Baby J's new fascination...

is to find out what will flush down the toilet. I was folding laundry when Little E ran in there to tell me that Baby J had one of Lucy's bones in the toilet. Yup, by the time I made it to the bathroom he had already flushed it. I used it shortly afterwards and it seemed fine. The kids had used it along with our occupational therapist and nobody said anything. We finished up OT and Little E had to go potty and when she came out, I had to go. Well, she had left some surprised in there for me and as I called out to her to remember to flush next time (at the same time I flush for her), the water starts overflowing everywhere. I got Mr. Plunger and after plunging about 6 times...the water still wants to overflow everytime you flush. I'm thinking the rawhide must have expanded once it was wet for awhile. I called Andy at work and asked him if he wanted me to call a plumber and he said he'd take a look when he got home first and if he wasn't successful we'd call the plumber. Little boys I tell you!

New Bed

We went out and picked out our new bed today. We picked this one and we're getting the end tables too (one for each side of the bed so we each have our own). The bed has 2 drawers that pull out on the end of the bed so we'll his/hers drawers too. I really like it. It's almost like a knotty pine.

Now we're getting a new bed...

I feel so dumb...our new mattresses came today. I could have sworn that our bed was a queen...turns out it's only a full....so the mattresses don't fit. Problem solved...now we're on the hunt for a new bed. Oops!

We're getting a new living room set delivered on Wednesday!

I had been saying for awhile now that we were in need of a new couch. We bought ours from IKEA about 8 years ago and I swore I'd never get a couch with removable cushions again as the kids (mostly Little E) will not leave them alone. She's got to get her feet underneath them to push them off or she's unzipping them or trying to pull the stuffing out. She pulled the zipper off one of my pillows the other day and Andy safety pinned it. She started bringing me the safety pins the other day and finally I had no choice that I just took that pillow off the couch as I didn't want anyone getting hurt since she will not leave them alone. Well a couple nights ago I went to sit down after the kids were in bed and noticed that one of my pillow covers was now torn. Andy went to a work fun day on Saturday and Deidra called him to tell him something and he asked what we were up to. She told him I was looking at couches. I was looking at IKEA, but he said he didn't know if he wanted another IKEA couch...so I went to Rooms to Go to look and fell in love with a chocolate brown set. Come to find out it was the same one that I fell in love with before when the house was being built. Andy asked me if I was buying it or just looking at it. I was like "I can buy it?" I decided I wanted to see it in person first and so we went to go look at it when he got home. We're getting the couch, loveseat, and recliner and we also decided to look at the entertainment centers because we're still using Deidra's little table as a tv stand. Our salesman told us that there was 2 they had on sale right around the corner and so we decided on this one! The one I saw online was really nice too, but they wanted a whole lot more for it. We decided to stay within our means and decided on the one on sale since that was do-able.

I so cannot wait for Wednesday!

Decorating the House...

We cleaned out the garage yesterday,now to just unpack the totes. I'm going to try and do one tote a day minimum. Anyway, we went to church this morning and I asked Mom to come by and help me hang pictures. She came over for most of the day and we hung the pictures that I had out (I still have a ton more in totes) and we went shopping for some other ones that I wanted. I found a couple cool ones that I'm going to save up for and I bought some cool frogs that hang on the wall for the kids bathroom. It looks really cool! Anyway, I've got the decorating bug now. Mom is making me a wreath to go with one of my pictures and I can't wait to see the finished product. It feels all homey in here now with just a little bit on the walls. I started my stairway too (all Deidra's pictures are going to be hung from birth to her senior year) and even my Mom commented on how nice it looked. Deidra came home from her sleepover and that was the first thing she noticed. I'm going to go up and get frames for our foster children's pics to go in and then have the pics from respite kids that I've done to put them into their slots too. The kids I've actually had as placements are going in their own 5x7 frames and the kids I've had for respite I'm putting in a big multi-picture frame. I can't wait until I get it all up. I'm going to try and take Baby J in to get his 2 year pictures taken at Wal-mart this week too so I have his professional picture to hang on the wall. I'm getting into this decorating stuff. It's about time since we've lived here for 8 months now and the walls were bare until this weekend. It really does make a difference. I have so much I want to do now...I've been inspired!

Landscaping the front yard...

We got out there this weekend and landscaped the front yard. I put before/after pics on our house blog if anyone wants to see.
http://hoffmanshouse.blogspot.com/

Our master bathroom disaster...

Most of you heard that the boys flooded our bathroom the other day when they were supposed to be napping. I took some pics of the incident just in case we needed some for any insurance purposes or Andy needed to show them to work since he left early to help me gain some sanity.

I never thought two toddlers could be so quiet while making such a HUGE mess. They stopped up Andy's sink and let the water continuously flow on full blast. I was trying to clean downstairs while I thought they were napping (Baby J was asleep when I left their bedroom and I left Baby D rubbing his eyes and I thought he was quickly on his way to napping...WRONG!). Anyway, after I cleaned the guest bathroom downstairs, the playroom, and went to unload the dishwasher I heard the footsteps and a giggle. I went upstairs to find my master bathroom door closed and them laughing. I opened up the door, saw the huge mess, and proceeded to slip and fall on my butt. What I didn't see at first was all the water ALL over the floor... I got the water turned off, the boys changed and put back to bed and went to put down all the towels that I could find. That wasn't nearly enough. I went and got all the blankets that I could find...that STILL wasn't enough. By that time, I called Andy in tears and he said he'd take lunch and come home to help me. Right after I talked to him, my Mom called. She was able to get me the number for some emergency people that deal with flooding (THANKS MOM!) and they came out right away. By that time, I had taken every bin of dirty clothes that we had and dumped them all over the bathroom floor to sop up the water and that helped get more up off the floor. I came downstairs to grab my mop and found that the water had started to pour through the laundry room vent over my head. I cleaned up the water downstairs that was on the floor and ran back upstairs to make sure that I got all the major water soaked up. I discovered that Andy's cabinet drawers were FULL of water...so I quickly dumped those out and got towels in them to dry them out. Unfortunately, they have some water damage...but it's only on the inside of the drawers so he's not too worried about it. By that point, Andy was home and the emergency people came shortly after. They probed our floors and walls and the downstairs ceiling and thankfully only a section of our drywall and baseboards and ceiling had anything to worry about. He recommended setting up 3 huge fans and a dehumidifer to those areas for 3 days to dry them out. They're coming out tomorrow to probe again to make sure it's all dried up. We did wind up with a small crack in the downstairs ceiling, but I guess it could have been a whole lot worse. We'll have to putty it and patch it up and repaint.

This is the only photo that you can honestly see that there's water on the floor (reflection of the window on the floor). But, they sure had a field day in there in the 15-20 minutes that I was THINKING they were sleeping. Now, they have a safety knob on their door so they can't get out and we're installing a door alarm as well so we know when they've opened the door for SURE.




Yeah, I think the cats will be glad to have the blowers and stuff gone too. They're so loud that they freak the cats out too....

We're constantly having to yell over them too and it would be nice to just be able to use normal voices to communicate with one another. UGH!






Yeah, they completely dumped out all the contents of my bathroom cabinet and scattered it all over the place. Then they dumped the cat litter all over, turned Andy's faucet on and plugged his sink and let the water flow out all over (did I mention that the water was also on full blast), dumped our hand towels in the cat's food and water dishes, they just had a grand old time and could not seem to understand why I was just not so amused when I found them having field day in all the water. There was not a dry spot on my bathroom floor at all! They also got into some ebay stuff that was in our bedroom and they tried to throw some stuff out of the window after they pushed the screen out. Little terrors! I did learn one thing though...I'm not opening up the upstairs windows anymore...I do not want them falling out!!

One thing that I am grateful for though is that it wasn't as expensive to clean up as we thought it was going to be...don't get me wrong it was still a pricey event to take care of, but we were more concerned that we thought we were going to have majoral structural damage when we saw that the water had made it through the ceiling and so forth. I'm just grateful that we had a real emergency fund built up and that it was only a small fortune to take care of it rather than the big one we thought it was going to be. Thank You, Dave Ramsey who we're taking our baby steps after!

House Spending Spree...

Well, I had $75 to spend on the house...I went up to get the stuff for my little bathroom and they were all out of stock on the things that I needed for it. So, I figured that I'd get all new towels since we've been using the same ones since we got married and I want nice matching ones. Anyway, I got light purple ones to match our bathroom and washcloths to match and I got two purple handtowels with the butterfly print on it that matches our shower curtain.

Then, I went and got the kids all new washcloths and towels in the green that matches their froggy theme in their bathroom.

I realized in trying to listen to the "I'm hungry" and "I'm thirsty" and all that mess that I forgot to kid the frog trash can for their bathroom and a new toothbrush for Little J since the boys threw hers in the toilet. Oops! So, I'll go back for that later. I need to grab a Tinkerbell trash can for the girls room too.

Oh! And the best part...Andy will be oh so proud of me...I'm under budget!!

House Splurges

Well, since the weather is warming up and everything is starting to green up, we wanted to get some stuff for the house and for the kids to play with in the backyard instead of just going out there and pushing their carts around and playing with their big bouncy balls or just running around. So, we got them a turtle sandbox which kept them all entertained and so occupied for hours.


We were also going to get this swingset, but we couldn't get any set answers on how big the boxes were so we weren't sure if it was going to fit in the van. So, we decided to go out next weekend instead to go back and get the swingset.



We also got the girls new nightstands that match their beds and we got them a big white wooden bookshelf for all of their books. I told Andy that I'm going to take the house envelope to Target tomorrow and get the stuff to finish my little bathroom as well. We need to get more focused on making our house a home and getting things little by little.

House Schedule

I've been asked by a couple of friends how I have been keeping up with the kids and the new house. So, I thought I'd share my schedule. Laundry for 6 people is nuts...but I think I came up with a do-able solution and I stay on top of my housework too.

Monday
------
Deidra's Laundry
Deidra's Bedding
Wash Towels
Pick-up and Vacuum Downstairs
Deidra Cleans Bedroom and Vacuums Room
Cat Boxes

Tuesday
-------
Baby J's Laundry
Baby J's Bedding
Pick-up Downstairs
Boys Clean Playroom
Sweep and Mop Floors
Vacuum Boys Room
Budget
Cat Boxes
Bath Night

Wednesday
---------
Baby D's Laundry
Baby D's Bedding
Pick-up Downstairs and Vacuum
Clean Bathrooms
Boys Pick Up Playroom
Cat Boxes

Thursday
--------
Little J's Laundry
Little J's Bedding
Pick-up Downstairs
Little J Cleans Bedroom
Budget
Cat Boxes
Bath Night

Friday
------
Wash our laundry
Wash our bedding
Pick-up and Vacuum Downstairs
Movie Night
Clean and Vacuum Bedroom
Cat Boxes

Saturday
--------
Budget
Cat Boxes
Bath Night


Sunday
------
Grocery Shopping
Cat Boxes

Surprisingly, it goes pretty well. The girls get notes from the House Fairy and prizes once in awhile when she's been watching for awhile and they've stayed on top of their messes and have practiced their manners. So, they're always eager to help. Baby D helps me unload the dishwasher too. The House Fairy has definitely made a difference in our house! They know that they have to keep things clean and picked up if they want her to visit, but yet they also know that she doesn't leave surprises every time..but yet she could be watching at any time. So that keeps them on their toes. I didn't put dishes or anything else down either as I have to do them sometimes once a day and somedays we run the dishwasher a couple of times per day. I just do it as we need to. I try to sweep the kitchen floor once or twice a day and it's mopped once a week. Anyway, that's how we're keeping up with the house and the chores. The girls take turns doing the cat boxes now too...they think it's fun...hey, if they're willing to help...we'll let them. We just make sure that they scrub their hands really well once their done. Usually one girl does the ones downstairs and the other girl does the ones upstairs. Otherwise they fight over who's night it is to get to do it. We help too of course!

Busy day...

Well, Deidra finally is starting to feel a bit better. She's up playing with Little J, although she still says that her head really hurts. She's still running a fever as well. They're up cleaning their room now per the House Fairy's e-mail that they had to each pick up 5 things. I have dinner going in the crock pot...chicken and dumplings. I'll probably make some corn later to go with it.

The boys are overly tired and won't take a nap. I had Baby J down for a nap, but Baby D woke him up. He does not know the meaning of "be quiet" and he'll just start yelling and babbling really loud for no reason and it drives me insane. I've tried whispering to him to demonstrate "be quiet" and everything. He just does not seem to get it. So, I'm trying to put Baby J down for a nap yet again and since he's way tired, all he's doing is crying.

They were supposed to come out and install our garbage disposal (we paid for the upgrade and they gave us the base unit instead of our upgraded one), so they were going to come out today to do that, but they are coming out tomorrow instead.

Well, I need to go break up an argument...