Is This Normal?
The chaos that is the KerbersArchive for basement
New house meltdown
I knew this week may be challenging after such a wonderful week of vacation last week. I mean, after all, we all went from dragging ourselves out of bed at between 8 and 9:00 am just so we could muster up enough energy to pack things up and head to the beach by 10:30 each day to getting up at 5:15 (me) or 6:15 (the kids) each morning and spending a full day at school or work. Yuck.
Anyway, things had been pretty well…until this afternoon. I picked up Ben after school and things seemed fine. We headed to TPLC to get Emma, and while we were sitting in our van in the pick-up line Ben had what can only be described as some kind of emotional break down. Now, let me explain to you that he is never happy about waiting in that pick-up line. I don’t like it, either, but for him it’s like the longest 15-20 minutes of his life. Today, though, he just started crying hysterically and saying that he missed our old house and he wanted to move back there. He didn’t want to live in our new house anymore and he, and I quote, “just wanted to go HOME!!” It was horrible. He just cried and cried, and even after we finally got Emma in the van he continued crying to the point that she was asking what was wrong with him.
It was so hard. I know it was happening simply because he was exhausted from the week, but it was awful. I just couldn’t comfort him. He just kept saying that he wanted to go home. It broke my heart. I know both kids miss our backyard neighbor friends a lot, and I know they miss the space they had in the basement to spread out toys and play. But I was so surprised that he was so adamant. It really threw me for a loop.
Thankfully the meltdown didn’t last too long, and there doesn’t seem to be any real residual sadness about living here. We really have to find some friends in this neighborhood soon, because I know that will make a big difference for him especially.
Baby Emma
Earlier tonight Dave was trying to help me with some video transferring. We had let way too many videos stack up on our video camera, so I was trying to get them onto my computer. It was not going well, and I was frustrated. It kept appearing to transfer, but I had no idea where it was being stored on my computer. So Dave was working on his computer searching for the path when he started watching some of our older videos that were stored there. The first one he watched was of Emma when she was very little. She couldn’t have been much more than 18 months old, and I was trying to get her to count on camera. As soon as they heard the audio, both kids were over at Dave’s side watching. I was, too. Emma was mesmerized at the sight of herself, and Ben got the giggles every time he came onto the screen. I don’t think they could believe that it was actually them. One of our favorites was of them playing in the basement together. Emma was just in a diaper and she thought that was so funny. ”Why am I like a baby?” she kept asking. Ben looked so little in the video, too. He kept saying, “Look, there’s the basement…do you remember that part?” It was nostalgia overload.
We watched all of the videos that were on Dave’s laptop together, and we all loved it. I think we could have huddled around that thing for hours. It made me realize how important it is for us to get all of our old tapes onto DVDs so we can watch them together, too. I can’t believe how quickly the time has gone. When I was watching those clips it seemed like they were filmed yesterday but yet they were filmed a hundred years ago, too. I know that doesn’t make much sense, but it does to me.
It was such a sweet time together watching our past. Just writing about it makes me smile and feel kinda warm inside.
And we have one spot!
I’m so very excited because I can finally park my car in the garage! Yay! Dave and I worked very hard today. We sorted and arranged in the garage and hauled a lot more stuff to the basement. I have to say that I’m tired, my feet hurt, and I’m definitely not looking forward to the time that we have to go through all those boxes downstairs. But…my car is in the garage, peeps! You have no idea how happy that makes me. One down, one to go…
Leaving our house
Tonight we finished hauling the last of our stuff out of the house and we cleaned it all up so it’s ready for the closing tomorrow. The last thing I did was mop the kitchen floor and vacuum the family room.
After I loaded the vacuum and mop into the car, I went back in to look around. It was a bit emotional for me to see the place totally empty. I was taken back seven years, when Dave and I walked into the empty house after our first closing. We had been married less than two weeks, and really had no idea what we were getting into. As I looked around all of the memories we’d had in that house came flooding back. I vividly remembered some of the changes that we had made there…painting many of the rooms before we ever moved in, putting up our first Christmas tree and decorations, painting the nursery, painting Ben’s big boy room when I was pregnant with Emma, putting the play set in the backyard, working hours and hours finishing the basement, hauling many truckloads of rock into our landscaping, and replacing fixtures and ceiling fans all over the house. But even more I remember all of the things that took place there…telling Dave I was pregnant with Ben, celebrating our first Christmas together, eating the top of our wedding cake on our first anniversary, bringing Ben home from the hospital and struggling through that first night, playing with both babies for hours on the floor of the family room, bringing Emma home from the hospital and laughing about how much easier it was this time, struggling to survive that first summer as a mother of two, watching the kids play outside with our neighbors for hours, decorating our house for holidays, and hosting all of our family and friends there many, many times. There were so many laughs and tears in that house over seven years. It was truly a home for us.
But now it’s time to move on. Dave and I are both confident that we will make our new house into a wonderful home for our family, too. We will never lose the memories we had at 1520 Augusta, and it will always have a special place in my heart.
Packing
Packing, packing, and more packing. You really forget how much work moving is until you do it. And now that it’s been 7 years and we’ve added two kids and mountains of crap over those 7 years, we are in packing Hell.
I have no time to think about much other than packing lately. Forgive me if you notice fewer posts or a bunch of old posts coming at once in the near future. I am trying my best to stay caught up on the blog, but the stress is starting to grow, and the blog is getting pushed to the back. Stay tuned, because I know they’ll be so much to talk about very soon.
Gettin’ organized
Dave and decided it was time to get this place cleaned up and organized. The toys were beginning to take over. So for the last couple of days we’ve been talking about how Saturday would be the day that we clean up and sort through all of our toys, finding a home for all of them. Ben & Emma were agreeable, but I don’t think they had any idea what they were in for.
Emma and I started the day heading to Target to get her some storage bins for her room. She was super excited because we got the same kind that Ben has in his room. I love how much she loves her brother. Anyway, by the time we got back, Dave and Ben were hard at work downstairs, so we joined them. 
They had dumped almost everything out and it looked like a disaster area down there. It was definitely a ‘darkest before the dawn’ moment. But we all got to work sorting things and putting them into baskets and tubs by category. Ben had giant dinosaur and ‘guys’ tubs full very quickly. Emma’s new tubs started filling up in no time, too. It was kind of slow going, but we were making progress.
Suddenly, though, I noticed that Dave and I were working by ourselves. It didn’t take the kids long to find old toys that they hadn’t played with for a while to occupy them.
The rest of the time we were working it was a bit tougher for the kids to focus on the task at hand. They were distracted, they were excited to play with toys they hadn’t seen for some time, and they were just kind of disinterested. Then the wrestling began.
Those kids. While they played, Dave and I finished the great organization mission, and I have to say that we really got the place shaped up. Some toys were moved to their bedrooms, some toys were set aside for the garage sale this spring, and still others just got permanent homes inside cubbies, tubs, or baskets. 
When we were finished Emma played and played with her Little People house and barn. I don’t think she’s touched them for months, but I also don’t think the area around them has been free of clutter for months, either.
I hope we can keep it organized, because honestly, the clutter in this house is really driving me crazy.
A great day
Today was a great day.
First, we woke up to a true winter wonderland. We were out of the house pretty early to get to Daddy’s work to see Santa. Although neither of the kids wanted to sit on his lap or talk to him, we had written notes to Santa and they both wanted to give him their notes and they were considering a picture with him.
I’m happy to report that for the first time Ben let himself get close enough to Santa to get a picture with him…but only on the condition that I be in the picture, too. 
I’m not sure why Emma wouldn’t talk to Santa this year when she did last year, but he did get a kick out of her note. “You don’t do naughty things, do you?” he asked her. She nodded yes. “Well,” he said, “I’m sure you try hard not to do that.” She got a huge smile on her face. I think she was genuinely relieved. Her confession of doing naughty things had lightened her conscience.
After running around and posing at every photo spot imaginable, we headed for home. All in all it was a successful trip, but now we were all eager to get outside to play in the snow. As soon as our feet hit the floor we were off to change clothes and get into the snow gear. Our neighbors were already outside, which made the need to get out there and play even more immediate. Finally, we had the snow pants, boots, gloves, hats and coats donned and they were off. Dave and I got our stuff on, and headed out. The weather was perfect for playing outside…it was 31° and there was not a speck of wind. No one was complaining that they were cold…even me! We started over at Mathiases house, but I soon reminded the kids that they could sled down our driveway, so we all headed over to our house. At first we couldn’t get a good run going because there was about 5-6″ of snow and it was pretty heavy. 
But after a few runs, it was packed down pretty good and everyone went down the driveway over and over again. It’s so perfect for this age, because they can all easily carry their own saucer back up to the garage. We got out our two person sled and the kids went down in every combination they could…Emma and Ben, Emma and Maxon, Ben and Maxon, Emma and Elijah, Ben and Elijah, Maxon and Elijah. Over and over and over and over. And each time the smiles were bigger than the next.
Dave decided it was finally a great chance to get out the block forms he had gotten three years ago, and he and David started building a snow block wall. The kids helped a little bit, but they were generally much more interested in knocking the thing down after it had gotten to be three or four blocks high. That let to a gigantic snowball fight. 
Seriously, I cannot remember having more fun with the kids. We all loved it. After about an hour or so I was getting cold and decided it would be best to go in and get started making some lunch. The kids lasted another half hour before they were ready to come in. I’m most happy to report that even though their snow pants and coats were absolutely soaking wet, neither of them had wet sleeves, pants or socks. Yay for spending a little extra money for good boots and gloves!!
Both kids crashed in the afternoon, which was good because our fun day was not over. Around 4:30 we headed over to the Mathiases for dinner and some serious playing. We’ve started getting together with them more now that we can’t see them outside as much. It’s crazy how much fun the kids together, and we parents have been really enjoying it, too. By the time we left it was after 9:30 and our kids were beat.
So like I said, this was a great day. I hope that I can long remember the fun we all had together.
Neighborhood fun
When the weather’s nice, we see a lot of our neighbors the Mathiases. Maxon is just a few months younger than Ben, and they are the best of friends. Actually, they’re more like brothers, because they bicker back and forth all the time but still love to be together and just want to play outside together as much as possible. Since it’s been getting colder, and especially now that the time has changed and it gets dark at 4:45, we don’t see them even close to as much as we used to. And we definitely miss them.
So tonight they walked over for dinner and some playtime. The kids were so excited to see each other, and they went straight for the basement to play. Dave went to pick up some pizza, and our night was set. Of course there was some bickering between various kids, and we had a couple of battles to referee, but for the most part they entertained themselves pretty well. And that was really great, because it gave the grownups some time to catch up, enjoying some cocktails and some laughs.
After a while we popped some corn and started a movie downstairs. The kids loved it.
We all agreed that we need to do this more this winter since we can’t get out to play as much. I hope we do, because it was a very fun night. We’re so lucky to have such great neighbors.
Family fun
We’ve been having a lot of fun with our friends Aaron & Alicia (Ben’s bestie Boyden’s parents) lately, and Aaron has mentioned a couple of times that he makes fantastic fried pork tenderloin sandwiches. Tonight, he finally proved that he was right. They invited us and six other families over tonight for some great food and family fun. There were 13 adults and 15 kids (ages 2-13) there, which of course made for some serious chaos. But boy, did we have fun.
One family brought a bunch of pumpkins and markers so the kids could decorate them. 
The kids all loved that, even though the little ones had marker covering most of their hands and some of their faces. It was a really simple way to entertain the kids and give them something to bring home to remember the event. However, I have to admit, we didn’t really struggle to find ways to entertain the kids. They were in the basement most of the night, and the bigger kids were doing a great job entertaining (and often refereeing) the little ones. At one point, they even came upstairs and did a little show for us. I think we all loved having the adult time to ourselves.
It was such a great night with our friends. We’ve already planned the next event, and are all committed to keeping this up as often as we can. I really hope we do that.
Turtle mania
We found this guy in one of our window wells last night.
I named him Snappy. He was not very happy to be stuck in our window well. When Dave tried to get him out with a shovel, he was very uncooperative and generally quite pissy. We were headed out for the evening, so we had to leave him there and worry about it in the morning.
As soon as the kids got up they were asking to go look at the turtle. They were fascinated with that thing. So we started our quest to get Snappy out of his little prison and off to a better home.
First Dave tried to get him to clamp on to a stick.
That didn’t work…he knew better than to clamp onto that thing. So next he tried using a rag.
Nope, that one didn’t work, either. But the kids did get to see a lot of snapping from Snappy that time. He went kind of nuts on that rag. I think he was toying with Dave by this point. Finally, he got a different shaped shovel and got him scooped out.
I have to admit that Snappy kind of scared the crap out of me. He was one ugly turtle, and he did not have a loving personality.
We loaded him into an empty garbage can and headed out to the country to set him free.
Dave dumped Snappy out of the garbage can, and he was home. Ben was very disappointed that he didn’t immediately walk off towards the water, but we finally convinced him that Snappy would be happy there.
By the time we got back in the van and got it turned around, Snappy was gone…presumably into the creek already.
Live long and prosper, Snappy…just don’t come back to visit us anytime soon!!
