In like a Lion and stayed that way...

It's been a stormy (literally and figuratively) month and my good intentions of keeping up with documenting house progress have fallen by the wayside.  

Perrin tagged along to meet the flooring estimator.  

So. Our dishwasher was pink inside.  Google tells me it's a type of mold. woot. I tried different cleaning methods and turned up the water heater, and it helped, but it just kept coming back.  And then the dishes were not drying very well. Somewhere along the line it occurred to me that maybe the heating element was broken and the water wasn't getting hot enough to kill the mold. I didn't want to mess with that, so I called a repair guy.  I told him it was pink, but his reaction when he saw the pink was hilarious.  Apparently he's never seen that before.  😜  He didn't think the heating element was bad and he couldn't get the electronics to reset, so our options were to replace a circuit board or buy a new dishwasher and he didn't recommend putting money into a 20 year appliance.  So meet our new dishwasher: the cheapest in stock dishwaher I could find.  She has exactly three wash options and she works great.   

The weather has been unsettled and we've already gone downstairs for tornadoes a few times. 

I am turning into my father.  Conrad was tearing out a kitchen and asked if he could rent dumpster space and I said, sure, but if there are any that are nice could we keep them for garage cabinets? Ha.  I have a little ways to go yet to be just like him, I did NOT save the old dishwasher to use as shop storage, and not just because of the mold.  😆

 Oh Goose.  It was a pretty calm winter, illness wise, so I guess we were due.  Miriel woke up on a Tuesday morning with a fever.  She didn't complain much, just laid around and watched movies.  On Wednesday she threw up a couple of times.  Thursday still feverish and tired.  I went to the Grade School open house with Cadence and her teacher said half the class had strep and the other had flu, Mrs. M included. By Friday she wasn't really any better so I took her to prompt care and she tested positive for Strep and Flu B. *sigh*  They didn't like her oxygen levels so they wanted us to go to OSF, and because they wanted her on O2 they wanted to send her by ambulance.  Soooo... off we went in the ambulance.  (Note to future self: the ambulance from prompt care is out of network for insurance and you should really try to see if you can drive yourself if no one is actively dying.)

Thanks goodness for Grandparents, they juggled children, and Bob came over to hang out with us.  We ended up spending the night in the ER.  woot.  They admitted her, but didn't have a bed upstairs so we were in a small hot room in the basement.  On the bright side we were back in a pretty quiet corner away from the main nurses station; and her nurse was a PCA grad who knew my cousins.  Hospital recliners are not comfortable, but they didn't wake us up too many times so I got some sleep.  
In the morning they moved her up to a big room and antibiotics, fluids, and oxygen had her feeling a little better.  She was excited to eat pudding and ice cream and mac'n'cheese....and chocolate milk! I was glad for the private bathroom.  Miri goose figured out how to unhook herself and hook herself back up to the monitors every time she used it.  :P     

They weaned her down off of oxygen and sent us home later that evening.  Hooray!  The other kids had spent the day going to Braker's market and playing at the farm so they didn't really miss us.  Except maybe Perrin.  We kept our germs home from church the next day.  

The 1st grade leprechaun trap is my least favorite school project.  Thankfully, Emmy took over and they made a cute little leprechaun camper trap. 

It was for sale- all furnishings and a pot of gold were included.  I'm not really sure how it physically traps the leprechaun, except maybe into a high interest loan that he'll never be able to pay off, but it was cute and I didn't have to do anything but print out the for sale sign.  😏

Perrin came with Bob and me to the brick store where he looked and touched all the samples.  

While Miri and I were hanging out at the hospital several of our friends and family cleaned up the house for us.  We had inspectors coming for framing/plumbing/electrical that week and it was just a dirty mess again.  Anyway, they were lifesavers and it looked great.

Also while Miri was in the hospital I was planning on going and picking up these two colonnades that popped up on marketplace.  They are in rough shape so the price was right.  The seller held them for us so we drove an hour, through a thunderstorm to this old farmstead.  There were multiple old farm buildings chock full of old stuff.  It was pretty much straight out of American Pickers... he told me it had taken him 40 years to collect it all. 😐  We loaded up the two cabinets out of an open cattle shed that smelled of pigeons.  😜    Maybe by next winter I will have time to work on them.  We tried them out where they will hopefully end up someday and then put them up in the attic.

The Jazz Coffee House was rescheduled for the Monday after the hospital weekend.  We had signed up to decorate two tables because Emmy really wanted to decorate a table, and we fill up more than one.  Then my parents couldn't come after the date got switched.  So we had two tables and not enough people.  Oh well.  My table was camping themed.  Mostly because I didn't have to buy anything except paper products and flowers.  

Emmy made an elaborate fantasy flower forest and also put out different fantasy books and made place mats with LOTR quotes.  Don't worry, I'm not sure I understand it either.  :)  

Mr. Perrin was enjoying himself, bopping to the music, eating his cupcake and smearing it all over.  Between that and Miri still being pretty tired after being sick, Bob took the younger three home after dessert.  

My sister let her kids make mini s'mores over candles and since we had leftover s'more snack mix I let mine try it.  It was terrifying.  

Inspections over, insulation got started!  

So exciting.  :D

I've been working on the vestibule tile... getting closer but not quite there. 

The spray foam takes away some of the attic's charm, but it's still pretty cool.

Bob spent several days sick on the couch and he really shouldn't have been out burning the scrap pile, especially since it burned a little further into the grass for my comfort.  Nothing like feeling like Ma Ingalls beating out prairie fires with a shovel.  

Meanwhile, I also got the cedar around the garage doors painted.  

Birthday party at the farm means trains.  

And everyone crowding around for presents.  :) 

The grocery pickup people probably wonder about me... they never know what they'll find in my trunk. 😏

We didn't do anything exciting over spring break.  Unless you call eating ramen with chopsticks exciting. 

Cecily needed to finish her chapter before lunch... 

Cadence spent the day with a friend and the rest of us went out to the woods to work a little bit. Cecily picked up a lot of nails while I put a second coat on the garage door trim.  

Perrin and Miri observed worms. 

Snacks on the porch.

I'm not sure why we put a window in the stairwell, since it needs staining and I am terrified of ladders.  They had the stairs covered with plywood, so I decided to try staining the window while it was easy to get to and reachable.  The plywood under the window was braced underneath, but I put stepping stone boards across this part because I didn't trust it. 

This is my practice window.  I have no idea what I'm doing and it probably doesn't look great so it's a good thing it's so out of the way. 
 

 

Emmy decided that she and Perrin were going to bake brownies.  Perrin: lots of chocolate chips for the brownies, and one for my mouth. 

Cousins came to visit and climb on our dirt piles. 

Somehow, some of our trim got delivered to the neighbors house.  I don't quite understand how a trucker could drive right past our very obvious construction site.  Good thing we know the neighbors, and Jonas and Jeremiah helped Dad and I get everything back to our garage. 

Insulation is done and drywall arrived!

Speaking of stain.  I'm trying to match the finish color of my antique china cabinet on both red oak and pine... and I have no skills. 

Hence the workbench looks like this.  I think I'm getting closer.

Also getting closer on replacing white tiles with design tiles.  Can't change my mind anymore... 

Am I frantically trying to finish up projects before painting and moving starts? Yes, yes I am.  Bob inherited two of these lovely green chairs and while I don't dislike the green, the cushion was so old it was disintegrating into orange-y powder, and the fabric is "scratchy" according to certain children.    

New cushions and arm covers- much more comfortable and no contact with the scratchy fabric. :)  Of course, one cushion turned out better than the other cushion, even though they are exactly the same.  

Eeeeeeeeeeeeee.  

Happy birthday to Bob!  Hooray for getting old; he gets interesting cards from the girls, and I give him things I want we need, like step ladders!

Eeeeeeeeee.  haha. Sorry. 

They were driving me crazy on Good Friday so I sent them out with sidewalk chalk for a little while.

Then we dyed eggs.  

No one spilled, and fingers stayed mostly clean!  Perrin played with plain water after he dyed his allotment of eggs. 

Cadence helped set the table for Passover/ the Last Supper.

Aaaannnnddd we had just sat down to eat when the tornado siren went off.  So off to the basement we went.  After the warning expired it looked like we had a 20 minute window before the next round of storms hit, so we quick ate our lukewarm food... and then the siren went off again.  *sigh* At that point I declared that there was absolutely no way we would be ready for church on time... and then we got the email that church was cancelled. 😜 Once that round of storms was over, we ate dessert and I was in the kitchen until almost 9 cleaning up and making food for Saturday morning.   We should have eaten standing up... ha. 

Koch Easter brunch... Perrin got to sit at the boys table. 😊

We met Matt and his boys at the woods in the afternoon and there was much running and hide and seek.  "Cheese!"  Conrad covered the ductwork in the attic so that we can get to the window without destroying it.    

I tried again on a different window.... we're getting closer.  I just don't know if it's going to look weird if the pine windows don't exactly color match the red oak trim.  I probably should have just gotten white interiors.  Oh well.  If it bugs me, I can always just paint them. Or not. 😏  

Blessings.