It's a Wonderful Life

I know, I know. What happened? Well, tax season. It happened. It's happening. And it will continue to happen for about 40 more days. I'm way behind (with the blogging - trying my best to keep up with the taxes), but I've been getting a bit of grief about not posting the kitchen. And I do feel bad about that, because it's so pretty and I love it so much. So, soon, I will post pictures of the 99% complete kitchen.

99% complete? What's that mean? Well, there's no backsplash. I'm not sure what to do there yet - so many choices! And there's some paint touch up from the flood. Yes, you knew it couldn't go off without a hitch. There was a flood as it was nearly complete. A pretty big flood. Gerdie misbehaved, quite badly. On the last day of the project, the contractor and her crew (who are still great despite of and largely because of this little snafu) hooked up the water to Gerdie so we could have water at the touch of a lever and ice that doesn't come from a bag from the store. All went well, and we had our first ice a few hours later. It was so great, I took it's picture. Travis mocked me just a little. I was full of glee, especially since Travis always said that they leak and that's why we shouldn't have one.

Course, about 3 am, that glee really came back to bite me. I woke to the sound of rushing water. Lots and lots of rushing water. Gerdie had rejected the tubing feeding her the water to make the magic ice. She really, really didn't like it. So water was flowing freely thru the little tube from the basement, running down the back of the fridge and back into the basement, where an inch of water waited for me at the bottom of the stairs. I rushed to the newly (and conveniently located) water shut off valve and stopped the flow thru the tube. The flow from the kitchen into the basement continued, tho. Turns out there was enough water for four more hours of dripping.

Travis and I spent the next several hours cleaning the basement. Fortunately, we're familiar with the process. The kids slept thru 6 shop vacs full of water, the removal of all sorts of garbage and too many trips up and down the slippery stairs.

In the end, not too much was damaged, the kitchen survived and Gerdie seems to be much happier with the new tube. The contractor totally took responsibility and we're happy with her response - she said she'd make it right and she did. When does that happen? It could have been so much worse - we were headed out of town in a few days. Had we left the water on (which, of course, we do not do) the house would have surely floated away. And on the plus side, Travis has done a great job of cleaning the basement and compiling a little pile of things for me to look thru post tax season (okay, we all know it's a huge pile of crap).

Anyway, this little setback contributed to the delay in picture posting. Excuses, excuses, I know.

To celebrate Ben's seventh birthday, we reserved an hour of field time at Portland Indoor Soccer and invited Ben's friends from school. Ben chose the games that the kids played and the parents that attended were gracious enough to fully participate in the scheduled activities. Of course, the promise of throwing balls at their children might have served as the appropriate enticement ...

Even Ry got in on the action, aiming very carefully for Ben.

The kids enjoyed the opportunity to target their parents as well. I'm thinking Travis might have been wishing he hadn't focused quite so much on Jack ...

There were blindfolded free kicks, crab soccer and parents versus kids scrimmage.

Ben acted as goalie for the kid's team.

What party is complete without sugar filled treats? Ben's birthday "cake" was an 8 inch Tex-Ass donut from VooDoo Doughnuts, especially decorated just for him.

Three dozen assorted donuts later (we ended up with a dozen at home) and we had hyped up kids with happy tummies. The parents seemed pretty pleased, at least with the donuts.