Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Craziness

Things have been a little....complicate around here.  Nothing much to complain of, seeing as we are all fine and nothing seriously is wrong.  I guess it's just that sometimes things go smoothly, and sometimes they don't.  It's been one of those not-smooth times.  I think it started last Wednesday when the guy that came to stretch our carpets (pull them tighter) and clean them didn't bring either his carpet stretcher nor his work van with the heavy duty carpet cleaner.  He thought he could get by with a portable carpet cleaner (his van was in the shop) and a little hand tool to fix our carpets.  He cleaned one room with the portable cleaner, wasn't too happy with the result (nor was I), then we decided that he might as well just stretch them.  He said they needed to be wet to stretch properly so he used his machine to wet all of our carpets down.  After a while of tugging on some carpet in one of the rooms he decided he didn't have the right tool to stretch our carpets.  So...I told him that I would talk to my husband and figure out what we wanted to do and we'd get back to him later.  That was the nice way of getting him out of my house.  At that point, ALL of our furniture and belongings were off the carpet and tucked away in the garage, out on the back porch, or in the dining room.  The carpets were all wet and we didn't know who to call to get the job done so we could get the house put back together.  We managed to find a couple of referrals, one for a carpet cleaner who thankfully could come the next afternoon, and one for a carpet repair guy who could come on Saturday morning.  So, what was suppose to be a one-day project turned into four days.  Or more, since I still have a bunch of food storage in my dining room that needs to find it's way back to it's spot.  Thursday evening was an interesting night.  The carpet cleaner (second one) was running behind and didn't get to our house until 5pm, the same time my boys' music class begins.  I let him inside, ran the kids to class, stopped at Trader Joe's for something to cook for dinner, then came home to put the groceries away.  Then it was time to pick them back up.  In the meantime, Mark got home around 6pm, the same time our home teacher came over.  We met him on the back lawn, since there was someone inside still cleaning our carpets.  That night the carpets were wet so we made do.  Mark and I threw our mattress on the dining room floor where we slept that night, Dallin and Adam slept in a tent in the backyard.  Owen was the only one who got a real bed that night.  Moving all of the furniture around made it obvious it was time to switch everyone's beds, something we've been planning to get to soon anyway.  Owen moved up from his crib and got Adam's old bed.  Dallin and Adam need a little more space in their room so we didn't set Dallin's bed back up--the plan was to get a bunk bed ASAP.  Plus, the carpet repair guy was coming Saturday so it didn't make sense to put the rest of the beds back into the rooms.  Saturday was General Conference, which was great, but between that, getting the carpets stretched in the morning, moving furniture in between sessions, and picking up a bunk bed for the boys that was listed on Craigslist, our house was definitely suffering by the end of the day.  I decided to have Dallin and Adam help me put the bunk bed together that night while Mark was gone at the Priesthood (young men and men's) session of Conference.  That was quite tricky, but we figured it out.  Actually, at one point I couldn't figure out how to bolt some pieces together.  Mark took the bed apart to bring it home and I hadn't seen how exactly it was assembled.  I thought we wouldn't be able to get the bed set up that night, but then I figured out where everything was suppose to go.  Dallin started cheering, saying "Great job, Mom!!" and the other boys joined in with some chanting, "Yay, mom!  Yay, mom!."  It was quite the moment!  Since we hadn't had a chance to buy mattresses and only had one twin size one, Dallin and Adam both shared the top bunk that night.  I did make one mistake setting the bed up that night though.  One that would be most evident the next night.  The bed has two height settings and I forgot to set it on the lower one.  Instead, the top bunk ended up much too close to the boys' ceiling fan.  Yep.  Someone got smacked in the head, pretty good too.  Sunday night I heard Dallin yelling for me to come into his room.  Mark was holding Adam's head and there was blood dripped here and there.  Adam was playing on the bunk bed and got up on his knees and got hit.  We thought he would need stitches, but after a few minutes the bleeding stopped, and since it is covered by his hair we weren't as worried about him having a scar.  We bandaged it up that night and Adam slept on the floor.  That's where he's slept since because I still haven't been able to go to the store and buy a mattress for the bottom bunk. We also lowered the bunk bed that night before Dallin went to sleep.  I am still nervous about the bunk bed, since the ceiling is low and there is still a chance the boys could stand on the bed and get hit with it.  I'm not sure what we'll do yet.  It probably shouldn't make a difference, but we just a couple of months ago bought and installed that ceiling fan, and it's a really cool one that they both really love. 

Yesterday and today I have spent lots of hours working on a fall guide for I Heart Mesa.  It's going to be pretty awesome, but I am sure glad we are finished with all of that research and writing.  I need to clean my house and get this food storage out of my dining room.