Trick or Treat

Happy Halloween

The girls and I carved our pumpkin today.

You knew there would be pictures!






Every year we name our pumpkins, meet Billy.




Have a great and safe Trick or Treat!

There's A Wocket In My Pocket

I love Dr. Seuss books. I mention this because this morning my life resembled what could be a new title for a Dr. Seuss book!

"There's A Mouse In My House!"

I was ironing my shirt for work this morning when Günter who is always by my side (and I mean ALWAYS as in “ Günter go lay down so I can pee alone!”) out of nowhere goes flying across the dining room and starts whining, and scratching at something under the dry sink, it is T-minus 3 min before we walk out the door for school.

Lindsey walks in the room her eyes get huge and starts screaming “ WHAT IS IT WHAT IS IT?????????”

I scream “ What is what?” she points down by my feet, and dear god I look down thinking (“please don’t let it be a huge spider please god!”) and it is a damn mouse!

Günter starts running after the mouse as it runs into the kitchen…Lindsey jumps on the computer chair screaming ” Kill it, Kill it!!!”

Alyssa runs in starts yelling ” No it’s a mouse. Can I have it as a pet? Mom don’t let him kill it I want it!!”(Like that is going to happen!But she can dream.) I’m yelling for everyone to stop yelling as I run behind Günter to see where the mouse goes.

Then Günter has it cornered and...

I make him sit and mouse gets away.

I just couldn’t let him kill it can you imagine the mess that would have made and who would have had to clean that? You got it me!

Have I every mentioned how weak my stomach is? It is safe to say that cleaning mouse guts off the kitchen cabinet would have made me ill to say the least.

I left for school 5 minutes late thank you very much Stuart Little!

All mouse busters are booked till Monday so, Stuart Little has till Monday at 3:30pm to surrender peacefully in the humane mousetraps I bought and get set free or, deal with the mouse busters Monday!

I am hoping he is a reasonable kind of mouse and will surrender.

I can't help but wonder what else will happen in this new comic series called " Rob's Gone and Gail Is Home Alone".

I do know there are 369 more days for us to find out!

The End of A Curse

It only took 86 years and many tears from the players and die-hard fans. I can tell you of the tears since I come from a long line of Boston Red Sox Fans.

I am also married to the worlds must dedicated Red Sox fan!!!

Today for him, it’s good!

Congratulations Boston!

You are the world CHAMPIONS!!!!

Is That Dust?

I decided to clean my room last night. Yeah well it is hard to enforce the ”you go nowhere, do nothing till your room is clean”rule when your room is in fact on the brink of being condemned. Not to mention I have children who will point this out to me by saying ”Mom I’m not trying to be fresh or a smart mouth or anything but…does this mean if our room is cleaner then yours it’s clean enough?” See what I am dealing with!

So I decided it was time and I told the girls …you clean while I clean not breaks unless I take one. Alyssa did great, Lin didn’t her arm was hurting so I cut her a little slack as in ” you get this part done today and the rest tomorrow.”. Lets face it I was in a hellhole working my way out no way I could stop and help her. I am a woman on a mission and come hell or high water (maybe I should changed that to smoke) I was not going to stop till I had a clean room and bathroom I could show off to anyone who stops by. (Yes-even electricians…are you noticing a trend here?)

So I get to work vacuum in hand, dust rags ready, Windex at my side….and what is the first thing I see under my bed( besides the MOUTAIN of stuff animals Gunter has stolen from the girls and hid under my bed along with his balls…ok toy balls geez! Lets face it no balls have been in my room for at least 9 months and counting!!!! I crack my self up!) Back to under the bed…yes you got it the thing I hate most in this world (No not Brittany Spears or Kerry stay with me here) yes a damn spider!!!! Don’t worry I sucked him up!

Made my skin crawl.

Of course after that I had to stop and wash my hands. In the corner of my eye I notice a tiny sol ant wandering. Now since Ivan these little shits have been a pain in my …Ok I know you get it. The poor exterminator has been out at least once a week spraying checking…poor guy he really has been great but I don’t do bugs in my house!!!!

Anyways, I killed it and looked around the tub to find several dead ants there…I decided ok time to peel back this wallpaper and see if the damn things had made a nest.

I start peeling and much to my delight I find a few dead ants no hug colony just a tiny hole they must have been coming in at and I notice the paper is peeling so well…I decided to peel as much as I could without having to spray. Then I notice what seems like dust. Man that is a lot of dust behind this paper look at it all and shit it smells too! I think to my self. So I leave to let the “dust” settle.

Go back to vacuuming as I suck up yet another hairball colony I notice the light in my room is flickering. Then wham! No power! I get up what the hell? why is the power half on in my room and everywhere else in the house all the power is on?

Go to the circuit breaker no circuits blown. Great! Noting to reset ...why is the power out then? What else could go wrong?!? (Warning never say that unless you really want an answer!)

I walk back to my room and notice that the bathroom (which still has power) still has A LOT of dust in it… look closer…that isn’t dust that is SMOKE!!! And it is coming from my light switch, which is now brown!!!


Ok now what?? Smoke..FIRE shit Gail shut off power! (I know, I know but it caught me off guard!) So I shut off the power and take the plate off…fried I mean fried! PANIC sets in “Now what the girls are in bed? Are we safe? So I do what any girl would do I called my daddy!

HELP DAD what do I do!!!! Poor man woke him and mom out of a sound sleep…but he did tell me that since the power to both my room and the bathroom was off we would be ok.


Thank god for dads!!

So my room is now clean...yes for ANYONE to come in and see and so is the bathroom. Now I have to dust the rest of the house...after all I can't have the electrician come in and see dust!

ARGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH

I love my husband , I love my husbnad...

MEN!!!

Bright & Beautiful!

No longer is the girl’s bathroom blah & boring, no sir now it is bright & beautiful. I am so thrilled with how it looks and very proud of myself. My neighbors dh did a great job for me on the wainscoting and other honey do things.

Now pictures:

This shower curtain was the inspiration for my colors of course. I love yellow and blue together.

Now this is actually not done I have tow shelves I am still painting. Nothing fancy just a piece of wood cut in two. I wanted simple and straight. I plan to add photos and candles to the shelves. I’ll update when I get it done.


The only thing left to do is hang one more Knob for hand towels. Then this is done I need to go to Home Depot again but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it today.

Other then a few decorating touches the bathroom is complete. I am hunting for towels still and I nice throw rug for the floor.

I can’t believe it looks as good as it does. I can’t remember when something I pictured in my head actually came to reality so well. I think Rob is going to be very happy.

I was thinking my bathroom needs some sprucing up too….hum what will I do ….to be continued.

Let The Decorating Begin

I can’t believe it but the wainscoting is painted and caulked. I put the knobs up for the towels and hung the first decoration a wreath. I am so close to being done I can barely stand it! I would finish it all tonight my spirit is strong however my body says “ ENOUGH ALREADY SLEEP!”.

So here it is the wreath on the wall with the new towel holders.


I selected old fashion faucet knobs for the towels since the art of hanging a towel to dry seems to escape my girls. Here is a closer look.


knobs
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I promise more pictures tomorrow!

Mirror

Well the mirror is up. As I said before it is off center. Honestly it isn’t that bad but enough to drive the OCD part of me insane!


Better shot here with light:


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Th rest of the wainscoting and the trim is up. Today I will painting everything that needs to be Off white and taping the walls so I can paint the ceiling. By tomorrow evening the bathroom should be done!!

Ok Tuesday the lastest.

We Have Light!!!

Here it is the new light. I love it and as you can see the paint color is no longer yellow and is now more gold like I had wanted. I have to tell you the guy at Home Depot was awesome. He had to re-tint the paint 5 times to get what I wanted.

Here is a picture of the old light :


And then new ligh,I love how it shows the color of the walls.


last one:


The medicine cabinet is now up. We (my neighbors husband had been doing all the “honey do” stuff for me.) had a problem hanging it because the studs did not line up properly and where the outlet was…well it’s a bit off center but I can live with it. I will take a picture of that and post it in the morning.

The wainscoting is up!

As you can see by the picture the wainscoating is up and primed. I am not overly thrilled with the wall color. I think I liked it better wet! HA HA. Its very yellow and I had wanted it just a tad more gold.




I am going to take the paint back to Home Depot to see if they can tint it more. After all I have ¾ of a can left. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Bathroom Update

Well here is what I have done. As you can see the wall is repaired. I am very proud of this wall it really looks like there was never any damaged.



Wall repaired I am proud of that there wall.

Color isn’t great! The color is a very dark golden yellow. Yeah well your going to have to take my word for it, it’s gorgeous.




The wall with no wallpaper on it, primed and painted!!




Next is the wainscoating and more priming, then the paint.

Progress

Well it’s slow but it’s progress. See I took down the Dixie cup holder and the wallpaper was bubbled so I pulled it and wham the whole damn sheet came off.

So I did the rest of the walls. This first picture is what I have left to remove.


Remaining wallpaper.

Now this is where the mirror was and Heather they did use that black glue to put it up so I have a small amount of sheet rock damage. Nothing too big and I do have a medicine cabinet to put there. Of course it is getting fixed.


mirror wall

And these are the nice clean primed walls!!! I can't wait to start painting the actual color.


clean walls with primer.

More to come!

Good-Bye Boring!

Today I start the girl’s bathroom. I have someone to install the new medicine cabinet with mirror and the new light. We tried to remove the wallpaper, seems when the house was built they didn’t size the walls and just applied the wallpaper straight to the sheetrock. Removing it with out causing damage to the walls is not an option so we are painting over it.

Here are some before pictures.


Bath 1
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bath2
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baht 3
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bath 4
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I have wanted to brighten up this bathroom since we moved in. I can’t wait to show you the finished product!

Fall Break!

Oh my gosh I am so excited it is Fall Break. Boy do we need the break too.

I love the fact I am going to be able to sleep in every day. I am so not a morning person. Honestly no one in this family is.

I plan to redo the girl’s bathroom. I have a neighbor I am going to pay to cut the wainscoting and put it up. Now if I can just pick a color. I also plan to clean some closets, and get some sewing done if I have time.

One entire week for just us!! I love it.

9 down 13 to go!

Finally we are under 400 days till Rob comes home. I find it hard to say he has been gone 9 months. Mostly I think because we still have so long before he returns home.

A very sweet teacher I work with made the comment the other day “ Wow! 9 months already, the time is really going by fast!” my first thought was to say “ For who?” but instead I just smiled. She meant well.

It is hard to explain to folks sometimes that while for them the time may be going fast for us some days feel like YEARS.

If you knew me (and by knew me I mean personally not just what you read here) you would know I am a very optimist person. I can usually find the up side and the humor in just about anything.

In fact when we found out Rob was leaving I kept saying ”The time will go fast and we will get the bills paid off so, when Rob comes home we will be ready for retirement.” I was thinking positive. I would also say “We have survived long deployments before we can do this, it will be ok and go quick.”

I have to confess, this separation has been so much harder then I thought. And in all honesty I am not as strong I once thought I was.

The girls and I went out today to run errands. By the time we had finished all our errands we were fully depressed. Every store we went into had started putting out their holiday stock. The girls started talking about how they really missed dad and wished he would be coming home for the holidays.

Our up and happy mood quickly gave way to sadness.

395 days, you know what I think we’ll just call this a day and move on to tomorrow. 394 days till Rob comes home!