August 2018

Max is starting to crawl and reach toys! This is one lucky boy with so many people who love him and cheer him on. 

Before school started we wanted to do one last 'fun' thing as a family. (Especially since Chris and I have been so occupied with getting the guesthouse finished, I've been feeling guilty for not doing more fun things with the kids this summer). We bought a punch of paint gel ball things and had a war. 

School starts! Alec is in 6th grade at a new school: Armstrong Middle School.  Charlie is in 4th and Gwen is in 3rd at Henderson Ward Stewart.  It felt so huge to be sending a kid to Middle school. Chris and I had a hard time just dropping him off at the curb and thought it was so cute how he just stood around with his friends, like a teenager or something. We drove through the drop off again to try and surreptitiously take a picture of him. He totally caught us.  

Freddy, Max and I are now buddies during the day.  Freddy is full of energy. 

Alec started playing saxophone this year! Band is a huge thing here in the South and Alec did really well on the instrument try out day, where he played a bunch of instruments to see how easily making sounds on the different reeds/mouthpieces were. He did a good job with the bassoon which is not typical and so we thought thats the one he'd get assigned but it turns out he was given the Sax. How fun!

We bought a car! Chris' old '96 Honda Accord bit the dust and would've cost more to repair it than it was worth.  The AC hadn't worked for years, and the clutch and/or transmission was shot. As it was the mechanic who looked at it offered to take it for $500. So we needed to buy a new car and tried to find the cheapest, reliable car, without much history. We found a barely used Toyota Yaris and bought it, it was around $11,000 and got the loan with such good terms we didn't have to put any cash down. It was weird to drive away in a new car without having paid anything yet. 

During Max's nap I try to have my scripture study. Freddy doesn't like to play or really be alone. So he'll sit right by me and 'read' books. He usually falls asleep pretty fast. 

Alec really wanted to go to this community event that one of his teachers told the class about. It was supposed to have so many FREE things: Free hotdogs, free prizes, free video game trailer, free tshirts etc. Chris can hardly turn down free tshirts, so we looked the event up on the internet and discovered that theres an old NBA player Travis Outlaw who's from Starkville that puts on this community event every year for his home town so we arranged our Saturday to go. We drove up to McKee Park and immediately felt out of place. We were the only white people out of hundreds.  We didn't want our kids to think the color of our skin should make one bit of difference so we parked and got out like there was no problem, but man oh man, did I feel uncomfortable. I wondered if this was how new people at church felt and I gained new insight and appreciation for minorities.  Everyone was super nice to us and included the kids in all the games without a blink of an eye. In fact my kids won a lot of prizes for the races. They didn't have other kids Freddy's age who wanted to enter the foot race, so they put him in with the next oldest group and gave him a head start and he still beat them! Chris enjoyed competing in the football throwing contest and others without caring that he was the only adult. haha  

Max, Freddy and I started going to "The Homestead." Its a community center that focuses on nature. We pay to be members and get to go to their preschool/homeschool weekly meetings where we often do a craft or activity. We learned how to make 5 minute Artisan Bread this time. Freddy LOVES it. 

Finishing the Guesthouse remodel

Finishing the guest house took SO much work!  Knowing we had a deadline, like a firm we-have-people-moving-into-this-space-in-a-few-weeks deadline, helped us get it done fast. Chris was still supposed to be working, so he'd work in the morning while I did house work and meals etc for the kids but once Chris was finished in the early afternoon, we'd assign one of the kids to be on 'Max Duty' and we'd both be out there working until we come in for a quick dinner, one of us put the kids to bed and then we'd both be out there again working until close to midnight, sometimes after midnight. 

We tiled the shower walls and in the process of installing it we wondered if the mounting bracket for the roughed-in shower handle was going to be too shallow and not stick out far enough past the tile to get the actual handle screwed on, so while the tile was setting, we got out the trusty sawsall to disconnect the wood upon which the bracket was mounted to adjust it..... but all of a sudden we had water gushing out everywhere. We had cut through the pipe bringing the water to the said bracket. Eek! I quickly ran to the back of the otherside of the wall (in the closet/water heater area and used my hands and a 5 gallon bucket to try and collect most of the water spraying out while Chris ran off to find the water shut off.  Feeling quite silly and frustrated at this setback amidst a time crunch we had to call the plumber to come back and fix our mess.  After a day we got it all cleaned up and the plumber was quick and kind and we saved MOST of the boxes of wood flooring waiting to be installed from getting water damaged. 

Next came the kitchen counters. We spent lots of time cutting out and sanding the hole for the undermount sink. Then we waxed them with food grade beeswax. I wasn't thrilled with the yellow/orange-ish color the wax turned the butcher block, but it does bead up water pretty good...which you want with kitchen counters. 

Then it was time for installing the plumbing fixtures, shower doors, floors and blinds. The floors were a little tricky.  (Mainly because it was our first time doing this) We had almost half of the floor down when we realized a trick that got the planks to snap even better together.  Chris thought we should tear everything back up and redo it with the tighter fit everywhere but I voted to just finish the job regardless of how it looked so far... but Chris was right. We want to do things RIGHT so we tore up the floor but it wasn't so bad to put back down since the edges were already cut. Looking at the finished product, knowing we got looking good and fit together snug, it was definitely the right call and worth the extra hours. 

We were so proud of all that we learned on this project. We gained so many useful skills, and bought some cool tools and feel pretty good with how it all turned out. Just in time for Trevor and Rebecca to move in a few days. Rebecca and her mom came out early to bring some stuff before they got married, but it wasn't ready yet (I think we still needed to put down the floors and the counters), so we had them stay in our house with us (we cleared out Gwen's room for them). A friend once commented to me after the fact, how scary and strange that must have been to let complete strangers stay in your house, but I never felt weird or bad about it.  Yes, it could've been awkward if the people weren't so great, but Rebecca and her mom were so kind, they felt like family from the very start.  We feel like God was directing everything so we could meet their needs and yet help us offset the cost of this experience and gain dear friends to boot.