Catching up

I can't believe that it's been over a week since I last posted! Well, scratch that. With the week we had last week, I guess I can believe it. But this blog is all about catching up, so here's what our last week was about.

VBS: This last week I was involved for the first time ever in our VBS program at our church. I was asked to teach a class and I said yes. I was really nervous about it because, while sometimes I like kids (I certainly like mine...it's just those other ones that sometimes I have a hard time with) they're not my area of specialty. Some people are called to be teachers. I am not. However I choose to teach 5th grade based on the idea that none of my kids are in 5th grade...so I'd still be getting a break from my kids. I actually ended up loving it! I had NO discipline problems. My kids were great and fun and we had such a fabulous time! What I didn't realize is that teaching VBS, although being only from the hours of 9am to 12:30pm was totally a full time job. I woke up at 6:30 every morning to get myself ready, eat and get the kids ready and out the door. Then every afternoon on the way home, I had to work to keep the girls from falling asleep in the car. I put them down for their nap when we got home and then started to catch up on housework and figure out dinner. Then after dinner I got the kids ready for bed, looked over the next day's lesson and then gathered up everything I needed for the next morning. Clothes, shoes (for 5 kids), what I needed for class, packed the diaper bag, filled sippy cups....you get the idea. It was a very long, full week. But I will do it again next year.

Kitchen "Remodel": Well, last weekend before VBS started, I decided once and for all that I was fed up with my kitchen cabinets. You see, I have always liked the look of painted white cabinets in the kitchen. So in every house I've lived in, I have painted the cabinets. There were two things wrong with this idea in this house, however. First, I didn't do a good job of painting (I was in a hurry to get them done for some event happening at our house) so I didn't prep them well and I didn't seal them well so the paint was chipping. Secondly, I've never had white cabinets with triplets before. They were stained and always covered in something sticky and pretty much always looked like crap. So I decided I needed to do something different. I took the doors off of one side of the kitchen and decided to paint them black. The painting part was easy. But since the fronts of the cabinets are just flat and plain I decided to make them look nicer and I added some inset moulding to them. Anyway, that took a while before I could find the time to do this, so the cabinet doors were off all week. But finally yesterday I was able to get out there and finish it. I put the doors on, painted the moulding to match and I totally love it. I'm so excited. Soon, we are going to replace the counter tops in our kitchen and add on some cabinets which in turn will add much more counter space which I desperately need. I'm so excited!

Bats: We have discovered that we have bats living in our house. Josh and I were out on our hammock on Saturday night talking and eating blizzards when we started hearing this high pitched squeaky noise. Soon after we started seeing bats flying out of a crack in our house. Now, let me tell you, I am TERRIFIED of bats. This was very traumatic for me. Needless to say, I haven't slept well the past few night for fear of bats flying in through our window and flying around my head. Josh worked hard last night to hopefully seal up any entrance they could have into the house and make a way for them to get out but not back in. Hopefully we will be rid of bats soon.

Chickens: As some of you may know, one of the things I wanted to do after moving to Corbett was to get chickens. Soon after moving we did. Several of our chickens have gotten killed over the months here and it is very hard for me. We never knew what was the cause. I ended up selling my adult chickens several months ago because they weren't laying and at Easter I bought 3 baby chicks. We've raised these chicks for several months. One was mine, one was Bryce's and one was Jayden's and we each named our own. It's coming up on the time to where they are going to start laying. Sunday morning Josh looked out our bedroom window to see the neighbor's dog chasing one of our chickens. He yelled out the window and raced down the stairs but by the time he got there it was too late. So we lost another chicken. And likely it was the neighbors dog that has also been responsible for our other chicken losses. I'm very angry about this and not exactly certain as to how to handle this and still keep good neighbor relations. It seems like they would have said something to us and/or tried to keep better track of their dogs after they have seen this keep happening. I have written them a letter both because I'm not good with confrontation and for documentation sake if we should need it. We'll see if Josh lets me deliver it.

Well, that's about it for all the big things that are happening at our house this past week! I'm hoping that this week of catching up will be a little less eventful.