Knocked out another room!

We went to town upstairs again this weekend and got the guest room finished. Well, almost. It will be finished as soon as I get off of here and put the final coat of paint on the trim and wash all the bed linens and remake the bed and put the furniture back where it goes. OK! So I’m NOT done yet! But we’re close! LOL! Hubby also blew the leaves all out of the front and back yards. It took two days and it’s his third time blowing them, but this was the big one. He will probably have to do it one more time, but most of the leaves are down now.

An interesting note, while he was blowing the leaves, this guy walked up to him from out of the woods. We have been noticing pink ties around the trees which we figured were staking out our property line and I have seen surveyors going through the woods.  We have woods on two sides of our property that go way back which we have been using for an unlimited supply of firewood. Ice storms down here knock over lots of trees every winter. Anyway, I got worried that they might be trying to squeeze another house into the tiny lot between us and the neighbors even though I didn’t see how they could – unless they made the driveway real long and stuck them in behind us! That would terrible! Try selling a place with tractors in your backyard! Anyway we found out from this guy that he owns the tract of land behind us all the way down to the main road half a mile away and that yes, he will be developing it! Well, no danger of anyone getting squeezed in between us but it looks like our woods will be gone in a couple of years. We were regretting losing the woods when we move, but we would be losing them if we stayed anyway. So it’s good we are getting out of here now while it still is really private and the new buyers won’t know about the development possibly going up in a couple of years.

We also took a break from painting to do some shopping again, but this time we didn’t need more paint! Well we do, but not right then! My sweet honey did ALL the Thanksgiving shopping while I got my order in at the store. I just LOVE that kind of shopping! LOL! Then we went to Target for a couple of things we couldn’t get where I work and we just started looking around and we actually made a pretty good dent in our Christmas shopping for the boys! Woohoo! But they are easy to shop for. We will have to find out what the older ones want when they come up for Thanksgiving:)

Yup, we got 2 out of the 6 kids coming home. Hey, one-third is better than no-third! LOL! But three of the kids live 1,000 miles away and the oldest has duty. So that leaves Steven and Alysia and of course Al will come too:) His family lives on the coast which is a 4 hour drive as opposed to a 1 hour drive to get here. Plus they want to be home to fight the crowds and start their shopping early the day after. They are a brave pair I say!

Well I must get back to it. Got lots to do today again and I am working tonight. But it’s only a two day week this week for me. Yay! Have fun everyone:)

I have been re-reading my old online diary and this is one of my favorites reminding me of the chaos that no longer reigns here! lol. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did reliving it!

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Bouncing off the walls!                            – 11/29/2000

Whew! The kids sure were wound up tonight! It took about 45 minutes to get them to stop setting each other off and quiet down to go to sleep!

I was tipped off that it would be one of ‘those nights’ when I announced shower time and mistakenly said it was my youngest daughter’s turn to go first. Well, it wasn’t and she was very vocal about it, so I checked my calendar. (Yes, EVERYTHING must be in black and white on paper here or the children will connive, fabricate and basically lie their way out of whatever they are supposed to be doing!) Well she was right and it was Steven’s turn first in the showers that night.  I was not surprised by Stephanie’s reaction but I was a bit stunned at my son’s reaction.

It was not easy to comprehend the scene before me. There he was, my 14 yr old son, wearing his camoflage clothes and his Burger King crown, jumping up and down on the couch yelling "That’s…NOT…ACcurate!" over and over. He was yelling a word with every bounce on the couch!  If that’s not bad enough, when I started towards him to get him OFF the couch (which is about the only piece of furniture we have for crying out loud!), he held onto his crown with both hands, jumped up and ran off – to quote Alysia – screaming like a girl!!!

Now our house is set up so that each room opens into the next so you can literally walk in circles around here. So as I was staring off in the direction he ran trying to figure out what his problem was, he came tearing up from behind me, still screaming and running by in the same direction he did before! I was completely nonplussed by this. But I stood in stunned silence as both my daughters (aged 12 & 15 mind you!) started running after him and screaming themselves! HUH? What the heck was going on? And although the cat took off like a shot, our precious baby of a Rotweiller, decided they needed HER chasing them and barking too! Round and round they went, 3 nearly grown kids and a great big dog, running and screaming and possibly compromising the structure of the house and all I could do was stand rooted to the spot with my mouth open! It felt like a small earthquake with windows rattling and magnets falling off the fridge!

As the whole screaming parade ran by for a 4th time and my mind was beginning to come back fearing for safety of my house (the kids were on their own! LOL!)  I wondered if Donna Reed ever had to put up with this??? And all because it’s shower time??

Well the screamfest parade didn’t last long. One of them tripped and fell and like dominoes, they all went down. They were wrestling, laughing, fighting and fending off the dog among a whole lot of noise, but I finally managed to fish my son out the mess and shoo him off to the shower!

They are all quiet now, though, so I am blissful again. Phew! And if truth be told, even though they are way too big to be running like banshees through the house and they were a little too wild and wound up, I wouldn’t trade the sight of seeing them acting crazy and laughing up a storm together for the world!!! This is what memories are made of…after all who could forget a scene like that??? LOL!