Mommathon

We had the BEST Thanksgiving EVER! Many, many tears were shed when our house flooded and we had to cancel our Thanksgiving plans. However, things worked out and we were able to go home for Thanksgiving and see our family!

My awesome brother and his lovely wife.

Battleship with Grandad

(Project 365-11/24/10)
A great dinner shared with a great family. My mom was so happy to have everyone under the same roof she got a little weepy when we all sat down to eat. It was a happy kind of weepy though. 🙂

Yes, they were yummy. They were yummy for dessert and even yummier for breakfast in the days that followed.

…especially when they just ripped a ton of water-logged insulation out of your house.

This is from the car…notice how I have the heat set to “MAX HOT”.

Sorry, I just love first grade projects. Colm brought this home from school today and I had to take a picture. I think I love it so much because he has really gotten into learning about the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag.

First grade has spent the past month or so learning about the Pilgrims and about how they came here for “opportunity”. (Colm loves to use that word when describing the Pilgrims’ voyage here). As an extension of that study, they have a homework assignment which involves filling out a little sheet about where their ancestors came from, why they came to America and what holidays their family celebrates. Then they will all do a little presentation using the info. from their sheets.

My job was to help him research traditional clothes that his ancestors might have worn. Colm was not impressed with his Irish, Scottish or English ancestors’ wardrobe choices, so we went with the Germans.

I cut out all the clothing. Colm cut out the guy, glued on the clothes and drew the face on him. I think he looks pretty good. 🙂

Yes, I guess it is beneficial to be able to get all of your laundry done all at once, but it is a pain in the ^*(%$ to drag it all there. It’s also PRICEY! Those laundromat people are making a killing.

Turner does a great job of telling the story of growing up in a fundamentalist independent Baptist church. He tells of his pastor tallying the number of souls saved each weekend, bussing people into church from near and far to get their numbers up (and to save souls), some of the diversions he used as a child to make it through church services three times a week (two of those on Sunday), boxing matches between his pastor and the devil and how his pastor liked to use the letter P while delivering sermons. It’s a great perspective on how kids view religion growing up and also how what they got from their childhood religious upbringing steers them one way or another as an adult. The subtitle of this book really sums things up: one kids’ journey toward God despite a holy mess.

You know things are getting interesting when they break out the hazmat suits. They were going into our crawl space to check out the damage. They ended up ripping out at least ten of those HUGE industrial size trash bags of insulation that got wet. Tomorrow they are supposed to come back to rip up our kitchen floors and tear out the ceiling. Good thing I’m not hosting Thanksgiving dinner this year. ;0

There is nothing like coming home after being gone for three hours to find that your kitchen, dining room and entry way are completely flooded, water is pouring-POURING-out of the light sockets and there aren’t enough towels on the block to soak up the mess.

What I think happened is that the mechanism on the washing machine (which is on the 2nd floor) that tells it when the water level is high enough and it can start washing the clothes malfunctioned and so the washer just continued to fill with water until it spilled over onto the floor….for three hours. I truly cannot put into words how much water there was. When the fire department came they were in awe…that’s never a good sign. Anyways, my neighbors are the heroes in all of this. They brought over their wet vac and sucked up all the water in the laundry room and tried their best to suck up some of the water in the carpet in the hallway while I was downstairs trying to do damage control. My neighbors also brought us dinner and had their teenage daughter come over and entertain the boys for me. I called the insurance people and they told me I needed to call a company that would get started on taking care of the water damage ASAP. The company came out within the hour and they were here until about 10:30 ripping up carpet, installing fans, dehumidifiers and poking holes in the walls and ceiling to let out the moisture. Where was my hubby you ask? He was out of the country on business, but I didn’t want him to feel like he was being left out of the party, so I called him in the wee hours of the morning his time to let him know what was going on. Poor guy, he felt so bad that he wasn’t there to help, but there will be plenty for him to do when he gets back, I am sure.