I have hired the kids

Yesterday I had the kids help me pack for a while. They did all of my dishes that were in the dishwasher and the plates and bowls left in the cabinets. It was a great help. Then today, since it is down to the last minute, I have really employed them. We have worked our way out through the house and now all I have left is the living room, dining room, and kitchen. Which is quite a bit. We have packed most stuff from each room, but it is the little stuff that takes so much time. Today has been so busy and I am so ready for a nap. But I must press on...

We have taken 3 loads to the house today already. Went to the grocery store for a few things, ate out for breakfast, and went to Sonic after lunch> I surprised the girls with Sonic in thanks for helping me. Really, they have been an asset. Aaron called as I was buckling the girls for our latest trip to the house and he was at the office eating out, so we went out to his office an visited him for a few minutes. And it is only 2:30.

Madelyn is not in dance, but the other night at the local dance studio, they had a back to school Brownie party for those that were Brownies last year, coming back. They let Natalie stay too, even though she was a Daisy last year. They had tons of outfits to dance around in, and they painted nails, spray colored hair on them, fixed their hair. I got some cute pictures, but since the dance outfits aren't very modest, I am not posting them. But I thought this one of Madelyn was pretty.

SNAKES GALORE

I was just at the new house a few minutes ago. I walked two bags of trash out to the trash cans by the mailbox, and decided to take a stroll through the barn to see if I could find a snake. Boy, did I.
The barn is full of junk that needs to be cleaned out this winter when the snakes aren't so plentiful. I walked through the middle and looked over the side of the one stall, and there about 3-4 ft away was a coiled up rattlesnake. I don't know how long it was since it was coiled up, but I would guess a 2-3 ft. It wasn't rattling. I had my phone in my pocket, so I called Aaron and he said I could either try to kill it with a shovel or shoot it with a gun, or hope it was still there when he got home and he would try to kill it. I chose to wait for him since I didn't like the thought of a possible ricochet from shooting the gun and I for sure didn't want to get close enough to it to kill it with a shovel. That would mean being trapped in a stall with it.
So I did the next best thing and went and got my 3 kids to come see it.
But, by the time I walked back to the house and made it back with the kids, it was gone. There is not much worse than being in a barn, knowing there is a rattlesnake nearby and not knowing where it is. (The kids never got closer than 15 ft from the barn, I wasn't going to bring them in until I found it.) But, while I was looking for the rattlesnake, standing at the edge of the stall, peering over the wooden planks, I look down, and about 6in from my feet (on the other side of the stall), was a coiled up copperhead. There was a plank in between me and the snake, so don't freak out too bad. It would have had to strike me between the stall planks, and it wasn't looking in my direction.
Apparently the snakes did the ole switcheroo while I was going for the kids. I chose not to bring the kids into the barn to see the copperhead, since the rattler was probably watching me. I also saw a 6 inch long lizard and a spider in a huge web, probably 3" in diameter- the spider, not the web. Although not poisonous like the snakes, the spider, by far is my biggest foe. And they grow them big in the country. I can handle snakes, and I would welcome them if they weren't poisonous, but the spiders, oh, I just can't handle that very well at all. Ugh! Any suggestions on a type of dog that will go after snakes and keep them away from your house?
By the way, Pump is in the well and pumping water to the surface, yes!!! I ran it for about 45 min. today through a hose into the yard, like the well man said. Said to run the water until the water runs clear. At first it was like watered down milk - getting out all the rock and sediment they drilled up while drilling. Once it is clear, we can get our sample to be tested. We can go ahead and have water in the house once it is clear, but we won't be drinking it until it gets cleared by the health dept.

You know you live in the boonies when...

AT&T doesn't service your area.
I called last week wanting to switch our service to our new address, and they don't go there. Apparently we are in another tiny area, and the AT&T worker actually gave me the name and city of the service that does go to our house. I couldn't find it on the internet. I looked in our phone book and couldn't find it either. A friend from church stopped by this morning and she was able to find the little area in the phone book.
There was one page. So, we will be listed on one page.
Good news is... there is a company that we can have a landline phone through.
Bad news is... they don't have the ability in that area yet to support internet. I was under the assumption that as long as you have a landline phone you can get dialup. But according to the phone company lady, that is not true. She said that they are trying to get it to every area eventually.
For now we won't have internet at our house. I guess I will go to the library once a week or so to check emails and post on the blog. Sigh..
Even in town, I have heard people talking about a waiting list to get DSL. I don't think I will be able to post pictures on the blog anymore, since I will be using the library computer. Maybe I can find a friend that will let me use it at their house.
Although an inconvenience, this is a problem I can live with.
Did I mention there is no cable there either?
She said we could get satelite, and get internet through that, but if we do get satelite tv, it will be a long time from now. We have other priorities to spend our money on. Like fresh water...
Our electrician is supposed to be finishing up running power and water lines to the well today and once he is done, we are free to call the well driller to come and set the pump up and hopefully at that point we will have water. I can't wait. We will be moving out of this house by Friday.
Right now, we are taking a lunch break from packing and cleaning. I had a lady offer to babysit the girls this afternoon, and I think I may take her up on it.
This weekend, while Aaron's brother and sister in law were here, he helped us move the last dresser. I will finish moving the drawers today and we are just going to wear whatever clothes happen to be in the laundry. The girls and I got their room cleaned of everything except their 3 mattresses, their baskets of clothes for the week and a toy box. That still sounds like a lot of stuff, but trust me, it looks empty compared to what was in there.
I don't know what room to do next. I am in that limbo of...if I clean it now, will it get dirty before Friday and I will have to clean it again. Then laziness rears it's ugly head and I think "I'll just wait until later" then reality sets in and says "you only have 4 more days of later, you can't put it off forever".
I am signed up to work 7-3 on Friday and Saturday. Why would I sign up to work on moving day? Well, I didn't realize at the time that it would be moving day. For once, I actually signed up 6 weeks in advance, before our closing was postponed.

Well!!!

It may not be pretty, but it sure is a blessing. 1st picture is well with the top on. 2nd picture is the well with the top off and the beautiful shimmering water way down deep. Can you believe that it goes 240ft into the ground? When I took the picture yesterday, you could see the water without a mirror. When you had to use a mirror, it was 52 ft from the ground, so now it is even closer. Today, our electrician and his brother from church dug a trench from the well to our house. They should finish hooking up electricity and pipe and once they are done, the well driller will come back out and hook up our pump and then we will have water. Hopefully, by the end of the month when we have to be out of our rental.

It is 12:20am right now. I am getting pretty sleepy. I worked 5-11 last night and before I went to bed around 12, I checked on Natalie, who had awoken and she had a fever of 102.9. She has a sinus infection/tonsillitis/possibly strep. I brought her mattress into the living room so she could watch tv while waiting for her medicine to kick in so she could go back to sleep, and I laid out there with her until she cooled off. (our couches are already moved). She is already getting better today. I worked 7-11:45 tonight and already signed up to work 7-11 tomorrow night. Aaron's brother and sister in law are coming on Saturday, so I probably won't be working then.

We have gotten a slow start to school this week. What with some of my curriculum on backorder, and Natalie running a fever all day on days 1 and 2, the move that never ends, finding supplies buried in multiple boxes, and me working 3 evenings in a row. I am liking the curriculum so far, and I really liked this company last year too.

Water!!!!

The girls and I went to the house this morning and stayed about 5 hours today. I got some more of my curriculum for school and had enough where I could start school today. I actually went to the store and got some snack food to take there too. Somehow, when we have been there for a few minutes, they are suddenly starving.
Now for the miracle and answered prayer from God...
I went and looked in the well this morning and I saw WATER. And although it was hard to tell the depth, it was much much easier to see than last night when we weren't sure if we were seeing water or not. Yipeee!!!!
Tonight, we took Aaron with us and were able to measure it. It was 52ft from the top. That means we have approx. 190 ft of water. After the well driller giving us a 1% chance of getting a tiny bit of water by today, we surpassed even his measly chances. The lime rock starts at 70ft deep and went down to the 240ft. He felt like the highest the water might fill would be up to the 70ft mark and I guess at that point, it would seep into the soil 70ft and above. But instead, it surpassed that by 18 ft. Not only did we get water, but we got more than he thought was possible!
He was really surprised when Aaron called him tonight and could hardly believe there was so much. He was excited and said he worried about it and felt bad about it all night last night.
Next step is to get an electrician to come out and run electricity to the well. Then the well driller will come out and put the pump on, then we will have to get a plumber to come out and dig a line to our house plumbing. Hopefully before the end of the month. Thanks for your prayers!

Well Water

Yesterday was a bad day. The well driller called around lunchtime to let me know that he hadn't seen any water yet and he was around 180ft. He said that he would go a little deeper, but not to expect much. So, long story short, they dug 240 ft and found no water.
He called a fellow well driller that had done a well on our road and they had dug 780 ft with no water. So we stopped at 240.
When he left, he said that our only hope for that well is if it is slowly seeping into the hole from the rocks around it and it is so slow that he can not detect it while he is drilling. It is hard to tell since they shoot water into the hole the entire time. He really thinks our chances are nil, he kept saying he wished he had better news.
He told us to go out there with a mirror after waiting all night and reflect the sunlight into the hole and if we see water, to call him and he can come back and put a pump in.
We went over there last night a few hours after he stopped drilling to look. Aaron thought he saw a little shimmer of water, but it was hard to see with the setting sun and the fact it is 240 ft down. However, we did hear water trickling and we heard "glub, glubs" We don't know if the water we heard was leftover water that the driller shot in there or if it was new water seeping from the rocks. So, maybe we will have some water. I was going to wait for Aaron to come home and look tonight, but I might not be able to wait that long. If I can get the lid off the well...
No matter, the well costs the same to drill whether we get water or not.

Praying for water

Tomorrow, finally, our well driller is coming. We are praying hard that they find water. Let me recap the week.

Wednesday, Aaron's parents came down. The well driller was supposed to come last week, but postponed until tomorrow. Over the next 4 days, we packed and moved, with the help of his parents, most of our furniture. I was supposed to work 7-3 on Friday and Saturday, but they cancelled me both days. I don't know about Friday, but Saturday, there were only 8 patients in the hospital.

We still are in the old house pending well water.

We have heard rumors that water is hard to find.

Tomorrow, I am going to try to get to the house in time for the girls and I to watch the well driller go water witching. I guess that is how you spell it, that is how it sounds. It will be an education, that's for sure.

Aaron's parents went home this afternoon. We spent the afternoon at the house. It is so beautiful out there. I love it! Even with the stress. I pray that we get water before Aaron gets called out west on a forest fire. That way we can go ahead and move it all and I won't have to find some strong backs to help me move the rest of the heavy stuff.

If you look close enough at the pictures below, you will see that the cat in the picture is wearing a jacket.

Relieving Stress

Got Natalie out of bed to come get me something out of the box. She never questioned why I would get her out of bed to get something from a box only feet away from me. He had already scared Hannah. If you get stressed enough, apparently you get a little silly.

Room pictures and new additions

I am going to try to get the captions to match the pictures.

Here is the picture of Madelyn's purple room.

Next is a picture of the pink that Hannah picked out. We will have to wait until it dries completly before we add Natalie's blue to the other walls. I took the girls to a lady's house who was giving away free kittens. She had a whole bunch, a lot of different ages. I let the girls pick out two new kittens. The gray one's name is Smokey, and the other's name is Stripey.

I emptied 2 boxes of kids' books, and 3 boxes of kitchen stuff while Aaron was painting the pink trim today. I have a meeting tonight at 7 for the coop teachers at our school that we go to on Friday. I am teaching a high school class from Dave Ramsey. I really don't want to drive 25 min. there tonight, but don't really have an excuse not to go, so I guess I will.

Madelyn is complaining a lot less today. I don't think the antibiotic has had time to work, but I think knowing what was wrong with her has taken a big weight off her mind. She apparently was really worried over the weekend, wondering what was wrong.

I'm Giving Myself an Award

Yes, I am awarding myself with the "NEGLECTFUL MOTHER OF THE WEEK AWARD"
I think I have earned it.
Let me give you background. I know I could have kept all this to myself and none of you would know what has happened, but sometimes I just have to confess my shortcomings.
Let me go back over the last week or two. It has been very busy around here with buying the house, watering plants at someone else's house, and all the other errands that we have been running this summer. Seems like we are always getting in the car and I am always yelling "go potty before we leave" Madelyn will go, then as we are walking out the door, she says she has to go again. In my hurried state, I have just thought the going a lot was her worrying that she wouldn't have to go while we were out.
I guess I was flashing back to my childhood where while having to go potty while we weren't at home wasn't a crime, it was at least something to feel guilty for. I even wondered how she could pick up on that.
Then on Thursday, she was complaining that her stomach hurt, but she couldn't give me more than vague symptoms. She was even dry heaving some and asked for medicine. So from Thursday until yesterday she was off and on complaining, lying around. I was getting frustrated because I couldn't get much info out of her. Everything was so vague. The first 2 days, I figured she either had the touch of stomach virus or ate something bad. By Saturday night, I was planning on a doctor's visit on Monday. Sunday night, it finally hit me. DUH!
Peeing all the time.
Lethargy
lower abdominal pain
nausea
She has a UTI and although I knew her symptoms, I didn't take the time to sit down and think about the last few weeks and put it all together possibly getting her to the doctor sooner.
We went yesterday morning and sure enough, the doctor comes in after checking the sample and says "Big Time Bladder Infection"
I apologized to her on the way home.

Busy

Busily trying to get the house ready to move into.
Over the weekend, we have moved most of the boxes that we had already packed. On Friday, when I was considering filling up the bookshelf in Madelyn's room with books, I decided that while most of our stuff was still at the rental, it would be best to go ahead and at least paint the kids' rooms. So, we decided to let the girls pick the colors. Friday evening and part of Saturday morning, Aaron and I finished painting Madelyn's room PURPLE.
Aaron is heading over there right now to start working on Natalie and Hannah's room. Natalie picked BLUE, while Hannah picked PINK, so we will see how it blends together. I will try to remember to take the camera over there with me today to post the after pictures. The whole house needs to be painted. The entire house inside was the same color - a bland off white, with a vague hint of green? I don't know how to describe it, but I think the rest of the house will have to wait though.
Aaron is working a weird shift today. He will be going in at 1:30 and getting off at 2:30 in the morning. Something to do with bats. So, he is off this morning, hopefully going to get a nap before going in this afternoon.
My mom has been here all weekend, and has enabled Aaron and I to run errands and paint without the kids helping.
Madelyn has a doctor's appointment today, and I will probably go help Aaron paint after that, but I have to get shoes on now. Thankfully, Mom is still here and so I only have to take Madelyn with me to the doctor.

The Wait for the House is Over!

Closing went very smooth today. We had to take the girls, I couldn't find a babysitter, but they did real well. I took them some new coloring books and they were very quiet. Thank you all for thinking and praying for us. I think once it hits us, we will be thrilled.

I think that it hasn't registered that the house is ours. We went over there today after closing and spent a while. It was great to be there without a realtor following us around the house. We walked through the orchard area and I took a basket to pick some fruit. That part was a little disappointing because all the beautiful plums that were there a few weeks ago had dried up or fell off. We did find another apple tree with sweet, little yellow apples. We found the fig tree which had a lot of ripe figs on it. There were two peach trees that had a ton of tiny unripe peaches, so hopefully they won't dry out like the plums before they mature, and we also found 2 black cherry trees.

We hiked around all of the property that was cleared (although needs to be bushhogged badly) and down the road area that goes into the woods. We were walking down the middle of the driveway and I felt what I thought was weeds tickling my leg, looked down screamed. The creature flew off and I thought it was a grasshopper, but Madelyn said, "no, it was a spider" Sure enough, there sat the huge wolf spider, bigger than a half dollar. I am terrified of spiders, I had to mentally calm myself down. Right before we left, Aaron said "look at that spider that crawled into the garage. So, I got out and looked. Wow, it must have been the other one's great granddad. It was about the size of a tarantula, but skinny, not fat and hairy.

We ended up missing church tonight. We got in the car and Madelyn saw a few ticks on her. These are the tiny kind that are about the size of a pinhead. Very hard to see and pick up. They all ended up complaining of the ticks the 5 mile drive home and when we got home, we probably spent 30 min. in the bathroom, combing over the kids entire body looking for these tiny ticks. Aaron counted the ones he pulled off Natalie. Grand total from Natalie? 32 I don't think Hannah was far behind. It took forever to get the things off. I probably had about 10 from my knees down on each leg. Gonna have to do something about the tick problem here.

I have posted pictures of Natalie and Hannah making biscuits for breakfast yesterday morning. I measured the stuff, Natalie stirred it together, then I kneaded it a few times and they took it from there. I did all the oven work, but they rolled them out and cut them and rerolled. They were real good.

Tomorrow is the Closing Day!

We should be closing tomorrow at 3:30pm. Think about us, and pray it goes through ok! I am excited, yet still leary. I think once the papers are signed, I will be more relieved.

One of Those Days

Awwww! Isn't she so cute?! She probably never gets into any trouble. DO NOT be deceived by the sweet, innocent face. I think I will call her "the Instigator" . In my family growing up, it was my older brother Michael. Oh the misery that one person put into my life. I don't know if he terrorized Eric, the oldest, but his mission in life was to make me insane, all the while feigning innocence with my parents.

Back to Hannah. I grew up with a brother who thrived on picking at me to the point of me taking and taking and taking, then I would finally explode in anger. That would get me in trouble, all the while my brother laughing that it worked once again. My parents used the useless phrase "just ignore him, he only wants a reaction from you" Well, that may be true with someone you don't have to live with, but when you have to be around a person 24/7 who loves to make you cry, it is hard to ignore.

That being said, I am very sensitive to siblings who pick at each other. I know how it is to be helpless, to know that you can't win either way. Either you are a tattler when you tell on that sibling, or you take and take, then you explode and since your parents didn't know, or didn't care how much you took, they think you are overreacting to a minor irritation.

On the opposite side of the coin, I cannot stand to hear the whine "Hannnnnaaaahhhhh, Stttttopppppp!" So, I have had to give the older two a way to deal with it, rather than put them in a no win situation. I told them, tell Hannah once, in a non whiny voice, to stop whatever she is doing. If she doesn't stop, come tell me, in a nonwhiny voice that you have tried to deal with it on your own. If you whine or don't come to me, then you both get into trouble. I think that has been a insanity saver for Natalie. The first few weeks after this announcement by me, she came to me all the time, and Madelyn, just a few times. I guess Hannah is tired of not getting away with her tormenting ways.

Now I will say to negate some of this negativity, she is a very sweet girl and I love her very much. Does that one sentence make up for the paragraphs before it? It will have to do today, maybe tomorrow after I have slept off some of my annoyance.

Here is a picture of Hannah sitting like a bird in the "nest" that she made out of pillows and chairs.

We had to go to the larger town about 25 miles from here today to register for Friday classes. I got the ads out of the Sunday paper yesterday and decided since we were going to be in that town, we should hit all the deals.

This morning, we started by going to CVS here in town and getting the colas that they had cheap. I was out of conditioner, and we go through a lot with 4 people with long hair, so they had some on sale, then more money off for 75c. So, I got about 5 and when I checked out, they came up 99c. Somehow, in the 10 min I spent shopping, from the time I got the conditioner to the time I made it to checkout someone came around and took off the 75c stickers. (I checked).

Then we drove out to the animal shelter to check on prices and just check it out. They ended up having an emergency call about a injured dog and had to close up, sending us away.

We came home and I gave the girls showers, ate a snack and got them ready to have their pictures made.

We drove to this larger town and first went to Walmart to get the pictures done. I thought I was going to have to sit through all the expensive package choices, even though I always just take the $7.99 package. Thankfully, someone came up and so she sped me through.

Then we went to Staples and spent a while finding the cheap deals in the ads, and then they didn't ring up as cheap as they were supposed to, but they were still really cheap, so I got them. I was in line and the people in front had a problem. So, there ended up being about 6-8 people in each line. They finally opened up another line and she says "I'll take the first few people in that line" I bent over to pick up my basket and before I even stood back up one lady just tore over to the other line. It was almost comical how rude she was. Then everyone else went over there. I tried a few more minutes in my line, but then gave up and ended up checking out behind everyone that was behind me.

Off to Walgreens where I had cut out about 8 coupons of really cheap stuff. Of course, I only found 1/2 of what was advertised. Apparently, they had run out of the other things.

After that we got lunch and went to the school to register. We were there about 45 min. until they called our names. They had one room open with toys, so the kids got to play while we waited. The girls got the classes they had wanted. Madelyn will be taking Science, Art, and Reading to Remember. Natalie will be taking Science, Safety for Kids, and The Story of the World. Hannah will be in the preschool class.

Our last stop was Aldi's which had milk on sale for $1.99 a gallon. We got 4 gallons, plus a few other things, then headed home. Whew! What a day!

We got home about 15 min before Aaron, so I boiled some water and started the spaghetti while the girls cleaned the dining room, and I cleaned the kitchen.

And then there were 2 kittens.

Sadly, our sweet Chocolate Chip has disappeared. We left the house Friday morning and she was here, and when we came back 6 hours later, there has been no trace of her. She was a good kitten and we will miss her. I suppose we will never know what her fate was, but we like to think that perhaps someone took her and is going to give her a good home.

We are planning to close on Wednesday. It is starting to get a little more exciting! I will breathe a sigh of relief when the papers are signed however. I have ordered our homeschool curriculum for the year. I am starting to get excited. Truth be told, at the end of last school year in May/June, I was about sick of it. Ready for a break and hoping that the desire to start school again would return this fall. I felt guilty about dreading schoolwork, but then realized that it was the same way for me when I was in grade school, and high school. Sick of it by the end of each semester, but excited about starting back again. We are using Winter Promise again. Last year we did their program Children Around the World, and this year we are doing the American Story I. I am looking forward to learning about our country's history. Something that I didn't learn a lot of while in school. I hated history.

Not much news to report right now. Oh exciting news! I don't think I mention that he was gone, but Aaron was gone all last week from Wed. to Thur. He got home Thur. night and we were all very happy to see him. It was a stressful week without him here, but he was on a fire making extra money, which will help us in our move, I am sure. I miss him when he is gone, but am so proud of how hard he works for us.