I Heart Electricity

We had dinner at my in-law's house on Tuesday to celebrate grampa's 79th birthday. The kids got to bed kind of late and I knew I'd be waking at least one up in the morning to get to the bus on time. It was Egypt. I barely got her dressed and was later thankful that I took the time to do this. After waving good-bye to Romania, I chatted with another mom and then headed back home. It was now that the garage door opener decided to stop working. It's been fussy lately, sometimes working, most of the time not. We can never seem to get out to Sears to buy a new battery. To make it all the more comical, I didn't have a house key on my key chain. And I had also forgotten my pager. Couldn't send an email to super-hero, couldn't even call my sister. So we did what any normal person locked out of their house would do: we went to Target.

I had to kill about an hour and a half before Sears opened. So we wandered around Target, picking up Halloween candy, kitchen scissors and tape. Finally it's 10 so we drive over to Sears. Showed the salesman the remote and he picked up a battery and handed it to me. I was able to pry open the thing before we left and put the new battery in. We get home and it's probably 10.45. More comedy: the door still wouldn't open. Holland had eaten a rice cake for breakfast and Egypt didn't even get anything before we left. The only way I was going to get in touch with super-hero was to email him from my sister's house. He answered pretty quickly and said he'd meet us at 11.30 at a store halfway between us. My sister gave my kids a few things to eat and as I was leaving asked her to reply to his message to say we were coming.

We got to the location and waited. And waited. And waited some more. Every 10 or 15 minutes I debated whether I should leave or not. If I left and missed him he would not be happy. Thirty minutes goes by. I'm thinking, 'he'd better have been in a car accident because 30 minutes is ridiculous'. The kids and I were so hungry, we opened the Halloween candy and started to eat lunch. Since Holland's diet now requires no gluten, I couldn't just run to McDonald's for something to eat. Finally at 12.15, he comes into the parking lot. He said he was waiting for my answer to make sure I was meeting him. My sister got sidetracked with her kids and doing an inventory for a new part-time job and didn't remember to reply until noon. I gave super-hero all the remote pieces and the batteries and he said he'd stop on his way home. We were locked out about 4 1/2 hours and after not having breakfast, Holland decided he wanted pancakes for lunch. So I'm exhausted from my morning of non-productivity and decide to let Holland build with Rokenbok in his room. His design turned out pretty cool. I'll have to get a picture before someone falls on it or something.

Oh yeah. We still cannot get the remote to work.

Water, Water Everywhere

Everything's so much more fun with water, right? So why not on Valentine's Day? Not that we were planning anything spectacular, but you never want to have to deal with an overflowing toilet.

I had just finished getting the kids dinner. Egypt had been finished for a few minutes and called to me saying she needed help with her clothes. This is always a clue to some greater mischief. She said she needed to change her clothes because they were wet. We're very close to being finished with potty training and any time she gets a little wet, ALL the clothes come off and she finds clean ones in her drawers. I put her back on the toilet to see if she would go again. No luck. So, got her dressed and went back downstairs. The boys were playing a game on the computer, so I sat down for a breather. Not even 5 minutes later, I hear a strange dripping noise upstairs, like someone forgot to turn off the faucet. I had Romania go investigate. Needless to say, "you're not going to believe this!" is not what you want to hear. I ran upstairs and water is gushing out of the bathroom floor onto the hall carpet. I get in the bathroom and the toilet (I'm thanking higher powers that it was clean water) is running over. I turn off the valve at the bottom and start yelling to the boys to get towels. I had no idea how I was going to clean this up. How do you pick up an inch of water on a floor? I race back downstairs and see that the water is dripping through the ceiling from a vent. Fabulous! Now we're going to have moldy drywall. I grab a plastic bowl and throw everything off the table it's dripping onto, shove the bowl under the drip and grab a broom and dustpan. Back upstairs the boys are stomping on the very wet towels. So basically I swept up the water and kept throwing it into the tub. It worked pretty well.

I even had time to page super-hero dad and tell him about our little fiasco. But his pager has been on the fritz and he didn't get the message. When he opened the door, the boys run at him and start explaining about the big water mess. We figured out (process of elimination since she was the only one up there) that Egypt kept flushing the toilet. Practicing for when she actually uses it.

Tonight super-hero dad and I ignored the humongous mess in the kitchen and watched a movie. How romantic! Too bad I didn't think to get a picture. Now that I have some where to write about all our mishaps, I'm constantly evaluating if the situation would make a good blog post and if so, how fast can I grab the camera. Sorry. I grabbed a bowl instead.

Who Is Joy?

For the past two evenings, I've been helping Romania make Valentine cards for class on Thursday. The teacher requested they be hand made and to make one for each student. We came up with a good idea and he loved using all my scrapbooking tools. He got to use a hole punch, put eyelets in and spray ink on the card. I was going back and forth helping Holland with a mystery game he's playing on the computer, so I was pretty distracted. When I came back I found this. Apparently he flipped the cutout words I made with my Cricut and it said "I love Joy" instead of "I love you".
Fortunately I only had to make 5 new cards.