One More Day

Rebecca and the children are finally coming to Pocatello tomorrow. When I got back from Washington I walked through the house with the builders and they said that the interior will all be done by Monday and we can move in then as long as we don't mind them still working on the interior. There was a lot left to do and I was skeptical, but they kept on telling me that it would all be done. Last I talked to them was on Friday and they were still saying it would be done on Monday so we are moving forward with our plans for Rebecca and the children to come.

There is still a lot left to do though and I don't think there is anyway they will be able to get to it all tomorrow. Whether they finish or not, we are going to have to move in tomorrow night. Rebecca and the children are leaving early in the morning to start the drive so there is no going back on that mid-day tomorrow if they tell us it won't be ready after all. Before I went to Washington they told us December 1st. I told the people I am staying with December 4th just to be safe. They had already put up with 4 months of me in there home and I didn't want to ask for any more time there, so I moved into my office yesterday for the next couple of nights. Since I don't think all 8 of us (me, Rebecca, the kids, and Rebecca's mom) can fit in my office, we have no choice but to start living in our home.

On the inside they still have to finish laying the carpet (they only put the pads in so far), do the shower tile in the master bathroom, do the back-splash tile in all the bathrooms, put the stone on the fireplace, touch-up all the paint spots, put the door on the cold storage room, put the counter-top and sinks in for the downstairs bathroom, add a hanging rod in the laundry room, add towel rods and hooks in all the bathrooms, trim out the hard wood floor areas, add the tile by the back door, add the stair rails, and fix up the other minor mistakes here and there (they didn't put in a frosted window in our bathroom and one other window in the laundry room is missing its decorative lines in the glass, they mounted the bathroom vanity lights upside down, etc.). Sounds like about 1 day's work, right?

Here are some of the most recent pictures:

A closer picture of the stone. I am really impressed with the people who do the stone. It seems like a really complicated form of tetris. Each stone piece is a different size and color and they have to get it lined up all right so it looks varied, but fits together perfectly.

The entry way. You can see the front door still needs stained


The office.


A view of the stairs side of the great room


The fireplace side. They need to put the same stone from the outside around the fireplace below the mantel and paint the rest of the mantel white.

The kitchen and dining room. I think all that is needed here is too hook up the stove and maybe the dishwasher.

The laundry room is pretty much done. I think they were just going to add an extra hanging rod above the washer and dryer. We ended up going with a steam washer and dryer. I hadn't heard of these before, but apparently they can get your clothes a lot hotter which means it gets the dirt out more and there are less wrinkles. Which is good because I can't remember the last time I ironed something. My siblings probably think that is funny because when I was a teenager I used to iron everything.

Upstairs hallway to the bedrooms. They just have to give the baseboards one more coat of paint and then they can lower the vents.

The main bathroom. I think everything is done on it except for our broken mirror and they have to put in the back-splash over the sink (they put the wrong one in at first and had to tear it out. This may be our only functioning bathroom for a little bit until they get everything else done in the other two.

Closer of the main bathroom. The paint color matches the paint in Agnes' room below.

Just needs some carpet and then the chandilier can be lowered to hang at the right height.

Julia's room.

The sinks are all done in the master bathroom, but they still need to add grout to the tile, put in the back-splash, and do the tile in the shower and around the tub.

The plumber did put in the water heaters so we should have hot water for our one working bathroom at least. The builders convinced us to put in two water heaters so if you come to visit we can guarantee you some hot water at least.

Seattle Christmas Trip

Growing up, Rebecca and her family often made a trip to Seattle during the Christmas Season for all of the fun activities that they have going on there. Luckily we got to squeeze the trip in while I was there visiting.

We started off by trying to find a parking spot by the Seattle Center. There was some even going on and all of the street spots were taken by set-up trucks for the event. We checked the garage for the Seattle Center, but it was completely full too. After following a line of cars through the garage and checking a couple floors twice we were about to give up. But as we were leaving a car started to back out right in front of us. We had two cars for our group so as we were talking about who would take that spot a second car right across from the first one started backing out. I thought we were pretty lucky - parking is always something I dread when I visit Seattle.

First stop was the model train set up in the food court at the Seattle Center.

Then we caught the monorail to Westlake Center. The kids loved the monorail. They got the very front seat so they could look straight out the window and for them it was like a roller-coaster (you can see Christian's hands up in the air in one of the pictures below). Although the monorail is fun to ride, it just kind of bothers me that it is the only train/subway transportation system for Seattle. I think cities like DC and Boston are so easy to visit because the subways can take you wherever you want to go. But there is so much congestion and parking issues in Seattle because they don't have anything like that. On the trip back the children got to sit in the front of the monorail again, but Elliott didn't get to the front seat fast enough. When the driver noticed it he let Elliott stand by him, honk the horn, and give him directions which way to turn it as we followed down the tracks.

Right outside the Westlake Center we played on the toys for a little bit and looked at the tree and the other lights some.

Then we stopped at the Sees store for free samples and everyone got to pick out one piece to buy.

From there we walked over to the gingerbread house display at the Sheraton. This year they did a Star Wars theme and had one display per movie, plus a few extra characters. The displays were amazing and probably the best possible theme for our children right now.

After that we walked over to Pacific Place Mall for their fake snow. I am not sure exactly what their fake snow was - it seemed like tiny soap bubbles, but it wasn't slimy or slick like soap. I read online that the formula for the snow that they use in this mall is a secret and it was created by a magician. I didn't taste it, but one newspaper did say that it does taste a little like soap. Which leads me to my next question - why do we stick out our tongues to catch snow in our mouths? It seems like it is almost an instinctual thing that everyone does.

Then we just walked around the downtown area for a little bit and the kids enjoyed looking at all of the lights and tall buildings.

Mirror Shopping

Rebecca and I decided that we would have a built in mirror for the master bathroom in our home, but that we would just put in wall mirrors for the other two bathrooms. One of our big goals while I was there was to buy some mirrors (1 for the upstairs bathroom and 2 for the downstairs one) so that I could bring them back with me in time for the builders to install them.

Finding the right mirrors was a difficult task. Rebecca and I went shopping together on one day and found some that we thought we liked. We got the upstairs bathroom one and then one fort he downstairs bathroom. The store didn't have a matching second one for the downstairs bathroom, but they said they did in their Lakewood store (about 30 minutes away). The next day I took Ethan and Agnes to get that second mirror, but when I got there it was not the same one (apparently they don't have product numbers at the store and the person had to just try to guess about the mirror based on how it was described over the phone). So Ethan, Agnes, and I shopped all around at the stores in that area to see what we could find. Then Rebecca and I made another trip, and then one last one on Black Friday. I am sure we bought over a dozen possible mirrors for that downstairs bathroom. Then we got more specific measurements from the builder and we found out that all of the ones we were considering were too wide. So we did one more big shopping trip and took all of the old ones back. We ended up not being able to find what we wanted for the downstairs bathroom, but at least we had an upstairs one that we were pretty happy about.

I carefully brought it back to Pocatello and put it in the bathroom in our home so the builders could hang it. When I went back to the house the next day, here is what I found:

One of those things you just have to laugh about. So after all of that, we are still looking for three mirrors for our bathrooms.

Giant Jenga

While I was in Washington Rebecca and I thought of a Christmas present that I wanted to make for our children - a big version of Jenga. We have seen these at the store before, but they usually cost somewhere between $80 and $120 although we did see one at Target on Black Friday for $50. Rebecca's dad has a table saw so we thought that it wouldn't be too hard to make one of our own.

I bought five 2x4 planks that were 8 feet long. I just got the cheap studs at Lowes that were only about $2 each, but I you could do it with better quality wood if you would like. If you do get the cheap pieces, make sure you sort through them to find the best ones possible.

So the tower stacks up in a rectangle with three blocks per row. Since 2x4s are really 1.5 inches by 3.5 inches, I cut each block to be 10.5 inches long. That gave me 9 blocks per plank and a total of 45 blocks (I wouldn't go much higher than that as if it gets too high it could hurt younger kids who might be playing when it falls). With the table saw it probably just took 30 minutes or less to cut them. I still have to sand them some time which might take another hour or so, but overall it was a very easy project. If you stained the blocks I think they would look really nice, but I think I might just leave them as is for now. If the kids really love it and it lasts without making too big of mess in our home, then maybe I will think about staining them at some point

We did test it out once with the children and then once with just the adults once the kids went to bed. The adult game was pretty intense. There were several close falls, but I think we got at up to maybe 4 feet tall.

We have the newspaper ads under it just because I hadn't sanded them yet and I didn't want to get wood chips all over the carpet, but once they are sanded I don't think there would be any problem with this being an indoor game as long as there are no breakables close by.

Home Alone

We started a new Thanksgiving tradition this year. After everything was cleaned up from the meal and we had our desserts and had a chance to just talk and lay around a little bit, we had the kids watch Home Alone for the first time. I am not sure why we didn't think of it before, but Rebecca came up with the idea and told them about it a few days in advance. They were really excited for it and probably talked about it ahead of time more than they did any other Thanksgiving festivity (the parade, playing football in the yard, the meal, or even the pies).

They all loved it. They were a little concerned for Kevin at some points, but mainly they were just laughing at all of the ways he was able to protect his home. There was one swear word, but we were watching a TV version so it said "butt" instead (but that is still a swear word for our home). There is also a part where Kevin gets into some magazines that his older brother has, but we were able to pause it for a second and talk to the kids about that (something we have talked to them about several times already). 

After the movie the children set up several traps around the house that Rebecca and I unknowingly walked into. Ethan also wrote a Christmas present wish list that included a house layout for trap plans.

Some of the traps to land on as I fell down the stairs.

Thanksgiving

I was able to travel to be with Rebecca and the children for Thanksgiving. With the way my classes were scheduled and the long break that they take at ISU, I ended up having 10 days off to be in Washington. Some of the fun things that we got to do were go to the Museum of Flight, do a Seattle Christmas trip, Black Friday shopping, go to cousin Mackenzi's birthday party, cook, and have a wonderful Thanksgiving meal. But the funnest part of the trip was definitely just hanging out as a family again. I had a great time snuggling with Agnes, playing Legos, wrestling, getting to do a Family Home Evening again, getting to talk to Rebecca face-to-face instead of through skype, practicing bike riding with Christian, going to the park, playing hide-and-seek and chase around the house, reading some books to the children, giving them baths, and putting them to bed. I can't wait until all of those things get to be a part of my normal life again.

Here are some pictures of all of the fun.

Julia, Christian, and Agnes have been playing with some of Rebecca's old cabbage patch dolls.

It's amazing what they can make out of Legos. They are really in to Star Wars and so most of what I saw them making was different spaceships.

Getting ready for church on Sunday.

Lounging around. I think Julia took this picture. She loves to take pictures and videos with the tablet. A few years ago she got a digital camera for a birthday present, but that didn't last too long with her younger brothers playing with it. Then a year or so we gave her our family camera since Rebecca and I don't really ever use it. It worked great until Agnes got her hands on it just a few months ago.

We went all out for the Thanksgiving meal. We had turkey, homemade cranberry sauce (Rebecca's specialty), stuffing, salad, mashed potatoes and gravy, a jello dish called blue goo, a sweet potato casserole, green been casserole, and rolls. I think I am missing one other dish.

Then for dessert we had lots of pie. We had made an apple pie, a blueberry pie, and two pumpkin pies. Then Rebecca's Aunt and Uncle brought over two lemon pies. And then the next day Talitha called up saying she had extra dessert and she gave us two more pies (one pumpkin and one apple), some cake, brownies, and pumpkin muffins. It was all really yummy!