Back to School

I can't believe that it is the first day of school. I am not sure where the summer has gone and can't say that I am totally ready for this year.

I took my traditional picture this morning before everyone was off to school. Last night Brynna and Meagan wanted to see what the "stair steps" looked like when they stand in front of each other for the camera. This year Brynna makes it look like there is no Meagan. They are almost the same height. As you can see from the picture Meagan has her shoes off but you can just barely see the top of her head. They all have grown so much. I took a couple more of the other traditional poses, Brady Bunch out to the side and just standing together. I can't believe that Meagan is starting her freshman year of high school, Brynna is starting 7th grade and Lauren is in 2nd. It took 90 minutes to get everyone to school this morning. I am hoping that it will improve as we get further into the school year. I will post later how the day went today. Hopefully, everyone got off to a great start.

Have you heard about the rain we have been having?

Well, I don't know how much more I can write about the rain, will it ever stop? Just when Mike and I think that we have found the leak for the bathroom and family room another torrential rain comes and shows us the errors of our ways. We think we have it figured out and patched but that is not the case. It is getting to the point of being comical.

On Saturday, I again sealed the grout lines, window inset and the curve of the wall with silicone caulk. I used a glove and smeared it on like Vaseline, it was me or the window! I was very proud of my handy work, although, it looks like a kindergartener did it because the gloves were a little too big for my hand. The newspaper had said we were suppose to have a heavy downpour on Saturday but it didn't happen.

On Sunday, the clouds decided to give me a run for my money and I lost again! Not 5 minutes after it started pouring (so hard you couldn't see through the sheets of rain to across the street) the window started leaking and the floor in the family room started to puddle. It was a quick rain, about 30 minutes but still did some damage with water coming in the house.

So after this lovely little shower, Mike was ready to take on the house. He took the hose and sprayed the window while I stood in the bathroom watching those little grout lines; no leaks, nothing, nada, zip, that window was water tight. So he moved up the wall of the house spraying and spraying (we now have a lake on the side of our house). There was one tiny crack over Meagan's window and surprise, surprise that was the one that made water start coming in again. We couldn't believe it. Not a drop coming in Meagan's room but it was traveling the 2x4 into the bathroom (we think, now we are sounding like we know what we are doing).

The roof was our next target. Mike went up and lowered some string so that I could put the nozzle of the hose in it and he could hoisted it to the roof and sprayed the cracks. It took about 3 hours of spraying and watching but we think we found the crack for that leak as well. We were able to put some caulk above Meagan's window and Mike will have to work on the crack on the roof this weekend. We are hoping we hold out and don't get any more rain this week. I am sick of the rain, that is for sure.

Waiting to see if we won the battle.......

Birthday + Brother = Roof Repairs

Since we are on the subject of birthday's, mine was in March and I turned 40. I have to tell some of the back story before I get to the point of this post.

My birthday was right around the time that Mike was returning from Iraq and it was crazy.

My brother has a great sense of humor and had called me a couple of weeks before my birthday. He had asked me when I thought Mike would be returning and wanted me to know that if Mike didn't make it for my birthday that he would drive down and be there for me. (He is a financial advisor for Smith Barney in Albuquerque, so not that far away.) He then very casually asked me which home improvement store I liked better, Lowe's or Home Depot. I, of course, said Lowe's, my home away from home.

The week before my birthday a package arrived from my brother but I didn't open it because it wasn't my birthday, so I set it aside for the big day. Mike was on route home and made it to Ft. Bragg on Sunday, 3 days before my big day. When he went Monday morning to find out when he could catch a flight home, they told him Tuesday. Well, Tuesday didn't work for ME.....so I called the airlines that he was to take on Tuesday and asked if they could get him on a flight out that same day. It all worked out and it was great to see him when he got home Monday night.

Wednesday morning came, it was my big 40, but because of the time change and the excitement of Mike coming home, the girls and Mike didn't remember it was my birthday. We had talked about it earlier but it was just bad timing with everything else going on in our lives.

I tried to keep my composure but when your husband has just returned from Iraq, you just turned 40 and your kids didn't remember, sometimes a girl just has to have a little pity party for herself. Then the phone rang. My brother was calling to see if I had gotten the package he had sent. I said that I did and he asked me if I had enjoyed the contents. I told him that I hadn't opened it yet because it hadn't been my birthday when I got the package. He was shocked and wanted me to open it right away - he had made some Special K Bars (a joke between us) that he had sealed with an air saver. I felt bad that I hadn't opened it sooner but the Special K bars were still in great shape. Also, in the box was a card with a gift card to my favorite store, Lowe's. He told me some funny jokes and gave me a hard time about turning 40 and made my day.

I received many gifts and phone calls from friends and family during the day and everything ended up working out with Mike and the girls but I have to say that my brother took the cake with the Special K bars and Lowe's gift card. (Many thanks for all the gifts from that day!)

The whole point of this post to say that, this weekend the gift card was finally put to good use. We had bought items to seal and re-tar the roof and we finally had some sunshine to get up there to fix the cracks and, hopefully, the leaks. It is a big job and one that needs to be done desperately. We hope we have a few more days of good weather so we can get the whole thing finished. We only made it to the area around the chimney on Saturday, the area that we think the water was coming in from last weekend. The gift card came in very handy for this job!

A big thanks to my brother!

A grateful sister...........