August 2015

They wanted to throw their dolls a birthday party, so we made muffins.

With anyone else, you would assume right away that this is just a really dark picture, but with these two, it could be just because they both are super dark, this could just be a normal picture and true color, who knows?

I was feeling crafty (like 5 months ago) and decided to put these letters up above the toy shelf in the playroom. I really dug deep in my creativity for these. I glued on something different to each letter. The I is crayons, M is buttons, A is building pieces, G is barbie shoes, I is pom pom balls, N is googly eyes and E is those melty beads. I finally finished! The A and the E were out when I bought the remaining letters forever ago, so I kept looking and looking but they never restocked, so I finally decided to get other letters and just play with the placement so they didn't look too out of place being a bit taller. 

Eli and I went to a Casey Abrams show at the Musical Instrument Museum. It's a very intimate setting and on top of that, we sat dead center in the front row. At one point he sat at the edge of the stage and I could have easily kicked him. It was a fantastic show!

at one point he walked around with his big bass guitar (or whatever instrument that is, I'm terrible!). He was entertaining and very talented.

storm's coming! Er, I mean monsoon!

Eva's first day of preschool, year 2! She is in Mrs. Linda's class again, and she goes for half days, 8:30-12:00 on T, W, and Th. I signed up to volunteer every other Wednesday too, so then Ella gets to come and join the fun on those days! Eva woke up to a fun surprise sign from daddy :)

oh my goodness, where do I begin...Well, it starts with those two pictures above. The silver line should be attached to the toilet... on Thursday, August 20th, I dropped Eva off at school, then Ella and I headed to the gym. We left the gym to go to the library, Costco and the other grocery store, but at the last minute I decided to go home instead because I decided I smelled too bad to sit in the library in close confines with 30 other people during storytime, so I wanted to take a quick shower. After my shower, I started a load of laundry and headed out by Ella in the carpet room to get ready to go when I heard a massive spraying. I ran and turned off the washer, assuming something weird happened, but out of the corner of my eye I see water spraying out of our guest bathroom (around the corner). I froze for a minute, totally unsure of what was happening and what I was supposed to do, and kind of hoping it would just stop, but it didn't. I told Ella to stay in the carpet room as I frantically ran around like a chicken with my head cut off. I had to put up a shield with my arms to get into the bathroom because it was spraying so hard, and attempt to turn off the water valve behind the toilet, this didn't work, the valve just wouldn't budge, so for a brief second I just tried plugging the water valve that was spraying all over the place, and it was so forceful that was definitely not happening, so I just aimed it at the bathtub while I gathered my thoughts. Then I ran around the outside of the house trying to turn off various valves that I knew had something to do with water, but unfortunately none were the main valve. I was also trying to text and call Eli, and probably 10 minutes later I was able to get ahold of him, in which he told me that I had to find out how to turn the water off (thanks honey :)). Eventually I did find the correct valve, and I would guess that the water was spraying for about 20 minutes. Imagine what would have happened if we had done our errands and the library instead?? It would have been 2-3 more hours! I think the whole house would have been under 5 feet of water. But anyway, Ella had a ball running down the hallways and using them as a slip n slide. Eli came home shortly after that and we started getting the water out. It was about 1-2 inches deep in the girls room, which is at one end of the house, there wasn't a drop of water in the guest room, directly across from the bathroom, however the water did soak in through the girls' closet and through the hallway just under the walls and under the floors. Our room appeared fine as well, but when we stepped in there, water just bubbled up from under the floors (all of the damaged floors were wood looking laminate so it is very easily damaged). The hallways were all under water, and it ran out into the carpet room on the complete other end of the house, but the main living area, which is just steps from the bathroom, didn't have any water in it either (not going to lie, I was a little disappointed that those floors appeared to be fine...but they weren't either because again it had soaked under the walls and under the floors, ruining them too). Our ugly pink tile proved to be indestructible despite being under water, and the carpet wasn't ruined, just needed to be dried and cleaned (luckily, we like that carpet and that was our lifesaver playroom during the repair!). All of the other floors in the house were ruined, and so were all of the baseboards throughout the house. None of the drywall was permanently damaged though. Our insurance recommended a company to come out and dry out the house. They set up 30 fans and 3 huge dehumidifiers throughout the house, and came back to check and assess everyday for 4-5 days. The poor cats did not like this! The dehumidifiers made it hot, about 90 degrees in there, and super noisy. Mr B chose to stay out in the 110 degrees outside instead, and Jinxy pretty much hid under our bed the entire time except when I came to feed them or check on them. We stayed in a hotel, and since it's slow season, we were able to stay at a fairly nice resort with a fun pool since they're so cheap right now!

Happy 7th Anniversary to us! We were still able to go out for our anniversary. We dropped the girls off at the drop in daycare and went out for dinner. Plus we had a nice family staycation at the resort for our anniversary!

kitchen view from the living room, those are the fans and dehumidifier.

the first company only removed the damaged floor, so that's why random parts are still there. Demo was super easy and I did the remaining part myself but had to wait until after the insurance adjuster came to look at the damage.

Kitchen and living room, I'm taking the picture from the dining room (say goodbye to this doorway! we widened it about 16 inches)

A view of the same living room, but from the hallway. Notice the door on the left, and if you look hard enough you see the door casing in the right of the picture, this just between the hallway and the living room so this is what we removed.

Our bedroom, with only the damaged floors removed (but still a good part of it!)

Girls room was completely ruined and removed

We were back in the house in time for my birthday :) the floors were cement, but that didn't stop the bakers from baking me a gorgeous cake!

We had a 5 year plan to replace the floors, so I can't say that this was devastating, just inconvenient. We were kind of homeless for a few weeks. I don't know what we would have done without all of our amazing friends who let us come over to do laundry, have us over for lunch and dinner, and just hang out for hours on end. I mean in the end, nothing valuable to us was ruined and we get new floors mostly paid for by insurance. Our 5 year plan also included removing a few of our walls in the house when we got new floors. We just recently paid someone to change the arches and the texture of the walls into a squared look with just a regular finish, we would have removed them then but couldn't because the floors didn't go under them so it would have looked goofy to not have any flooring in those spaces but back when we were debating doing it, it seemed like a very straightforward process of simply removing them, everyone was certain they were strictly cosmetic. We also had some odd doorways throughout the house. Where a normal person just has a hallway, we had door frames in all of our hallways, so those doorways were also going. Our drywaller couldn't come out for a few weeks to do the work so instead we at least decided to remove the walls and door frames ourselves so the floors could be installed, and he would just finish the walls when he could. Anyway, as Eli began hacking away, he discovered some disturbing hints that perhaps they were structural after all, eek :( So, after he tore into the ceiling to confirm, we had a much bigger job to do...thankfully Eli 'knows people'. So a structural engineer acquaintance told him what sort of beam we needed to install in the ceiling (12 feet long and like 7 inches thick) and the brother of one of his coworkers does contracting work and was able to come out and install the beam over the course of the next two days. He also had to cut into another wall to install this beam, and just as luck would have it, despite his being super thorough and careful, he cut the water line to the fridge, WATER EVERYWHERE! I walked in to see a hole in my wall, a pipe spitting out water, and this contractor is nowhere to be found (the floor guy walked in then, probably saw my face go pale, and told me the water is off, the contractor ran to home depot, reassuring me it happens sometimes and it's easy to fix - he was right). Fortunately the new floors were not installed yet in this area, phew! It was just cement and some drywall that had to be dried...fans again (this time we could do it ourselves). It really was not that big of a deal in retrospect, but still so nerve wracking at the time! We also had a few electricity concerns, so we had to have an electrician out for the whole day, going through our house fixing little things here and there. Just ridiculous! Oh, I guess I forgot that part of that reason was because I decided I needed to paint the master bedroom before our new floors were installed (it's rare that you'd get to paint a whole room without having to use a single piece of blue tape! since we are installing crown at the top of the walls I didn't have to cut in at the ceiling, and with just cement floors and no baseboards, I could even let the girls help without much concern! they loved painting...) but I also decided to change the electrical outlets with my newfound skill for doing this (I have already done much of the house) and it was all fine and dandy until I got to the light switches. We have always had questionable wiring with our switches so in some rooms we just left them alone to deal with 'later', but since I removed them, Eli and I didn't know how to install them. Eli wasn't extremely happy with my choices here but I have no regrets and I think he's happy it's all fixed now. Did I also mention that removing the walls (what turned out to be structural walls) was my idea? I also don't regret that though, I think we both know it's for the best in the end even though it was quite a frustrating few days when we (Eli) had to figure out how it would all come together. Those were pretty much all of our problems before the floor install, I think. It was a rough week or so, but hey, Eli and I are still happily married, I swear, haha!

One of the former doorways, not just a regular hallway.

hallway after the tile was demoed. 

This was also apparently structural, so we put those studs back and have to drywall over it. That one wasn't worth a beam...but at leaast the door casing part is gone now.

the beginning of our problems....:) that little wall, with the bottom cut open, is the support wall, so then the ceiling above was ripped open to install the beam. 

The install really didn't happen until September, but I'll do it all here. There was a little drama with the tile, but I won't write that all out. The big thing is the grout color changed from black in one room (as it was supposed to be) to grey, so now we have to dye most of the grout. The grey grout makes the floor look like tile, which is not the intended look, we only chose tile because it's the most durable and it's not a good idea to have real wood floors in Arizona because of the lack of humidity. In order for it to look more real, the grout has to be darker than the floors, so it has to be black, plus it just looks really nice! But for now, this also makes for a lot of black feet in the house until we wash it 8 million times. It really is getting better though. When I return to AZ we will just have to dye the grout, the baseboards to have installed and the drywall fixed...and then paint. Maybe changing a few more outlets too :)  We also had our bathroom done, and overall it looks nice too...

may as well redo the bathroom too...since they are tiling it, they had to remove drywall and replace with some other kind of wall that's for tile. 

this is what our new floors sort of look like...without all the grey dust everywhere they look pretty good :) 

oh and I forgot to add that during this time, I got the best quote I've ever for someone to remove our neverending pain in the neck mesquite tree (it grows like crazy, and sheds constantly). So I figured may as well choose my own birthday present, and get that removed too. It took them the entire day and looked awful to remove, which Eli was happy to hear because he would have been really disappointed if it only took an hour and he could have done it himself.

There was a guy next door redoing the roof and he wanted some wood so we left him a pile, which was perfect because it was less for the tree people to have to haul away. However, our own pile was up against the house and someone must have come along and taken that too! We were a little disappointed, because it would have set us for life with some nice mesquite firewood, but at least we didn't have to haul it all to the backyard (plus we already have tons of wood from previous times we'd trimmed the tree)

Sooo that's it for August! We had our first day of preschool, 7 year anniversary, a flood, new floors, new bathroom and I turned 32.