Random pics

Just some random pictures of when I was a mechanic's assistant. The older two kids were visiting their bio-mom and the middle child is just about useless sometimes LOL. That left me.

First we had to move a semi out of the way. Mostly because I don't have a CDL but really because there's a problem with the transmission [I've driven a couple but never got past third gear] my husband drove it and I rode shotgun.

This was a really awesome truck. Those switches had what looked like plastic red gems on the ends that my husband says light up at night. AWESOME!

The Mr. 

Then I got to drive a forklift [after a brief lesson by a properly licensed forklift operator].

My main job as forklift "operator" was to babysit the controls while they held up a truck bed. So all I really did was sit there.

When my husband pulled out this huge fan and pointed it straight at me was when I realized I was going to be babysitting the forklift for a while.

My superawesome parking job! [It only took me two tries lol]

There's just something about watching a man do what he's really good at:

Me being as helpful as I could be. Messing around on the camera LOL. P.S. that fan was really strong. Look what it did to my hair!

That's it! Hubs got the job done and we were on our way back home in a jiffy. I don't often brave the dirty and greasy garage, but when I do it's a pretty good time. ><

AmyG

The middle kid turns 14

Okay so it isn't his birthday YET....but he will be 14 soon and it just so happened to be a night when ALL FOUR OTHER KIDS were GONE for the night! So we took that opportunity to show our middle child a fun night and took him out to his "birthday dinner."

Now we told this child he could pick ANY RESTAURANT (that was within a 30-mile radius) that he wanted. ANY RESTAURANT AT ALL. So what did he pick?

STEAK 'N SHAKE.

Well whatever, at least it was pretty cheap and he DID seem to enjoy his chocolate-fudge-brownie-whatever-it-was shake.

 So since we saved so much money from him choosing a less-than-expensive place to eat we decided to go see "22 Jump Street" at the Carmike theaters.

This is him walking like a creeper. Because apparently that's what soon-to-be-14 year-old's do.

This is a picture of the movie popcorn we decided to splurge on. There's nothing quite like real theater popcorn, and we didn't go overboard on it. We didn't refill it or anything. Just enjoyed some and took some home for the kids.

(Don't judge...we have a few very strange children who LOVE cold popcorn. I think they're weird, too, but whatever makes them happy.)

We ended up staying out past midnight, but we got home safe & sound and then the Mr & I went straight to sleep because we're lame and don't stay up all that late (usually) anymore.

But our boy got a special night so hooray!

Happy Birthday to my Little Star ><

The first box.

I was rearranging the boxes in the garage (yes, again!) and I came across the very first box I packed before I realized we were moving. Way back when, probably even around this time, I was sick of how [dangerously] messy the garage was, and I set about getting it cleaned up. I had put a few things in a box to set aside and decide if I was keeping them or getting rid of them because they certainly weren't going to stay in the garage! There was a few boxes like that (eight, if I remember correctly) and I just had them in boxes while I organized things. I got about 1/4th the way through the garage when we got the notice that because our landlords didn't feel like they needed to pay property taxes (for the past four years!!!) that we needed to move off the premises by October. At first we attempted to pay the back taxes ourselves, but the landlords wouldn't let us. Let me rephrase that....they'd let us pay the property taxes, but not to the courthouse, they wanted us to give THEM the money. Yet we had been paying them money for the past four years and they couldn't seem to use any of that to pay off the back taxes.

So we were done. Seven years and tens of thousands of dollars down the drain and we had had enough. So we started looking for a new place to live. Then like a gift from Heaven, one of my husband's friends posted a listing of a house on Facebook. We went to look at it and we liked it instantly. It was in our modest price range and it fit all our kids and pets and it had good neighbors and it was still in the school district! Everything happened fast after that, but not fast enough! I won't lie and say it all went perfectly, but overall it went pretty smoothly, and once we had everything in order we managed to get moved in just over two weeks.

I looked at what was accidentally the first box packed and all those memories came rushing back. It was a stressful but exciting time.

I think back and realize how awesome our decision was, because I don't think we'd be nearly this happy if we had ended up trying to get our old property.

Of course, here I am, once again cleaning up a mess in the garage LOL.

Wet

So it rained for 30 hours straight. We have a sump-pump which helps keep water out of our basement, but my husband didn't tell me I was supposed to check it every once and a while and it sucked up a sock that came from WHO KNOWS WHERE and it burned up and died. I had no idea until I went downstairs and found water up over my ankle.

Well, shit.

That blue tub floating over the dog toy is the dog's food container. The bone is also floating, along with the laundry baskets and the old laundry detergent container lol.

My husband has since got a temporary pump and we have flooded our street emptying our basement, but there's still an inch of water down there. Luckily the water didn't rise up enough to get to the books on my bookshelf, and now I know I need to periodically check my sump-pump to ensure it's survival. You know, whenever we can afford to buy a new one......

This has been a very short week money-wise, and it's not looking to get any better for the next few weeks. We have a lot of bills due (including, ironically, the water bill). Gonna be an interesting couple of weeks. Without a sump-pump I cannot do laundry, as the washing machine isn't hooked up to a drain. It dumps into a little well which is emptied by the sump-pump. So there's that. I'm taking bets on how long it takes for the kids to run out of clothes LOL. They don't have school, so they can wear whatever they want. We still have our long-sleeves and winter pants out so with the air conditioning we should be good LMBO.

So anyway....I get some stress for the first time since we moved to our wonderful house in our wonderful little town. The first stress in the past 8 or 9 months.....I'll live. :)