January 2013

When did this happen? Proof of how time flies. Love Andrew’s buzz cut, his souvenir from going to football camp over the summer- a buzz cut for his school picture! It’s tradition for all of the football players to shave their heads at camp. I can’t say that I like Andrew’s hair that short either. He looks like he wants to kill someone. And let’s not even get into how Andrew wore the same shirt for school photos this year as last year. It seems like he wants everyone to be clear that he is an American. All the kids look so old. And who agrees that if Karli and Chase could easily pass for twins? I tell Karli all the time if she chopped her hair off she would look exactly like Chase.

I also never shared these photos from the football season. January appears to be the month of organization for me, literally. So don’t mind me while I catch up on some posts. I love Chase in his football photo, what a little stud.

(Sports Photos taken by GSK Creations)

It never fails whenever I attempt a project around the house something always go wrong. The kids bathroom needed painted…remember it was on my list? While I was preparing the bathroom for painting I had the brainy idea of fixing their faucet. A couple of months ago Ken had to replace the seal on one of the knobs because water kept leaking. When he put the faucet back together he put the knobs on the wrong way and you had to turn the handle the opposite way to turn the water on and off. It drove me crazy and I rarely even used the faucet in that bathroom. So you know where this is going right…plumbing and me do not mix. Just ask Ken how many times I have clogged up the garbage disposal and have tried to fix it myself.

I’m pretty familiar with how to take the handles off the faucet after all I do clean the inside of them every year or so. What? Don’t tell me you do yours more often than that. After I got the handles off I used this set of pliers that came with my “girl” tool set that I have had since my “single mom” years. See house repairs and I go way back, oh the stories I could tell. As I slowly loosened the nut around the faucet it suddenly popped off and water was spraying around the bathroom like a geyser. I’m not sure exactly what it looked like because I had to close my eyes it was spraying that hard. Luckily I knew where and how to turn the water off pretty quickly under the vanity. WHY I didn’t turn it off BEFORE I started playing around with the faucet is still a great question. The answer is honestly I didn’t know you had to. My explanation would be I didn’t think water came up to the faucet, you know wherever it comes from, UNTIL you turned the faucet on. How was I supposed to know that water is sitting there just waiting for you to turn the knob so it could come out? This is why I should not being doing anything with plumbing.

Cleaning up the mess wasn’t too bad. Karli and Chase had heard the loud pop and came running and I had told them to grab every towel they could find. They each grabbed about 5 towels each and we had it sopped up in no time. This included the water all over the ceiling as well. That was quite the experience.

I also can’t leave out the other brilliant idea I had in Blake and Chase’s bedroom. I wanted to install some new shelves because their trophies and memorabilia were no longer fitting on the two small shelves they currently had. Those shelves needed to be moved to another spot and I had some larger shelves laying around that I was going to use. After I got everything ready I had Ken patch all of my holes with whatever that dry wall goop is called. I let is dry and then I touched up all the spots with light blue paint. I figured while I was on a roll I would go ahead and touch up all the spots on their wall that needed touched up. I’ve have done this for years in all the rooms in our house. The light blue paint dried perfectly fine. As for the darker blue, not so much. It looks terrible!! So terrible I am going to have to paint the entire room. I guess the paint is no longer any good or maybe the paint on their walls faded. Who knows. Thankfully the dark blue color is only on half of their room. I’m so frustrated because the plan is probably next summer when Andrew goes away to college to paint the entire bedroom a different color because Chase will be moving into Andrew’s room and and all the bedrooms will be getting new carpet. Did I mention how much I despise painting?

At least their bedroom looks nice and organized now. I even installed one of Ken’s bulletin boards that he doesn’t use above Chase’s bed because he is always taping things to the wall. I hung those two plaques like that for a reason. One if a Dan Marino football card and the other is a wrestling award. I told Chase I am making room for more wrestling awards that he will be getting this year. Hint hint…and he liked that idea.

Lesson learned: Turn off the water underneath before messing with plumbing. Or even better, leave the plumbing to Ken.

Don’t even ask about electrical. One time I thought I could switch the dimmer switch in our bathroom from above our sinks to the light above our garden tub. I’ve seen the inside of a light switch before…just a couple of wires to connect. How hard could it be right? Well I screwed it up so much Ken couldn’t even fix it we had to have a friend who is an electrician come fix it. Hey at least I am independent and don’t make long Honey Do Lists for Ken all the time. However I think I create even more work for him the way I mess things up!