Flood Update: Part 6

~Thursday (January 27)~

At 9:30 a.m., Mr. J and Mr. L arrive to work. Mr. L finishes the second and final coat of paint on the blue wall and Mr. J textures the guest room walls.



Mr. L finishes the second coat of paint on our blue walls.



Mr. J textures the walls in the spare room.



At 3:00 p.m., Mr. J leaves early, and Mr. L begins painting the stairwell. Once he is within earshot, Josiah kept him entertained with a steady stream of conversation! J They talked about everything from music, to Christmas, to “Toy Story 3,” to “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.”  Mr. L mentions that his favorite part of the book is when Aslan turns Eustace back into a boy (he was previously a dragon) because it “reminds [him] of what Jesus does in our hearts, and how He changes us.” I thought that was so cool! We have been very blessed to have Christian, homeschooling workers. They have to spend lengthy amounts of time in our house and with our family, and it is a blessing to have them be fellow believers!



Mr. L paints the stairwell while Mikey plays peek-a-boo.



I chatted with Mr. L a bit and find out that he has four children, and that his wife was homeschooled growing up. It’s not very often that you find second-generation homeschooling families. Lord willing, I will be a second-generation homeschooler one day! I want my children to experience all the blessings of home education!

~Friday (January 28)~

Mr. L arrives early at 8:30 a.m. to start work. He finishes painting the ceiling at the bottom of the stairwell, and paints a yellow base coat in the guest room. It looks so much brighter in there!



Finally, the bottom part of our stairwell has real paint on it! (We think that it only had a primer coat on it previously. The wood bled through and it did not look good at all! This looks so much better)



The spare room with the yellow base coat. The final color won’t be this bright!



Mr. A his wife are supposed to be arriving with carpet cleaning equipment later this afternoon. At 1:00 p.m., Daddy arrives to work from home, so that he can meet with Mr. A. We put back all of the aviation pictures and missions mementos in the stairwell. One part of the house is finally finished!



Our stairwell after it was “put together” again. (It’s not really that dark, but the camera focused on the light and made the rest of the picture dark.)



At 3:00 p.m., Mr. L gets a call from Mr. A. Unfortunately, they can’t make it because their schedule filled up too much. So the carpets can’t be cleaned today after all. He will call Dad tomorrow and talk details with him. So Mr. L gets to leave early and spend more time with his family!

. . . To be continued. . .

 

McShock

It’s a long and interesting story, and it started here…

Before I tell it, here’s a question for you…which of the cups above is the larger one?  Without going to any websites, can you tell?

Come back next week, for a story that could change your life.  It changed ours.

(posted by Betsy)

Look What I've Been Reading. . .

Since receiving this book for Christmas, I have been getting very excited for gardening season to begin! When I look outside at the mountains of snow, I can think that at least my garden will be good and wet this spring. J

But I have a question for my readers! What gardening/seed catalogues would you recommend? I know there are several avid vegetable gardeners who read my blog, and I would love any advice you have to offer or books you would recommend. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in becoming more self-sufficient on a small budget and limited space. As you can see, I have already marked it up with new ideas for my organic garden!

Please leave me a comment!

The Best

Safely through another week,

God has brought us on our way;

Let us now a blessing seek,

On th’ approaching Sabbath-day:

Day of all the week the best,

Emblem of eternal rest.

--John Newton, Olney Hymns, 1774

(posted by Betsy)

Flood Update: Part 5

~Monday (January 24)~

At 10:00 a.m., Mr. A comes by to talk with Dad extensively about the restoration. Dad spends close to 2 hours going over all the details with him and discussing what the insurance will and will not cover. I thought he was going to start fixing things today, but he is supposed to come back tomorrow to start on the basement. Yeah!

~Tuesday (January 25)~

Around 10:30 a.m., Mr. J arrives to work. Mr. A drops by for a bit to work as well. They move everything out of the guest room and pile it into the rec-room. It’s quite full in there!



Our rec-room filled up with furniture!



Another view of the over-stuffed rec-room.



At noon, Mr. A leaves and Mr. J keeps working. He rips out the remaining ceiling in the guest room and then brings in a panel lifter and puts the new ceiling drywall in place.



The guest room after the drywall and ceiling had been put in.



The panel lifter. I wish I could have seen this in action!

  

At 5:30 p.m., Dad arrives home from work while we’re at worship dance and goes down to talk with Mr. J. It turns out he is listening to K-love on his radio! (K-love is a local Christian contemporary music station.) It is a real blessing to have good music and edifying language going on around our workers!

All of Mr. J’s tools neatly stashed in a corner of the spare room.



~Wednesday (January 26)~

At 9:30 a.m., Mr. J and a new worker, Mr. L, arrive to begin work. Mr. L tells Mom that his family homeschools, like Mr. J’s family does! God is working in our circumstances and blessing us despite this difficulty of a flood. Mr. L finishes putting insulation in and the walls are plastered and prepped for painting.

Mr. L puts insulation in the spare room.



An “in progress” picture of the spare room being plastered.

  

At 1:00 p.m., Mom, Roma, and I leave for piano lessons. We arrive back home at 3:45p.m. to find everything removed from the stairwell, tarps down, and Mr. J painting the blue walls! He finishes the first coat and they look fabulous!

The stairwell being prepped for painting.



Mr. J works on painting one of our blue walls.



One coat down, one to go!

  

Mr. L has to leave early because they received a call about another house flood. Mr. J works until almost 6:00 p.m. and then leaves.

. . . To be continued. . .





For Our Friends in China. . .



Josiah's first international architectural endeavor—Tiananmen Square!



…Happy Chinese New Year, friends!



Flood Update: Part 4

~Thursday (January 13)~

Around 12:00 p.m., Mr. A shows up to do his daily measurements. He is very punctual, arriving 1 minute early today. Finally, everything is dry! J I am SO happy that all the “noise makers” can go! It looks like Mr. A and his company will be doing all of the restoration work. I can’t complain. He does a good job and we’re happy to support a fellow Christian. He will be coming back Monday to start work!



Mr. A put down carpet padding to make it nicer to walk on the kitchen flooring (This turned out to make a bigger mess than we bargained for!)



We enjoy a quiet afternoon. We listen to a “Selah” CD. We haven’t been able to put in a CD since the flood due to all of the noisy blowers. It seems a little too quiet in the house now! In the late afternoon, Mom talks with Mrs. F (a lady from church) on the phone about coming to discuss paint colors for the basement. She plans to come over on Saturday at 5:00 p.m. Apparently, we have authorization from the insurance company to paint the whole basement—rec room and spare bedroom. We may take advantage since it probably could use it.

~Friday (January 14)~

Finally! A good, peaceful, quiet night’s rest! I was “out like a light” and it felt good to catch up on all of the lost sleep of this past week. Today should be a pretty quiet day as we actually don’t have anybody coming over. I will enjoy it, as I believe next week reconstruction begins, and that will be a busy time!

~Saturday (January 15)~

Around 5:00 p.m., Mr. and Mrs. F arrive to talk colors. We start in the basement bedroom. Mom and Dad thought that some sort of light/New England-style yellow would look good and brighten up the room. We decide on a “cornmeal” color. I’m sure it will help that room to feel “happier!”

(Sorry for the blurriness of the pictures in this post. The basement can be rather dark at night, and the lighting in our spare room is especially poor.)



Daddy shows Mr. F the damage in the basement.



Mom and Mrs. F discuss colors for the basement bedroom.

 

Mom and Dad decide on a medium-dark blue for the wall at the bottom of the stairs and for the wall outside the bathroom. Mrs. F said it will create a dramatic entrance.

Then we walked upstairs, and Mom and Dad along with Mrs. F discussed colors for the dining room for quite some time. They decided on a dark green and a cream color. We will do the green on the bottom half and cream on the top half with a chair-rail dividing it down the middle. The reason we’re painting the dining room is because everything has to be moved out when they sand and stain the wood floor, so we thought it was a good time to strip wallpaper and paint in there. We’re going to get so much done in the next few weeks!

(The following week, not much was done at all. We tried to iron out issues with the insurance and the restoration company and get the work order finalized. Nobody came out to the house. It was a quiet week.)

. . . To be continued. . .

"When Life Hands You Snow, Make Snow Cream!"



This picture was taken in 2008, but that’s about how deep the snow is...and still coming!



Michigan is under a brilliant blizzard right now.  As I waded through snow this morning to take Mikey for his morning romp, two thoughts crossed my mind: (1) I feel like a child again, with snow above my knees, and (2) this is a perfect day for snow cream!

Folks, do not miss this chance to make a special treat with your children, or little ones that you babysit, or even just for the kid in you! Following is our favorite recipe for fast-and-easy Old-time Snow Cream. Enjoy…and stay warm!:-)

Old-Time Snow Cream

1 cup milk

½ cup sugar

Scant ½ tsp vanilla extract

About 3 quarts of CLEAN snow

In large bowl, stir together milk, sugar, and vanilla until blended.  Stir in enough snow to make snow cream to an ice cream consistency. Eat and enjoy!

Variations—you can make many substitutions to suit your taste. Try substituting canned cream instead of milk for a heavier flavor. Add chocolate syrup or instant cocoa mix for chocolate snow cream. Try adding plump raisins and cinnamon.  Or puree an overripe banana and add to the mixture.  Get creative—the sky’s the limit!

(Posted by Betsy)