And in other news...

I finished the bookcase! It looks exactly the same! But at least now I can scratch it and the paint doesn't just peel off. This might have been more work than the playset. I definitely learned the hard way that if you don't properly prep a surface prior to refinishing it, you create a huge problem that will take forever to fix. I think I'm done with big projects for quite a while. I need to take up a mind-numbingly easy project like scrap booking. Maybe not.

In process:


And done:

I did end up replacing the hinges with brushed nickel ones. But that's really the only difference. I highly recommend doing a more flat finish on large projects as it hides the flaws and brushstrokes more easily. I think I ended up with a satin finish- not too glossy and not too flat. I'm really happy with it.

In other news, I don't think I want to live in the South permanently. I don't think we Lukes are made for it. Our skin is too pale and too sensitive for this weather. But the biggest reason of all is the bugs. I have never encountered bugs before like I have here. It is a constant battle. I've stepped in fire ant hills twice now and I can't let the kids go outside without walking around the yard to be sure that a new hill hasn't popped up overnight. A lady in the ward told me she had to wear long sleeves all last summer after picking up some brush in the yard and being bitten 80 times on her arm. It took 3 months for the scarring and bites to go away. I've also bought several sprays to try and get the mosquitoes away from the yard. I would love to get a Black Flag propane fogger, but I'm not sure it's worth the investment if we aren't going to stick around here for more than 2 years. But then I look at my daughter's leg and I feel differently.

That's just one area- she has them all up her arm and front of her leg as well. One of the first things the kids will tell me when they get up is "ITCHY ITCHY ITCHYYYYYY". It's horrible. We need to go buy our calamine lotion in bulk now. Did I mention the cockroaches? Steve is going to fumigate our place when we leave on Tuesday for a much needed vacation with Grandma Dorothy in Charleston. It started with the Palmetto bugs, which are essentially giant flying roaches which don't take well to living indoors, but make their way in when it rains and then promptly die. But I've seen a few other visitors make their way up our pipes and I'm launching an all out attack. It's disgusting. I'm not even going to get into the jumping spiders I saw yesterday. Give me freezing temperatures any day if it keeps the bugs away.

The kids are doing well for the most part. Rowan is still really struggling and I'm at a loss of what to do. A day does not go by without multiple timeouts from talking back and disobeying us. I miss my old Rowan. I'm hoping that kindergarten will help with adjusting to our new life and cooler temperatures so we can get outside more often. Also, if anyone has any advice on how to help kids participate in Primary (give talks, say prayers, scripture etc) I'm all ears. He still refuses to do it, which I can totally understand. It's scary to get in front of your peers, but at some point I feel like he needs to start doing his part.

Speaking of being scared of standing in front of your peers, I got my first calling in this ward. I laughed out loud when I got it- Gospel Doctrine teacher. I think of this as the final frontier (yes, I've been watching Star Trek too much on Netflix lately). I've been in just about every other auxiliary in the church and minus a brief stint as a youth Sunday School teacher, Sunday School has definitely been deemed as Steve's forte. Part of me wonders if Steve will be called as a secretary in Relief Society or Young Womens now, but I guess the odds are against that.

This whole calling seems to have come about because of a talk I gave in sacrament 2 weeks ago. I don't say this to be boastful, but I have never had a talk so well received in church before. All of the bishopric came up afterwards and thanked me, as well as at least 20 other people. Even today I still had people comment to me about it. The counselor who extended the call to me mentioned it to me again when he was issuing the call. They seem to think lightening can strike in the same spot twice or maybe Heavenly Father thinks I need a consistent humbling experience in my life. Either way, it's going to be a bad wake up call. Steve also gave an equally good talk that day which garnered as much compliments as mine, but I had gone a bit over in my time with 2 youth speakers, so he had under 10 minutes to sum up what he wanted to present. Maybe if I had given him more time, they would have realized that he's more the teacher in the family. Suffice it to say, I'm really nervous about it. I'll be teaching every week starting next Sunday. It probably won't take too long for them to realize that I used up all my good stories already. :) But I'm excited for the challenge and hope that I can teach with the spirit the things that need to be taught.

Maybe if I just bring Nadia in every week, they'll be distracted by her ability to stick light-sabers up her nose and won't notice how terrified I am.


Rowan updates: He is off the nebulizer- hooray! Rowan is also reading in spurts and comes up to me at least once a day with a new word he has learned. It's amazing how it has just kind of taken off on its own.

Nadia updates: My sweet little girl. I'm so glad that my kids trade off difficult stages. Rowan may be struggling, but Nadia has calmed down a lot and is typically sweet and good. She is still my firecracker, but she is much more helpful and obedient now. She LOVES nursery and plays so well with Rowan.

Nadiaism
Upon reading the story of the rich young man who wanted to know what he needed to do to go to heaven...
Steve: What can we give Heavenly Father?
Nadia: Dancing Time! (promptly starts shaking her bootie)

Looks can be deceiving

Well, we've had it with the bugs, the heat, and the lack of friends and family.



So we've calling it a wash and going back home.









Did you buy into it?

Alas, we have had it with those things, but we're sticking it out. And by sticking it out, I mean buying crazy large things that require a Uhaul to get and dragging them around in 110 degree heat. We all have our different ways of coping. Apparently mine would include, as Steve puts it, spousal abuse.

Long story short, we have a huge backyard, but nothing in it beyond fire ant hills and quack grass that we can't seem to get cut every week. No trees to climb and enjoy shade from, and not a lot for the kids to do unless I get the sprinkler out. There's no playground in our subdivision even and I really wanted to get something out there for the kids to do, so I started scouring craigslist for a playset, a pool, or a trampoline. In the interest of getting something that the kids could do unsupervised and year round, it got narrowed down to a playset.

Have you ever looked at how much playsets cost? I was shocked to be honest. You can't get much under $1000 and that's for a pretty basic set. I looked for used and even then was getting numbers around $500. Then one day while I was obsessively looking (curse or talent, it gets the job done), I found a playset listed on craigslist for free. I immediately replied to the post and then in hindsight replied again offering $100 for it, hoping that the money would lure the offerer my way. It worked. I'm really glad I did it because the lady told me she got over 100 people responding in 2 days and one even tracked her down from the pictures she posted and knocked on her door begging for it. It was an older set, but a Rainbow system brand which is like the Cadillac of playsets. It's made from redwood and built to last. I wouldn't be surprised if this set cost $2000 new.

I have to say, I didn't realize how much work would be involved with getting the playset from A to B. I honestly thought we could dismantle it enough to be able to transport it in our car. Thank you Steven for telling me I was wrong and for my mom and sister who told me to just rent a Uhaul. It took 6 hours in blazing heat (103 degrees that day) just to dismantle it and get it home. The kids were AMAZINGLY well behaved even though they endured the heat with us and stayed up way past their bedtime. I then decided to pressure wash it (borrowed from a ward member) and stain the wood since it had seen better days and I wanted to maintain it and the resale value. That took a full week. It was so hot that I really could only work on it in the morning or late evening. Steve and I were out there until midnight 2 of those nights just trying to get it put together. It was an unbelievable amount of work and I publicly apologize to Steve for putting him through it all. I have to say, I think we both enjoyed the aspect of working together on it though. It was satisfying in a certain way to be doing manual labor in the middle of the night alongside each other. Yes, I'm crazy.



I'm really sorry sweetie.

So here's the before:




And the after:



There's still some decorative wood sunburst things that we need to put on that go on the clubhouse, but it's 90% there. It's a little muddy in places because when we were putting it together, we encountered this:


The previous owners had the playset installed on an incline, so the posts are about 2 feet longer than we needed them to be. So we dug some big holes and filled them with gravel afterward to help prevent the posts from rotting. Steve and I looked at each other at one point and said "We should have just dug a big hole in the backyard, filled it with water and called it good." It probably would've entertained the kids just as much as the playset will. But we're cleaner this way.

Would I do it all over again? Probably. But I'm a sucker for punishment it seems.

Happy Birthday Grandpa!

While I was outside trying to finish sanding the bookcase, the children entertained themselves by painting the house. They love the book "Oh were they ever happy" and thought it was pretty cool to reenact the story for themselves. Thankfully, we have washable paint so it was a quick clean up job afterwards. We also sneaked in a little message to someone very special to us.



Rowan insisted on having a "TO" in there.

After we cleaned up the house and ourselves, Nadia wanted to sing a little song for that same special someone.








Rowan isn't really the singing type, so he opted for a more visual display.


Happy Birthday Grandpa Luke!! We love you!

It just keeps getting better

Rowan found a new way of emulating Darth Vader.



You didn't really think things were turning a corner here did you?

For those who need additional information, I took Rowan up for his followup appointment and they've decided he needs to be on a nebulizer 3 times a day for a bronchospasm he's developed.

An Explosive Weekend

My weekend plans for the fourth of July plans were set. We were going to go to a boat parade followed by fireworks over the lake on Saturday and on Monday, we'd go to a local Peach festival and stuff ourselves silly. Instead I had sick kids all weekend. Rowan got so bad that his fever almost hit 105 under his arm and he could not keep even his medicine down. When I took him in, he was so dehydrated they couldn't even get the IV in because his veins kept failing. Eventually they decided to just inject the medicine in him and hope it would work enough for him to keep some fluids down. Suffice it to say we didn't end up in the ER and he is doing much better. I wish I could say the same for Steve and I (no we aren't in the ER, but we definitely have felt better).

I feel like things keep going wrong since we moved here. In case I am delusional, I have started a poll in which you are free to anonymously vote and tell me I'm crazy. The sad part is that I feel like I haven't even touched on a lot of what isn't going well here. Like the lady who drove into our mailbox yesterday, but that was actually amusing in it's own way. Steve's job seems to be the one area of our life that has been going well thankfully. But I still feel like I'm experiencing an unusually high amount of bad luck lately. Do you agree?