Just another septic Thursday

We had the septic tank pumped again yesterday so we'll be ok for the next few days (we are limiting our water usage as much as possible in the time being, covered the septic hole with a tarp...) till DH can figure out if it's the holding tank from the septic tank that's blocked or if the field lines are damaged. He'll probably rent a backhoe to make the process infinitely easier. I can't wait, can't wait till it's back to "normal" so that I can start doing laundry again. I have learned my lesson, though, that I shouldn't do laundry back-to-back-to-back like I did last week. Stresses the system. This has really served to highten my awareness of how much water I use on a daily basis and I think I'll really try to cut down when possible. My mom gave me a great idea of saving the water that usually gets wasted when waiting for the hot water to get to the other end of the house (for showers...) and use it for other things (the garden in the summer, watering house plants, flushing toilets, adding to the fish tank...) so I may try doing that.

Plumbing woes

We've known almost from when we first moved in here that the plumbing was not quite there. The toilets seemed sluggish and finally one of the toilets refused to flush altogether so we haven't used it in quite some time. Lately the toilets have been bubbling and needing to be plunged frequently and when we are plunging the toilet, water bubbles up in the sinks (gross!). So we finally had a septic guy come check it out and he said that our field lines (that drain the water off the top when the tank gets full) are needing to be replaced. So... DH is going to see if he and a couple of guys from church (one has a back hoe) can handle that part of it and some septic guys are coming out tomorrow to pump it out which will, at least for now, allow us to resume normal water consumption (washing clothes, dishes, showers, flushing toilets... we've been doing some of this, but at least then we'll have no worries and things should work much much better!). I really can't wait to have multiple working toilets that actually flush like they're supposed to. Yehaw!

Getting caught up

Sometime between my last post and now, Geo grew his very first adult tooth, the bottom front right tooth. It's coming in behind his baby tooth which I thought was a little odd, but it's pushing the baby tooth right out and it'll be just a few more days before he'll have lost his tooth, but won't exactly be "toothless."

We've made 2 trips up to the new house with a small moving van and my folks' minivan so we have most of our stuff up here now. There's still some junk and stuff at the other house than we need to clear out, I'd just love to chuck it all, but I suppose there might be a few things we might need before throwing in the towel.

We're all just getting over two bouts with two different flus, one traditional one lasting about a week (DH being the only one to come out unscathed), followed by (for some of us) 2 weeks of gastrointestinal flu. My mom was supposed to come help me unpack this week, but now she's coming down with the GI bug so there goes that wonderful idea. Sigh.

Camping and stuff

I couldn't take it anymore living so far away from DH so we loaded up his truck and our car on Monday and we "moved" up to the new house. We took what we absolutely needed, diapers, clothes, pots and pans, food... and we're setting up house. It's kinda fun :) I keep changing my mind about where I want to put things (ie in the kitchen). We've been cleaning almost non-stop too since we got here. The people who moved out were supposed to clean, but all they really did was make sure the visible surfaces were decent looking (countertops, sinks, ...) and vacuumed the carpet. We were hoping that they would shampoo the rather bedragled carpet, but they didn't so we got a rug doctor and did most of it ourselves on Tuesday. My mom did the kids' rooms and the living room (newer carpet and not as dirty), and DH and I did the bonus room (very dirty) and the family room (as dirty as the bonus or worse, lots of coffee stains). We worked as long as we could stand it (till 1 a.m.) and crashed. We didn't get around to doing our room or the hall, guess we'll have to use mom's carpet shampooer for that. But we got most of the house done anyway. We did such a deep cleaning in the two rooms we did that the carpet was still mighty wet this morning. Luckily God blessed us with a nice day and the kids did go outside a fair bit to play. Also DH sent over a fan from the club to help things dry out. That helped a lot and the family room is now almost dry and the bonus is on its way.

I didn't manage to pack a play pen for Eli so I am improvising by waiting till he's good and tired before I lay him down, then I leave the room so he can settle himself without me distracting him. Usually he's out in under a minute. But a couple of times today he did a little wandering. I put him down in one spot and then checked on him a few minutes later to find him sprawled out on our air mattress, sound asleep. Guess he wants to be close to us, even if we're not right there. Kinda sweet. I'll be glad to have his crib next week tho. Hey, I'll be happy to have a lot more next week, why stop at the crib? lol

My folks are coming down to our old house on Sunday and will help us load up a small moving truck, their van and Daniel's truck if he choses to drive it down. That way we can get our washer, dressers, beds, sewing table, possibly the love seat, kitchen table, desks and whatever other things we could really use before we get around to "the big move." The big move will be the one that hopefully our church will help us with. It will be whatever is left after the mini-move and this Sunday's move... the entertainment center, dining set, guestroom bed, couches, dryer, and all the rest of the junk in our basement (can we all say "yard sale!"?)

Gideon is getting one of his adult teeth in and he's mighty proud :) It's the bottom right front tooth. It's growing in behind (not under) the tooth above it so I hope that's not a problem. He's been so jealous of one of his friends who only just turned 5 and started loosing her baby teeth when she was still 4 so I know he's ready to join the croud. We must hurry and take our family pictures while his teeth are all still intact. Now if Eli would stop being so succeptible to gravity, stop losing his balance and toppling over when he's crawling... Poor kid, he's kinda like his brother in that regard, G1 was always clunking his head on something when he was learning how to crawl and walk.

I love my new kitchen. It's smaller than my old one, but it's laid out so much better, everything is right there and very convenient and there's actually more storage and counter space so I'm pretty pleased. It's cheery and warm and a lovely place for me to hang out during the day.

Our impending move

The cat is finally out of the bag to our church family. We let the church board know on Wednesday to start looking for replacements for our positions (Men's Ministry Leader, Communications Director, Youth Song Leader and whatever else DH does, and Cradle Roll Leader [me]), and then sent out a post to everyone else on Thursday. There are still lots who will be surprised since we didn't have their email addys. The associate pastor's wife and kids came over on Wednesday afternoon to help me pack (or watch the kids so I could pack). They were able to stay quite a long time which was GREAT! I got all of my kids' clothes sorted (20+ large plastic totes full!), weeded out and ended up with 2 large & 2 smaller boxes to donate or sell and 2 large boxes to hand-down to the kids' girl cousin (just a little older than Eli). I'll probably end up keeping 5 or 6 boxes (maybe a couple more) of clothes that each of my kiddos is either currently in, or will grow into in the next few years. All of Gigi's too-small clothes will keep getting saved for her cousin so I won't have to keep them longer than a few months to a year at a time. I also got some books packed for our once and future yard sale and a couple more boxes of the kids' books that we'll keep.

On a different note, today was DH's birthday so I made fresh bread and rice pudding (a couple of his favorites) and the kids & I gave them the dress shirts and ties that I was able to get on an old gift card that I needed to use up. I totally got the wrong sizes so we'll have to go back and get the right ones, but at least he had something to open on his birthday :) I hope he had a nice day.

Light at the end of the tunnel

We now have a closing date... January 15. I was really hoping that they'd be willing to move the date up a little, and we just found out that on my parents' part, it would have been a go, but the owners of the house will be closing on the condo that they're buying on the 15th as well and just want to do both of them on the same day. Oh well, I'm not ready to move just yet anyway. I did get one more box packed today, lol. Didn't really make a dent tho.

As I was looking at pics of the house again tonight, I realized that the floor plan for the house was a little off in the master bedroom so I re-did it. Here it is:

I don't have bedside tables for the kids yet, will have to work on that (freecycle) and I'd eventually like toget matching bedside tables for my room (maybe the kids could have ours and we could get "new" ones). My dresser can either go over by the crib or in the nook by the dresser (we'd have to remove a dressing table area which is fine with me). I measured all of my furniture so most of it is to scale in this mock-up.

I did this with the really cool, online furniture placement subscription service from icovia.com. They have a "try it free" option which I have had so much fun playing around with. I just can't save my creations so have to screen capture them. I wish I could make a living drafting up floor plans for people to help them determine furniture placement. That would be so much fun.