A poem for Grandpa

This is another poem that Gunnar was working on but never finished. Too bad; he was off to a fun start!

"The old mustang car was as fast as a shooting star
And it is my dad's mustang car and it has about 200 horse power.
It is fast it is swift it is very very slik (sic).
But" (...)

Fat Lip

Karsten chomped on his lip while jumping on the neighbor's trampoline yesterday (apparently after a little push from his brother knocked him to the edge). He cried for about 45 solid minutes and insisted I put a bandaid on it. That obviously didn't work out too well, but there was no use trying to convince him of that. When you are three bandaids can fix everything.
Today his impressively pouty fat lower lip is one that teenage girls everywhere might envy.

A big day on the blog for Gunnar

Gunnar's poem was chosen to be included in a local booklet, and we attended a reception this afternoon where he stepped in front of a packed room while his poem was read. A very cool experience.

The Nez Perce War

Gunnar's diorama is ready to turn in tomorrow, and it isn't even due until Wednesday. Woo-Hoo!
Signe had the idea to build a hill out of a coffee filter. Gunnar enjoyed painting red blood onto some of the fallen. At least he didn't cut any figures in half or remove limbs like one of Signe's classmates did on his.

Brothers in church

I love these two little men.
They look more alike all the time.

Putting on the trim

Other than electricians coming back to set up the pendant lights, which I first need to find time to pick up down in Lewiston, the workers are pretty much done in our house. Nick is working today on the base trim to cover the gab below the prefab IKEA kick plates. He also wants to get the doors and shelves in. We absolutely love all the undermount lighting; it's very cool!

My favorite quote of the day

"Can you please be quiet so that I can hear the TV."

-Zane Holloway to the workers in the kitchen yesterday afternoon, during the boy's "cartoon time" when I go to teach my Spanish class at 2:00 and Nick comes to work from home.

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Immigration

Signe's diorama was due today over a topic from the literature or history they studied in 4th grade this past year. Signe loves doing crafty projects like this, including using fancy calligraphy-type writing that Daddy taught her. She wrote two paragraphs glued to the side of the box about immigration history. It was tough to find a good boat for the ocean passage so she had to make do (I'm sure some people arrived on Ellis Island on a sailboat, right? Right?).
Gunnar's diorama is due next Wednesday, and little Mr. Responsible (which I love about him) has been bugging me every night to help him get started on it. With the remodeling chaos at the house I am behind on everything, so I've been a bad mommy and kept putting him off. We finally ran to Michael's last night to purchase some more figurines to represent the Nez Perce War. That appeased him a bit.
All this is in anticipation of Grandparent's Day at Logos next Friday. The kids are super excited to see all of them!

Making progress on the kitchen.

UI Vandal football

Our favorite University of Idaho Vandal football player, Dallas Sandberg, after his spring scrimmage.

Turkeys.

I took Signe and Gunnar turkey hunting for the first time on Saturday morning.

Heard several, saw two, but didn't get close enough for a shot.

Disclaimer

Abby here... while I have posted all the updates so far, I did not post the last one, Nick did. I just felt the need to clarify that.
The sheetrockers covered up so much to spray the texturing in the kitchen and Signe's room, that Nick stayed home from work to spend the morning taking advantage of it. We borrowed their sprayer so Nick could prime the walls and paint the ceiling, before this afternoon when Ty Knight came over to start setting up the bottom cabinets.
I was starting to feel a little worn down today by the magnitude of mess, thick layers of dust, and misplaced laundry and clutter overtaking my house. But at the same time that feels petty in light of the tremendous blessing of beautifying my home.

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Kitchen remodel progress

Progress is being made despite the presence of a semi-hairy gorilla. The creature agreed to paint if it was paid in bananas.

Beautiful new floor

The finished mangium (acacia) floor looks amazing, and has a rough-hewn scraped design that should help hide all the dings we are sure to give it. We found a great deal, and it was important to Nick to have real wood.

One week down

Not much happened the second half of last week, other than the sheetrockers showing up periodically to put another layer of mud on the walls and ceiling. On Saturday Simon Esmond put in the upper cabinets before the walls were textured, which will make it a little complicated later on for me to primer and paint around them. The sheetrockers showed up last night and worked from 8-10 (!!!) and Signe slept in her brother's room since they were prepping her room the texture the ceiling. Inconvenient timing, but I am VERY thankful to finally get her beat up ceiling finished. It was the one room where the previous owners scraped off the old popcorn ceiling but never re-textured it, and it looked pretty dinged up. They are also fixing two huge lines of bumps on the stairwell that always bothered me, where the old Sheetrock slabs came together. I didn't even have to ask about that one; it bothered Larry and Jeff too so they offered to add that in.
And yesterday they started installing our new floor, and they finished that up today at noon! Jerome was over to keep Karsten entertained all afternoon since I didn't have class.

Day 2, Part 2

Since the electricians were done with the kitchen earlier, Shad the Sheetrock Guy stopped by later in the afternoon and patched up all the holes in the kitchen. Then after 7:00 last night Larry and his partner came over to mud it all. Larry did our sheet rocking 2 years ago when we tore out the dining room wall, and the guy is super fast and does an excellent job. But crikeys does he work long hard hours, often until late in the evening. If he has a wife, I feel sorry for her.

Today no one is working in the house until they come back around 5 (!!) to finish patching the downstairs. I will try to resist the temptation (maybe) to lead them through the entire house to patch up every hole and crack I see. When Larry came 2 years ago he pointed out the visible lines under the paint where all the original Sheetrock slabs meet up, which obviously bugs him. I could tell he was itching to smooth them all out. He says he sees it all over town in houses built in the early 70's. Larry and I are not impressed by the work of whoever the Official Sheetrocking Guy of Moscow was 45 years ago.

Something I am extremely grateful for is that we have a "kitchenette" in my laundry room to hold us over until I get my real kitchen back!! Most remodelers aren't so lucky. We had it pretty well set up for my brother when he lived with us, with the two plug-in burners especially helpful. Last night we ate at Subway, however, because the electricians made such a dusty mess in the laundry room. I had no idea how involved it would be to up the power downstairs.

The family room is now the dining room, with the old laminate floor temporarily underneath. It slides around a lot, but I much prefer it to concrete.

You can see in the last picture the circular holes in the wall that need patching, and the new gray electrical conduit the electricians threaded through two walls. I told them not to worry about tearing out the wall to hide it. I can paint over it later, and hey, it *is* just a laundry room.

Day 2 of kitchen re-do

Tuesday was another day mostly with the electricians, who had finished putting in numerous cans for lighting the kitchen on Monday. Yesterday they worked on putting in four cans to improve the lighting in the "man cave" downstairs, where Nick and his dad had boarded up the walls with 100+ year-old ship-lapped planks he salvaged from an old seed grainery that is being torn apart downtown. The electricians also poked many holes in the walls of the man cave and laundry room to recondinate the power coupling so the family room would stop blowing a fuse every time 2 things were plugged in. (Alright, I obviously don't know what they did other than answer my call of "I need more power! She can't take much more!", said in my head with my best Scotty accent).
The man cave room also suffered a bit from being underneath the kitchen when it flooded last August, but on the plus side we tore out the ugly ceiling tiles and the electricians were able to easily access space under the kitchen when they wanted to fiddle around with stuff from underneath.
On a less positive but somewhat humorous note, the younger electrician guy they called Thunder (I assume an apprentice) did not notice the water line in the ceiling when he was cutting a board for the new can lighting, and I heard the waterfall commence from the laundry room next door. This is sadly becoming a familiar sound to me. The other electrician guy found where to turn off the water and I helped them mop it up with every spare towel in the house. Poor Thunder was very sheepish and apologetic, and spent an unexpected chunk of his day going home to get out of his drenched clothes and hit Moscow Building Supply to get parts to fix it. He did bring back his personal humidifier, and the carpet is pretty much dry today already. They had even more fun times when they later turned the water back on and the old brass knob broke, so back to MBS went Thunder again for more plumbing supplies.

Easter pics

Easter family picture.

Easter pics

Saying goodbye with no regrets

After some water damage last summer to the kitchen and bedroom below it, we are finally saying goodbye and good riddance. None of us will miss this kitchen that is almost 45 years old, with doors hanging off hinges and drawers plopping way down. And I am especially happy to get rid of the cheap blond laminate flooring, which I never liked.

And the destruction begins

Nick is pulling out all the cabinets and soffits, with some helpers. And check out the lovely green linoleum flooring we found under the dishwasher, which I'm sure was very stylish in 1971. Ugh.