Getting Us Through Valentine's Day

For the Super Bowl we played our usual silly games. It was kind of a boring game though and the only person who won was Lee and he won like $.65. Not super exciting!

I just realized that I never got a photo of the boys school Valentine boxes. They were cute. I thought Amy was cute reading all the Valentine books one evening.

We don't celebrate Valentine's Day in any huge way. This year I put a heart of sticky notes in everyone's rooms and wrote things I loved about them on each note.

This was Tyler's:

Will's:

Amy's: ( I need to get a picture)

Lee's: (Some of his were already falling off)

Around Valentines every one was sick. Just a bad cold, but it ran through the family. Lee had it first. Then Tyler and myself and lastly Amy. She went though a lot of tissues!

Tyler said, "Mooooommmmm... WHY do I have to write my name on these?" Boys and Valentines. It's a totally different ball game.

We celebrated our one year anniversary of our house! I should have thought about all the stuff we've done to it thus far. I think we've been rather busy!

We bought a lot of insulation for the upstairs and a friend helped me install it. Well, most of it, we have a little more to do.

Tyler was really cute wanting to help Lee bring it upstairs. He sure did work hard!

We had a random warm day and Amy washed Lee's car.

Will and his piano playing.

Will had a field trip at the Bowling Center (see how I said "center" not "alley" Aunt Lynn? :) We went to this place last year and I have to say, it's one of the easiest, most organized field trips. Everyone loves it.

The little girl with her arm around Will is the sweetest friend. Her name is Riley. We met her grandmother at the store just after Christmas. Riley was with her and the grandmother had a service dog. The grandmother came up to Will and said, "Hi Will. I'm Riley's grandmother. Riley told me about your seizures. I have seizures and that is my seizure dog. If I'm about to have a seizure, he will bark and stand by me until help arrives. I just wanted you to know that you can do anything in life. You can drive a car. You can go to college. You can do whatever you want. Never let your seizures stop you. "

It was the sweetest moment that really touched Lee and I that day.

This little girl has turned out to be such a good friend to Will. She watches over him. He doesn't annoy her. She taught him how to bowl (well, she tried. ;) She listens to him. She is such a blessing in our lives.

The day of the field trip, Tyler had gotten sick. He'd had a seizure the night before and had several days with a high fever. I wasn't sure what to do as he obviously couldn't go to school and I had already committed to go on Will's fieldtrip (I go as his "nurse.") It turned out that Lee saved the day by cancelling class and staying with Tyler.

After school I brought Tyler his Valentine box from his friends and he was so excited. He read through every card, every name saying, "Oh wow! This is from John...." "Oh this is from Elizabeth- she does love pink..." it was really cute watching him.

He also told me he was going to give me one million kisses. I think he only made it to 20, but that was close enough. :)

He missed 3 days of school. One of the days he helped me deliver the packets for the Hot Chocolate run. I had picked them up for all my friends.

I also took him to Nachos. But he actually wasn't as hungry as he thought. He didn't eat much.

That weekend was my favorite race of the year, the Hot Chocolate Run! It was cold but it wasn't as cold as years past! It was my 5th year.

We saw our beloved trainer, Austin and his wife Paige. He doesn't work at MTSU anymore, and it's probably been close to 3 years since we've seen them. We were quite excited!

My friend Talana and Trista also ran the race.

Back at Halloween, when we did our Grossology dinner, the kids were disgusted by sardines. Aunt Lynn had said that Grandpa taught her how to put them on bread and how much she loved it. Well, she sent this picture the other day....

I knew I had to capture the kids faces and I was glad I did!

  As of right now, everyone is well and trust me, that has taken several weeks!

The Upstairs, Snow, Tree Climbing, Gardening and a Really Nice Day

We started working on the upstairs. I got all of the rafter vents hung last weekend. It was fun. Who knew I'd enjoy doing this kind of work? Like father, like brother, like daughter, I guess! 

Next up is the insulation. Because of thickness issues, we had to go with a product called Rockwool. It's not made from fiberglass but from stone. It's actually kind of cool. You just push it up and it stays in place. We are slowly buying more and installing that. This upstairs will be a long process, but it's fun to see little strides being made.

We got a little snow the other day. And by little, I mean little. When Lee took the kids to school it was slightly flaking. Before he got the kids there, a message came that they were cancelling. So he brought them back. It came down fierce for about an hour and then melted completely away by noon. (It was snowing harder in the northern part of the county and they were worried about it freezing over during the day- since that's what the forecast was. It obviously did the opposite.)It was really pretty while it lasted!

During the snow day we pulled out the small cotton candy machine. I think I'm going to need a bigger one of these!

The day after the snow day, the kids had a scheduled 3 hour day (it's really a resource day for the teachers.) To pass the time she made paper claws.  Seems worthwhile right?

Will has a breakdown every so often. I think so much emotion gets built up that it all comes out at once. We just try to listen and let him get it all out.

While we were putting the mesh around the a/c the kids were taking pictures of themselves climbing trees.

That's Amy up there:

Tyler:

Amy again, different tree:

Tyler:

And Will:

Amy helped me with a gardening task. I wanted to try this method of winter sowing this year. The basic concept is the milk jug become a mini greenhouse. You plant the seeds and let it sit out until planting time. We shall see if it works! (Someone at church gave me a garbage bag full of milk jugs!)  

Yesterday was gorgeous. It really was such a beautiful day. Will needed to go on a 1 mile hike to pass off something for Cub Scouts so we decided we'd better do it now before it got cold again.

Will "hiking" is a true test of patience. About 10 feet in he declared he needed to rest and have a snack.

And every 10 feet past that we had to stop again. We were only walking a 1/2 mile to an overlook and then the same distance back to the car.

The overlook looks over the river. Sometimes this area is completely dry and you can walk all over it. We've had a lot of rain so it was full of water this time. Tyler enjoyed throwing rocks.

On the way back, we were getting tired of our slower than a snails pace and Tyler was mad he couldn't keep climbing all over the rocks. There are a lot of holes that pop up (think mini-sink holes) so we didn't feel comfortable with him running all over. This was him being mad.

With that we finished our lengthy mile walk and headed back home to watch Groundhogs Day. :)

Tyler doesn't take lessons yet, but he loves to play the piano. Maybe he'll be the pianist of the family??

Amy too, when she practices. :) (Although she's better at practicing than Will)

The boys have been fighting a lot lately and it's driving us all crazy. They do have moments when they enjoy each other though.

Amy can usually be found painting. She got a nice watercolor set for Christmas and she uses it all the time.  This time, inspired on the garden day we had, she painted root vegetables.

And I think all of that catches us up! Whew!

The Tale of the Skunk

About two weeks ago we started noticing the smell of a skunk in the house. We assumed it had sprayed outside and was just coming through the vents. After about 4 days of that, one evening it came through so potent that I was coughing and gagging. It was around 11:30pm and we were opening windows and trying to catch our breath. 

At that point we thought maybe it wasn't a skunk but actually a dead animal under the house. Lee reluctantly decided he was going to go under the house to retrieve the carcass. Heaven knows I wasn't going under there! Throughout the day, Lee was dreading doing this and decided to call our pest guy and ask if he did carcass removal. He said he did and he came by later that night. Armed with a headlamp he crawled all under the house and found nothing. He did say the smell was a live skunk and soon found it's nest kind of under/near the a/c. He also added that it was probably a pregnant skunk nesting for her babies. He said it was getting in through the opening around the bottom and going up and through it to get to it's nest. 

Well, no way on earth were we going to have a pregnant skunk under our house! 

That night we put wood all around the bottom of it, hoping to keep it out.

The next day we tossed 3 boxes of moth balls under the house. Skunks supposedly hate moth balls. Our house quickly went from skunk smell to moth ball smell. Both were awful.

While we were tossing them under our neighbor said, "What in the world are you guys doing?" Turns out he was having the same problem. We walked over to his house and found his hole. He actually called someone who told him it has been living under his house for about a year. Luckily, ours was only a new resident.

Then became the question- how do you know if a skunk is gone?? We hadn't smelled any of its spray, but perhaps it just hadn't been spraying. Maybe it was under the house giving birth. Or maybe it had relocated because of the smell. We had no idea.

A few days later Lee started doing research on moth balls and it turns out they are really hazardous to your health. The EPA has several warnings about them. So instead of continuously poisoning ourselves, he braved the crawl space again- this time armed with a better gas mask- determined to get all them out. Amy said, "Mom, I want to marry a man who is willing to go under the house!" I told her that it's a great trait!

Sweet Tyler wants to be a "fixer man" so he couldn't wait to help. We armed him with a mask and gloves and they both went under. When Lee removed the door the moth ball smell was unbearable. He only let Tyler help for a little while.

They collected over 300 moth balls!!

Lee decided to go all in and scoped where the thing was living. He found the nest and lots of poop, but it wasn't there (or he would have gotten sprayed) and several of the moth balls were in the nest. So surely the thing had moved on.

Since we knew it wasn't at home (and had no idea if it was still coming back or not) we duct taped some small holed mesh around the a/c.

I guess this was the only picture I got of the duct tape. It was getting late and it was our temporary bandaid on the problem. Our other neighbor said, "What the heck are you guys doing?" (We get that question a lot around here!)

The next morning Lee went through and screwed in the mesh all around as a more permanent fix.

Now that is sealed off and we've walked the perimeter of the house multiple times. We cannot see any other way for that thing to get back in. But we shall see. So while this seems like the end, it's really a continuing story!!