6 Miles

Alex is starting to talk. Aside from now saying "Mommy" & "Daddy" (instead of Ma or Da) he can tell us thank you ("dank do"), all done ("al dun") and has started to point to things and say what sounds like "Want that" ("wa dat").  It cracks me up to see him point out trucks, carts and especially dump trucks. There must be something in that Y chromosome to make boys so fascinated with large, loud vehicles.

He has been teething/drooling up a storm. Both back bottom molars cut through last week and now his upper, right molar is coming through.  Along with those he has 2 teeth up top in the front and 3 (not the usual 4 I see) on the bottom. His bottom jaw looks a bit lopsided!

Edited to Add: Alex is trying to eat with a spoon by himself more and more. Sometimes the results are better then others. (Click on any of the bolded words to see pictures.)  The picture to the right was taken after Grandma H. tried to feed him some ice cream. He decided he'd rather chew on the spoon instead. Will & I enjoyed the treat!

Our Sunday School class is studying the Spiritual Disciplines.  The first one we talked about last week was silence and solitude–and no, we did not spend the time alone and silent. First, our leader talked about WHY we need both. Here is one (of several) interesting quotes that were shared:

"Let him who cannot be alone beware of community…Let him who is not in community beware of being alone…Each by itself has profound pitfalls and perils. One who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings, and one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation, and despair.
                      –Bonhoeffer, Life Together

Then we broke into groups to discuss a variety of points as well as some traditional & creative ways to practice both. Monday I was aware of creative ways I seek solitude (though not necessarily silence) throughout the day.

• Working out (I need to play upbeat music to keep myself going, but do enjoy the time in the office weight room by myself)
• In the shower
• Eating breakfast or lunch (I don't do well eating with the kids. I'll sit at the table and talk with them/read the paper, but I tend to get short tempered with all the requests that require me to get up/down and leave my food. By the time I end up eating, my food is cold. So I do better to get them fed and in an activity or nap, and then enjoy my food.)
• Nap time/Rest time (I work during this time)
• When I vacuum (Both boys are scared of it, so they go in their room and with the machine going I can't hear Alex crying about being stuck in the room or about the noise. And with the messes Alex makes, this SHOULD happen every day in the dining room.)
• At the chiropractor (This is a new addition to my weekly schedule. James and I started going because after meeting our insurance deductable for Alex's treatments, we can now go for free.  I'm now going 3xs a week because my back "is all messed up"–according to the Dr. And this gives me 10-15 minutes of lying face down on a table.)

Now that I've identified times of solitude in my life, I need to work on the silence and what I do with it. I'm sure it is not meant to plan what I'm going to do during the day, what we should have for supper, or any of the other silly things that keep my mind occupied.

"In silence we close off our souls to 'sounds'. Silences goes beyond solitude. Silence is frightening because it strips us as nothing else does, throwing us upon the stark realitites of our life. It reminds us of death…and leaves us only with God.–Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines

We just got the Explanation of Benefits for Alex's rounds of medication. Those drugs we got to give him through the IV 3x a day? They cost $163.50 A DAY!!!

The total costs (before the insurance company "adjusted" the price) is now just under $35,000 for that weekend adventure and the medication for it afterwards. (The insurance comany has some sort of agreement that gets them lower costs so they've "only" paid just over $25,000.)  I am thankful we have insurance but can't imagine how people without it do it.

This year is the year of the deck.  Last year we did the patio doors.  They led to no-where so now we have to put in a where for them to lead.  Actually, last year, after putting in the doors I put in concrete blocks as steps and then found some left over bricks and made a 2 x 3 foot patio.  Not much to look at and wasn't very conducive to putting a grill, patio table and deck chairs on. 

So, this year we (and by we I mean 'I') are going to fix that.  I spent lots of time trying to decide what we wanted.  Even got a quote from a contractor.  We decided on a 12 x 4 deck with a 16 x 14 add on.  As you will see in the picture we have an A/C condenser by the door so it cut into our deck.   

First quote came in at $2600 dollars.  Basically it was $10 a square foot.  It seemed like anything we wanted to do was going to be $10 a sqr foot.  So I went to Menards to check out what they have.  They use a neat little program that allows you to design your deck and then print out pricing materials.  I couldn't figure out what ALL those materials were going to be used for.  This brought the price down to $1300.  Alright, $5 a square foot.  Cut the price in half and now I get to spend some sweat equity.  I don't mind.  I can construct.  I learnt from my dad.  He made me do all kinds of things around the farm.

(hold on, got to go see what The Otter is up to)

Okay, I am back, He found a big bag of goldfish.  Luckily they didn't get dumped.

So, then I went to Lowes to begin buying materials.  (See that, design it at Menards and buy from Lowes.)  At Lowes something called Deck blocks caught my eye.  (dragged it 15 feet) I started looking at them.  They seemed to be easier to install.  The ad said "Easier to install and cheaper".  Those are my two mottos.  I went to their website, http://www.deckplans.com/, and found the plan I wanted.  It gave me a pricing guide to send to the store and get a quote.  Came back at $750.  Wahoo, even cheaperer.

So, Sunday they delivered the materials.  Only 4 items on the list, 4x6s, 4X4s, Deck Piers, and lots and lots of screws.  Makes Menards material list look crazy.

Sunday was day one of installation.  I spent 4 hours working on getting the first 8 deck piers and 4 4x6s in.  Since I have the 4×4 cut out around the A/C condenser I had to take their installation "guide" and modify it a little.  I also had to level and square.  I don't like leveling and squaring.  I am impatient.  I want it to do it automagically.  I have provided the view from the yard to the house and from the house to the yard for the End of Day 1.

Monday I had to go back to work.  The days have been beautiful but I figured that I would work on it when I got home from work.  WRONG!!!!!!  There were other things to do.  Don't remember what but there just wasn't any time to work on the deck even if we have light until midnight during EST.

Tuesday was going to be beautiful and it was scheduled to rain a lot this week.  So, I called in sick.  Just kidding. We have PTO (Paid Time Off) so I called in, OFF and worked on the deck.  I put in a full 8 hours of work.  I don't think I have worked that hard in a while.  The end result is that all 30 piers are in and all 12 2x6s are screwed to them.  In case you are keeping track the 4×4 posts are being used.  They are used to level the deck in the piers.  Since my deck is only 18 inches off the ground I only needed 1 1/2 to 3 1/2 inches of 4×4.  This means that of the 6 4×4 posts I had delivered I am only going to use 1 of them.  That means I get to take 5 back and get a $35 refund.

The next step is place gravel in the appropriate spots to reduce foliage and make it easier to mow around.  After the stones are in place I will put on the deck boards.  After that is the steps and the railings.  I haven't purchased those yet.  We will do that in August.

The good news is that so far in this whole process I have only scraped one knuckle and The Otter fell out the patio door scraping his head on stones only once.  Of course this was because Tina had the door open and was yelling at gently correcting The Tort to stay out of the water.  The Otter just slipped out right next to her and dove 18 inches head first into the stones. I give him a 10 for style.

After a week of rain (really, I'm not exaggerating), the boys enjoyed spending time outside this weekend. Because of the rain, our backyard is very (very, very, very) muddy. Alex was having such a good time outside, he didn't let something like mud stop him! His shoe got stuck in the mud, so he just pulled his foot out and kept on going. When it happened later to BOTH shoes, he got both feet out and kept on going. At that point his socks came off and he got to go barefoot. As he took his first step, the look on his face was a mix of glee and shock.  He enjoyed this for a bit and then he started to get fussy (I'm not sure if it was too poky on his feet or if he was just ready for his nap). So he went right into the bathtub and then to bed. I was rather sad I didn't get to get a picture of him first though. His hands, feet, and bottom were all brown. He'd gotten so muddy the mud soaked through the pants and had gotten his diaper dirty. He'd also gotten mud in his hair and on his face. He didn't appreciate me washing that off.

James took advantage of the nice weather to start work on our deck. Will had a great time "helping" him. We are having summer weather, with record temperatures in the 80s. I had to dig out shorts for Will after church–I had put on my list of things to do this week ("start getting summer clothes out"), I just had to do it a bit earlier then I thought I would. We are expected to stay this warm all week. If we're going to start having such warm temps so early, I'm glad we'll have a deck so we can enjoy being out back–without being in the mud! 

Last night Will decided he wanted to "sleep" with Alex. So he crawled in the crib with him. And he decided to empty out his drawers. "Because it was fun" was his reasoning. As you can see, no sleeping was occuring. He was not happy to have to go back in his own bed. I was not happy to see the clothes from 2 drawers in the crib. He got to help me put them back today. 

Other family news:

• James celebrated his birthday on Saturday, but actually turned 31 yesterday. But he doesn't like a big deals made over birthdays, so not much of a deal was made. We had a good time going out with my parents on Saturday and then we all enjoyed the ice cream cake my mom made.
• Will had his first visit to the dentist Friday. He has 6 cavaties!!! (We're blaming our well water, our poor teeth brushing skills, and his inheriting deep grooved teeth from me.) He had 3 filled on Monday (the 3 on the right side) and wil have the other filled in a few weeks. He now has a silver tooth (and will end up with another one).  He did VERY well. The hardest part for him was having to wear the thing on his nose for the gas. The Dentist was very quick and was telling Will he was almost done and Will could go. This concerned Will because he wanted to see the end of the Dora he was watching. They finished up with about a minute left and let him stay and watch that.  As we went to go, Will was given a coupon for a free Jr. Frosty (which I was told would be a good thing for him to eat while his lips were "de-numbing") so we stopped and picked that up for him.  We now have a floride mouth wash to help strengthen the teeth and are working on doing a better job monitering his brushing skills (and how often he brushes).

Our temps dropped from the 70s to the high 30s today. And it rained ALL night so we've had some flooding. The boys really wanted to go out again, but didn't last long. And Alex got his pants good and muddy–he's not too steady on his feet yet. Oh wait, March Madness isn't in reference to the weather!

I love this weekend. So crazy, such fun. So, how's your bracket holding up? So far (and the night is still young), I'm rather proud of mine (I'm 11-1 in my picks). I'm most proud of picking VCU to beat Duke. We'll see how tomorrow goes–seems if I do well one day, I stink the next. I joined the pool at James' office…I like having a slight incentive while watching the games.

Yesterday our temperature was a record breaking 80. Today it was only 74. As normal for the midwest, it will be dropping tonight as a cold front comes through and we should be back to "normal" by Friday (at first they were calling for snow but "they" have changed their minds.)

Will kept asking me, "Mommy, is it summer!?!" Sorry kid, we just live in an area with weird weather extremes.

So we've spent the last two days being outside as much as possible. Thus the house is a mess and little has been done. Instead, we've done more important things. We took pictures of the flowers starting to show (the picture of the white crocus was taken by Will). We ate lunch outside the last two days. We've gone for walks and played with the car in the driveway. After lunch today the boys played with the water in the sandbox (the lid got left off and we ended up with a snow box for awhile) and got good and muddy. So they then had baths and naps. 

We worked our last Date Night last night (we work 3 and get to go out the rest of the Tuesday nights).  James and another dad took the older kids out to the playground.  It made for a less stressful night–which was good. I think that was the first date night I worked were EVERY child was there. There were a lot of kids there, lots of craziness. In the end I was glad it was our last one and we're done! We can enjoy the rest of the nights, dropping off our kids & having some nice time away.  Because we worked we had to stay to the end so the kids didn't get to bed until late. Alex actually slept in and then took several naps today.  

I did accomplish the Most Important Thing today: Making green cupcakes for Will's "Half-Birthday Party" tomorrow for pre-school (he gets to celebrate being 3 1/2 since he wasn't in school when he had his birthday). They are chocolate (his favorite) with green icing (his favorite color). He has been telling his friends he'd be bringing green cupcakes the last two times he has gone–he is quite excited about this.  He had a great time helping me make them and watching me make the icing.  His favorite part was testing them though–they were approved.

The title is "Awww" because that's what Alex or Will say when they hug. Guess we say that too much. 

Check out Alex's boots! These were given to Will from a friend of mine in Texas (naturally ). By the time Will was walking, the boots were too small for him. I'm excited that they fit Alex perfectly and he enjoyed walking around in them today (I think he enjoyed being able to stomp in them).

Today James took the boys for a walk–Alex didn't want to ride in a stroller, he wanted to walk as well. So James took him across the street to the cul-de-sac where they have sidewalks and very little traffic. One of the ladies on the street gave them old bread to feed the ducks. So they took a path to a large pond that is behind the street/next to James' office and got to feed the ducks. (The same path James takes to work each day.) James said even Alex tried to throw the bread in. Then he tried to eat it. Since the bread was moldy, he took it away from him. (Me? I napped during that time. Yesterday I thought I was all better, but this morning had me decide otherwise. James came down with the same achy-tiredness yesterday so he slept in and we traded off with the kids.)

We're hearing warnings that later in the week our weather will be coming more "normal" (read: cold) so we're trying to be outside as much as possible today and tomorrow. Tomorrow's goal? To clean out the inside of the car!