry the drawers, but the cabinets are too large/heavy to move with only Samuel's assistance. Somehow I suspect Kyle would appreciate being able to get to his bed when he gets here.

OK, so maybe he had reason to laugh. . .

I keep forgetting that preparing the room for painting takes quite a while all by itself. One of these days I'll stop combining that with the priming day. I spent most of yesterday sanding walls and cleaning up the dust so that I could get the masking tape and paint to stick (in the appropriate locations). Masking off the edges of the floor and laying paper around the bed went quickly, and then I spent the better part of two hours cutting in all the edges in the room. I finished up by priming the ceiling.

So, shift the priming work to today, and I'll get to color tomorrow. I might still get the trim done tomorrow, but I expect that will be Thursday's project. We'll still be ready to move furniture in on Thursday evening!

Happy Valentine's Day to all my ohana!

It's painting time!

I'm just taking a bit of a break from prepping the room for painting. In spite of spending much of yesterday shoveling snow and bucking the neighbor's tree that fell in the road & across their driveway, James finished mudding our room. That makes it my project now. (James sands & muds. Mary paints.)

Today is the prep & prime day, around shuttling Samuel to & from his drum lesson. I started cleaning up the mud drips and sanding dust, so that I can tape the edges of the floor and lay down paper. I'll get two coats of primer onto the walls around chauffeuring and dinner. I'm hoping I'll also manage to get the ceiling painted this afternoon/evening. That way the paint will be dry enough to tape off the edges of the ceiling in the morning, and I can easily get the color coats on the wall tomorrow before my student shows up for tutoring. I might even manage to start on the trim. Wednesday I'll finish painting and scrub the wood floors, while the room is essentially empty.

James laughed when I said we'd have this done, and our furniture back in our room by Friday. That sounds like a challenge to me. But at least he's stopped trying to bring me in to a more "realistic" view of the time required. We're making progress. My time frames are getting ore realistic by the project, and we're both getting better at our parts of the task, so each project gets done faster. And we're really enjoying the improvements we're making.

(And I didn't intend for having the room finished to mean that I'd figured out what to do with dressing the windows, and gotten that finished!)

Cousins found!

A few weeks ago, Mimi mentioned that she'd had a letter from Papaw Creech's nephew's son, and said she'd send me his address when she ran across his letter again. This afternoon I was talking to Mom, and she mentioned that she'd made email contact with Doug, and he lives in Pennsylvania, and she remembered that Doug is his middle name. She said she'd forward their correspondence to me this evening.

Having some time on my hands, since we're beginning to get the forecast "snow event", and James being busy mudding our bedroom, I applied myself to a bit of internet sleuthing. . .Success! One Robert D. C. lives in D-town, PA, so I figured it was worth a shot. Over two hours later, we've had a marvelous chat, and have made plans to get together in two weeks, when I am up in PA with Liza's Rotary overnight trip. The challenging part of our Creech genealogy is the abundance of John Creeches in our line. Our common ancestor is one John W. (?) Creech, son of Hezekiah (of "peas taste. . ." and firecracker fame). Hezekiah's brother, father and grandfather were ALL named John, as well as a few cousins & uncles.

I have done very little with genealogy in the last eight or ten years, but am really looking forward to getting together with Doug and his wife. I'm also looking at a trip to Florida to talk genealogy with Mimi and Mom.

Isn't family fun! Anyone interested in a Creech reunion???

Back to Disarray!

It has been wonderful having a week without home improvement clutter in the livingroom. I really enjoyed it.

But it is Thursday, after all. And if we want to have a chance of finishing our bedroom before next weekend, when we have the house full of teenagers (with two who are close enough to pretend they are teens-twenty days until their birthday), then we really have to get started.

I started by moving books off the bookcase before James got home from work, and finished putting them back on the bookcase in the new location after my students left. We moved most of the furniture out of the way this evening. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to bleach and scrub the exterior walls tomorrow. There hasn't been enough air circulation behind the large pieces of furniture, and they are discolored. I wish I'd gotten the rice hull insulation project figured out before we started on this. It would be a whole lot easier to get everything done at once, but it would make it difficult to finish in the week we have to do this segment.
And where would I store the rest of the rice hulls for the other walls????

I AM looking forward to having our bedroom looking clean and bright, as the rooms we've finished do. Having moved the furniture out, I'm trying to figure out how to keep the open feeling once we move things back in. (Calling the clutter-busters!)

Eliza's team won the Mock Trial again today, this time by intimidation. (The Prosecuting team forfeited.)

I guess that's the news for the day, and I feel like I'm babbling, so I'll just say good night.

I love my children!

James came home today and declared that we were ordering out. We don't do that often-frugality and all that, but it's been a couple of months since we'd ordered pizza. We covered the table top with the various pizza boxes, and sat and laughed and ate.

The kids were in quite a mood! Okay, so Tori was dragging a bit with a cold that she's wading through, but even she caught Liza's exhuberance, and we had quite a silly songfest. Sorry Mimi, I don't seem to have taught them to NOT sing at the table!

These are priceless memories. I love the interplay, and there's a marvelous dynamic when Tori and Liza get together-especially when they include the twins.

The tonal quality was not Broadway, but the drama and expressiveness certainly were there. And the fun and laughter continued through our evening clean-up.

I don't remember if I've written about that before, but it's really working out well for us. A couple of months ago, James and I got tired of the fighting about whose turn it was to do dishes, so we declared a new policy: Everyone who is home will participate in evening clean-up. Sometimes that is only a three-member dish team, but when we have everyone home the floors get vacuumed or swept, bathrooms and the litterbox get cleaned, lightswitches and doorknobs get wiped down, spiderwebs disappear, etc. The rule is everyone works until the dishes are done, and you have to keep finding jobs as long as that takes. Order and cleanliness are spreading throughout the house, even with the disarray that seems an inevitable part of home improvement.

The fighting over chores has virtually disappeared. The kids are learning to see what needs to be done. And we're building wonderful memories of songs and laughter while we're working together.

Precious times!

Taxes are finished!

I finished our taxes last night, and efiled the federal taxes. Quite a refund due, since we have three kids for child tax credits, and Tori's Hope Education credit. I'd change the withholdings, but we lose Liza's child tax credit this year, and Pratt gets to claim two of the kids if he is current with child support, so . . . We just give the government an interest-free loan.

The taxing challenge this year was dividing everything between two states, since James's residency changed when he retired from the military. Each one handles the numbers slightly differently, and both had to be filed on paper because of the situation. But the refund from one will cover the tax due on the other, so we get to put the whole federal refund toward paying off our equity line of credit!

We're really working on clearing that so we can start looking for property for our "hole-in-the-ground", as my sister-in-law refers to it. We still haven't decided between going underground or building a super-insulated strawbale house. We'll wait and see what fits best with the land we find when the time is right. Each step gets us a little bit closer. . .

She's in court!

I finally got to use that line when someone called for Eliza! As part of her no-time-to-breathe schedule this month, our sweet Liza has taken on the role of Defense attorney on her school's mock trial team. I've been dying to have the chance to tell someone that she wasn't available since she was in court, and last night I got to do so. The response was fabulous, the laden silent pause, and then a question about what happened.

Her team won, both the decision and the points. Defense has a particularly difficult challenge in this case, since they are defending a reporter's right to keep sources confidential, and the concern is over a potential child abuse case. Regardless of how we feel about the subject, the other team did not prove that it was necessary for the reporter to reveal sources as well as Eliza supported the position that there were other means to find the necessary information.

Each time we pick up Liza from the courthouse, I am struck by what a beautiful young woman she has become. I've reached the place where I can share my mother's lament, "My daughter looks better in my clothes than I do!" She sure looks sharp, and carries herself well, in MY suit! And it's funny to then watch her dash off to class, having changed from skirt and heels into slacks and sneakers- in the car!- between the courthouse and the community college campus.

Time passes so very quickly!

Ethics as applied to life

So, on his way to bed, a cloaked being I suspect was Samuel, asked if I had blogged today. I don't know exactly what to say, but can't ignore that prompt. It seems my children, at least, are reading my blog.

Actually, I know that James and my sister Becky do also.

I really appreciate the fabulous people I have in my family. Becky called today. My off-hand and somewhat teasing comment about the adoption criteria struck a nerve. We're all waiting for Beck and Mitch to get their 171H documents allowing international adoptions. I'm glad we didn't find out any sooner than we did that they were planning on adopting. It's hard enough waiting the nine months for a baby to be born. Waiting for bureaucratic process is even worse, knowing that "our" kids are already here, and needing to be loved. I can only imagine what it must be like for them!

Becky and I talked quite a while about the ethical considerations they went through, in deciding to adopt, and then from which country and organization to adopt. It seems that, having made their decision, based on the concerns that seemed most important to them, they have been confronted with quite a few people who questioned, or even challenged, the choices they'd made.

My defensive streak is activated. Let me at 'em, Beck. No one picks on my sister and gets away with it!

It is very interesting to see our family's moral & ethical concerns brought into focus this way. Yes, we definitely came from the same tree! I listened to Becky sharing the concerns they'd faced along the way, and followed right along with the choices she and Mitch had made in the face of those concerns. I understand the quandries, and see our values being lived in the choices they are making.

Way to go, guys! We are looking forward to welcoming your new little ones!

And we love the big ones you already have!