Thursday, December 20, 2007

Merry Christmas!

Here is the Christmas card that was never ordered...

Home again... finally

After living in a hotel for two full weeks we are back at home. It feels great to be at home, but we have a lot of work ahead of us.

All of our belongings are in boxes and bags. We are basically moving back into our house.

We have no kitchen and won't really have a working kitchen until the end of January when our cabinets are in. We set up a table in our basement with a george forman grill and toaster. We are using a dorm size refrigerator for now. The King tried to lighten the situation a little by claiming this is just like tailgating.

Construction in the kitchen is moving ahead. The doorway to our old pantry is now drywalled shut and they are starting to texture the walls. The tile floor will be installed soon. Our appliances should all be here in the next two weeks, but I am not sure we will be using most of them until the cabinets are in.

DQ seems relieved to be home again. Everything has been a battle with her the last few weeks from refusing to putting on her jacket to not sleeping at night. Last night she went right to bed and slept all night. She seemed to be in a much better mood this morning.

We are trying to get in Christmas spirit, but it is kind of hard with plastic sheets covering your Christmas tree and stockings. Luckily I had most of my shopping finished before the fire, otherwise that would be another big stress added to my list.

I keep telling myself this is only temporary and I will have a fabulous kitchen when it is all finished. Maybe someday I will look back at this and laugh..

Friday, December 14, 2007

More drama

Seriously, can I just get a break?

Last night after work we decided to go out to eat after we picked up the girls from daycare. We have been eating most meals at the hotel since going out to eat with the two monkeys (especially the drama queen) is not fun. DQ was not feeling well - her preschool teacher said she had about 100 degree temperature most of the afternoon, but we decided to go anyway. DQ didn't eat a bite and spent most of of the meal on my lap crying. Trust me - I am not on vacation here.

Obviously I was a little frazzled at this point, but I got the princess excited to go swimming when we got back to the hotel. The King dropped us off and then he went our home to get some work done. The girls and I went upstairs to our room, put in the key and the door would not open. I had my arms full of stuff, so I put everything down and tried again. The green light on the door turned on, but I could only jiggle the door. I gathered my stuff and the kids back up and we went downstairs to the front desk. There is only one person at the counter and another couple was checking in. They must have been the parents of a bride that was having their reception at the hotel this weekend and they are asking a million of questions. My kids get board waiting and start to terrorize the lobby. They knock over the wet floor caution signs, take stuff off the Christmas tree and start jumping down the stairs to see how many steps they can jump without killing themselves. So I step out of line for just a second to get them under control. As I step out of line another person walks into the lobby and gets behind the couple trying to check in. At this point, I am extremely annoyed. Then the princess calls to me:

Mom, DQ pee-ed her pants.


So I am locked out of my room, my two year old now has wet pants, I don't have a cell phone to call the King to come back with clean clothes and someone just got in line in front of me. I gave everyone in the lobby a dirty look, but it didn't do me any good.

I finally get to the counter and explained to the guy what is going on. He reprograms my key and told me to try again. I was pretty sure this would not work, but I went ahead and tried it. I gathered my stuff and kids again and went back upstairs. DQ at this point is walking bull-legged down the hall at an extremely slow pace. I try the key and of course it does not work. We went back downstairs and the clerk decided to try his key to see if he could open it. Again, I tried to explain that it wouldn't work, but he insisted on trying. We all went back upstairs and failed again. He finally called the manager to see what needs to be done. At this point I made him give me his phone to call the king for clothes for DQ since I assumed this was going to be a long process. We sat down in the hallway and waited. Of course everyone who walked down the hall wanted to know why a mom and two young kids were sitting in the hallway of their hotel.

The manager finally came and tried her key. Surprise, surprise... it didn't work. She offered us to go eat at the restaurant while we waited. I told her we had already eaten and my kid had wet her pants because of all the wait. I just need to get into my room! She opened up a room down the hall so we didn't have to sit in the hallway.

The King shows up just as they get the door open (the door was caught on a screw inside the door frame). As he walks by all he sees is that there is someone else in our suite and that we are in a single bed room. He flips out before I have a chance to explain and starts running down to the manager's desk to find out where our stuff is. I did end up catching him before he made a scene.

At this point I was finished for the day. No swimming tonight. I put a movie in for the girls and vegged out on the couch the rest of the night.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Bad luck? Or just cursed?

They say bad things happen in threes. I disagree...

1. The fire.

2. Friday, someone pulled out in front of the King on his way to work. He swerved to miss the car, but ended up sliding on the slick roads and getting hung up on a rock. He had to call a tow truck to get out. There is minor damage to the car.

3. Tuesday morning I got in my car and noticed there is now a crack going across my entire windshield. The king was the last one to touch my vehicle before this. He claims nothing happened to it when he drove it. All I know is that is wasn't there the day before.

4. They took out the wall behind our old stove to expand our kitchen into that first bedroom that we were using as storage. It sounded like a great idea, however AFTER the wall had been removed it was realized that the window in that room was too low and there was no way to put a kitchen counter or sink under that window. Now we are looking at getting a new window. I don't recommend doing a remodeling project while in crisis mode... bad decisions get made.

5. The king dropped his new cell phone into the toilet. Not only did it get wet, but it fell apart into several pieces. He is now using his old phone that doesn't keep a charge.

So what's next?

On another note, the Princess wants to be involved in the Kitchen remodeling project. She has a vision on what our kitchen should look like - Pink and Purple floor, Orange Stove, Blue cabinets on top, Green cabinets on bottom, Purple ceiling. I guess if things keep going the way they are, maybe we will just purchase a Little Tykes kitchen set instead of a real kitchen and then she will be happy.

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Fire!

Did that get your attention? Well it should have.

We had a small fire on our stove last night. Somebody (I won't name any names since it was an accident, but I just want to make clear it was not me) turned on the wrong burner on the stove when making his hot chocolate last night. The burner that was turned on happened to have a nylon\plastic lunch bag sitting on it. We were both downstairs when the fire started so we didn't get to it right away. By the time we got upstairs all the fire alarms were going off and the house was basically filled with smoke.

The girls were in bed and were obviously freaked out by the alarms.

I ran to stop the alarms and calm the kids while the King went to put out the flames. He got it out pretty quick and we opened the house up. The smoke hadn't reached the bedrooms yet so I closed them off and put blankets under the door just in case.

It could have been much worse - the only "fire" damage we can see is on the stove and a little bit on our kitchen floor. I am sure the stove still works fine - it was just some paint that was burned. However, our house now smells like smoke and we have a black residue on everything in our kitchen, living and dining rooms. The insurance company is sending a professional cleaner this afternoon to get looked at.

I will let you know how things come out.