Well it's been a bit, but here I am again. We've had quite an eventful month overall. The kids and I spent a bunch of time outside over Spring
Break - I took the week off work rather than try to deal with the racket
that three teenagers can make. We spent Monday out in the yard
clearing out weeds and old mulch, then spreading new mulch. Tuesday we
spent recuperating. Thursday we spread some more mulch and then that
Saturday Josh and I planted some new flowers that I got from a FreeCycle
member. I'm still looking for them to take hold and bloom - might need
to wait til next year but we'll see how they go :)
I'm in the middle of training at work - nothing spectacular - just a refresher on a line of business that I haven't worked for nearly 3 years. They're wanting us to all be cross-trained eventually, so this is my turn. It's mostly reminders and "oh yeah I remember that" type of stuff, so honestly I'm a little bored. There have been changes since I worked this stuff last, so I do have to pay attention. Fortunately I have a great trainer and she gives us plenty of examples to work through and get practice.
This weekend we've been dealing with a wet basement. We've had so much rain in the past week that the ground simply couldn't hold it all ... and so it tried to invade our house. The last couple of years have been much drier, so we never realized that our sump pump wasn't really doing anything ... well we found out this past Thursday!! It was quite the saga, really ...
Long story short - after assuming the sump pump we had was working (it was, but only temporarily), finding out it had stopped and allowed a half inch of water into our finished basement, buying a new pump (and running out of gas in the process), the pipe breaking during the install, fixing the pipe and finally getting the new pump installed, and sucking out 12+ loads of water with the 10 gallon shop vac, the basement is now being dried by 4 box fans and a dehumidifier. We are leaving the basement door open in an attempt to allow moisture to escape upstairs and out the windows (when we're able to open them - temps dropped into the 40s!!). I have borrowed a carpet cleaner from a friend and will use it today to try to get rid of the wet-dog smell that the basement currently has going on.
And the good news is that Ashleigh's birthday is in a few days and we are gearing up for that.
She's decided she wants to have a few friends get together at Skateland - not for a
full-on party with the cake and all that, but just a few of them to go skate for a while. Then we'll have the family party back at our house
with all the adults who have no interest in skating :P She and Hallie
decided they want to have a joint party again because "It's just not as
fun when we do them separately". And the icing on the cake (for me anyway) is that our new couch is being delivered just in time for the party, so there will be plenty of seating for everyone!
More events in May and June - we'll be going to the RenFaire in Wentzville, then Daniel and I will be headed to Dallas for YFN. It's going to be a great summer !!