I have been a little distracted this fall. Between Megan's volleyball, Patrick's soccer, Emily's dance and all my meetings, I haven't made much time to blog. Perhaps I should enlist Anna to help because her extracurricular activity seems to be computer time... Sports are mostly over for now, meetings have slowed down due to the holidays, and the weather is keeping us inside. I have plenty of photos to catch up on though and I will add those later.
So for now, let's focus on rats. Earlier this week, say 4:30am earlier, I was woken up by a beeping sound and decided to just get up and catch up on emails. It turns out the beeping was a defective smoke detector that I banished to the garage but was then moved outside to Patrick's fort in the bushes. When it started raining, it started beeping. Anyway, sorry to the neighbors, but I wasn't about to go out in the dark and rain and dig around for it in the leaves, so for two hours I had to listen to it. And in between beeps I heard scratching noises coming from the laundry room, or perhaps under the laundry room. From what we can tell, there are pack rats living in the crawl space under the kitchen and laundry room. Specifically, there are six fewer pack rats living there. Time will tell how many remain to be caught. Thankfully they aren't big (yet). They are stuck to glue traps and tied up in plastic bags in my trash can. Umm, what? I refuse to go open the can for fear of what has transpired. Not sure if this is related, but we have sewer gas issues down there too. Thought we found the problem once but no, that wasn't it so the hunt continues. We live in fear of the crawl space and what goes on in there, perhaps during the remodel in January (when they are going to use spray insulation to cure my freezing kitchen floor) they can deal with whatever issues are there. Some weird decisions were made during the construction of this house, I will just say that.
So the other project keeping me busy has been planning the long awaited white kitchen. Pinterest inspired the whole thing, I just found photos I liked and assigned them to walls in my own kitchen and ta-da, all done. Okay, it may have taken more time than ta-da, but I love it, it's my obsession. My cabinet guy patiently revised the plan several times and I just wished I could have had his computer program instead to save time. I know what looks right but I don't always have the right language to communicate that. But we powered through and the designs are ready to go to the plant for production. Demo starts January 4th, installing and/or refinishing hardwoods on the entire first floor at the same time. I have a little more trim work to paint in my lame attempt to save money and we'll be ready to go. Ready for takeout meals and crock pot for two months? Hoping friends will let me come bake bread at their houses...
At one point when I told Sean I had a "cabinet meeting" he asked what cabinet? Did I enter politics? I'm on some boards and some councils and some commissions.... but no, no cabinet. I am starting to wind down a few of those commitments and have figured out what my focus should be. Planning events to make people feel part of our church and school community have had the most impact, so I'll continue on with that for now. Sean is a little unsure of some of these events but is a good sport. I recently hosted a party for all the parents at our church (and a friend provided all the catered food) and it was rather uncertain for a while there... how many would come, how everyone would get along, etc. Well, it turned out fantastic with a wide variety of people and since no one was there out of obligation (except Sean, ha ha!), everyone came excited to meet new people. And we ate leftover party food for days, it was a nice break from cooking!
I will post more about the kids when I access the photos. Only other story for now is that I was also woken up by an earthquake this week, at 1:44am. Sean was awake in the basement at the time but did not feel it, must have shook more on the second floor. The birds also felt it as they woke Anna up with their chaos. I do sleep better at night having added on the earthquake coverage to our homeowner's insurance. I think we have every kind of insurance now... we are for sure adults now.
