April Showers bring...

Well. (It's a deep subject.)  It has been a busy month.  Perrin refused to wear 'a bow' to the Easter Program, but he was willing to wear his bow tie on Easter Sunday.  :)    

Getting to church on time is difficult normally, so I made them wait to open Easter baskets until after church.  

They all got bandaids...

...and new swimsuits that had to be tried on right away.  :P 

 Bob and I went for a walk in the woods after church and looked for mushrooms.

 

Prairie Creek is pretty full.  

Sharon and Rustin had us for supper with some Rockes.  The older girls hid eggs for the littles... in the garden dirt.  😜

Perrin was wild all evening and we probably wore out our welcome long before we went home.  We also discovered that Miriel is allergic to cats.  Poor kiddo, suddenly she was sneezing and rubbing her watery eyes... 

Lazy Easter Monday.  Kenna came over for a while.   

We found a handful of mushrooms this year.  These were gray and so tiny!

Pocket doors!  Eeeeeeeek.  

Slowly staining windows.  It's a frustrating messy process that I am not good at and I am far from finished.  

Drywall continued.

An artsy picture of clouds blowing in over the house. 

Cecily had a scholastic bowl tournament at good old EMS, so of course I had to come along.  It was very weird to be back in the old art room. The rest of the building has been added on to, renovated, or reconfigured, but the art room is pretty much the same.  :) They didn't win, but they came close- and Cecily knew the answers to all of the questions that she should know since both of her parents are nerds.  

'This is my construction site.'

Sunday afternoon and the cousins came to see the house.

Drywall leaves a mess.  Why Miri is sitting in the middle of it, I'm not sure.

Eeeeeeee!  

Oh what a beautiful day...

Forty years ago I was dethroned...

Michelle and Mom and I planned a party.  Well, I mostly provided moral support over text and showed up.

Jake and Rach brought a mess of morrels and they were amazing.

Quarteting.

And cake of course!  Happy 40th Birthday Matt!

Everything needs to stop breaking so we can sell this house.... this week I noticed water running down the basement drain pipe (while I was staining of course).  Tim and Asa came over, I left for an hour, when I came back there was a new section of pipe and a hole in the back of the bathroom cabinet.  Thank goodness they didn't need to open up any walls!  

The day after Matt's party, Cecily told us she wanted to start repenting.  Which is a lot.  And I'm still processing.  But all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.  

Oh! And one day we drove out to the house and the trailer was gone!  

I took the three oldest girls to the HS play-- Clue!  It was fun and funny, but someone was annoyed that I wouldn't let her buy concessions during intermission. 😜

Bob took some kids to the garage sales while I was running errands.  They came home with TRAYSURES.  *sigh*  Perrin's new dinosaurs live in my sink now, I guess.

Perrin was 'camping' and building a fire one lovely evening.  

Jon and crew came on Saturday to build the bottom part of our porch pillars.  

We cleaned and dug worms and made a worm habitat.

These are basically the most beautiful pillars you've ever seen... according to the master mason. 😏They are a smidge too tall, but historic proportions don't match up with modern building code. So.  I will just have to live with it.  

Bob and I celebrated 17 years!  It was on Sunday, which was fun, I guess, except all the close BBQ places were closed so we got takeout from Peoria.  And I had been an emotional wreck all week and it all came bubbling up and poor Bob just takes it in stride... he's a good man.  

Only the two younger girls wanted to try on my dress this year. 

😊

Final coat of poly!  (I was told to stop futzing over imperfections, if its that bad, I can fix it when they're installed.)

We cleaned up a lot of drywall dust after they finished up.  Mr. Perrin is along for the ride and is usually content to sit in his chair and watch on the tablet.

A bit redneck, but the leaf blower and a box fan in the window was surprisingly effective at getting drywall dust off the walls.

I left to pick up school kids and came back and the dumpster was gone!  Look at that front porch.  😄

Bob took a couple of days off to clean and prime the house; one of those days was Miri's birthday.  She is obsessed with pigs right now, so I managed to make a quick and easy pigs in ganache mud cake not quick or easy.  But it turned out cute eventually.  

Little couch potato, but we got things done.  

My coverall didn't have a hood so I scrounged around in the diaper bag that I never clean out for anything I could sacrifice to the cause- nursing cover to the rescue.  

Bob sprays, I back roll, the red wagon is also sacrificially getting primed.  (Don't worry, we have two. 🤷)

Back home when the light started to fade for waffles and sausage and pig cake!  (Goose- I want sausages for supper!  also Goose- I don't want to eat piggies!)

Mom picked up Perrin and he went to play with Jack and Logan, while Matt took the afternoon off and came to help us prime.  He's not afraid of heights or ladders. 

Um... I could hardly watch, and also couldn't not watch this totally safe way to spray a two story stairwell.  Who designed this place anyway?!?

Switched spraying and keeping the plank from tipping.  ayiyi.  We collectively decided that if this stairway gets painted we will hire it done.  😂 It may stay only primed forever... 

Everything seems to take longer than we hope, and require more materials than calculated (almost 9 5gal buckets of drywall primer!).  And Dad's sprayer started leaking really badly so we ran and got another one... but lunch breaks with this view aren't all bad.  :)  

We finished priming today and started spraying ceilings.  We didn't get quite as much done as we'd hoped this weekend, but we're in a good spot for the vinyl flooring that is supposed to come this week.  We still don't have a septic and therefore no modern toilet... but if you don't mind taking the camp toilet out to the woods..... 😛
So far this has been the most stressful part of building, but this too shall pass.  And it will get done. Eventually. 

Blessings.