Momma's 1st day back

I took off today to enjoy the silent house with all the noise away at school.  It was glorious.  Here's how it went:

After dropping off the kids, we dealt with an ant issue in the pantry.  It's so much fun to adult!

 Then I spent a few house working a 1,000 piece puzzle...this was #5 since June 1st!

After that, I made myself leave the house for a while.  I headed to Wasabi and ate 12 pieces of sushi...cooked of course.  It was delicious.  I was the only one in the restaurant and it was great!

Then I headed to McAlister's to get the kids 1st day of school chocolate chip cookies....since my kitchen is completely out of commission.

After that, I went to Starbucks just because.  It was lovely...except I usually get decaf and I decided to get half caf.  I still can't handle any caffeine.  Sigh.

 But it did help me finish the puzzle!  This has been one of my favorites!  I love that our library now lets you check out puzzles!

 When I finished the puzzle, I had about 5 minutes till it was time to start picking up kids. 

Here are the 2 things I had hoped to accomplish today that I feel zero guilt that I didn't take care of....I didn't file last years school stuff but I do have it separated into piles and ready to go for tomorrow...hopefully. 

And I also didn't add these photos to the current photo albums...but they are organized and ready to add....maybe tomorrow!

Let's talk about the "S" word

School....it's that time.  Summer went by FAST this year....so fast.  And somehow I found myself setting my alarm last night, for the first time in 2 1/2 months for 6:30something this morning.  It was sad...and a little exciting.

Earlier this week we visited all three campuses to walk the halls and meet some teachers!

We walked the halls with Elle and I swear I walked about 2 miles just finding all of her classes!

Then this morning, we all woke up way earlier than normal and put on new clothes and headed to the first day of 3rd grade, 6th grade (MIDDLE school!) and 9th grade (HIGH school!)

The day went so well for all of them!  Everyone was happy and didn't really have anything negative to talk about!  I spent the whole day praying for each of them.  Two of them started new schools today so I was a little nervous all day.  I am so thankful this day is over and excited that they had such success today!  I have 1st day interviews to post but Elle's was something like 12 minutes long so I have to wait to upload hers because Vimeo only allows so much space per week and she exceeds that. Ha!

Cozy in Comfort

About a week after we got home from the beach, it was time for the kids to head to Camp Grandparent for a week!  While they were gone, Shawn found a bed and breakfast in Comfort, TX that ministers to ministers!  They allowed us to stay 2 nights at they B&B FREE!  We enjoyed spending a couple of days relaxing and exploring an area of the Hill Country we haven't really spent much time in until now.  It was good to be *forced* to chill out in the midst of this whole kitchen debacle.

Here's the place!

The Old Tunnel is now home to a gazillion bats....it stunk SO.BADLY.  

Then we headed to Luckenbach to get back to the basics of love.

 We spent a little time in Fredericksburg too.  This was what we remembered most.  This was Shawn's burger....he *almost* ate the whole thing.  It was a LOT.

Perfectly timed Getaway

Way before the summer started, we had already planned a trip to go see our friends in Rockport right after we got home from camp.  With the house all crazy, the super loud fans blowing nonstop and the heat from those fans, it was actually a good thing to get out of the house for a couple of days and spend time with people we love and miss!

My kids have become masters at making hermit crab habitats.  These are like The Ritz Hotel for crabs!

We also visited the Fulton Mansion while there.  It was pretty cool to see...although I can't imagine living there before A/C.

We got to try on funny clothes....this is JUST what I need to balance out my figure.

Elle adored playing with the clothes....she should seriously be a costume designer when she grows up.

 All the kiddos at the beach

I still love Brookie Cookie so so so much!  I miss this family!

Dishwasher Betrayal

We decided to leave SUPER early on Tuesday morning to tackle the 12 hour drive back to our house.  We were all excited to be back at home sweet home after being gone almost 3 weeks.  It was going to be the first time we got home while it was still light outside and everyone was just ready to relax in our own comfy house.  Fast forward 12 hours....around 7pm.....We came home to our beautiful house and the first thing we always check for is if the A/C is still working.  It was!  Whew!  We head into the house and I turn the corner to the kitchen and am greeting by my entire kitchen standing in water, with mold all over the place.

The rugs were COVERED in fuzzy mold...all three of them.  :(  The upside is, that these rugs may have prevented further damage because they soaked up SO much water.

I set my bags down and got out our wet-vac and went to work sucking up the water.  I got about 4 gallons worth off the tile.

Then Shawn went to work ripping out the betraying piece of equipment.  It lasted 11 years, but it sure went out with a bang.

This was the mold all over the drywall behind the dishwasher and up the sides of the cabinets.

Within about 2 hours, we had someone coming in and beginning the process of drying out the kitchen.  These fans sounding so loud that you had to yell to be heard while they were going.  They told us they were going to need to run 24/7 for the next 5 days.  Oh and it was probably going to heat up the downstairs quite a bit.  Fun!

  Here I am holding the "Good News" jar...ever the optimist!  I am trying to find the good in each little part of this and there are so many positives.  Yes, this is a mess and yes it's inconvenient and yes, it's taking a large chunk of our savings to fix it.  But, we are fine and it's going to be ok.  It's material possessions and they don't mean much in the big picture.

So this is the current status of our kitchen.  It has been 24 days without a kitchen.  Insurance is paying for all but $150 a week in food money.  We have visited 31 different restaurants in that time, some multiple times.  It has been bittersweet!  It's fun to go out to eat...it's fun to try new places...It's wonderful to not have to cook especially at the hottest time of the year....but it is hard to feel healthy after all this.  It's hard to work your schedule around leaving the house every time it's time to eat.  Our taste buds are burnt out! We STILL have yet to have a plan in place because our adjuster wanted us to try to fix the kitchen in a way that every contractor and professional has said isn't possible...so we continue going back and forth and jumping through hoops to get this kitchen fixed in a logical way.  In the meantime we are running out of new restaurants to try! 

The Bent Nail

After camp, we headed to the Bent Nail, which is only about 1 1/2 miles away from camp.  This cabin is owned by family and we haven't been able to stay there in years!  It became available during camp this year and we leaped at the chance to stay there.  It was just what our family needed.  Having the creek out our back door was a huge bonus.  So was the sleeping loft upstairs for all the kids.  We enjoyed such a wonderful slow pace to life for those 4 days.  Lots of downtime and no wifi.  :)

This is 40

I couldn't have asked for a better birthday.  My 40th birthday fell on Friday the 13th this year.  It was also the day everyone left camp, which I was actually glad about!  

Shawn snuck out of our room at camp before the sun came up and drove up to the cabin we were going to stay at, to fill up balloons and put up banners so that when I got there, it would all be decorated.  😍

After we got settled, we headed back into town and ate at a yummy taco place.  Then we headed to Walmart to get all the food we'd need for the next few days.

After dinner we celebrated with cupcakes, icecream and presents!

As the evening wore on, a wonderful thunderstorm rumbled and rain pattered on the tin roof of the porch.  It was perfect.  I grabbed a book I was reading and relaxed and thought to myself, "This was a perfect 40th birthday."  :)  Lots of exciting stuff is happening during this decade!