Naptimes...

I think there could be a country song written about naptimes with two-year-olds. Seriously.

"It's been a long day waiting
For the carpet man to show
And you've played unceasing
Now to bed you must go

Oh please shut your blue eyes
They are ever so tired
No, it's not a surprise
So please quit acting so wired..."

I never claimed to be a songwriter. Clearly.

As you can tell, it's been a battle over naptime today. Not just with Caleb - with Logan as well. Please forgive me for taking a bit of my frustrations out on this post! I think I just needed to make light of this situation! I know there are many other things out there to worry about and fret over, but today this has really gotten the best of me.

Oh, and the carpet man finally did come to give us an estimate on replacing the carpet pad in Logan's room. It was smelling a bit, shall we say, 'funky' after we finished with the ceiling repairs - and upon pulling up the carpet, a nice wet spot was calling the carpet pad home. Great. So, before we have a fuzzy colony taking residence in his floor, we're getting rid of the wet pad.

I'm sure you wanted to know that. It made your day, didn't it?

Off to calm a crying baby who refuses to take his nap...

I feel weird doing this...

Oh, no - I don't feel weird about my haircut at all. I love it! I love that I have seven (SEVEN!) inches less of my insanely thick hair to dry, style, wrangle and wrestle every day. What I'm not so thrilled about is seeing my own face on here. Maybe it's because there are few pictures of me as the central focus, but I hardly recognize myself in a picture anymore. Like when these were taken today, I had to pause and think to myself, "Is that what I really look like now?" I look so much older and just flat-out different than what I picture myself as in my wee little brain. (I'm sure I'll want to pinch myself for saying that in another 30 years, but oh well) Isn't it funny how you can look at yourself in a mirror, but then see a picture of yourself and think you look so different? Or is that just me?
I really try to not get caught up in how the outward appearance comes across, but I do have to confess that after today's haircut, I felt so, so good - and I hadn't realized the degree to which I wasn't 'feeling good' before that. I felt like the mom at the end of those Suave hair product commercials that tote "90% of moms feel like they've let themselves go...but 100% can get themselves back."

I'm trying to find my way back - new haircut, new workout, new Bible study - back to a better me. The me that my Lord has called me to be. The me that is content in my own skin. All three of my guys deserve that, and maybe I do too.

Gender lines clearly drawn...

Setting: kitchen table, at lunchtime. Eating turkey and cheese sandwiches.

Mom: Caleb, what are you doing?

Caleb: (picking apart his sandwich) I no like turkey. Turkey not for Cabub.

Mom: Why is turkey not for you?

Caleb: (discarding turkey on the table next to his plate) It's icky.

Mom: Why is turkey icky? I think it's yummy.

Caleb: Turkey is for girls. (great emphasis on the word 'girls')

Mom: (swallowing laughter and choking on sandwich) Is that right? I didn't know that. What do you eat, then?

Caleb: (looking at me like "duh, mom...") CHEEEEESE!! Cheese is for kids. Not turkey.

Apparently, girls aren't kids. I'm so glad I'm clear on that now! This also explains why he'll eat ham, but not turkey. What an imagination that one has!

The joys of being the only 'girl' in the house...

At least we learned what Not to do...

Poor Ryan.*

Hurricane Ike left us with a leak in our roof. Well, I say a leak - what happened is the casing around one of the pipes that vents out through our roof was damaged somehow, possibly by something flying through the air in the 70+mph winds that occurred sometime between 4:30 and 9:30am last Saturday, September 13th. Anyhow, that allowed the major rains we received both Saturday and Sunday of last weekend an entry to our home, so the water collected above Logan's ceiling and found it's way through the sheetrock onto his floor.

Which means we had a leak, in my professional opinion.

Last Saturday, Ryan climbed up on the roof to caulk and re-seal that vent pipe, and Sunday and Monday were spent cleaning out the insulation in the attic over Logan's room, cutting a 4'x8' slab of wet sheetrock out of the ceiling, and measuring (and re-measuring, and repeating again just for good measure) before cutting a new piece of sheetrock. The dust that stuff will put out is not my friend. It coats everything!

You should have seen Ryan, my dad, and I as we wrestled with a big piece of drywall, trying to put it up on the ceiling. After about the fourth time it fell (fortunately, it was caught and saved each time - once by Ryan's head) it became almost comical. One of those situations where you either laugh or you cry...and being that two out of the three of us were male, laughter was the road we took.

Tuesday was spent "mudding and taping" to make sure one can't tell where the new piece of sheetrock is. The construction guys around here who do that for a living really make it look a TON easier than it really is - so don't look too closely at Logan's ceiling whenever you're here!

Since we were in College Station on Wednesday through Friday for a planned recruiting trip for Ryan's office, we got back to business yesterday priming and trying to re-create the texturing on the ceiling. MUCH easier said than done! I guess like many craftsmen, the guys who paint and texture new homes around here have their own 'signature' way of doing things... so after about 4 different trips to two local Home Depots, I think we may have found a winner. Just a couple coats of paint, and it should be all done!

At any rate, my handyman husband and I have learned quite a bit about putting in sheetrock. Mainly, we learned that we don't want to do it again! Also, I don't think I ever would have known that the type of brush used to do the texture is called a "stomp".



*Yeah.... Last night, Ryan came home from his third trip to Home Depot with a bag of texturing powder marked "Popcorn Texture". (Our ceiling is thankfully not the popcorn texture. Hello '70s and '80s!) We had already tried using a spray type of texture on the ceiling with the stomp, but it just didn't look 'texturey' enough to us, so that's what prompted the trip to H.D. It was late when he got back home, so we waited until this afternoon to try it out. When he poured the powder into the tray, I had to wonder if it just wouldn't work - it looked just like cottage cheese, instead of plaster-of-paris. But, knowing that Ryan likes to figure out and learn things on his own, I kept quiet. I couldn't stay silent when it looked like he was ready to start putting it on the ceiling, so I asked him if the "popcorn" could be sifted out. Poor guy - he had to stomp a bit of it on some scrap sheetrock to find out for himself that the bag of texturing he bought wasn't the right kind. Hence, the last and hopefully final trip to H.D. for a while! We had so hoped to be done with this little project long ago - but it's been one learning process after another!

Guess where we've been...

Calm before the storm...

A beautiful sunset before Ike's arrival, last night - Sept. 12, 2008. You can see the bands of the storm that had already made their way inland.

I just loved the colors that God used to paint the sky yesterday evening. To me, it's still His way of saying "I'll never leave you, nor forsake you."

Ike's left town...

And we're all OK. Just a minor leak in the ceiling of Logan's room, which a small sheetrock job can hopefully easily repair. We were without power from about 4am to 2:30 this afternoon. Right now, my folks and Ryan's parents are still without power, and since their electricity isn't run underground like ours it may be quite a while before it's restored to their areas.

It was a long night and morning, but everyone is safe. Praise the Lord for his shield of protection around our area! There was a lot of damage to many places around Houston and Galveston, so please continue to pray for relief, rescue, and rebuilding efforts. The worst has passed...

Thank you for keeping us in your prayers!

Pictures soon to come of last night's "Ike Sunset"...