Wading Pool?

When my kids first saw the downstairs they were thrilled. They thought Porter and I had made them an indoor wading pool. The first thing they did was strip down to their underwear. They were running and jumping and having the time of their life. This picture is of Brynlie on her boat. She found a piece of particle board and two screwdrivers as paddles and she was trying to row herself around. Didn't work, but she still had fun. Porter and I spent most of the day yesterday trying to clean up the water. It took us several hours to get things organized and then Porter started to use our big wet vac to get the water up. He cleaned up about 70-80 gallons just with the vacuum and had to haul that outside to dump. The girls were trying to help us sweep some of the water towards the drain, but we couldn't put too much down the drain because our septic system wouldn't be able to handle it because the ground is already so wet outside.

We also had a bunch of carpet scraps that we had laid down so the girls would have somewhere to play down there and all of those were soaked so Porter had to hang all those up so they could dry. After many hours we finally got it to where we thought the rest of the water would just evaporate and we would be done with this mess. We had set up two large fans to help it along. Later that night we went down to see if this had helped and most of the water was back. It had rained a bunch last night and I guess the water had no where to go again but in our basement so we are back to square one. Our whole house just stinks. The new house smell has gone and has been replaced with a musty wet gross smell. I'm really just sad. The girls ended up getting coughs and runny noses. I don't know if their cold was hurried along by playing in the cold water in their underwear or not, but I'm not letting them play in the water again.

Bad Luck

This week has definitely been a week of bad luck. To start off the week our 65 inch big screen TV broke. It won't even turn on. We didn't really have the money to go and buy a new TV but fixing our old one would have cost just as much as buying a new one. So we go to Best Buy and reluctantly buy a new one. Then they tell us it isn't in stock and it would take a week to get it here. Sad to say but I seriously can't live without the Bachelor and American Idol, so we moved the little TV from our bedroom to the living room so I could get my fix of TV. That wasn't the worst of our luck. Last night I noticed that our pump in the basement kept going off and it was loud enough the girls kept waking up and telling me they kept hearing scary noises. I usually never go in the basement unless I need something down there, so instead of investigating I call Porter at work and ask him if the pump is supposed to be going on and off like that since it had never gone off before. He told me to go down and look and this is what I saw. This isn't just a shiny floor it's about 1 inch of water covering the entire basement. The white spots aren't dry spots like it looks it's old dry paint under the water. Thankfully I had transferred most of our things to Rubbermaid bins. There were a few things still in cardboard boxes, like pictures and clothes for the D.I. The pictures didn't get ruined too bad, they'll just be a little wavy, but several picture frames and albums will have to be garbage. I had moved our big LoveSac upstairs for Super Bowl and just a few days ago I decided to move it downstairs because it's so big it took up a lot of the living room. Unfortunately that got soaked. I hope it dries and doesn't become moldy that thing was like $600 not including the cover or the footstool we got with it. I was really ticked last night thinking this was a new house and things like this weren't supposed to happen. Porter told me it was because we haven't put up rain gutters yet and we don't have a yard in and since we've had a big winter and it rained a lot recently this was bound to happen. I guess it happened to his family when he was little in their old house . Still I had no idea this could happen, it's a good thing we didn't finish the basement. I guess we'll just have to wait a few years before finishing it and see if rain gutters and putting grass in will stop this from happening again. Thankfully my father-in-law came over and helped me. We had to get stuff off the ground in case it got deeper. We had moved our big screen downstairs earlier this week and had to get that off the ground. We also had a fridge and our closet doors are still down there, all of our baby stuff like the crib and car seats and stuff had to be moved off the ground. I just hope it won't take forever to dry out and I hope we don't get mold. Our whole house smells like wet cardboard and this all really sucks!

Valentines Day

For Valentines Day this year Porter and I decided instead of trying to find a babysitter we would just celebrate with the girls. The girls got new pajamas for Valentines so we got them in the bath so they could put on their new pajamas, then Porter made us a really good steak dinner. The girls only ate their broccoli and a little bit of their potatoes and then had to go play. After we finished eating we all sat down to watch Madagascar 2 and around 9 o'clock Rylie announced she was too tired to finish the movie and wanted to go to bed. The girls went to bed and Porter and I had the rest of the night to ourselves. He got me two really nice plants as my gift since I have been wanting real plants and just never get around to buying them. It was a good Valentines Day because both Porter and I agreed we would rather spend time with our kids and stay at home than go out and spend money.

My Husband

Since it's Valentines Day I thought I'd post about my husband Porter and why I love him. He is the type of husband I always dreamed of having. Don't get me wrong it's not always perfect, but pretty close. Porter is a great dad! I never have to worry about leaving the kids with him because he never needs instructions he just knows how to take care of them. He always makes time to play with them and he loves them so much. They are big time daddy's girls and love him so much.

Porter always knows how to make me laugh. I honestly can never stay mad at him. He is so easy going and so much fun to be around. He pretty much never gets angry. He is always so calm and patient with me and the girls, even when one of us is throwing a fit. He is such a selfless person. He works a lot of hours and even works overtime so I can stay home with the kids and we can have all that we need, even if that means he goes without. Another thing that I love about Porter is that he loves me unconditionally. I know I can be crazy at times and hard to live with and have kind of let myself go, but I never have to worry about Porter. He loves me no matter what and makes me feel good about myself when I'm having a bad day. I know this whole post is kind of mushy, but I really do have that good of a husband and sometimes I have to remind myself of that. I love Porter very much and I love having him in my life.

Hopefully he's not to embarrassed about some of the pictures and things I've written about him. He usually doesn't like me to blog about him and he for sure doesn't like me to post pictures of him. But too bad, it's Valentines and I didn't get him anything but a card so I thought I'd at least try to show him that I really do love and care about him.

Valentine Cookies

This year for Valentines Day the girls and I decided to make sugar cookies. The girls always love to help make anything, especially cookies. I usually roll out my sugar cookies too thin and they end up crunchy so this time I rolled them out thick and when I baked them they were so big and puffy . Some of them were thicker than the Grandma's pink sugar cookies you buy in the store. Anyway they turned out really good but I let the girls frost them and put sprinkles on them. They would put a little bit of frosting and then dump a ton of sprinkles on the cookie. I started with two full bottles of sprinkles and ended with less than a fourth in each bottle. So even though the cookies were big and moist they were really crunchy when you bit into them because of all the sprinkles. The girls had fun though and I had a huge mess to clean up.

Snow Day with Dad

Ugh! It snowed again. I am so ready for the snow to be gone. Actually I don't mind if it stays for a while, I just don't want any more. The girls however have been waiting for it to snow for a while. They always want to go outside but our yard is a huge mud pit. I haven't been letting them out because they love to play on the big hill of dirt we still have in our front yard and they come in and then I have to wash everything including their boots which isn't easy. So yesterday it finally snowed and covered up all the mud. I really don't like the cold and I really don't like playing in the snow so thankfully it was Porter's day off and he took the girls outside to play.
My in-laws dog Foxy had to come and join in on the fun. Any time my kids are out Foxy loves to come over and play and my girls love it too.

The girls would climb up this little hill in our backyard and then tube down it. They had a lot of fun. They were out there quite a long time. Usually they get cold and come inside after twenty minutes but they stayed out over an hour. Which was a nice break for me. I love that Porter is such a good dad and will take them out and play with them and he enjoys it. I love my kids but snow is definatly not my thing.

Super Bowl Party

Sunday we had a Super Bowl party because if anyone knows Porter, they know he is obsessed with football, the Steelers in particular. He was excited that they made the Super Bowl. At first he wanted me to decorate the house in Steelers colors and footballs and stuff, but when we went to the party store they were all out of black and yellow colors. Good news for me because I didn't really want to decorate. We had a bunch of his family come over and had lots of food and watched the game. It was a really close game and a bunch of times Porter was a little tense. I was really glad when the Steelers won, it made for a more pleasant night. I think everyone that came had fun. I myself am not a football fan, but because I love my husband I have started rooting for the Steelers and letting him buy me and the girls Steelers gear.