Catching Up Once Again

Okay, fair warning; this will be a long post, and it will have lots of pictures.
So, the first reason I haven't posted in a hundred years is that I got sick. I've been well for a week and a half now, so the second reason I haven't posted is last week we had some friends stay with us for three days. It was way fun to have them, and we stayed busy busy busy!! So I spent the next few days recovering, lol! We went to the zoo, the St. Louis Mills Mall, a park....tons of things! They wanted the whole St. Louis experience, and they wanted it in three days!! Needless to say, we did our best, but they are coming for a second visit in July. ;)
Okay, so that wasn't that long of a post after all. On to the pics!!

Okay, these first few are from the first day at the park. It was St. Patrick's day, and we spent 2 hours trying to get to the Zoo, and gave up. There was some sort of race, and all the streets around the Zoo were closed off. But we found this really cool park by total accident!

This is Tiffany. She's gorgeous. This is our new ride! Yeah, baby!

Erik of course found the dinosaur almost immediately. He loooooves dinosaurs!

This teeter totter thing was a ton of fun. I'm afraid Tiffany and I hogged it quite a bit. When we got off, a stampede of little kids took it over.

Now we're at the Zoo the next day. It took us about 30 minutes to get there! Here's Erik totally enthralled with the monkeys.

Me and Erik. He hated having his picture taken!
Me doing the mommy thing. Wasn't my outfit cute? John didn't like it.

Me and Tiff.

Here's the one and only pic I got of Nancy. Here she is with her sister, Tiffany.

Here's Tiffany's daughter, Haley. She's adorable!

Haley and Erik. It was not a real great day for pictures.

Here's the only real good shot I got of the next day at the mall. They're such cutie pies.

The Almighty Liz

My Girl

It was wacky hair day a couple of days ago at school. This is what Jonni wanted to do with her hair. She's so cool.
The Almighty Liz

Classic

Erik did this a couple of days ago. And of course, I had to take a picture.

Hilarious.

The Almighty Liz

How About Something GOOD for a Change?

Well, we signed some papers on Thursday, and they were received yesterday, a large check for us is in the mail, keys have changed hands and WE HAVE A RENTER/BUYER FOR OUR HOUSE!!!!
They can't get financing until January 7, 2010, but they want the house bad enough, and we're desperate enough, that everyone agreed that renting until then was the way to go. HOORAY!! They are responsible for pretty much everything as well, so no more emergency trips three and a half hours north for us!! There are still one or two details to iron out, and they are not smallish but largish, but I think we can all work together to find a solution. In the meantime, we have income coming in, instead of a steady and horrible drain going out, and they get the house they fell in love with. Everybody wins. Let's just hope and pray the next ten months goes smoothly, and that we actually close in January, like the contract says.
Also, here are all the pics of Jonni's birthday as promised. Six years old! Due to the interrupted nature of her birthday this year, we just opened the last present, from her aunt and uncle Virginia and Apollo, and cousins Wren and Lark. I don't have pics of all the presents since I was not present for all the openings this year. So here's what I have! I rather think she liked the extension of her birthday, lol! Enjoy!
The Almighty Liz

Here's Jonni hiding her eyes because she didn't want to see the cake until it was lit and in front of her.

Lit up cake!

Blowing out the candles.

Her first present; her first journal from Mommy and Daddy!

She got to open Grandma and Grandpa Bryan's and Uncle Patrick's presents about a week later.

She LOVES the cd player.
She just as ardently loves the cd that came with it.

Here's one more from Aunt and Uncle Virginia and Apollo and Wren and Lark.

Enough Excitement for One Day

Well, I'm done for the day.
I had to go get blood drawn today, so John came home early for lunch to watch Erik so I could go. I have been to this particular lab once before, and the woman in charge is a nutcase. Seriously. She talks to herself, laughs at thin air, and is just one of those characters that will draw weird looks wherever she goes. As the person about to draw your blood she does not inspire confidence. Truly, the idea of giving her sharp objects to wield at innocent, unsuspecting people is a cause for more than mild alarm. Having been in her clutches once, I was not enthusiastic to be thus vulnerable again. I prayed that someone else might be working today.
Fate was not with me.
At our last encounter, she declared that a freckle I had over one of my veins was the best spot because "Moles never lie." I spent the next week and a half with an inch-long bruise because she had to really dig for that vein to prove her point. Today was different only in that it was much, much worse.
She dug, she wiggled that needle, she explained again why this was the best spot, (even after I refreshed her memory in how badly it had gone last time), and she was going to prove it. It was horrific. She dug for at least thirty seconds. To anyone as accomplished as I am at getting blood drawn, this is definitely more than excessive. It's torturous. Not comfortable to begin with, being stuck is okay, as long as they don't dig. You can imagine what it's like to be stuck with a needle, and then to have that needle moved side to side, and in and out like someone was doing needle point...! This on top of the fact that I had been fasting since dinner the night before, and it was now noon, was too much for me. I fainted.
I was out a good five minutes too. She was truly alarmed when I came to.
My arm is still sore. I expect it will be for a few days, curse that woman. I'll take pictures of the bruise I can feel forming, but hasn't flowered to the surface yet. I'm sure it will be one of my most spectacular, even taking into the account some of the beauties I had after I fell down the stairs at our extra house a couple of weeks ago.
I came home understandably shaky, and John made my lunch for me. I must have looked a bit pinched still. He went to work when he was satisfied that I wasn't going to immediately keel over, and I settled Erik in for his nap, and then gratefully, finally!, settled myself in for a much deserved slumber of my own.
It was short lived.
Jonni's school called to tell me she had puked during computer lab, and could I please come get her? Immediately? I could have...if my car battery wasn't dead! So I had to call John out of a meeting at work to go get his sick daughter from school. She's still lying down, and I'm thinking a movie might be the order of business tonight, since John will have to work late due to his extended lunch, and his dash to save Jonni.
At least we don't have to drive three and a half hours north to take care of some uber disaster. There is something in that.
The Almighty Liz

Not Quite as Long as the Last Long Post...

Well, we are back from the extra house, and have completed repair and cleanup of the latest disaster. Good and bad news on that front; the water was worse than last time. The sump pump hose outside the house froze because it was on level ground and not draining, and the pressure became too great inside the house, so the hose inside exploded, causing the sump pump to pump all the water that normally seeps into the house to go nowhere. So there was a lot of it when we got there. Also, in the middle of this vast swimming pool of icy cold water was our brand-new, less than two weeks old, $200 top-of-the-line dehumidifier that we got on the ultra cool basement guy's advice. It's ruined. Ask me how peeved I am about that. VERY.
We patched the hose in a very red-neck way (and I will give all that credit where it belongs; to my brilliant husband) to get the water pumped out so we could change the hose. There was no way we could do it with all the water; setting aside the fact that we couldn't see beans under the water (which was where the sump pump was, and the hose attachment), that water was freezing cold (since it was freezing cold in town) and we couldn't keep our hands in it long enough even to determine where the hose attached to the pump. It took all night to pump out. Hundreds and hundreds of gallons of water.
Soaked and weary (John much more so than I), we met with the people who want to buy our house in January when they are eligible for financing, and rent it until then. They are delightful. We got along right away, and were so thoroughly on the same page that the wife and I were finishing each other's sentences. I think this relationship is going to work out fine. We talked over the contract, added some things, took some things out, and our realtor got it back to us today all prettied up with our changes inserted. We both want a 2 or 3 days to really read and absorb everything, to make sure it's exactly what everyone wants, and then we'll sign. Hallelujah! Please toss up yet a couple more prayers that everything will go smoothly, now and in the next ten months.
After they left we thought showers, dinner and bed were definitely needed, and in that order. Unfortunately, the water heater's pilot light was out, and we couldn't get it lit. So, dinner (which was absolutely heavenly as we were famished), another unsuccessful try at the pilot, and we collapsed into bed.
Up the next day, and finally got the pilot lit, too late to do any good. We cleaned the basement to the best of our ability, replaced the damaged hose, got the outside hose running as downhill as we could, did some mild cleanup, and rushed home for Jonni's first ever school music class concert. Quick showers, quick dinner, the grandparents (all but my mother in law who stayed a couple of days at the house and watched the kids so we could go take care of our emergency) and some assorted aunts and uncles showed up, and off we went to the concert.
It was way cute. They did some stuff with bells and one poor little boy got clobbered right in the ear by his neighbor. He cried, and my heart bled for him. He was tough though, and went back to doing the concert. Jonni, to no one's surprise, was awesome. She knew the words to every song. She's been really nervous for a couple of weeks, and wouldn't even talk about the concert. After, we found out why; she'd been under the mistaken impression that she was going to have to perform all those songs and hand gestures and bell playing all by herself! What a relief to her it was when she found out she was wrong!! My poor baby, lol! Also, she's the tallest one in her class. Big shock there that she's tall, but the tallest? I was a little suprised by that.
I do have pics of her birthday and present opening and such, but I'm going to post those tomorrow as I'm tired now. I'm still recovering from two visits to the disaster house in less than two weeks, and all the adherent hard labor that accompanied those visits. I know you all are dying to see them, so I promise not to take too long.
Until then,
The Almighty Liz

Oh, Come ON!!

My realtor just called because she was showing the house, and heard water running in the basement. The sump pump hose exploded, leaving three ginormous holes in the hose right above the pump. What the crap?! I mean really?! Do we get a break? EVER?!! The friends we have taking care of this kind of thing say that this is well outside of their skill set. So that means we hire someone to fix it (gah!) or we go fix it ourselves. In the next couple of days. Which means, what on Earth do we do with Jonni? She has school and all. ARGH!
The Almighty Liz