Stuff

Allyson really likes to draw and for a second grader, I think she does real well.  Here is a picture she put on her door last night.  Obviously she's still learning how to spell, but does a fairly good job at sounding out the words :o)

At the beginning of the year, Allyson's teacher was real excited about the new math curriculum the school was going to use this year.  From what she's brought home for homework, I just don't see what's wrong with how we learned math way back when.  But I guess if Allyson is understanding it and is doing well at it, then that's the most important thing.  Here is a paper I found on her dresser a few weeks back.  This was just something she did on her own.  (sorry about the pic being turned - not sure why the blog switched it.)  She got the correct answers, but how?  :o\

Happy Sant Patsick Day!

Sun Fun

It was so nice to be able to tell th girls today to go out and play!

It looks like Janae has done lost her bike :o)  Kaycie started riding it the other day, and this was actually the first time I saw her do it.  Amazing!  Looks like Janae needs a new bike to ride.  And she probably really does too because when she rides this bike, she's too big!  Must have grown over the winter :o)

Janae having fun pulling her wagon.

A Room Of Her Own

On Saturday Allyson finally got what she's been asking for . . . to have her own room.  Off and on she'd ask to have her own room, but she would always change her mind.  This time, however, she was ready to do it.  So around 2pm we started this "major" move and we were finally done a little after 5pm.

We decided that we should totally empty the playroom first and then start moving items in.  Here is our empty room.

You don't realize sometimes how much stuff you have until you are trying to rearrange everything and getting it to all fit again!  We did manage to eliminate the changing table which was being utilize to hold some puzzles and toys, so that was nice.

Here is Allyson's new room.

Aunt Amy was wanting to get rid of her desk and asked if Allyson would want it.  What perfect timing!  A great fit in the room plus a place to store all of her art supplies.  I told Allyson that those supplies are to stay there.  She's been known to move them all over the house.

Here is Janae and Kaycie's "new" room.  We decided to move the bunk beds to give them something new as well.  We also told them that the bunk beds had to stay because we needed all the room we could get.  I'm not totally sure Janae liked that idea, but we told her she could sleep with Kaycie sometimes, and she still likes to sleep on the floor (don't ask me why but she does!).

And as a side note, we don't see Allyson quite as much.  I do believe she loves her room, so that's where you now find her - in her room with the door closed :o)

Birthday Girl

This past Friday at preschool, Janae got to celebrate her 5th birthday.  Here are a few pictures (that only took a matter of minutes to upload compared to probably 30 - 45 minutes).

One of the two tables of children.  They are waiting to begin.

Putting her name on the February Birthday Cake.

Blowing out her candles on the fake cake :o)

After the birthday snack of chocolate cupcakes, the kids got into a circle and Miss Jane and Janae got to talk about getting bigger.  I was to bring along several pictures of Janae as a baby so the kids could see how much she's grown.

Not only was Friday Janae's birthday snack day, she was also line leader and they had a field trip to the fire station.  Definitely a fun day for the birthday girl!



We Are Finally in the 21st Century!

The Year 2012 has brought a lot of changes in the Schrock household, and we are only just ending the second month!  The majority of the changes are in the technology of the house.

The first small thing that happened is that I finally was forced to either sign up with AT & T or find another cell phone carrier.  I had been with Centennial Wireless for years and since AT & T bought Centennial a year or so ago, I knew this day was coming.  I decided to stay with AT & T, but with this I had to sign up with a new contract - a contract that actually has long distance.  Yes, the plan I originally had was sooo old, I didn't even have long distance on it!  (I was only paying approx. $26/month)  But I really didn't need it, so it didn't bother me.  One thing I don't have is texting, so please don't text me :o)

The next huge thing is that we finally got a flat screen TV.  This was not in the plans as of yet, but when your hubby accidentally breaks the one you have, you end up doing what you've got to do :o)   In a nutshell, Rodney went to turn off the TV by pushing the button on the TV itself and the button broke.  The remote still turned it off and on, so I wasn't concerned.  He decided that he wanted to fix it, so he took off the outer case.  When he was looking for the button (he was on the opposite side of the button), he had to lean around the back of the TV.  I saw it happen and he barely touched the circuit board on the back, but regardless, it broke in two.  We had sound but no picture.   A couple days later we finally had our new 32" flat screen!  Awesome picture!

Now the last huge thing is FINALLY getting DSL!!!!  We were always under the assumption that we could never get DSL (being told "not available" by every carrier's website) and wireless high speed would be the only option.  After complaining on Facebook on how extra slow our internet has been lately, a friend suggested that we actually call the companies to see what they say.  I decided to call our home phone provider and was quite shocked to discover that yes we could get DSL and it was on a special too!  The only bad part was that we had to wait a week before they could come out and install it, but I wasn't going to complain too much - we were getting high speed!!!!  So as of yesterday at approximatley 12:45pm, we are going gang busters online :o)  I'm loving the fact I can finally watch videos, don't have to wait 20 minutes for some emails to load, upload photos in a flash, and just overall not wait so long sitting at the computer waiting for it to do its thing!

The Before and After

Without Rodney knowing, I took it upon myself this afternoon to put the basement back in order, and I actually got it done! :o)

Here are the before pictures:

Here are the after pictures:

We still need to reapply the border, but that's it!  I didn't want to wait until we got that done before taking pictures, so just use your imagination to do some visualization :o)

We took down the border in the bedroom area as there were sections of it that just weren't staying up anymore, so that involved a bit more work of taking it down and additional painting.

Doesn't it look good?!  Both Rodney and I are happy with the way they turned out and are extremely glad that this project is 95% complete.  As I mentioned earlier, we still need to hang the missing border, Rodney needs to install the ladders inside of the window wells, and come spring/summer time we'll need to landscape outside.  It feels soooo good to have our basement clean and usuable again!

What A Mess But Oh So Worth It In The End (I Hope)

After talking about doing this since we bought the house exactly 10 years ago, we finally got our two egress windows put in the basement.

Rodney taking off the drywall.

Rodney cutting the inside basement wall.  Boy was it DUSTY!  The saw is a special inside saw with a vacuum attachment to avoid being so dusty, but it didn't seem to work too well.  Glad we put up a barrier so all the dust stayed somewhat contained to the work area.

A couple of co-workers helped out.  Here is one digging out the side of the house so they could cut the outside basement wall.

Daylight!

The forms are set for the concrete window wells to be poured.

Pouring the walls.

Isn't the ground suppose to be frozen this time of year?!  UGH!!

Windows are now installed and forms removed from the walls.  Looking good :o)

The somewhat finished look on the outside.  Notice the long patch of dirt heading out to the road?  Rodney had the company bring in a dump truck to haul away a lot of the dirt.  Once they were done loading the dirt, it was sooo overloaded, the truck was majorly stuck!  Took some time to get it out and talk about ruts and a mess!  They didn't do too bad of a job filling in and smoothing out the yard though.

Once we get the basement walls finished (drywall, mud/sanded and painted), I will post a before and after pic.  Glad this project is almost done!