The Science Fair

Last week was the girl's science fair at school. I can't wait until the kids can do projects like this totally on their own. I think they really enjoyed the project this year though and because they didn't choose something too complicated and beyond them that they are really looking forward to the science fair next year. I however, am so glad that it will be a year before I have to think about the science fair again.

Elizabeth:

Elizabeth did a study with flavored waters. She took four different flavored carbonated waters and put food coloring in them contrary to what would normally go in them. Then she asked people to taste the waters and tell her what flavor they tasted. She had so much fun with this one. I think she did a great job on her board too. She was one of the kids in her class that were chosen to go on to the district level. Go Lizzie! You show 'em how its done!

Rebecca:

Rebecca did her project on the storage options for popcorn. I have heard that its better to store your popcorn in the fridge to keep it fresher. But I also heard that you should never keep it in the fridge. So Rebecca decided to store the popcorn in different places and then see which one was better. It was interesting because I really wanted to know which rumor was right since popcorn has become our snack of choice. We looked forward to the day that she got to pop all the popcorn. We had a few different recipes for the popcorn and we rented a few movies so that we could be sure to take advantage of the abundance of popcorn we were about to have. My favorite was the white chocolate popcorn. She wasn't chosen to go on to the next level but her teacher said that she scored really high and that it was close. She is a little disappointed but she is glad that her friends were chosen to go.

"Look deep into my eyes...."

So, Megan woke up this morning and this is what I saw. Her eyelid has been red for a few days but it looked so much better yesterday. I certainly didn't expect this! I panicked at first until I realized that it doesn't bother her and her eyeball itself looked just fine (once I got the eyelid open far enough to even see the eyeball.) Of course I called the doctor right away. Apparently this is pretty common for kids her age. It is called Periorbital Cellulitis, meaning, a minor infection of the skin around the eye. Her eyeball is totally fine. No redness and very little drainage. It doesn't seem to bother her at all. If you touch the supper puffy eyelid it feels like a water balloon. This isn't serious and as long as she takes her antibiotic and I keep an eye on her eyeball. I guess it's a bad sign if her eyeball starts sticking out or it can't move in any direction.

Building: Week 8

Another week has come and gone. This was a difficult week with the build because there were some misunderstandings within the group and the construction supervisor was holding a few people back for some reason known only to him, so most people just weren't able to be as productive as they have been and many hard feelings were starting to show between families. We had a group meeting first thing Saturday morning and went over a lot of points that needed to be brought out in to the open and discussed so that they could be dealt with and the group could move on and we can get back to building houses. The meeting must have worked because the group worked really well together for the rest of the day and there wasn't a single bad feeling between anyone, so we were able to get lots of work done on the third house. We got 2 outer walls up and a 3rd wall is nearly ready to go up. We are hoping that we can get back to our super fast schedule and have this house completed in less than 2 weeks. If we can do that, our supervisor will let us work on the next two houses at the same time. The build won't go any faster, but everyone will feel more productive at all times and we hope that it will help to keep the hard feelings at bay.

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Last week we finished the "punch list" for our house. That is the list of all the little odds and ends that have to be done before our part of framing is complete. I look forward to doing the "punch list" on the 7th house because that means that the framing part of the build is over and that is the hardest part of the build. So, we are 1 house down with only 6 more to go...and the "punch list" for the second house is scheduled for this week.

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As for the progress on our house, the roofing is complete, the electrical has all been installed, and our front porch was poured. I expected the roofing and the electrical, but the porch was a surprise. We weren't scheduled for that for a few more weeks.

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This is a picture of the professionals installing our shingles. The significance of this picture is that it was originally going to be our group that had to install the roofing. Since the build took so long to get started and they got such a great deal on the roofing they decided to contract it out saving us weeks on the build. You don't know how grateful I am for that.

Here is the roof completely finished. I thought that the shingles would be darker. I hate that they give you this tiny little sample to look at and expect you to know what it will look like on a grand scale. I also didn't know that they were going to have black vents on the roof. I totally would have picked a darker color for the shingles if I had known all that.

I am soooo excited to see the porch. Of course it means the house is that much closer, but I am also excited to see it right now because walking over all that re-bar was getting old and dangerous. It will be even better when there are stairs so that we can get to the house without climbing in through the 3 foot high garage door.

The rough electrical is finished. I am so happy to see tons of outlets in EVERY room. We are that much closer to having a functional house. They also installed at least 3 phone jacks that I saw. CJ said he saw more. I thought we only got one phone jack and had to have the rest installed ourselves. Bonus!!

Remember in the last post how I showed you that we got to clean our house and it looked so nice. Here is the same spot in the house after the electricians had their fun. The rest of the house looks just like it. I already can't keep up with the house work! LOL

This was the best part of all. My sister and my niece were in town this weekend and they stopped by for a quick visit. More on that in another post. Anyway, my sister was our first family visitor to our new home (it was too cold for my niece so she didn't get out of the car.) It was so much fun to be able to give her a tour! She especially loved the view from the back of the house.

Oh yeah. I forgot to mention that the arch in the entryway to the front room was also completed and it looks great. On a side note, I have had a bad cough and a small cold for two weeks now. Every time I made some progress on getting rid of the cough I would have to go work out in the bad air and wet ground and the cough would get worse. Saturday my cough was really bad so I called my mom (she's a nurse) to ask if there was any better medicine I could take to get rid of the cough. The small cold I could handle, it was the cough that was driving me nuts. I haven't slept well (and neither has CJ) for so long because of the cough. My dad told me that I should get Cold-Eeze for the cold and both my parents told me to go to the doctor to have the cough checked out. So, after I got home and took an extra hot shower so that I could finally feel warm again I went to the doctor. I had a chest x-ray and she told me that I had mild pneumonia. It was a good thing I went in when I did because she said it could have gotten a lot worse if I had kept ignoring it. I did get the Cold-Eeze too so I could fight the cold as well as the pneumonia. I must say that after spending two days in bed (thank you soooo much CJ) I do feel much better. I sure do hope I survive this build. lol

Building: Week 7

Here are some pics of the work that was done last week.

Plumbing and ventilation for the washer and dryer has been installed.

We now have a furnace. (Notice all the ice in the background.)

The heating vents have all been cut and covered.

The big window in front has been installed.

The roofing has begun.

We were finally allowed to clean up the inside of the house.

Before.

After.

We filled up this large box with all the stuff that was on the floor of the house.

The electricians should be here this week. There have been some snags with construction of the other houses. Let's hope these problems can be worked out and things can get back on track.

Note to self: Don't rush Rebecca!

This last Sunday we were taking a long time getting up and getting going. CJ had cooked a really nice brunch (since he's the only one awake before 9:30am on Sundays) and we were all just sitting at the table catching up on what happened last week and what was going on this week. We didn't realize how late it had gotten so we had to rush to get ready for church. I was the last one to take a shower and I had very little time to get ready so I asked Rebecca if she wouldn't mind getting Megan dressed and ready for church. Rebecca was excited and played with Megan before getting her dressed. I said that it was time to go so Rebecca quickly got Megan's dress on and we left. We were a few minutes late for church so we got a seat in the back. About 5 minutes into the meeting I was holding Megan and checking out her dress. This was the first time that she wore this particular dress. The dress has a matching diaper cover which I thought was cute. I was feeling to see how well it covered the diaper and was amazed that I didn't feel the sides of the diaper at all. This diaper cover was doing an amazing job at covering the diaper. I peeked inside the cover just to make sure that Rebecca had put the diaper on straight because Megan tends to wiggle a lot and Rebecca has a hard time getting the diaper on straight. I was totally shocked to see not a diaper peeking back at me but two little baby butt cheeks instead. In the rush to get out the door Rebecca had just skipped the step of putting the diaper on all together. I couldn't help myself and I just started laughing. It was a quiet laugh (so I didn't disturb the meeting, good thing we were in the back) but I couldn't control it so I grabbed the diaper bag, the diaper less baby, and left the chapel as quickly as I could. Out in the hall I just busted out laughing and Megan thought she was missing out on something so she started laughing too. It was just one of those moments that makes being a mom so much fun.

Building: Week 6

We had a fun time this Saturday. CJ and I installed all the windows except for the big picture window in the front. We couldn't install that one because there were some brackets that weren't delivered so we'll just have to wait on that one. It took 7 hours to install the other windows because it was just the two of us but we feel like we really accomplished a lot. The hardest window was the bathroom window (the smallest window in the house. lol) The reason it was so hard was because the hole for the window was originally too low on the wall. When they went to put the tub in they noticed that the tub would have covered half of the window. Other people have been working on raising the hole for the window in the wall here and there so by the time we went to install the window the hole was in the right place but the finish framing around the window still needed to be done. After CJ and I finished framing the hole for the window it went right in. Part of installing the windows included putting the black plastic water proof lining around the windows. That proved to be a big pain but we still had fun working together.

This is the west side of the house with the roof complete and the windows ready for installation.

Here is the house with the windows and water proofing installed.

This is the back of the house with windows and doors. There was another couple working on the doors. Can you believe that the little window in the middle is the one that we worked on the longest? I really like the style of the back door. We didn't get a choice in doors so I was a little nervous at what was going to be installed but I am very happy.

I love the front door as well. We can paint it later if we want but we don't think that we will.The HVAC, and plumbers have been there this week as well. We found many holes cut in the floor for heater vents. The rough plumbing has been started and there are pipes going everywhere. Since we have one tub installed and a water heater in the basement the others in the group kept asking if we wanted to take a bath now. I think I'll wait for warmer weather (not to mention a few more walls) thanks.

I caught CJ just staring out the back door lost in thought when we were cleaning up. He was just picturing the back yard filled with our friends at one of our BBQ parties.

The plumbers and HVAC guys will continue their work this week. We need the heater installed and working to dry out the floors and walls so that the drywall people can come and put up some inside walls. We are also working on finding out where the drain in the basement is under all the ice. We need to uncover it so that as the ice melts the water has a place to go. As CJ and I were starting to clean up we felt a few drops of rain. We were relieved that we had finished just in time since we knew it was going to rain any minute now. I thought I would take a few pictures before we cleaned up. It would only take a few minutes so I thought it would be okay. I was WRONG. I had only been taking pictures for 3 minutes when the rain hit. We got hit with a hard, windy rain that seemed to be dumping an entire lake on us. It was so weird having such a hard rain in the middle of winter. Inside the house we had a waterfall from the sheeting in the roof that was not covered yet. The windows however were holding out the rain like a champ. We couldn't help but sit and admire our work for a few minutes before swimming out to the car.

Oops! It's a late post.

I was going through some of my pictures to send them to my mom and I realized that I had forgotten to post about Christmas so this will be a short Christmas post. We didn't go anywhere for Christmas this year because of the build so we had a simple celebration at home. This would have been a great year to go too because CJ had the whole week between Christmas and New Year's off since his company was closed for upgrades. Well, we didn't get to go visit any family but CJ was able to get a lot of work done on the house that week. We had a really nice Christmas with the girls thanks to our generous family. We are so blessed with such a wonderful family and we love them so much. We had to wake the girls up again this year to open presents (even Megan.) I keep trying to tell them that waking the parents up very early in the morning is a tradition and I WANT them to wake us up. They are such heavy sleepers however that even though they wanted to wake up early, they just couldn't do it. Oh well, maybe next Christmas.

Building: Week 5

Saturday was a busy day, a good day, but a busy day. I was a bit nervous because earlier that week I tripped on my porch steps out front and injured my foot. I jammed my big toe, bruised the middle toes, and broke my pinkie toe. I couldn't put a tennis shoe on at all for three days. I was blessed however, that by Saturday I not only could wear a shoe but was able to walk with no pain at all. My foot came through like a champ, what killed me was my lungs. I was also sporting a bad cough that day. I picked up a little cold from the babies and had been coughing for 3 days as well. My cough wasn't bad Saturday morning so I wasn't even thinking about it. That cold, yucky air (we are having bad air days here from the inversion) hit my lungs and I had a hard time breathing. I didn't do to bad as long as I didn't cough. Coughing was extremely painful.

Anyway, back to the build. Our roof is now fully sheeted and ready for the shingles. CJ and I were inside getting many of the little things done that completes our house. The last step this week is to install the windows and doors. The doors have already been delivered and I love them! The windows come this week.

*Stairway to the ice rink...a.k.a. basement.

*Looking through the walls.

*Sheeting the roof.

*The roof is done.

We are progressing on the other houses. The second house is almost ready for its trusses to be put on this weekend. That house was built in half the time of our house which is the plan. Each house is supposed to be built faster than the previous one. We have actually begun the third house now and it is expected to be done in 3 weeks. They have finally dug and poured two more of the houses. That makes five. In about a month they will come back and dig the final two houses. As of this point we still do not have an eighth family and we are all hoping that they don't get one. That means we would only have to build 7 houses in stead of 8. Since we are already on the third house that means that we are nearly half way there. Professionals will come to do a lot of the work on our house now while we are framing the other houses. About the first week of March we will start painting the inside of the houses. I can't wait for that because that is where I can really start being of some use, not just as a wood cutter and carrier.

Clear Creek

Last week Rebecca got the chance to do an overnight retreat with her class at school. She has been looking forward to this trip since last year when Elizabeth went. The fifth graders go to a mountain camp retreat called Clear Creek up in the mountains about 1 1/2 hours south of here. The boys go up on Wednesday and return Thursday. The girls go up on Thursday and return on Friday. They get to do activities like snowshoeing, sledding, hiking, rope walking, staying up watching movies until they fall asleep, and more.

Rebecca has been counting the days until her trip since the beginning of school. She mentioned that she gets to go to Clear Creek no less then 15 times everyday for the last 5 days before the trip (ugh!). Elizabeth has been remembering many things about her trip last year to give Rebecca a heads up for her trip. She gave her many warnings as well so that her trip could be the most fun possible. She had a great time and loved the rope course the best. She is now counting down the days until she gets to go on her next field trip to "This Is The Place" park in Salt Lake City.

Building: Week 4

Wow! Can you believe its been 4 weeks already?! I know I can't. Our house has come so far in such a short time. Now its on to the other 7 houses. There are only a few things left to do on our house. We need to sheet the roof and install the doors and windows. Those are two things I am really looking forward to for reasons other than the obvious. I can't wait for the roof to be sheeted because I am tired of shoveling snow out of the house. There is about 1 inch of ice with 1-2 inches of snow on top of that on the entire floor of the house and my job is to get it all out of the house. You really find out how much house you have when you have to clear out every square inch of ice and snow (even inside the walls.) I will feel so much better when there is a roof and windows so that once the snow and ice is all cleared out I won't have to do it again after the next snow. I look forward to the installation of the windows and doors as well so that we can keep the neighborhood kids out of the house. Last Saturday, WHILE WE WERE STILL THERE, a group of kids walked right into our house! A group of girls went right into the basement to skate on the ice rink that we have down there, and a group of boys stayed upstairs playing with all the cool "toys" (like boards with nails sticking out) they could find on the floor. You know that this was not the first time they have been in the house. I just would hate to think that a kid got hurt while playing in my house, or decided to brake something in the house just for fun. I can't wait to get the doors and windows in so that we can keep the kids and the house safe. Anyway, here are just some of the 50 pictures I took.

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Here is the "before" picture. This picture was taken that morning before the crane arrived.

Here is CJ attaching the trusses to the crane. (Lucky man)

These are (top) The trusses being lifted in a group and going in to the air. (right) The trusses being placed on the house (over the dining room/master bedroom.) (bottom) A picture of the house with only half of the trusses done (its one of my favorite pics of the day.)

This is the house finished with all the trusses.

CJ working in the rafters. (He was only a little scared.)
The "after" picture of the house. It really is starting to take shape and look like a real house now.

It was so much fun watching the trusses go on top of the house by crane. CJ got to hook the trusses to the crane and then use the guide rope to keep the trusses from tangling while they were being lifted on to the house. It's actually the job I wanted, but I couldn't do that and take pictures too so I had to do something else. My job was to be inside the house handing the men who were on the roof hammering in the trusses anything they needed. I thought it was going to be easy and I would have plenty of time to take lots of pictures. I was indeed wrong. They were very needy men. I had a hard enough time just trying to keep up with all their requests, let alone trying to take pictures as well. I didn't mind though because I got to know every board in my roof very well. It just makes the house seem more personal when you know every nail that goes into it. Just a side note, we had to get the trusses nailed on as fast as possible because the crane we use to put it up with is very expensive. We were hoping to get it done in as close to one hour as possible. Because this was the first roof and we didn't know exactly what we were doing we did it in 2 hours and 15 min. The supervisor said the next house will go even faster. That's just amazing to me because I thought it went really fast already.

Have pen, will write.

Megan just keeps coming up with new ways to make me smile. She is so funny. Back in September she found a pen and a postcard on the floor and started "writing" on the postcard. I thought it was so cute so I took a picture. It was so fun to see her just instinctively know what to do with paper and a pen. A few months later she did it again, and has been doing it ever since. She is almost always seen with a pencil in hand looking for any scrap of paper (or appliance) she can "write" on. She will sit for a long time just making her little marks on both sides of the paper. She will also bring the paper and pencil to you asking you to draw her a picture so that she can color it. Don't even try to take the pencil out of her hand because she has the grip of steel and she will tell you that she does not want to give up the pencil.
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Megan writing just before bed.

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She fell asleep before putting all her thoughts down on paper.

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She found a spot in the hallway where no one could bother her and made it her own private writing studio.

I watch her concentrating so hard on her writings and just wonder what novel or masterpiece is in there just waiting to emerge.

Tween Town

Everyone keeps telling us that having three girls so close in age is going to be h-e-double hockey sticks when they become teenagers. The fights about "borrowing" clothes, who stole who's date, who gets more bathroom time, and so on are not going to be fun. I however don't think its going to be that bad. I have some really good girls who have learned how to share and coincide in really tight quarters...all four of them still sleep in the same room on weekends. I know that it won't be a bowl of cherries but I don't think it will be all that bad. I know it won't be bad for one main reason. We are already going through some of the teenage drama. The girls are all in the awkward stage that happens before the teenage stage. The stage kids hit when they are 9, 10,11, and 12. The Tween stage (because they are between a little kid and a teen.) I thought this stage was hard because we could never figure out what to get them for birthdays and Christmas (they're too old for Princess toys but too young for make-up.) But I was wrong. This stage is hard because they are starting the hormone change and their emotions have started on the roller coaster ride they will be on for the next 10 years. Their interests go back and forth from listening to cool songs on the radio while chatting with friends on the phone to playing hide-and-seek with mom and dad. What you thought they liked they think was soooo yesterday, but then again its what they will want tomorrow. I never know which emotion to expect from one minute to the next, or from which tween child its going to come from. I guess this is just a taste of what's in store for when the real thing happens and it's not that bad...on most days.

Anyway, I just couldn't believe what happened last week. I was caught off guard and had to remember that my little girls are getting closer to becoming young women every day.

Elizabeth was in the bathroom (unusually long) with the door cracked open so I thought I would go in and see if there was something she needed help with (you know...playing the part of the nosey mother.) As soon as my hand touched the door she slammed it shut as quick as she could. I asked her what was wrong. She said, "nothing". I asked her what she was doing..."nothing". I asked her if I could come in..."NO!" My interest is piqued now. When a girl says that nothing is wrong that usually means that there is definitely something wrong. I ought to know since I am the Queen of "nothings wrong". I finally get her to let me in the bathroom and she has one hand to her forehead and the other is quickly trying to clean up my make-up. She said that she had accidentally spilled my make-up and was trying to clean it up. Okay, no big deal. I help her clean it up. The whole time though she won't take her hand off her forehead. I ask her if she has a headache..."no". Why won't you take your hand off your head?..."because". (This is going nowhere.) Elizabeth, let me see your forehead. She moved her hand away and I noticed that her beautiful eyebrow (she really has the most beautiful eyebrows) was almost gone. It took a few seconds before I realized what she had done and then it took everything I had in me not to laugh. She had her new Disney magazine in front of her opened to the page where there were pictures of her four favorite characters with a list of what she needed to do to look just like them. I really didn't think that she was that preoccupied with her looks that she would take that page seriously. She was in there with a pair of scissors trying to give herself some bangs so that she could look just like one of them. She had only cut a tiny amount of bangs before she realized that she had taken off half of her eyebrow. She wasn't sure what to do but she was certain that she was going to be in BIG trouble. I just looked at her and smiled. I told her that I would be happy to help her cut her hair. She was relieved. I told her that I would have to fix her eyebrows though because it was really obvious. She wasn't too sure about that but in the end she let me trim the other eyebrow to match. She really looks good with bangs. Dakota and Rebecca liked them so much that they asked me to do the same for them. I will miss her eyebrows but at least I know they will grow back. Their childhood innocence however is quickly slipping away.

I need to be more inviting and less scary so that my girls will think about coming to me first when they want to do something so drastic in the future. If not, the next time could be a lot worse than a missing eyebrow.



My beautiful daughter. (Her bangs are covering the eyebrow that she chopped.)

Building: Week 3

I'm sorry that it took so long to get this post up. I didn't realize that it has been almost a week since I was out at the house last.
Things have slowed down a bit for two reasons. First is due to the snow. It finally stopped snowing today and the sun has decided to come out and play. We got hit with almost two straight days of non-stop snow, and that is on top of the snow we had already gotten. We got over a foot of snow here in a matter of just a few days. CJ was trying to go to Payson last night to work on the house but almost couldn't because his car got stuck trying to get out of the large snow bank at the foot of our driveway (thanks to the snow plow who only clears the other side of the road by piling it all up on our side of the road.) It took a lot of digging, and pushing from neighbor kids and our Bishop (who lives next door) to get the car out of the driveway. Thanks Bishop. They are doing the finishing touches to our house this week, and are making sure everything is done before this Saturday when they will be putting the trusses on top of the house with a crane. Then we have a week to put the sheeting on the trusses and install the doors and windows so that the professionals can come in and start making the wood "play house" look like a real house. We were supposed to get a garage floor last week but due to the snow and ice...yet again...they were unable to poor it and will have to wait until we get a good thaw before any floor can be poured.
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This is the garage as of last Saturday. It is done and ready for a roof now.

The porch is starting to take shape.

Not a very good picture of the front of the house, but I was tired.

The second reason things have slowed down is because there were only three houses dug and poured before the snow hit, and one of the houses we found has the basement walls but no floor. Rural Housing didn't think this would be a problem because they expected us to take forever learning how to do the framing and thought they would have plenty of time to catch up. What they didn't count on was so many people in the same build that already knew what to do. We are building so fast that Rural Housing is making up little projects to slow us down because if we keep building at this rate we will have nothing to do in about two weeks. The framing of our house will be completely finished by the middle of next week and the second house should be completely finished in two weeks. Because the third house has no floor we can't do anything with it and, since there are no other houses dug or poured, we will have nothing to do. It wouldn't be so bad if we were building in any other season, but with all the snow they are just not sure when they will be able to dig and pour the other houses. So, there you have it. The good, the bad, and the ugly of what is going on with the build.

Happy New Year!!

I can't believe it is the start of another year. Even the kids said that last year was over too quickly. We celebrated in our traditional manor. We ate finger foods and played games together all night. We tried out a few new games the girls got from school and from Christmas. At midnight we turned on the TV to watch the ball drop in Time Square, then we made a toast to the new year. Dakota made the toast this year. We look forward to the ball drop and the toast every year, although I don't like the changes they have made to the ball in Time Square so we probably won't watch that anymore.

CJ is not much of a night person and usually prefers to bring in the new year in a quiet slumber. This year we were blessed to have him join us for our midnight celebrations. The girls thought it was awesome to have Dad there.

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Megan drinks to the new year.

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Party friends.

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Megan says that she was listening to the voices in her head and they told her that this will be a great year for you.

We want to wish every one a wonderful New Year.