Ideas

Well, our basement reno has been postponed a month.  Just imagine the tears coming from my face.  For various reasons, including an extremely high water table we need to get beneath to do piping, and our friend who is doing the reno has a two week government job that pays much better than home reno, and so we wait.

I'll get over it.

In the mean time in between begging Chris to just "dig that egress window already", I have been virtually shopping.  So, so dangerous.

Look at what I found for the new bathroom.  A periodic table of the elements shower curtain.

I seriously cannot stand it.

Who comes up with this stuff?  It's from the website cafepress, where pretty much they can custom make anything for you.  I can totally see this with my new bathroom upstairs.  Originally, I was going to put it in the kids' bathroom downstairs.  But then I realized that they wouldn't appreciate it, and the nerd in me can't reconcile with this being in the basement and every visitor who comes to the house would totally miss out...

So then because I stole the kids' shower curtain, I had to keep  looking.  And here's what I came up with.

You don't find this in the aisle at Target.

They only hesitation I have with this is that is it too much of a cliche' to put this in a bathroom?  All of those bathrooms filled with shells drive me crazy.  And here I am going to stick a ginormous Octopus in mine?  And then I wonder how I would decorate the walls.  I'm going to have to ponder this...

Perhaps this?

Chevron, I don't care if it is getting old, I cannot get over it!I can totally see a white and black bathroom, maybe with a bright coral accent color?  

And then there is this strange one.  

A shower curtain of the world with the currencies of different countries.  Strange, and unique, but not really in the running.

And therein lies the problem, with too much time to sit and ponder, I go crazy.  It's probably why I have had 8 colors in my kitchen- I cannot stand the same thing too long and there are too many awesome choices out there.  But seeing as the Nelsons don't have any money trees in the backyard, I kind of have to pick something and go with it for the foreseeable future.

Sigh.

Strong Willed Child

When I was pregnant with Truitt, someone, actually lots of people, told me he was going to be the easiest and so laid back because he was the youngest of 5.

They were all liars.

                                        

Doesn't this just scream easy and relaxed to you?

That kid.  I don't really even have the words to describe him.  Naughty, defiant.  Never know what type of mood he will be in.  We call him our disgruntled employee.

He went through a stage where every time you gave him something other then milk, which he only got at meals, then he would be throw the cup as hard as he could across the room.  He always tells me no, grunts in defiance, hits and screams.  Last week I literally drug him across three baseball fields to get to the fourth where Owen was playing, all because he wanted to stay on the playground.

When he's in a good mood, I have never met a child sweeter than him.  We just never really know which side of Truitt we'll get at any one moment.

I'm almost yanking my hair out with what to do with this little rascal.  I found this link that gives advice on what to do with strong willed children.  Unfortunately, it's more aimed at kids older than Truitt.  Hopefully, this is just the terrible twos rearing it's ugly head and he'll grow out of it.  Maybe I'm just more stressed because I also have two kids going through the terrible threes.  I don't know.

You'd think after all these kids I would have this all figured out by now.  Any thoughts or tips?

To Teach or Not to Teach

                     

So for like 1 month last year I played teacher.  Until I realized that the three ultra needy babies were getting in the way of the education of my eldest and I had nightmares that she would somehow become the dumbest fourth grader ever in the history of the United States all because her mom can't teach under pressure.

Back to public school she went.  But then she periodically throughout the year said that we made the wrong choice and that she wants to home school again.  But then she went on the middle school tour this past spring and was all excited about middle school again- our crazy messed up school district has a 4 day week where the kids go to school for like 8.5 hours a day including travel time, and the 5th grade is in the middle school.  What is that?

Why am I talking about this in the summer you ask?  Because all my girlfriends are raving about their home school curriculum they just received.  And I am slightly tempted to consider it again.

But the last thing I want to be is that mom who keeps yanking her kid in and out of the school district. But I am tempted, oh so tempted to try again.  Pretty much the only issue that arose from my attempt at home-schooling was math.  Ava is great at it- in the top math class at school, but she doesn't like it.  And the math program that we were using was very tough and very fast.  Almost a concept a day.  Which every other person that I talked to said wasn't something they did when they homeschooled.  So then I got to thinking that if all these people home-schooling aren't buzzing through math like crazy, then why do a lot of homeschoolers finish school early and outperform public school kids like crazy on tests?

There also is the issue of three toddlers who like to hang around and in general create problems for me.  But there are tons of other women out there with families at least as large as mine and some with kids as close in age as mine and they can still do it.  That doesn't mean it's meant for me, but I can kind of see it.  My left-brained flower child/modern hippy would do really well being at home.  That's where she wants to be anyway.

What's a mom to do.  Is this crazy talk spewing forth from my mouth?

FEED by Lauren Bush

Have you heard of FEED?  It's a non-profit that Lauren Bush (yes, President Bush's niece) formed to help feed children all across the world.

I have been obsessed with this purse for literally a couple of years.

                                           But at $250, it's quite out of my price range.



                                    They do have this little beauty that tempts me as well.

                              This one is $45 dollars and it provides 100 meals for people.


FEED just partnered with Target and have all sorts of goodies in stores.

I'm tempted to buy these for organization in the boys' room.
       

Or how about these water bottles.   Or these dish towels?

          

Totally awesome.  And a good cause. (There's lots more stuff besides these too.)  Because what we all need is another reason to go to Target!

South Dakota Loving

Finally after 6 consecutive years of planning and then not going, the Nelsons went to South Dakota.  If you are within driving distance, go.  There is tons to do and you will have a blast.

Lest I bore you with too many words, I give you pictures.

The Badlands.  Where Moyz cried the.entire.time.

Inside the corn palace.  Kind of boring, but nice gift shop.

Ancient creature, once found in South Dakota.  How'd you like to swim with that?

Random waterfall on the side of the road.

How Truitt really feels about Mt. Rushmore

Buffalo in Custer State Park

12 years and still going strong

Wyoming, but hopefully you got that

Wild Burrow

The eye

Wild stream, Chris and Owen having a moment

Julio (pronounced hoo-lee-o) and Owen

One of their cuter moments

The Jackalope.  Which Owen thought was real for 3 days.  Then was crushed when he learned it wasn't

Wild Burrows.  One kicked him

Always posing with hands on the hip.  Future diva?

Precursor picture to 20 minutes of rock throwing

A few little pictures of the Nelson clan.  I took 600 while gone.  That's gonna be one heck of an album, and the kids want "one of every picture so we can see them all".  Someone is going to drop it on someone else's toe and then we'll wind up back in the hospital.

The Bathroom Situation

I have a dirty (literally) secret.  It's my bathroom.  For who knows what reasons, the people before us had put in a blue bathtub with fake blue-veined marble tiles around the bathtub and the same sink.  Disgusting.  And yes that is mold you see in the corners and along the grout in the tile.

It's a major, major problem.

The marbling is way worse in person, but you can kind of see how bad on the backsplash.

Before I get a new bathroom upstairs, which will be a complete gut job, the downstairs bathroom needs to be put in.  7 people have to go to the bathroom somewhere.  The downstairs bathroom currently looks like this:

That big hole to the right is where we need to move the plumbing to.  Currently, the water table is so high that it is filled with water, and we need to dig a huge hole and drop a second sump pump down to drain the water out and do all the plumbing to make this puppy work.  Sounds like fun, yes?

Here is a better shot of all the water.  Every day the kids ask to go downstairs and look.  And every day I have to yell at one of them to get their butt upstairs right this minute.  This morning I found a blue bouncy ball in it.  It's not deep enough to suck them in and cause problems.  But it's plenty deep for naughty children, of which I own several, to do some serious damage to the rest of the house.

And since we had to move all the stuff that was in the reno area out so Chad (our friend and reno guy) could fix it, all that crap, I mean stuff we value, had to go somewhere, so here is what our downstairs family room looks like.  And will for the conceivable future.

That, plus the dirt everywhere is the biggest bummer of this project.  I can't kick my kids downstairs when they are driving me crazy but it's too hot outside to boot them out the door. 

So before I get my new pretty bathroom upstairs we have to deal with all of the above.  One day it is going to look something like this:

Or this:

I'm just hoping I can hang in with all the rest of the reno without going crazy!

PS:  This just in, 2 hours after I wrote this post last night, the washing machine disconnected itself and all of the bleach water I used for washing my white slipcovers flooded the basement.  Sometimes I really hate my life.  When I whined about it to Chris, his tender words were something like, "And this is just the beginning".  Hopefully, nothing like this will happen when the walls are being banged up.  Off to deal with bleach water all over everything.

I'm Back!!!!

Remember how Michael Jordan retired and then came back to play baseball?  And everyone was all like, what?

That would be me.

Or if you don't like that comparison, do your remember the song "Return of the Mack"?  Love that song.  So here you go, in honor of my not-so-glorious return, here is the you tube video to it, it's a little risque just to warn you, but if you only need to jog your memory on what exactly I am talking about the first few beats should do it for you.

Enough time has passed (three months) and enough things are happening at the Nelson household, and family loves following along with what's happening.  Okay, if I'm honest, by family I mean my parents,  and I kind of like venting about my life on an on-line open diary for a bunch of strangers to read.  I still keep my regular journal that was my 2013 resolution but I get hand cramps because I try to write fast to get everything out.  And typing is so much easier then actually writing things out by hand.  I still need to work on patience.

Anyway, after all that to say that I am starting up blogging again.  Mostly it will probably be about what's happening at casa de la Nelson, but who knows.  No idea how often I am going to post either.  Lots of non-promises for all of you.

So, to kick things off, here is a short run down of things that have happened very recently at our house:

*  We put an offer in on another house, and got out offered.  Which led to frantic house searching for anything, anything, anything bigger/better than what we have.  Which led to the realization that there wasn't anything currently out there that we liked.  Which led to bullet point number two.

*  Instead of moving right now, we decided to completely redo the basement.  Bathroom number two for 7 people shall hopefully make an appearance in the next month or so.  (Can I just say how much I HATE spending money to fix up a house that I don't want to stay in?)

*  Ava found a teeny tiny baby duck across us in the empty lot.  We spent 45 minutes trying to catch the thing, and were told by the local feed store that it would probably die.  It lived.  And honest to goodness, it thinks it's human.  Julio is his name and he follows us around the house and outside and swims in our bathtub.

*  The whole duck as a pet could become problematic as in a couple of weeks we are getting a Great Dane puppy.  Because my house is not big enough for 7 people, now we are adding a dog the size of a small horse.  We be crazy.

*  We went on our first family trip to South Dakota.  Awesome for the most part, except Truitt pulled a table down on his face and had to get 8 stitches.  Not to mention the little thing called 12 1/2 hours of driving in a car with 7 people and an air conditioner that only works on high.

There you have it.  A brief synopsis of what's happening with us.  More to follow.