Grandma's Knee

Lest you think that things are too boring around here, Grandma K is scheduled to have surgery on her knee Thursday morning.  At her doctor's appointment this morning it was revealed that she has a torn medial and lateral meniscus, partially torn ACL, non displaced fracture in her tibia, and non displaced fracture in her humerus.

Now normally, the arm (humerus - no it's not funny) would be immobilized i.e. put in a cast or splint.  But she needs to be able to move her elbow to use her crutches.  But she's not supposed to put pressure on the fracture.  So the doctor gave her some advice about what to do and what not to do and told her to "be careful."

Charming.

Please excuse me while I go double the dairy intake of my children.

Anyway, grandma is hurting and confined to the recliner.  On the plus side, she has crocheted enough samples to make a couple of afghans.  And the girls have figured out that she can't run away from them when they would like to have a story read.

Hopefully Thursday will mark a turning point toward recovery.  Maybe we should plan a "Kitchen Christening Plus Grandma Can Navigate the Steps Again Party."

Maybe by April.

Kitchen Remodel: Day 18

There is a stove in my kitchen.

It's plugged in.

Steve made a point of putting the kettle on it.

I said, "We can make tea!"

Steve answered, "Yes!  And we can throw out that hot pot thing... which leaks out the sides... and doesn't actually get the water all that hot."

Some people are so fussy.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that the pot that goes with it is chipped.

Kitchen Remodel: Day 17

We have cupboards on the wall.  Aren't they beautiful.

Cupboards!  Can I start filling them?

Corner Cupboard.  I love the three power drills in a row.

My fridge is back in the kitchen.  So is Steve.

Kitchen Remodel: Day 15

We are hopeful of installing several cupboards this weekend.  If we do well, we should have a working stove and sink in the kitchen by the end of the weekend. 

 Complication 1:

Steve's not feeling very good.  Sinus malaise.

There are other complications.  Some of them are named Paul, Julia and Petra.  But we shall overcome. (Cue inspirational music.)

Some of our upper cabinets will have glass fronts.  Steve got lights to put in them.  They are LED lights and they use such little electricity that they run via USB cables to a hub which has a regular electric cable coming out. Maybe this is just the geek in me, but I think that is super cool.

This lighting method required that we get some recessed outlets.

And Steve told me he also needed a new power tool to get the recessed outlets in place.  Hmmm...

Ballerina

Do you remember me mentioning that the new kitchen floor is slick?  Julia has discovered that is perfect for doing a pirouette.  

Paul's needs

Yesterday I noticed that Paul's shoes were falling apart.  He had also mentioned to me that his teacher suggested he should have a pair of dedicated school shoes.  The comment had come about after he had been picking mud off his sneaker and letting it drop on the classroom floor.

As we were waiting for the bus, I said, "Paul, I'll stop by the store and get you new shoes today.  Is there anything else you need?  Socks?  Underwear?"

"How about a LEGO Ninjago?"

"No.  Nice try."

The Sun in February

To my children – go, be outside.

The sun was bright.  The air was chill, but in this odd winter, green weeds were starting to creep across the ground. 

“Paul, are you okay!?!” My boy was laying flat on the ground with his arms spread out. 

“I’m sunbathing, mom.”  Can your skin make vitamin D through layers of coat and sweater and tee shirt?

Go, run outside. 

Swing. 

Sunbathe, and, Julia, keep your shirt down.  We closed our eyes and stared at the sun, with the blue sky laughing back at us.

Somewhere out among the sticks, and mud, and “Put your coat back on”, and picking weeds for the chickens, and “Swing me, mommy” and “Where has the dog gone?” and “Oh, never mind about your coat,” I forgot to remember my worries.

Bleary Petra walked back to the house for nap time.  Paul and Julia played house under the winterized picnic table.  My head cleared.

Thank you, God, sun maker, mud maker, stick and weed maker. 

Kitchen Remodel: Day 11 - Blood, Sweat, and Tears

Blood - Julia got a bloody nose for no obvious reason.  It happens sometimes.  I left her sitting on a stool in the kitchen with her grandpa nearby.  He was pealing wallpaper and she was holding ice on her nose.  I thought, "It's just a nosebleed.  It will stop in a minute."  By the time I got back to her, she had soaked through the towel and her face was smeared.  I started giving her my undivided attention then, and with a little help from grandpa and Paul, we cleaned her up and stopped the blood.

She dripped blood on my new kitchen floor.

Sweat - grandpa removed some more wallpaper.  Steve got the electric prepared for the stove.

Tears - I gave Julia a bath right after the nose bleed. (It wasn't that bad.  I was planning to give her a bath before the nose bleed started.)  As Julia was drying off, I heard a bang in the kitchen and Paul started hollering and crying.

He had been horsing around and bumped over a couple of boxes that had cabinet parts inside.  They landed on his feet.  Now, Paul doesn't cry unless he's really hurt.  He was crying over this.  I picked him up and put him on the couch with his feet up.  I had visions of him being laid up with his grandma.  I might have cried a little bit too.

He is fine.  He might have a bruise on one of his feet, and he was walking a little gingerly this evening, but he was also milking his injury for attention tonight.

Steve's assessment of the score was, "We took the kitchen's floor and one wall out, but it has taken two feet and a knee out.  I think the Score is kitchen 3, Kuhlmans 2."

Kitchen Remodel: Day 10

The novelty of living picnic style in our dining room is wearing a little thin.  I think it is not specifically the kitchen remodel that has me stressed, but it is an easy target for me to blame and maybe even do something about.

Last week we got the radiator put back in the kitchen.  It was fun to watch Julia chatting with the furnace people.  One of them is a woman about my own age.  Julia showed her how easy it was to dance on the smooth kitchen floor and about how she had to go the hospital when she was 3 and there was a bed there that went up and down.  Unfortunately, part of the radiator valve broke, so another fellow had to come the next day with a replacement piece.

Radiator with bead board behind it. 

The replacement piece was a little longer than the original valve, so our furnace guy had to drill an extra hole in the floor.  I almost cried when I saw the extra hole left gaping in the pretty floor.  Seriously, I need to get some emotional distance from the flooring.  It's a kitchen floor, for Pete's sake.  It is going to get damaged.  (Deep breath.)

The bead board, nicely caulked in.  Quarter round, which matches the floor well.  Gaping hole that  I nearly cried over.

Friday around noon, Steve's parents came over to help scrape wallpaper.  I don't know what Harvey used for glue, but this is really stubborn wallpaper.  (Harvey was a relative of the previous owner and helped with different remodeling projects in the house 20 to 30 years ago.  We periodically take his name in vain).  Using diluted Downy and a putty knife, we celebrated each time a chunk of wallpaper bigger than a square inch came off.  I tried to use the wallpaper removal as a patience exercise.  Rather than becoming increasingly frustrated, I kept repeating, "I am making my house more beautiful."

Stubborn wallpaper above the bathroom door. 

Shortly after Julia was on the bus and Petra was napping, Grandma fell off a ladder.  She missed the last step coming down and landed hard on her leg.  Once we established that her leg refused to take any weight, Grandpa drove her to the E.R.  Diagnosis: torn meniscus.  Stay off of it.  See your regular doctor on Monday.

She's been doing a good job of staying down, with her leg propped and her knee iced.

Other kitchen progress includes:

• Putting OSB (boards) up on the west wall
• Stripping enough wallpaper to paint by the place where the first cabinets will go in
• Roughing in the electric
• Assembling the first cabinet
• Adjusting the bathroom and south porch doors so that they could be reinstalled

West wall, looking like a wall again.

 I thought about including a picture of grandma in the recliner with her foot up.  I thought she might not appreciate that.  Hopefully, I'm learning some degree of discretion with age.

Peaceful Moment

 I am delighted with how well my children play with each other.  This morning Paul read to his sisters for a little while.

Then Petra decided to sit on his lap.

Stealth Petra

I realized that Petra's pink snowman pajamas are very similar to her pink snowman sheets.  It's just like a polar bear using natural camouflage in the wilderness.  Sort of.

School work at home

I've been a little overwhelmed by Paul's homework load this week.  He was studying for social studies test on Tuesday that covered American culture, diversity, traditions, and what it means to be an immigrant.  Today he is turning in a mobile report on Henry Ford, which he and I did together.  All this on top of the normal reading and math assignments.  I'm proud of him for hanging with all this work so well.  It is going to be good to have a three day weekend.

Julia also has homework.  On Tuesday she used her sight words to make a word search.  She and I filled in the spare letters together.  As I filled in a row of "random" letters, Julia looked down and said, "Did you just write POPCORN?"  Maybe.  I'm no good at random letters.  We gave the word search to Daddy to solve.  Word searches are harder when over half the letters in the puzzle are written by a kindergartener and some of the 'a's are backwards.

Last night Petra brought Julia a little toy and then explained to Grandma, "I give Julia  her flamingo."  We both stared at her a moment wondering if we really just heard the word flamingo come from her mouth.  I love my kids' vocabulary.

Kitchen Remodel: Day 6

I think Steve actually got in a full day at work today - the work where he gets paid rather than the work were money only goes out into construction supplies.  :-)  He was home sick yesterday.

Tomorrow our furnace people are coming to put the radiator back in the kitchen and plumb it in.  So today Steve bought bead board to put on the wall behind the radiator.  He and grandpa cut it to fit around the window. Steve also put paint on the baseboard where the radiator will go.

You can also see that we finally located some wallpaper scorers.  Grandma began to remove wallpaper for us.  Will we remove it from the places that cupboards or bead board will cover?  No, we will not.  The plan is to place bead board between the counter top and the upper cupboards.  It will also cover the walls up to the should height (at least to my shoulder) on the other walls.

We are enjoying the new flooring.  Now there is no little step between the dining room and the kitchen.  There is, however, more of a step between the kitchen and the bathroom and south porch. The net result is that Steve must now trim 3/4" off the bottom of the doors to the bathroom and the south porch so that they will fit again.  Fortunately, those doors and solid wood.

For the time being, there is a clear line of sight from the downstairs toilet to the whole wide world.

Kitchen Remodel: Day 5

The floors.

Yay for professional installers.

Yay for a sale on the kind of flooring we wanted.

Yay for being able to walk across the kitchen again.

Yay for Steve not smashing himself under the refrigerator when he and his dad moved it back into the kitchen.  (Watch out, the floor is a little slick.)

Pretty wood floor.  Happy Valentine's Day to me.

Kitchen Remodel: Day 4

On Monday Steve put a half day in at work in the morning.  He said he needed to go to so that he could get some rest.  In the afternoon, he bought some plywood and brought it home without sliding it into his ankle.  Steve, David, and his dad moved the refrigerator out of the kitchen and placed the plywood on the floor.  They used liquid nails to bond the plywood to the subfloor, but some of the plywood had a natural curl to it. Steve went on a strike mission to find heavy things to hold the plywood down while the adhesive dried.

Cast iron lawn chair, tool box, 2 bags of chicken feed, 5 gallong buckets with water, boxes of cabinets, charcoal. sidewalk  salt - all holding down the floor.

East wall without cabinets

With the bags of feed laying around, it looked like a group of drunken frat chickens broke in and had a party.

The red and blue pipes going through the wall are the ones that earned the  "delivering a baby" comment.  They will be obscured by the radiator.

Steve's priority list.

Kitchen Remodel: Day 3

On Sunday, Steve and his dad started working on the kitchen right after lunch.  They did plumbing.  Part of the reason I am writing this blog rather than Steve, is because words cannot express the feelings he has for plumbing.  At least, words can't express those feelings on a family friendly blog.

Just to give you a feeling for how things went, Steve did not get supper until after the children were all tucked in bed.  At one point I overheard Grandpa say, "Maybe the flux is bad."  After forcing some pex piping through a wall, Steve said, "Man, I've never given birth, but it seems like that was at least as hard as delivering a baby."  (I should have kicked him, but since all my babies have been c-section deliveries, I felt under qualified.)  There were some other difficulties, but I was riding herd on the kids and didn't catch everything.


Paul and Julia went into the basement for a while to see Daddy "in the hole," which is an apt description of the entry to the crawl space where all the plumbing needed to be done.

The work the men accomplished will reduce the risk that the pipes going to the clothes washer will freeze.  Even if they do freeze, they are now burst resistant.  Yay! 

I found out that the guys removed 4 layers of artificial flooring from the kitchen on Saturday.  The height of the floor dropped sufficiently that Steve will lay down some 1/4 inch plywood before the new floor goes in so that the kitchen and dining room floor will be the same height.

The score?

STEVE: 5    KITCHEN: 3

Please note, scoring is cumulative and subjective, based on how much grumbling I hear Steve make at the end of the day.

Kitchen Remodel: Day 2

 It is amazing how much difference some insulation made to the temperature in the kitchen.  Today Steve had help from David, Paul and his dad.  THANK YOU!  They cleared the layers of linoleum off the floor, roughed in electric wiring, and put insulation and fire blocks in the west wall.

West wall

Do you see the pipes coming out of the floor in the picture below?  The big white pipe is the drain for the sink.  I ran a load of laundry in the room next to this one.  Normally, when the washer drains, soap bubbles and water back into the kitchen sink.  When there is no kitchen sink, the soapy water just bubbles onto the floor.  Nuts.

We set up a portable radiator in the bathroom to try to keep the guys and the pipes from freezing.  The shop-vac, while highly useful, is regarded by Petra with a great deal of suspicion.  She looks at it and murmurs darkly, "Daddy make noise."

So, about Steve's foot.  He went to Home Depot yesterday.  (He went today too.  They ought to give him some sort of frequent flyer discount.)  He bought some ply wood among other things.  The plywood shifted on the way home.  When Steve opened the hatch to the Suburban, the plywood came zipping out at him.  He jumped back, but not fast enough.  The edge of the plywood caught him in the calf, scratched him through his jeans and turned his ankle pretty badly.  

He's still able to work, but he is avoiding ladders and stairs.  Today his ankle is more swollen and his foot has a dark line of bruises along the side of it.

Steve, putting his foot up after a day of honest work

Kitchen Remodel: Day 1

Blithely ignoring the previous months of planning, measuring, saving, shopping, and packing away stuff, we are going to call today our Day 1.  We can call it Day 1 because up until today the kitchen was still usable for cooking and dining.  Now it is not.

Steve took the day off from work.  The kids and I vacated the house shortly after breakfast.

Steve finished clearing the cupboards and counter tops.  With help he removed the stove, dishwasher, sink and all the old cabinets.  They guys tore down the west wall to facilitate wiring and so we can put insulation in there.  They shoveled up the rubble and bagged it.

Think of it as a clean slate, except that it is dusty and gross.

BIG THANKS to Dave and Grandpa Kuhlman who helped haul, destroy, breath scary construction dust, and make sure Steve was okay when the plywood slid out of the Suburban and whacked him in the ankle.

Steve's ankle is now bruised and swollen.

STEVE: 1     KITCHEN: 1

Living Room Shelves: A Review

2008 The corner of the living room was a narrow closet.

2009 For most of a year the corner of the living room looked like this.

2010-2011
Stain dramatically improved the appearance of the shelves.  Other projects took priority.

2012 The trim has been finished and a coat of polyurethane added.
It looks pretty sweet doesn't it?

We are a handful of shelves away from a FINISHED product.  Maybe in 2013.

Steve's Birthday

Here are some pictures from Steve's Birthday.

Happy Birthday, Big Guy

Key lime pie for dessert

Gratuitous toddler shot.

Kitchen Remodel: 9 February 2012

We're redoing the floors in the kitchen, so today we had the radiator taken out.

 This is what is behind the radiator.  Ew.

 This is what is behind some of the wallpaper.  Ew.

This is what is below the linoleum - old linoleum and, um, ew.

This weekend we rip out the old cupboards and flooring. Should be a good time.

STEVE

Just for the record, my husband is pretty cool.  Here are some of the reasons why.

1. He plays bass guitar.
2. Well.
3. It's a five string.
4. He does laundry.  (I love you, man.)
5. He's been backpacking in Colorado and looked down on Vale.
6. He's been canoeing in Florida and not been eaten by alligators,
7. which bumped the underside of the canoe,
8. or been poisoned by snakes,
9. which dropped into the canoe.
10. He trusts that God has a plan for his life.
11. He raises chickens for eggs.
12. He butchers chickens for meat.
13. He grows his own hops.
14. He buys me peppermint ice cream when I'm sad.
15. He shares bacon at church.
16. He knows how to get Paul just angry enough to motivate him without exasperating him.
17. He reads repetitive and painfully simple, favorite stories to Petra.
18. Last night, he "steered" the Wii bicycle for Julia so that she earned 2nd place on the Advanced Biking level.
19. He planned out our honeymoon.
20. He planned out bringing the family with us to the Czech Republic.
21. He opens our home twice a year to massive gatherings.  One of those annual events is a fundraiser, but he still mostly does it because it's fun.
22. He writes high geek level computer programs.
23. He has a sense of humor about how much pink has been coming through the laundry these days.
24. He is steadfast.
25. He does not play stupid games with relationships, and I appreciate his level of directness.
26. He's handy around the house.
27. He's adventurous enough to like living in a house that needs a handy owner.
28. He puts a high value on humor but is discerning to know when to be serious.
29. He likes Kafka.  (Okay, I think that's kind of weird, but in a geeky-cool kind of way.)
30. He likes Poe. (That one I understand a little better.)
31. He gets a glint in his eye when he says, "A + B = decimal 21."
32. He makes a really fun guide at the Air Force Museum. 
33. He watches reruns of Rick Steve's travel programs.  
34. He isn't snobby and lets tempting status symbols slide by.
35. He plays with children on their level.
36. He honors his mother and father by fixing their computer.
37. He's at home when I need him.  Can I tell you how huge that is to me?

There's more.  Like looking down on an Icelandic Volcano and driving over 100mph on the autobahn.  Or taking on the IT establishment in college.  Let's just call this a sampling of why my man is cool.
Happy Birthday, my love.

Fearless

Sometimes it is hard for me to gauge how much scary stuff my kids can handle.  I don't want to overwhelm them, but at the same time, there is a lot of heavy knowledge out there that I want them to hear first from Steve and me. 

Last week at church we had a speaker come in from a local crisis pregnancy center.  Paul and Julia both got to hear her talk.  Later, over lunch, I asked them, "Do you know what that word, abortion, means?"  And we talked about it.  And about making mistakes.  And about God loving us.

This week, Paul brought home a newsletter from school which talked about some of the biggest events of 2011.  It mentioned the royal wedding.  It had a picture of Kermit and Miss Piggy because of the new Muppet movie.  But it also had a picture of a Japanese woman walking through tsunami wreckage.  And it showed the destruction from the tornado in Joplin, Missouri.  We talked about those things too. 

I think this is all still a bit much for Julia to process.  She has fear of tornadoes.  But Paul needs to know that Daddy and I will deal straight with him, as much as we are able, about reality. 

And I also need to repent of feeling like the reality of suffering somehow impugns God's reputation.  I have told the children that God is in control, even through disaster and tragedy.  He loves us and has a purpose for everything under the sun.  We don't have to live in fear.  We do have a responsibility to use our blessings to help the people in distress. 

It is exciting to see my boy growing up and starting to ponder these things.  Talking to him makes me clarify my own thinking.  It makes me turn to God. 

My girls

I wish I could bottle up some of what makes my girls so sparkly and keep it on by bedside stand forever.

Julia got to go to a gymnastics birthday party this weekend.  She was one of the shortest people there, but never once showed any sign of intimidation.  She fearlessly ran across trampolines, slid into pits of foam blocks and swung across mats hanging onto a rope.  She jumped, pranced, and practically danced around the whole place.

One of the little prizes to her in a gift bag was a glow stick.  When we got home she lit it up and then it was bath time.  She took her bath in the dark, using the glow stick to light the tub and find her puff.

Petra is also wonderful.  Saturday morning she came up to me while I was working in the nursery.  She made some very loud high pitch noises followed by something like, "I big bad wolf.  I blow your house down."

We watched a movie Friday night and Petra got up to dance during a couple of the music numbers.  There is no dance like toddler dance!