More projects around the shelter-in-place-house

We are slowly working on a few other projects around the house while we are sheltering in place.

This weekend/week Jeremy has installed a new water softener.  In the kitchen, he installed a new faucet with a sprayer in the head, and also a drinking water filter with its own faucet. He also ran a new hose from the drinking water to the ice maker which required moving everything out of the lower cabinets, moving the stove, and the fridge. He is a regular plumber this week!  And he made about 7 trips to various home improvement stores, even though he tried to order everything on line and just pick it up. (I will say that Lowe's remains not great with online orders, geesh.)

Sylvia helped with installing the faucets in the kitchen.

I've been working on trying to reorganize our den.  It has become a dumping ground over the past couple years, and I really want it to be organized and usable. Plus, I love my red shelves and I want to be able to see them because they make me happy!  

This is an in-progress photo. Since Annah finished school this month, she moved her school things out. We bought a new iMac and cleaned the desk when we set it up. I moved the tall white hutch into the bathroom and switched the rusty white cabinet into the den. It is full of yarn. I condensed my finished crochet projects into 2 red bins and took a bin of party supplies upstairs to go in the hallway closet when I get around to reorganizing that. I condensed yarn into fabric bins on the red shelves. The biggest part of the mess in the den now is actually items that are waiting to be donated to Goodwill or Mission Mart, but no one is accepting donations in the middle of a pandemic.  I will keep plugging away at this room forever, I'm sure...At least we can walk through it now.

Annah decorated the front and spine of a cardboard binder for me to use for crochet patterns.

Sylvia doodled the back.  I love that it has both of their very different artistic styles on it! 

About a month ago, we got Caeden some audio recording equipment and software. He has been using basic Garage Band on the iMac or his iPod/iPhone to make beats and produce music, and we wanted to invest in him a bit more since he seems to have a talent for it.  When we discovered our old iMac was too old (We've had it almost 10 years!) for downloading updates anymore and we got the new one, we also bought a little Sauder desk and moved the old iMac into the music room for Caeden to use. Sometimes he lets us listen to his songs in progress.

The music room is also in progress...The shelves I bought for music books a few years ago are leaning, and Shannon is going to reinforce them for me when he comes back to help with the entry way project. So...we are trying to get some things done around here, slowly.

Recovering

I'm not sure where the last few days went, other than trying to recover from vacation and the flood.  Our chest freezer in the basement died, though we were thankfully able to save all the meat that was in it.  A repair man came today to see why our dryer wasn't drying clothes.  He found that the motor was ruined by the water and it will cost $340 to fix it.  Ouch.  Hopefully the new motor will come in soon so we can dry laundry again.  Drying racks in the living room aren't really cutting it too well.  

Jeremy and Caeden have been busy every night this week with wrestling camp.  There are about 15 kids participating, which is pretty good for the month of July when everyone goes on vacation.  They are having fun.  

In other news...we were nearly attacked by a much-too-friendly (and hopefully not rabid!) squirrel outside Cook Hall while Sylvia had her cello lesson!  Too close for my comfort, crazy squirrel!  

Flooding, Friends, and Camp Drop-off

This morning was terrible.  We had a big storm, and our basement flooded with about 8 inches of water.  The water heater was under water, and part of the furnace too.  Things were floating around, and I was freaking out.  I called Jeremy in a panic, and he offered to come home from work and start the big trash pump, which empties the basement of water in 5-10 minutes.  I didn't want him to have to come home, so I told him I wanted to try to take care of it.  3 hours, 13 phone calls, and 21 texts later, I still didn't have it running.  I was running back and forth between the basement, outside, the garage, and sobbing, whining and panting.  Hysterics did me no good, so I texted a couple friends to ask them to pray for me to calm down.  I also think I frightened our children.  I felt so stupid that I couldn't figure out how to hook up any of our pumps.  Jeremy always takes care of it, and even though he had shown me and tried to help over the phone, I just couldn't get any of them going right.

I had to have the girls finish helping Caeden pack for camp.  Finally, after a few hours, a neighbor stopped by and helped me get the trash pump going.  Minutes later, Jeremy came home on lunch.  I just sobbed and apologized.  I felt awful.  I left a little pump going, and took the girls to Dawn's.  I don't know what I would do without her.  She is such a wonderful friend.

The girls played with Addie and Reece until Jeremy came to pick them up.  They watched Tarzan and made a project out of a big cardboard box and duct tape.

Caeden and I went into Normal to meet Pastor Todd and his kids.  He drove us down to Carlinville to drop of Caeden and Sammy for NWIL Kids Camp!  This is Caeden's first time going to camp, and he could not have been more excited!!  After we got them situated in their cabin, Caeden asked me to "vacate the premises" so the fun could begin.  I'm glad he was so excited.  One boy in his cabin was crying because he already missed his mom.  Caeden told me last week, "No offense, Mom, but I probably won't even have time to miss you because I'll be having so much fun!"  I sure hope so.  Praying these buddies grow closer to Jesus this week...

Pastor Todd gave the final pep-talk, and I prayed over the boys before we left.

Todd, Adam, Jillian, and I stopped at Cracker Barrel on the way home; yum!  It was so nice to have the day with them to chat and enjoy friendship.  

Wow, the Lord has really blessed us with wonderful friends.  I'm so grateful!!

An Icy Saturday

We had a wonderful day of ministering and celebrating Jesus and Christmas today!

We're enjoying our Christmas tree in the living room; it's a particularly lovely one this year!  And, I think the "Auto Awesome" feature of Google+ Photos is pretty cool...It automatically makes Christmas tree lights twinkle!  Nifty!

This morning when we woke up, everything outside was covered in a sheet of ice that seemed to be getting thicker by the minute!  However, the kids and were scheduled to be part of a Christmas music program at Evergreen Place, and assisted living community in Normal, and I wasn't about to drive on ice.  Jeremy had been planning to go to work, but chose to drive the rest of us to Normal instead.  I'm very grateful.  We had a great time making music for the folks at Evergreen Place!  Caeden started off the program playing Jingle Bells on his guitar, and Annah did a beautiful medley of O Come, O Come Emmanuel and O Come All Ye Faithful on her violin. One of my voice students, Allison, sang Welcome to Our World and Here With Us and I accompanied her on piano.  Her mom Joyce is the director of Evergreen place, who invited us to be part of the program along with her family.  Joyce sang a beautiful performance of Ave Maria.  Sylvia played a violin medley of Angels We Have Heard On High and Hark! The Harald Angels Sing and Annah added some nice harmony to parts of it. I sang and played Christmas Is and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, and at the end all of the families joined together to sing We Wish You a Merry Christmas.   Then we were able to spend a little time visiting with some of the sweet residents.  We were so blessed to meet them, and Jeremy and I spent quite some time talking with a couple in their 90's who will celebrate their 68th anniversary tomorrow.  I'm sure we were ministered to more than they, and I'm so glad we could go!

On our way home, we had lunch at Moe's--YUM!!!  Then this afternoon, the kids played Wii and watched Christmas movies while I baked more Christmas cookies and Jeremy worked on pumping water out of the basement.  It rained all day long, and I heard we had a 1-3 inches of rain.  There was beautiful, scary thick ice on everything when we went back into town to set up for Open House at church.  In fact, Jeremy and I argued loudly in the car about whether or not we should be going at all. Neither of us won the argument.

At setup, Kim had me get the girls going on making adorable chocolate dipped marshmallows with candy canes for people to drop in hot chocolate at the open house tomorrow.  So cute!!

We left church before setup was completely finished, since Jeremy had left the pump running in the basement and we needed to get home to attend to it before it ran dry and burned up.  He has spent quite a bit of time not sleeping but attending to that pump lately.  Such a never-ending frustration.

Celebrating marriage and parenthood

Happy Mother's Day!  What a blessing to be a mother!

    

Everyone here is feeling better now, thankfully.
    

We spent the weekend in Indiana.  Friday we visited with Jeremy's mom and Grandma DeHaven for a little while.  Then, we left Annah with Grandma and Grandpa McEowen, and headed to Syracuse to celebrate our wedding anniversary.  We had dinner and spent the night at the Oakwood Inn at Oakwood Park.  We had a wonderful, relaxing time there!
   

Saturday we visited with Taryn's parents a little and then had dinner with both sets of our parents at Carlos O'Kelly's.  We had a great server, and the food was excellent! ;) We also stopped at Zesto and Annah enjoyed eating some "ahkens" (ice cream).  We also got to see Great Grandma McEowen and Great Aunt Juanita and Uncle Jerry and Great Aunt Wanda & Uncle Earl, and of course Princess the dog, whom Annah loves!!!

    

When we returned home today, we found our basement flooded worse than ever...probably about a foot of water in some parts of it.
    

Happy Anniversary to us tomorrow. :)

Water, water, everywhere and all the boards did shrink!

Our basement is flooded with hundreds (maybe thousands?) of gallons of water this morning.  The only thing we can do is try to bail it out with the wet-dry vac, but it is coming in through the floor in fountains!   And, it's not even raining outside.

quite a chain of events

Last week was a bit of a challenge to our nerves. When we turned on our computer Sunday night, it crashed. We couldn't salvage anything, and after trying too long, we could no longer even turn it on. So, we replaced it on Monday. 

 Tuesday, a big plastic sink in our basement broke as water from our washer was draining into and the drain became blocked. There was water all over that room of the basement. 

 Wednesday, we were all outside getting ready to go to town to buy a new sink, when Snickers decided to meet the neighbor across the street who was mowing her lawn. Just as he was running across the road and Jeremy was running after him, a huge delivery truck sped through and hit the dog. He yelped and ran around behind the neighbor's house. When Jeremy got there, they were both freaked out, and Snickers was limping and bleeding underneath. Jeremy took him to the emergency vet clinic in Normal. He is a very lucky dog.--no broken bones or internal injuries. He just had a bruised back leg and scraped underside. 

 Annah is trying to say more things now. She can say, "sock," which actually sounds more like, "sah," but it's cute anyway. She tries to say, "shoe," but only mommy and daddy would be able to identify that. She has SIX teeth now, and eats lots of big people foods. 

Grandma Lopshire got her a Halloween costume, so she is getting ready for her birthday!