Filling in the Trenches

I love this picture of Ardell driving the tractor.  After hours and hours, all of the sprinklers are in place.  Matt's tractor has come in handy because he's used it to cover up most of the trenches.  And he's using his tractor to do a rough leveling job.

Tanner loves to ride the tractor with Matt.

Tanner with Lizzy and Sophie

Tanner loves to pester Sophie but he also loves to snuggle with her.  Sophie has decided that she likes Tanner's bed.  I'll find her sleeping on his bed early in the morning.

Sophie is such a spoiled dog!!! I can't believe that we let her sleep on our beds!!!

Our sweet little Lizzy is looking really old.  Since Mom and Dad brought the four wheelers up, she likes to sleep on the back seat.  She curls up in a little ball.  Tanner likes to go out to the garage and pet her.

McKenna's Shower

McKenna is getting married in a couple of weeks.  So Tiffani and Amanda threw together a bridal shower for McKenna from the Minnesota girls.  Amanda hosted at her house.  Everyone contributed to the meal.  We had soups with bread and fruit and cookies.  We gave McKenna the vacuum that she registered for.  She was very appreciative!  It was so fun to spend the afternoon together.  I love these ladies so much!  They have been such a wonderful blessing in my life.  

Chase's Wisdom Teeth

Chase's wisdom teeth have started to come through.  We were hoping to take them out during the summer but one of his wisdom teeth was coming in slanted.  It was causing "pericoronitis" which means the wisdom tooth is partially erupted but the other section of it can't break through the gum line because of the slant.  Infection builds up under the gum where it can't break through.  Chase was in a lot of pain with it.  It hurt him to eat.  I took him in to our awesome dentist.  He felt like they would be easy to remove and he could take them out the next week.  So we went ahead with it.  That morning, Chase had to take a "relaxer" 30 minutes before.  I was upstairs getting ready.  When I was ready to go with Tanner, I called down to Chase a couple of times.  I didn't hear a response.  I got a little bugged but then I remember that he'd taken the medication.  I went downstairs to the exercise room and Chase was on the floor next to the bean bag.  He was so drugged he couldn't stand up by himself and his speech was slurred.  I had to help him up and help him walk to the car.  He was really goofy!  Dr. G only does wisdom teeth on Fridays.  He does conscious sedation with it and doesn't have any other patients during that time.  They had a continuous pulse oximeter on him that also showed his heart rate and they were checking his blood pressure every 5 minutes so that made me feel better.  (I had mine taken out at an oral surgeons office).  Everything went really well!  Dr. G had to give Chase some fentanyl to help sedate him because Chase kept trying to hit away Dr G's hands.  Chase was a little slow to wake up because of the fentanyl.   The procedure took about an hour.  I talked to Dr G's cute wife the whole time and got caught up with her.  I love their family!  Dr. G kept asking Chase who his girlfriend is.  But Chase wouldn't say anything!

When I got Chase home, I had him sleep in my bed so I could keep an eye on him.  A couple of hours later he woke up in a panic.  He looked at the clock and said "Mom! We've missed by appointment!  We forgot to go get my teeth out!"  I told him that it was all done.  At first he didn't believe me but then I finally convinced him.  He was cracking me up!  He slept a lot the first day and lived on smoothies and pace popsicles for several days.  He went back to school on Wednesday to get caught up on his homework so he could work on everything during fall break.  His teachers were great to work with the situation.

A couple of days after the procedure, I went downstairs to check on Chase and found him and Tanner asleep in the bean bags.  Chase didn't eat solid food for almost a week.  He didn't even like to eat ramen because he said it hurt to move his jaw.  So smoothies, milkshakes and popsicles were his main thing for about 5 days.  Chase was so tough!  He didn't like how the heavy pain medicine made him feel so he stuck with Tylenol and ibuprofen.  He rotated with the heating pad and ice packs on his face.  He didn't get too swollen in his face.  I'm so glad it's done!

Bridger's Soccer Team Captain

Bridger's had a couple of kids on his soccer team be mean to him.  One of the kids was walking behind Bridger at school and said "raise your hand if you belong to the I hate Bridger club."  Sweet Bridger didn't even acknowledge him and just kept walking.  (I wanted him to turn around and punch the daylights out of him.) His soccer team has had some issues with the kids getting along.  Bridger was been fighting back a little.  So the two coaches decided that they wanted the kids to vote for a team captain at each game to lead the kids.  Bridger was voted to be the first captain!!!!  I thought it was sweet revenge to that punk kid!  When they posted the results, Matt said "look who belongs to the I hate Bridger club now!"  I'm so proud of Bridger for rising above it and not punching the kids lights out.

Dishwasher Flood!!!

We woke up conference Sunday morning at 9:30 to Chase coming into our room and saying "there's water every where!!!"  Matt and I jumped out of bed and ran to the kitchen.  Water was spewing out of the bottom of the dishwasher.  There was water all over the kitchen floor, half into the dining room, all through the mudroom, pantry and halfway in the laundry room.  We went downstairs and the ceiling was pouring rain in the kitchenette and theater room!  Parts of the ceiling were already falling in.  The couches were soaked with water.  The cup holders were overflowing with water.  I called Katie B to see if her husband was home because he's a plumber.  He wasn't home but she showed up 20 minutes later with fans and another shop vac.  Luckily Matt figured out how to shut the water off.  We started sucking up the water upstairs first.  I immediately called Mylissa and started crying.  I kept saying "it's ruined!!!"  She told me to call the insurance right away and start the process.  This wasn't a job for us to tackle because there was so much damage.  Then I called Jen and she came right over.  Mylissa called Mom and Dad and they headed up.  We sucked up the water upstairs but then it kept coming out from underneath the island.  We had a couple of shop vacs going downstairs.  We had emptied them each four times by the time the disaster crew showed up.  They sucked up an additional 22 galloons.  They couldn't believe how much water we had sucked up so quickly.  We were so blessed to have such amazing help!!!

Some of the cabinets in the kitchen were already splitting and swollen.  It made me cry to see my beautiful kitchen cabinets damaged by the water.  

Water was underneath the speakers at the front of the theater.  Water was pouring out of the projector. Bridger's iPad was almost submerged in water that had called on the couch cushion.  The TV remotes were wet and the xbox controllers were wet.

Water leaked into the kitchenette and theater room cabinets.  We took everything out as quickly as possible.  We were throwing things into baskets.

Water leaked from the upstairs down through the sports court.  Luckily we don't have a finished floor so it was just the concrete that got wet.  We didn't have too much cleaning up in the sports court.  Water even leaked into the cold storage room.  Luckily all we had to do was suck up the water.  We didn't have to move everything out.  The water leaked in down the walls.

After the disaster company got the rest of the water cleaned up, they started with the fans and the dehumidifier.  The goal was to keep the damaged areas at 100 degrees to try to dry up things.  The main thing was to heat the floor boards.  Luckily after four days of a crazy hot house, they turned them off and felt like the floor board was ok.  Luckily we did tile floor and not hard wood floors.  The tile floor never cracked so we think we're ok.  The crew came in the next day on Monday and started to tear out everything.  They ripped out everything in the kitchenette and theater room down to the framing.

While they were taking things out, they found black mold around the kitchenette sink and dishwasher.  Our awesome plumber didn't do another right and it looks like it's been slowing leaking there!  I don't have one nice thing to say about our plumber!!!!!  The insurance and another plumber came out and looked at the dishwasher.  They agreed that he didn't put the parts on correctly and that's why it came apart.  They were surprised that it had lasted this long.  But of course it's one week after our year mark so it's not covered under our warranty with our builder.

They moved everything into the sports court room.  It's nice to have that space but now the boys can't use it to practice.  We're hoping that they can save the cabinets.

The disaster crew put up a plastic wall separating the family room from the disaster area.  We're hoping it will help to keep it semi contained.  We joke that our house looks like a haunted house.

The insulation upstairs behind my cabinets got wet.  Instead of ripping out the cabinets they cut holes in the sheet rocks to try to dry out the insulation.

Sweet Tiff and her mom brought us a delicious dinner a couple of days later.  I loved her card!  I was without a dishwasher for a couple of weeks.  The sink was taken apart so I didn't have that for almost a week.  Luckily we used the laundry room sink to wash dishes.  I had cabinet drawers and kitchen stuff scattered all through the house.  I felt like we were living in chaos for a few weeks.

I think they ended up with 26 fans and 2 big dehumidifiers.