Rachel's busy

Of course, we all are but especially her. We're getting into the swing of the schoolyear.
Some of you know and some of you don't but Rachel switched from clarinet to saxophone this year. She has been doing very well at practicing her saxophone. The band director has not been able to come to school yet because of health problems. There has been a substitute teacher so far and most of the time has been spent on theory and paper and pencil projects. This has given her a chance to work on her own to try to catch up with everyone else. The regular band director is hoping to come back this week. It will be interesting to see how he responds to her change and progress now.
Rachel also decided to run for Student Council Representative for her homeroom. Now that she has found out her competitors, she doesn't think she'll win but we'll see. She can make campaign signs and then next week she has to make a speech. The election results will be announced at an all school assembly next Wed afternoon.
Last week, we were listening to the radio and they were talking about See You at The Pole coming up on Wed. Sept. 27. She remembered that last year there was only 1 other car in the lot at 7:00 when it was supposed to start. I said that now that Rachel was in middle school, she could help with promoting it so that people would know when it was to start. She asked 2 other girls if they wanted to help but they weren't interested. She didn't let that stop her though. She asked the principal if she could put up posters to promote it and he said fine so we spent an evening printing signs for it. She has also asked the wife of our Christian Education Pastor to help sing some choruses that morning since they have children at the school too. So she is going right at it. She has even been thinking through what they should sing. We are really proud of her for not just sitting back on this event and letting it pass by. I know our youth group promotes it a lot but she isn't part of the youth group as it starts at 7th grade not 6th. If you want to know more about the event, the website is www.syatp.org.
Well, it is time for Joshua to get home and I haven't gotten much done so I have to go.

School's back in session!

Yes, the children started school on Tuesday! All 3 of them this year! Joshua is in morning kindergarten and has the same teacher the other 2 had. He is really enjoying school and has no problem separating from me for that time. Stephen started 4th grade on Tuesday. He has a new teacher to the school but she seemed very nice at our meeting a couple of weeks ago. Then there is Rachel, she started middle school! This is new territory for all of us, but so far, so good. She has a very nice home room teacher as well.
We spent Labor Day holiday up at Lake Ann Camp for another work bee. It was a very nice get away. Aunt Marlene, Tammy, & Joe met us there with Rachel Friday afternoon. We showed them around a bit before we got settled into our cabin. Rachel & I spent the weekend working in the kitchen. Rachel isn't allowed to serve the food till she is 14 but there were lots of other ways she could help. She wants to spend the summers working in the kitchen as soon as she is old enough. That will be fine with me since it will mean that she gets her week of camp for free.
We did have some minor incidents will we were there. Friday night Rachel fell off the top bunk bed while sleeping. She woke up crying and said that her head hurt. The next morning, it wasn't her head hurting...it was her bottom. Moving caused her quite a bit of pain Sat. but she survived and now the only evidence of it is a major buise on her elbow. When the men came in for lunch on Saturday, Joshua looked quite worse for the wear. Seems he took a tumble down their tubing hill which is in the middle of their disc golf course that Mark and another friend were working on. Once I got his face cleaned up though he looked much better. Mark also ended up with a scratch on his face but everyone survived just fine.
I took pictures of the kids on their first day but don't have time to get them online right now. Will have to try that soon. Boy, do the 3 hours that Joshua is gone just fly by. I'm trying to make sure to focus on my Avon during that time but it seems that 11:15 gets here quicker than ever. Now it is almost time to go get the rest of the crew. I'll try to get on more regularly but you know how that goes.

Doing better

Everyone is fine & healthy again. We have now visited all the kids teachers and seen their classrooms. I have been slowly working on gathering their school supplies and are almost there. I have refused to buy any pens or highlighters till we go through this house and check for any lost ones that we have on hand. The boys need haircuts and there are probably some more shoes to buy but for the most part school prep is pretty well under way. They start back 1 week from tomorrow!
I spent Friday night and all day Saturday at the Hudsonville Fair working at an AVON booth. Friday went well but Saturday was slower than expected. I think because it looked like rain all day it kept people away. I didn't sign up any recruits on the spot but did get some prospects.
Rachel is up at Gramma's house. They have been having fun garage sale-ing and also canning peaches.
Yesterday was promotion Sunday at church. It is my least favorite day of the year. Being in charge of the preschool dept. I have to talk in front of all the parents. I have no problem being in front of the kids but don't like doing the adults. But I survived again for another year.
Well, I have to get busy around here. I'm still playing some catch-up from being sick.

Rough couple of weeks

I told you all about Rachel being sick with a virus a couple of weeks ago. I don't think though that I mentioned having to take Joshua in for an infection in his eye which happened a week after Rachel came down sick. Then last Sunday I started getting sick. It was basically the same symptoms as Rachel (congestion, cough) except no fever. I made it to church last Sunday morning but by evening service declared myself sick and didn't go. Monday, I made myself get up and busy becasuse I'm a mom and can't be sick for very long. That just doesn't work. I kept going best I could till Thursday. My chest really felt heavy on Thursday so I finally called the dr. Probably a good thing I did because he said it was pneumonia. He gave me a pretty powerful antibiotic (Avelox) which I had never heard of before. He also gave me a breathing treatment at the office and an inhaler of Albuterol to go with it. So I have been using those as well as Mucinex & acidophilus (the same as active cultures in yogurt). I didn't get any worse after starting all this but it took till yesterday before I actually felt a little better. I was actually able to sleep in bed (albeit using a special pillow to keep me upright) last night instead of the recliner. That was a first in the last week.
To go along with this fun, I also got to deal with no hot water most of the week. Mark found out Monday morning before going to work that the hot water heater had started leaking. Fortunately, it was only a leak and not a full blown hole. The other thing we are thankful for is that everything that was between it and the drain was up on a pallet so nothing was damaged. I did some research on models and prices even while sick. Wed. evening we went out and bought one. Then we had 2 friends from church come over on Thurs. evening to install it. They had a few problems so they ended up having to finish on Friday. So we now have hot water again without having to put it on the stove first and it only cost us some favors for church family. (The price to have Home Depot install it would have doubled the cost of it.)
Our church family has helped quite a bit this last week. Besides installing the water heater, we had free meal Saturday from a restaurant that is owned by a church family. There was actually enough chicken that it took care of 2 meals. We just added rice to it the second meal. Also, a very dear famly stopped by Sunday afternoon, with a chicken & rice casserole, muffins, and cookies. I'll use that for dinner tonight because Mondays Mark has to work till at least 7 or 8 p.m. Rachel was glad to hear about it because she has been having to learn some simple meals that I have supervised her making while I wasn't feeling good.
I have the kids busy helping around here today to get things done. The Treasure Hunters live finale has been a great incentive to keep them working today. I'm looking at my schedule for the week and trying to determine which items I can handle and if there is anything I can hand over to someone else to lighten things up a little. We meet with the kids teachers this week and I am scheduled at a fair for an Avon booth later this week. I'll just do what I can and rest when possible.

Few minutes

Just I better take a few minutes to blog while I can right now. The weather finally broke and Dad didn't think that much of an excuse anyway. Of course, we were hotter here this last Sunday-Wednesday than what he was in FL. We had temps in the upper 90's and heat indexes around 105-110. Not having a/c, it makes for rather uncomfortable living.
The main thing to talk about in our week besides the weather, is that Rachel is sick. She actually gave us quite a start on Tuesday. She said that her throat hurt a little and she had a headache when she first got up but I sort of blamed in on the miserable heat. I had an appointment at 1 so I took the kids to a friend's house with a/c while I was gone. Except Rachel got worse while I was gone instead of better. I didn't want to hurry home because of the heat so we took her temp there and it was 102.7. We gave her an extra strength tylenol but it didn't go down at all. So I called the dr. and we were able to get a 5:45. I left the boys with the friend and called Mark to have him pick them up when he left work. At the dr.'s, Rachel was miserable! They tested for strep & UTI but both were negative. They said she could have 600 mg of ibuprofen for her fever. She said she felt a lot of pain when they were feeling around her neck and head. She was also dizzy and walking very stiffly. The dr. decided that we should go across the street to the ER. She called them and we headed over. The ibuprofen kicked in while we were waiting to see the ER dr. So they ended up sending us home without further testing (such as a spinal tap). They decided it was just a virus.
She hasn't had a fever since Tuesday. However, she is still rather sick. Her congestion went from stuffy to running like a faucet yesterday. She also has a cough and a lot of joint pain. Then yesterday afternoon, she started complaining of an earache. Seems that some of the congestion caused bacteria to get into her ear canal and cause an infection there. She now has an antibiotic to help that. So we aren't going very far or doing a whole lot with her like this. We are trying to get her better so she can get in her visits to Gramma and her friend Jackie in Newaygo.
They are done with the Saturday morning video time so I better get moving. The rest of our commitments and lives haven't stopped because she is down. It just takes more juggling this way.

No blogging for now

Sorry, but with the heat & humidity level as high as it has been, I'm keeping the computer off as much as possible. They are starting to say "save energy" and I do my part by keeping this heater off. This is tricky when I need it to work on AVON and the budget/checkbook but I'm do the necessities then get it off. The kids are frustrated too because they don't get their computer time every day like they were. Just know we are fine and finding ways to stay cool. Hopefully this heat wave will break by the end of the week.

House is DONE!

Don't have a lot of time to blog right now but had to let everyone know that the house is finally done! It took probably 6 weeks for the painters to get their part done. I finally signed off on their work although I still wasn't exactly happy with it. I decided I was tired of dealing with them and could do it better & faster myself. I spent 1 Sat. painting the shaker shingles that they weren't required to do. Then we had a friend from church that spent 2 days painting in areas that I couldn't get to (or wasn't comfortable getting to). Then I spent the 4th of July painting till it got too hot to work on the south side. Another friend stopped by on the 4th as it was cooling off and I was about to go back out. He went up and worked just a few minutes till he ran out of paint. Last Friday, I bought another gallon and was back up on the porch roof by 9 a.m. on Saturday. I finished up the front by the time it was too hot to be up there again and then we went around back and finished up the touch up needed back there. I am proclaiming it DONE! There is one side that could still use another coat but if you aren't looking really close and inspecting it, it looks fine.
More on the kids at camp later.

Dad's home

Suppose that means I better get blogging again so I don't get any emails about it. Of course, he got a little taste of how busy my days area while he was here.
Last week was our church's VBS. It went very well. We had around 75 kids the first day but the rest of the week it was closer to 100. I had a very different time this year. I chose not to be the leader of the pre-k & kindergarteners or any other group of kids. Since MI has a $.10 deposit on all cans and bottles, we use that as our missionary offering for the week. The kids bring them in and then I took 2 teens to the closest Meijer's store & returned them. Except for the first day, we had $50-$75 in bottles and cans. It usually took 3 carts to get through the store with all of them. It was really different for me & I really enjoyed it. Most days, I was back to church early and would go around seeing where help was needed or getting to visit with some of the other workers.
This year was a little different for Rachel as she was both a participant and a worker. It was the last year that she could participate because she is going into 6th grade this fall. She is also part of our puppet team which performed every day at the closing of VBS. She thought it pretty neat that she had 2 nametags and was able to leave class early to go do the puppets. Actually, on Friday, she came with me to do the pop can returns because 1 of the teens that had helped me all week was telling the Bible story that day so he couldn't come and she wanted to.
Wednesday, Joshua and I left VBS early. He had been having bowel problems since our trip to Lake Ann over Memorial Day. It was hard to tell if it was a real physical problems or, sometimes we suspected, it might have been laziness. I finally took him into the doctor and she felt that it was a legitimate problem although, not major. He just was out of whack and was going to need some help to get regulated again. He is now on a Rx laxative and doing better.
Our CE pastor and his wife had a picnic for all the VBS workers and their families on Saturday. That meant that I came down off the ladder about 4:30 to get ready. The painters were almost done with the bottom half of the house and so I spent Sat. doing the top part. I didn't get as far as I hoped. I only did the small porch triangle and prepped the top front triangle. Then did about 1/3 of the big back triangle. I didn't like the feel of the ladder going to the top point on the back. I could have climbed it ok. It was the thought of standing there trying to paint that I didn't care for.
Actually, a friend of ours from church that is currently unemployed came by today and has completed the back and is now working on the sides. Hey Mom, when's your next trip down? I think we may be doing some wallpapering when you come. This friend's wife says that she has a room that she wants papered but she doesn't know how to paper. Well, if he can paint, I figure I can paper but I need my coach and helper.
Well, I have to leave it there. The baby I'm watching for 2 days woke up from his nap a few minutes ago. I'll have to try to get on again soon.

Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Musuem

On June 2, 2006 Mom and me went to Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum. It was fun! We left with the whole 5th grade at 7:00 a.m. We were on bus #2. We got stuck on the second to last row, next to the bathroom. But we still had lots of fun! I liked the museum better because it talked more round want Henry Ford, Wilbur and Orville Wright did to change America. In the Village, they talk about how they lived back then. They even were glass blowing. I'm trying to convince Mom to take me back to see more.
On the way home we were supuse to get home at 7:45, but noooooo. We got home at 8:30!!! We got stuck in traffic. Got to go now. More later.:)

Catch up

Guess it's time to catch everyone up on another busy week or so. We had a very nice Memorial Day weekend at Lake Ann. The heat was unbelievable. It seemed much more like the 4th of July holiday than Memorial Day. It didn't even really cool off in the evenings. Which was really a bummer because I usually put some pops outside our door to be cold for drinking the next morning and that didn't work this year. (Camp serves coke products and we want our Pepsi products.)
The workmen have been here all but 1 day last week and that day it was raining. They are doing a much better job then when they started. I think they found out I wasn't going to accept a half-done job and decided they had better do it right. I think they are finishing the garage today and they already have 2 sides of the house mostly scrapped. A couple of days, rain threatened most of the day so they scrapped instead of painting what was prepped on those days. At least they were here and making progress.
I spent 13+ hours with 5th graders on Friday. It was the big field trip of the year. They sell bags of popcorn to the school every Friday all year to help pay for the trip. We went on charter busses to Greenfield Village and Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI. We had to be at school at 7 a.m. and didn't get back till 8:30 p.m. Rachel wants to blog more about our visit there so I won't say much except that it was nice only having to supervise my own child while we were there. I could enjoy it more because I wasn't having to keep track of a half dozen kids going in different directions.
We had a very full weekend. Mark had to work on Saturday and then he and Rachel went to our ballfield to watch the West Michigan Whitecaps play baseball. Rachel had earned 2 free tickets to go to the game. There were storms in the area when they went so the game was over an hour late starting. The Whitecaps lost but they had a good time and even got to see fireworks at the end.
I'm just trying to stay on top of all the activities. This week will be busy like all the others. The kids are done with school on Thursday at 11:15. They have field day today. Stephen has a field trip on Wed. and I get to have lunch at the Amway Grand since I was able to achieve President's Club status at AVON this year. Mom's coming down on Wednesday and should be here till Sunday. I still have to figure out plans for Stephen's birthday next week. Then there is all the normal busy-ness to deal with meals, laundry, cleaning, and AVON. I better get at it.

Heading to Lake Ann

As soon as Mark can sneak himself out of work we will be leaving for Lake Ann Bapt. Camp. It is up by Traverse City. This is their annual Memorial Day Work Bee. We spend the weekend getting the camp ready for the summer camp season. A lot of families from our church go up and it is a lot of fun. We spend Sat am & pm working at different projects (setting up teepee's, sorting food, or painting) till almost dinner time. We are fed great during the weekend and when we aren't working, we get to play games and disc golf. Sunday is chapel services and family time. Then we work Mon. am till lunch, pack up and come home. The weather is supposed to be more like July 4th then Memorial Day here.
Hope everyone has a safe and good holiday weekend.

Babysitting...contractors

As if I wasn't busy enough around here this week. The lead contractor decided he was ready to have some guys start painting here this week. And from the last 2 days, it isn't encouraging. They came Monday and started on the garage. They are supposed to "wet scrape" since it is lead paint. Well, that is hard to do if you leave the water bottles laying around the yard and you have a cigarette in the hand that isn't holding the scraper. So the paint chips that they are taking off aren't staying on the plastic very well either. They scraped the garage and spot primed it. Then they started on the back of the house. When I looked at the scraping on the garage, it wasn't done. They did some more on it yesterday as well as more on the house but were only here a 1/2 day. When something is primed, that means it is ready to paint, right? Last night there was no way that the scrapping was done but yet 3 sides of the house were spot primed! This morning I have talked to both the contractor and the city supervisor for the lead program. They both assured me that they weren't done scraping. No one had an answer then as to why they had spot primed over areas that still needed scrapped. They have only taken a few of the hardware left from the old storm windows off and only after several were spot primed over which tells me if I hadn't complained they would have just been painted over and left there. And with my complaints about the chips not staying on the plastic, they have brought a hepa vac to clean them up. Today they have stayed till 10:15 and disappeared again. My best guess is that they will be back around 3:30 to clean up and put away for the evening since the contractor usual transports one of them to and from the site. At this rate, there is no way the work is going to be done before the kids get out of school on June 8 and heat and humidity is to set in this weekend. In the mean time, I can't open windows during the day when they might be here working and the kids can't play in the yard. AAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!! I don't have time for this. I have way too much going on to have to babysit these useless....... (I'll let you fill that in). Well, thanks for listening to my rantings. I better get busy.

Profile

Trying to get this photo into our profile. It doesn't seem to want to work for me so I guess it'll have to wait. I have other things to get busy with right now.

Pictures

I'm trying to figure out how to post pictures. And it looks like I did it. These are some that Mom sent to me from when we were in Alpena for spring break. I hope that I can get an electronic copy of the family picture taken at church last Sunday for Mother's day. Then I can add that one to the profile. But I better post this and send the church photographer an email before I forget.

Gone

Well, Mom's gone home for now. I've actually been gone for 4 of the last 5 days. Mom came last Monday to lend a hand here. I earned a trip to Chicago through recruiting with my Avon business. We were getting to go on a tour of our "branch" there that does both manufacturing and distribution.
Mom and Joshua took me to meet up with 5 other reps down in the Hudsonville area last Wednesday around noon. We drove over to Chicago in our uplines minivan. The trip went fine. Even with construction there wasn't any problems. There was a pizza party at the branch Wed. evening and then some shopping as well as visiting at a Ruby Tuesday in our hotel. Thursday we toured both areas of the branch, had lunch, and headed home. Coming home didn't go as well as getting there. It took us 2 hours to go about 40 miles through Chicago. We stopped for more shopping at the outlet mall in Michigan City, IN and then had dinner before heading home. The ladies finally had to be done shopping because the van was so full we almost had to put some bags on their laps. I know that my feet were a bit squished from packages. Mark ended up picking me up at about 10:45 p.m.
Then on Friday, I had to unpack and repack. 3 other moms from church and I were taking our girls to a "Secret Keeper Girls" Conference in Fort Wayne, IN. It was a complete surprise to the girls! We pulled them from school early and were already packed and ready to leave town before they knew anything was going on. This is a conference designed for 8-12 year old girls and has to do with dressing modestly in order to keep the "deepest most beautiful part of themselves" for the man that they will marry. More info is available at www.purefreedom.org. The same author offers retreats for older girls which some of the teens went to this winter so we wanted to check this one out. It was really great and a lot of fun!
The conference was from 7-9:30 and then we had a hotel room at a Holiday Inn. It was a fun time! We had 4 moms & 5 girls and were able to travel all in 1 van. The girls were able to go swimming for a while on Saturday after breakfast. Then, since it was 1 of the girls birthday, we had cake in the hotel room before we checked out.
We only had about 2 snags. The rooms were supposed to have 2 double beds but instead had 1 queen size. The 1 mom had brought an air mattress so it worked out fine for them. In our room, we had them bring a rollaway bed. Rachel used that and I just crashed in the recliner. I was so tired that it wouldn't have mattered where I slept. Rachel wasn't too thrilled with the bar supports of the rollaway though. The second snag came when we were trying to start the van to leave the hotel and come home. It wouldn't start. The battery was dead. (We had forgotten to turn off a dome light we needed to read the directions the night before.) Thank goodness for a AAA membership. After the hotel couldn't get it jumped using their mini-bus we called AAA. They were there within 1/2 hour and since I told them battery problems they sent a van that carries them around. He was able to test the battery. It showed only 25% charge but the health of the battery was at 0%. His batteries would have been over $100 but he was able to tell us where an AutoZone was easy to get to. He gave us a jump and while part of the moms stayed at a playground 1 block from the hotel, 2 of us went to AutoZone and got the battery replaced for $50 and we even were able to get him to put it in for us.
We took our time coming home. We found a gokart place and stopped to race. Then we had to stop for ice cream before getting home. It was a good time but was 8:00 before we got home on Saturday. I was too exhausted to do much of anything yesterday.
I'm still pretty tired today but have to get myself moving. Lots to do. The nice thing is that I don't have to worry too much about laundry because Mom keeps up with that and keeps my kitchen clean. What a blessing!
Well, I better get at it.

Tough week

This has not been one of our better weeks around here. The boys finally got better on Tuesday. Not early enough that I could take Stephen to school at all but at least he could complete all his homework before going back to school.
As the boys were getting better, something outside was starting to bloom that had a bad affect on my allergies. By Wednesday, I was more miserable than my allergies have ever made me. Congestion, sneezing, headache...Oh, boy and that was while I was already on Claritin-D. The doctor thought I should add Nasonex to my Rx cabinet to try to help out.
While I was at Sam's Club being flabbergasted by the price of that Rx, all of a sudden my middle finger on my right hand had shooting pain going up it. The pain would keep coming and going. Sometimes when I would bend it, it would hurt. The next time, it wouldn't but it would hurt to open it back up then.
There was a Fine Arts Festival at the kids' school on Thursday evening. I couldn't miss that because Rachel was performing in 2 different musical groups. The art teacher also displays as much art work as possible so we had to look to see if any of the kids' works were on the walls. Trying to applaud was not a fun experience as it sent more pain shooting from my middle finger. By the time we got home, the swelling was rather obvious up the back of my hand.
I called the doctor Friday morning to take a look at my hand. The middle finger still felt as though it had been jammed in and needed to be popped back out. It wasn't the shooting pain though. The diagnosis...the start of carpultunel (sp.). Oh, joy. So I am now on anti-inflammatory and a wrist brace. By the time I got kids home from school, I was miserable. I managed to get dinner but other than that I was on the couch most of the night. Part of it, may be my body adjusting to the anti-inflammatory. I haven't taken much Naproxen before this. I know it doesn't work well for Dad but so far I was just really tired.
So that was our week. Not one of our better ones, especially for me. My allergies didn't help Mark with getting sleep this week either. He's at work today and the kids and I may try to pull off a surprise since his birthday is next week and I am even going to be out of town for it.
More on that later though as I don't want to do too much typing to aggravate this hand.

Rude Awakening

Well, my week is not off to a very good start. It is a little bit of a rude awakening when a child comes into your room at 3 a.m. crying that they have thrown up on their bed. That was my start to this Monday. It was Joshua and he had gotten it all over himself and the bed. I cleaned him up and had just gotten him settled on the couch and me in the recliner when Stephen came down. He didn't get his bed but made it to the bathroom before he was in the same shape. We snoozed in the living room till it was time to start the day (again).
Joshua doesn't seem in as rough a shape as Stephen. He hasn't had any problems since around 9 this morning. I have let him start on some sips ofwater and a few sips of clear pop, spaced out about every 15 minutes. Stephen has made a lot more trips to the bathroom. He was doing fine so I let him start on some sips of water and then pop but after about 2 sips of pop around 1 this afternoon, he lost that little bit of liquid again. I had hoped to take him to school at lunch tomorrow but that doesn't look like it will happen. They want the kids symptom free for 24 hours before they return.
I don't know what is causing this. I have tried to figure out what they might have eaten that is affecting them like this but don't know what it could be. They haven't had a fever but Joshua did complain a little about a headache once.
Looks like I'm homebound till at least Wednesday. This has postponed Joshua's kindergarten testing for a month. I also was scheduled to help a part of my downline sign up a new representative. I couldn't find anyone to cover so we rescheduled for tomorrow (this was before Stephen heading to the bathroom again at 1). I think I should be able to have part of my upline go on it tomorrow. They just were all busy today.
Hope you are all having a better Monday than I am.

Van's fixed!

We decided to ask a friend/neighbor if he could help with getting the fan off the van with us. Not only did he help get the fan off, he called a friend of his that does even more mechanical work (possibly professionally) and the 2 of them got the fan off, the water pump off, and everything put back together by about 9:30 tonight. We would still have been working at it on Sunday I'm sure. So maybe the water pump was a bit more than we could chew but at least we tried, and the Lord provided the help we needed. The guys wouldn't take anything for helping. I may have to do some cakes in the future for them but that's a small price to pay. I can handle that.
Now the next step that we hope to do over the weekend is new spark plugs and wires. I think we should be able to handle that. If all goes well, we may even do the oil change while we're at it.

Auto help

Maybe I can get more help with this problem than the ink problem. (Were you serious about the brake cleaner, Nate?)

We are trying to replace the waterpump that sprung a leak on Tuesday on our '92 Chevy Conversion van. Our problem has come with trying to remove the fan. We have removed all the nuts and bolts that we can find but can't seem to get it off. Mark pulled and banged and sprayed it with WD-40 but it isn't budging. Are there any other little tricks that maybe weren't in the Haynes repair manual that we follow so closely? On the very front center of the fan unit there is a little coiled up piece of something that appears to be rubbery but we can't get figure out if it is to be removed or is holding the the fan on at all. We have several people from church that we usually consult about our repair jobs but most of them are currently in Georgia on a missions trip. Any one have any long distance advice?

Thanks.

Home a week

I'm rather surprised I haven't heard from Dad about not blogging at all this week. Of course, he hasn't been on since Tuesday either so I guess he can't say much.
The kids and I left Monday April 3rd for Alpena and stayed there till last Saturday. The inside lead work was actually completed on Thursday and Mark stayed here that night but we stayed in Alpena till Saturday to give Mark a chance to get some additional cleaning done. (They'll be back in another couple of weeks to do the outside but we don't have to evacuate for that.) We stayed at Aunt Marlene's house though she was in Florida. Her house is just much more conducive to having children in it, especially since the weather was lousy most of the week and the kids couldn't spend much time outside. We went to see a magician at the library one evening and went swimming at the clubhouse one afternoon. We turned the clubhouse trip into a birthday party for Joshua. Cindy came and brought Emily and Damian plus Mom brought out cupcakes. It was really nice. We topped off the week by decorating colored eggs on Friday afternoon. (Good thing too because I haven't even reached the Easter baskets yet.)
We drove up in a bad snow. At times, I was following the tracks of the cars in front of me because I couldn't see the lines in the road. On one 30 mile stretch, we saw 4 accidents! The way home was beautiful! The only problem was that at times the kids couldn't see the action on the DVD screens because of the bright sunshine.
We spent last weekend helping do more extensive spring cleaning. We have actually done very little unpacking because we are trying to go through things and reorganize instead of just putting all the clutter back where it was. With the family room, I'm waiting to see what the kids ask for. I figure it is spends more than a month in the basement without being asked for, I can probably get rid of it. We'll see.
Trying to organize while trying to stay current with all the other things going on in our lives has made for a very busy week. And will probably keep me that way for some time.
Joshua felt that he needed a birthday "party" with Dad since it didn't happen on his birthday. So last night, we had just a couple of friends over after the Good Friday service. He wanted another Tigger cake. (He doesn't remember his first one since that was his first birthday.) Fortunately, that doesn't take too long to decorate.
I also have a cake to do for Sunday for a boy's birthday from church, then there are 2 showers for teachers at the school on Monday and Tuesday this week that I will do the cakes for. 1 is Rachel's current teacher (and I even organized this shower) and the other is a kindergarten teacher that had both Rachel & Stephen and plans to have Joshua next year. (I helped with her first shower when Rachel was in her class.) I also have been asked to do a wedding cake for the end of September from a family at church.
I think that about catches you up for now. The kids Saturday morning videos are done so I have to get them motivated now for the day.