Coming home from the beach, I was the first person in the house, and I thought to myself, "Man it smells yuck in here!" Thinking maybe a cat had been left inside while we were gone, I checked all the rooms and no cat appeared.
As I walked into my bathroom, I thought it was weird my shoes squeeked on the floor, as if they were wet. On the way back out, it struck me that my shoes should in no way be wet...
I looked into the boy bathroom to find standing water and a flowing toilet. Further checking found that my bedroom carpet was wet to about 5 feet into my room, and Thing 2's bedroom carpet was wet to about 3 feet in.
Dammit!

So, we sopped up the water in the bathroom, tried to use towels to soak up the water in the bedrooms, and decided to call the carpet cleaner people in the morning to ask if they could come out and suck up the excess water.

Monday morning I call the local carpet folks, and his alarm made me concerned, and when he told me I'd need to call my insurance company & file a claim, because he rough estimate without even seeing what happened was $3,000, I realized this is probably a big deal.

Let me just take a minute to express my love to USAA. I love you insurance company! You have bailed me out of a few situations without snickering at my mishap and have taken care of all the details while I just follow simple requests.

Yeah, so called the insurance company & they had a water cleaner upper company out there within two hours. They got to work, peeling back carpet, taking out damaged padding, out went the laminate floor in the bathroom & all kinds of blowers and dehumidifiers went to work drying out the place. The people mentioned that in situations like these, homeowners usually stay in a hotel, and advised that I check with my insurance company to see if they'll cover it.
I figured I'd try and tough it out, how bad could it get?

Well, we can't open any windows, because it'll let moist air in, which is what the dehumidifiers are getting rid of. The fans are hella loud, and the combination of machines heated up the house. We usually keep the house at about 65 degrees, when Thing 1 came home from school, it was 85 degrees in the house. I wussed out and called the insurance company & hooray! Hotels are covered!!!

The four of us and our little dog too are now staying at a hotel. It's not a scary one, the room is a little on the small side (intimate you could say) but it does have a beautiful view of the inlet.

I'm trying to be more positive and look at the bright side of things.
It just so happens that we were getting ready to start remodeling the bathrooms, so at least this happened before we started that project. And I had a chat with the people doing the repair work on our house & we can do upgrades! So, yes, they can put down the tile floor we were going to have done instead of laminate! Yes, they can do the master bathroom too!

Today The Man and I are going to go shop for bathroom things, and check in with the repair people. Hopefully we'll be back in the house tomorrow. Or as Thing 2 says, are we going to the lellow house or the homtel?

This past weekend we packed up our little family & joined two other's for a weekend get away in Pacific Beach. We rented a 4 bedroom cabin that slept all 10 of us perfectly!
Our cabin was the last one before the ocean, so beach was just a quick trip down the trail.

The girls played at the water's edge, spashing in puddles left by the outgoing tide & were chased by waves. One rogue one did sneak up on them and soak them. They thought it was great fun -although both us mom's had a slight case of heart failure. We brought kites, so the boys flew until the wind died down.

I really enjoyed the big family meals we had together, each one prepared by a different pair of people. It was fun to see how everyone interacted. We had brought down Rock Band 2 in hopes of acheiving stardome, but the microphone refused to work, so we had to do without. Because, what fun is Rock Band without a head singer? I'll tell you, not so much.

We're definitaly doing this more often. It's easy to get overwhelmed with responsiblities, and forget to stop and have fun. More often than not I look at the weekend as a time to catch up on sleep and tackle Mt. Laundry.

Saturday was a beautiful day for a parade.
It was our little town's annual Armed Forces Parade and my roller derby league was participating.
The girls made this amazing skate float last year, it was entered again this year and we added a few touches to support the theme of Skate Heaven.

There was an idea for our kids to ride on the float and blow bubbles, which really was a great one.
Next time we'll get the bubbles to the kids later. The bubbles were boring and spilled by 9:20.

But they had a great time hanging out on the float!

That's me with the fairy wings, cuz' that's as close to an angel I could get. Thank goodness for little girls' dress up clothes!

We were all there around 9 am, it we didn't end up moving for our turn until 11am.
And, holy crap was it hot!
Like, in the 90's hot.
Children were cranky and skaters were wilting, which wasn't good for either party. A group of us were going to be bouting in Seattle that night, so heat stress wasn't allowed on the menu.

Some lovely people whose house were were parked out in front of while waiting our turn to go let us fill up our water bottles. Then a derby dad trekked down to a store and bought a bunch more water and a bag of Doritos for the kids to share (OMG! what a lifesaver!)

Once we got moving in the parade, we forgot about the heat and had a great time. The parade rout was mostly hills, which was tricky on skates, but we made it with only a few girls taking a tumble. The kids had a blast and we all look forward to the next parade!

Miss Slaughter County looks like she could use a drink though

What is it about those last 10 minutes you have left in the morning before leaving to drop the cherubs off at daycare on your way to work?

In my mind I picture my children getting on their jackets, slipping their feets into shoes and boots, and after blowing one more kiss at the puppy, tromping out to the truck as I gather up my coffee and work bag and follow them out.

However, each morning as soon as the clock crosses into that final 10 minutes before whatever time it is I've decided we need to leave, some little bit of hell breaks loose.
Sometimes it's something easy to remedy, like a missing shoe or forgotten lunchbox. Mild chaos would be having to suddenly go potty once strapped in the carseat. Which requires unbelting from the carseat, up the stairs, over the baby gate, past the licky puppy to bathroom.

This morning, was a good one.
Thing 1 went out to get the newspaper, so the puppy would having something to 'go' on while we were gone for the day. Instead of going out through the garage, he went out the front door. Thing 2, who had been hiding all morning instead of getting dressed, followed him out, in her t-shirt, panties and wild hair. As I'm calling her back in the house, the puppy slips out the door and runs off into the yard.

Thing 2 insists it's more important to get the paper in the house as I'm attempting to get the puppy to keep from running out of the yard, and at the same time trying to convince him that no, he needs to hop his bare footed self over to help capture the puppy.
In the end, we're that family running down the street, barefoot, jumping through the neighbors' yards, half dressed toddler in tow at 7:30 in the morning, me yelling for the puppy to Come Here! Sit! Sit! Sit!

I caught her at the end of the street, she was distracted by something and had to turn around to give it another sniff.
Bitterly complaining about cold feet, we all walked home and finished getting ready, wrestling Thing 2 into clothes that I dare pick out instead of letting her do it. Never mind her hidden state all morning.

Julia had a rough day at daycare yesterday, or more so, the kids around her did. She decided to not use her words, but stubbornly purse her lips close and pushed when she doesn't want play company. Hopefully peer pressure and some tough love will help her mend her grumpy ways. One of the little girls asked her why she was being such a crab, and Ms. Char and I both talked to her on how unprincess-like her behavior was. Not to say I'm encouraging her to grow up to be a princess, but at 3, being a princess is important to her, and we're hoping that she'll want to be more princess like and play nicely with her friends. Because, you know, princesses are gracious like that.
At home, she was horrified to find out her punishment for being mean to her play friends was that she wasn't allowed to change into her princess dresses. She even tried to sneak into a skirt after dinner, but that was in time out too. Oh! the tears.
This morning we went over proper princess behavior and she nodded along with me that yes, she would play nicely today so she could come home and change into what she should really be wearing.

Antonio is, goodness, almost as tall as me, it seems. His 8th birthday is just around the corner, luckily this year it's not on Thanksgiving, so he can have his pumpkin pie, then cake too. His sense of humor helps me get through the day most times, Julia will be in regal terror mode, and he just chuckles as if to say, 'boy don't you have your hands full!'

Warming back up

Busy-ish morning, not much more than usual. Antonio was upto mischief, Geno woke me up grouching at him.
Julia demanded, in a demon voice, as I'm brushing her hair. Need.My.Princess.Shoes!
I told her that princesses don't talk in that tone of voice, which amazingly, worked...this time.
Antonio being up to no good, means unattended puppy, so I stepped in pee on my way to get coffee. At least I didn't have socks on yet.
Made it to work in one, unruffled piece though. Going over emails and having the second cup of coffee.

It's about time we got some color around here