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!

They Said What?!

For those of you who are not on Facebook, you've missed out on some of my "quote of the day" posts (something said by one of the girls).  I decided to make a compilation of these quotes for you.

"Will you scratch my itchy butt?" - Kaycie

"but i've been 4 for a long, long time! i want to be 5!" - Janae

"I love my uncle Tyler! I love my uncle Tyler! I love Tyler!"  - Janae

"i had lots and lots of fun but i was too sad to play. i missed you." - Janae

"mommy, you need to call me Cinderella" - Kaycie

"I like all my new friends!" - Janae - she's referring to all the kids at preschool - the ones she hasn't even met yet :o)

"they're so good I could kick myself!" - Allyson

"I may be short, but I'm smart and in the 2nd grade." - Allyson - she also went on to say that she's the shortest one in her class, but then again, she's always been :o)

Our Friday Night Adventure

At the beginning of Christmas break, Allyson brought home a paper from a local bowling alley that gave every school aged child one free game of bowling each day during their vacation.  The girls had been practically begging the whole break to go bowling and since it expired on Friday, we decided to take advantage of it.

The alley was busier than I expected it to be, but it appeared a lot of families were doing the exact same thing we were.  One great thing was that when we were at the desk, the attendant let me fill out cards for Janae and Kaycie and they too got free games :o)  Our total price for bowling 2 games each plus shoe rental was $12.00!  Can't beat that!!

Normally you just pay for shoe rental first then pay at the end for how many games you bowl, but this time we had to tell them how many games we were going to bowl.  Since we've only been bowling once before and that was at Allyson's birthday last year, we weren't quite sure how many, so Rodney said two games.  It ended up that one game would have been plenty.  We now know that it takes right at about one hour for all of us to bowl one game - meaning we were there for two hours :o)

Here are just a few pictures.

Allyson and Janae watching me help Kaycie bowl.

Janae's turn.  Rodney was helping her for a little while, but it didn't take long before Janae did not want any help at all.

 Allyson's turn.  I think this was her highlight of the break.  She also told me that bowling is her favorite sport.

Room Rearranging (again)

For Christmas we got the girls a 4' x 4' tree play tent.  I admit it ended up being slightly bigger than we were thinking, but the girls love it!  After we first set it up, we put it in a corner in the living room, but I thought it best if we could move it into the play room.  In order to do that, we needed to rearrange and reduce what was already in there.  So this morning I started going through all the books and puzzles pulling out the more baby/younger child ones.  I also went through the toy box and threw away a lot of duplicate fast food toys and little odds and ends.  I was quite impressed how much room and how clean it turned out :o)

When Rodney got home from work and after I returned home from getting groceries, the whole process of rearranging began.  Here are some pics of the new play room.

The new play tent.  They already decorated it for Christmas - see the garland? :o)

Notice those two FULL shelves of games!

Do you think the girls like the tent?

And just last night Allyson was asking about putting the bunk beds back together again.  We told her it was a good possibility but if we do, then we don't want them telling us that no one wants to sleep in the top bunk anymore (that's why we took them apart in the first place).  They all agreed to that, so since Rodney was home early and we were already rearranging the play room, the girls' room was next.

It is put back pretty much the same way as before, and there is sooo much room now!  I love it!!!  Not looking forward to changing sheets on the top bunk again, but I will survive :o)

I'm thinking that the rotating of beds may still have to continue, although it will rotate only between Allyson and Janae for the top bunk and Kaycie and whoever will rotate from the bottom bunk and the other bed.   Not time for Kaycie to be sleeping on the top bunk yet.