The Play's the Thing

Our homeschool group Children's Musical class had it's presentation Saturday night. Big Brother, Little Brother and Little Sister had parts along with being in the chorus. Big Brother started feeling sick on Thursday. He has had bad headaches and nausea. He was able to do his part in the play, but he is still hurting. I am praying that he will feel better soon and that no one else will get whatever he has.
Our play was "The Secret of My Success" and told about how it is better to have Jesus than all the riches of this world.
"What good is it to gain the whole world, but to lose your own soul?" Matt 16:26a

It's raining, it's snowing, it's flooding

Living in New Hampshire has a lot of great things about it, but lately New Hampshire has been a giant puddle. thankfully our house is on a hill so it doesn't get flooded, but I know a lot of people who have problems when it floods. We were fortunate that only one of the roads we use to get to the main road from our house was closed down, though it is supposed to rain or snow till Saturday.
Well, we should not have any problems with our well running dry this summer.

From the Mouths of Babes

Our youngest, Little Sister, is such a cute child and often says things that crack us up. Yesterday the kids were outside and they had left a snow tube out. In the center of the tube, a circle of ice about 1 inch thick had frozen. I dumped out the extra large "puck" and it slid down the hill on the snow which hadn't melted yet. Little Brother came over with a shovel yelling,
"Let's play ice hockey". To which Little Sister replied, "I want to be the puck!"
She changed her mind after we explained what the puck was. :-)

original kitchen pictures

I was going through some older pictures and found this picture of what the old kitchen looked like so folks could really see the difference.

Time to Party and Party

We recently had a unique experience...double birthday parties. Big Brother turned 13 on the 7th and Little Brother turned 8 on the 12th. For years we have been able to convince them to have one party for both of them, most of the time just family or a couple of friends. This year Big Brother wouldn't be swayed. He wanted a party of his own with a small bunch of friends. He wanted a Star Wars theme and to play video games at the party.
Little Brother wanted a Cars party. He loves Lightening McQueen and wanted to enjoy a fun time with his friends. He wouldn't be swayed from Lightening so using the same decorations was out of the question.
We were going to have the 2 parties on different days, but then we realized that most of the friends both boys wanted came from the same families. It made no sense to make these families drive out here to boonieville more than once so we had the Little guys party upstairs while the Big guys took on the Empire downstairs in the basement. We ended up making 8 frozen pizzas (Schwan's Self Rising, Oh SO good), buying 2 one quarter size sheet cakes and Ice cream (Edy's was on sale so we got that one).
I timed it so that I was able to see both pinatas, candles being blown out and presents opened. It wasn't easy, but we did it. All the guests had a great time. I was so glad that the kitchen was done. Everybody loved it.
By the time we got done, we had 25 people in the house and it wasn't too crowded.
Now I have 6 months to recuperate until it is the girls' birthdays. Hopefully we will be able to get them to agree though I am not holding my breath. :-)

The kitchen almost finished

These are pictures of the now functioning kitchen. Before DH and Big Sister went to visit some relatives, he got the dishwasher working and the sink in place. We still need to take down the upper cabinets, move them down and then put them back up. After that we can fill the cabinets and then we just need to get the floor put in. Right now I am not in that great a hurry for the floor, but will be glad when the cabinets are moved.

Kitchen part 4 coming down the home stretch

These are the latest pictures. The upper cabinets need to be taken down moved over 1/4 of an inch and reinstalled. My DH had a friend come over yesterday (Sunday) and help him get everything set up correctly. When DH finished securing the base cabinets, he realized that they were 1/4 of an inch different than the upper cabinet and with the fridge having the wall between it and the cabinets for a long cabinet above it, the upper and lower cabinets have to match. So much for getting my sink done before the new dishwasher arrives tomorrow morning.

And yes that is a Christmas tree you see in the corner of one of the pictures. Our tree, artificial, is stored in my DH's workshop, which is where the old kitchen cabinets are headed. So until the cabinets get moved (you can see the old cabinets in the dining room shot), the tree needs to stay up. If it is still up on the first day of Summer, I am just going to leave it up for next Christmas.

Kitchen part 3

These pictures are of the painting process. The pink on the ceiling is a special kind that goes up pink and dries white so that you can see where you have painted.

Kitchen Part 2

Here are the other pictures from the early renovations, including the ceramic floor, which when it came to removing, were more fun than any human being should be allowed to have.

Kitchen Renovation Part 1

I am moving over to Blogger because I want to upload kitchen pictures, and I only have about 50 more years to live and I didn't want to spend them waiting for pictures to upload :-)

This is the wall where the sink, kitchen window and door out to the deck is, or should I say used to be. The deck came off about 8 years ago and the door had been the door to nowhere. When this picture was taken, we were waiting for the new window (old window leaked like crazy) and to put up the drywall.

For some reason, I cant upload other pictures, so I will see if starting a new post works. I am still new at this blogging thing :-)