Happy Birthday Dear Seeees-ster

.: 08:14 :.

Happy Birthday To you!

Cheryl is 34 today! We haven't mailed her a card yet, so this will have to do until I figure out this pen and paper and stamp stuff. I hope it's a wonderful birthday, and that you get to do things you enjoy.

For her fan club:

.: 08:44 :.

Jumping on the bed and singing.


Still Jumping.


In the tunnel at Lorane Little School.


In tunnel with toy pig.


Still in the tunnel.


Having a cat nap at home.


Narnia and Logan hard at nap.


All dressed up.


Logan posing with Sunny.


Adjusting their positions.


Explaining things to Sunny.

Today we're hoping to do gardening outside, and in the evening John and Logan hope to plant her flower garden. If the day goes calmly I'll even get pictures of all the planting we did on Sunday. Olivia had flowers here. I had flowers I brought here. Logan is choosing flowers at every opportunity. We'll be overflowing with them when we get all caught up!

Mom says don't call, blog.

.: 20:56 :.

I've been a little slow in posting here, time flies when you're living in a daze. Some work has gotten done in the house, although the process seems to involve about one week of work and three weeks of waiting each month. We do have a good number of things growing in our garden, and as of last weekend blueberry bushes in the ground. Also two clematis, which are now waiting for an archway to climb. I don't feel as much like posting when there's no big change or no good news. I doubt any one wants to keep reading something negative, and it's hard to find positive things to post at times.

So what has been filling up our time? Well four out of five week days Logan and I are on the road to somewhere. Tuesdays we go to Baby and Me. Wednesdays and Thursdays we go to Lorane Little School, and Fridays we go to Mini musicians. Those don't all take the whole day, but they do eat up a good chunk of it. And things like chiropractor visits, catching up with house building contractors, and errands get mixed in, or shoved in to our home day on Mondays. And then there's Saturday, when Logan's been going to pre-ballet classes. She doesn't actually participate in the class often, but she watches and listens and then comes home and practices what she's seen. At ten dollars a class, I'd really rather she participate, but at least she shows signs of learning even without doing things with the class.

John is still on a ¾ time salary, although he's not getting to help with house construction since the house construction isn't happening 2/3 of the weeks. And work is ready for him to be back to full time ASAP, although I think that officially doesn't happen until the end of this month.

On our end of getting things done on the house, we've selected counter tops , butcher block and granite; a bath tub, six feet long and deep enough to soak in, we hope; a basic style of kitchen and bathroom sink; and flooring, which will be linoleum downstairs and bamboo upstairs; a stove, a refrigerator, and a water heater. None of those are actually here yet, of course, but we've chosen them, until someone comes up with a reason not to get the one we chose and we start over again.

Today we visited the storage unit where the packed up stuff from the house is stored. Scattered, randomly, from box numbers 40 to 60 we found two boxes worth of yarn, now with two months of time for the soot to have set in to it. Some was used as padding material. Some was just tossed in. Some was even in a box labeled yarn, but most was not. We found books, packed with other things, instead of put into the book boxes that Karen, wonderful Karen worked on. We found John's wines and beers, which were supposed to be left for us to relocate. Now we'll have to list them all for the insurance, or the rebuilding company to reimburse us for - they've been exposed to some pretty high temperatures in the storage unit. The people who packed had good intentions, but were, sadly, not overly competent. We're going to have to enlist competent friends to help inventory the things stored in the shed. Insurance said they would do it, but nothing has happened so far.

People who we see regularly keep asking if the house is "about done". I'm getting pretty tired of saying there hasn't been a change since the last week. This isn't a quick process evidently. We're still living in a 500 square foot shed, with most of our belongings in boxes waiting to be sorted to find out what has to be replaced. Life in limbo.