His and Hers Bedroom ~ the Rest of the Story

I can't believe the response I got from almost every woman that has seen the pics of our bedroom, I didn't think it was that big of a deal, but my dd just called and said, "You didn't REALLY hang that deer head in your bedroom, did you?" Yes. I did. And it's not that bad.

To be fair to my dh, I thought I would post a picture of another corner of our bedroom, that HE has to wake up to every morning. I figure if he can stand to have all those dolly eyes staring at him, I can handle just one deer's. It's either the bedroom or the livingroom, and at the moment it doesn't really matter, there is no wall between them yet.

Wordless Wednesday #13 ~ His and Hers Bedroom

My Side

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HIS Side

Week 29 Weigh In ~ On Again...Off Again...Back and Forth

Well, we WERE online for a little while last night. Molly and I went to town so I could go to WW and then we went over to the other house to pack up some of the odds and ends still left over there. Ray and his crew met us over there and got it all in the van for me. We came home, and the cordless phones all read, "no line" and there were no lights on the "thingy" or the "do-ja-ma-hicky"! So much for reporting on my weight loss like I had promised. I did lose 3 lbs, which sounds pretty good, but the last time I weighed in, I was up 2.6! So all in all I'm a 1/4th of a lb closer to my goal weight, if that makes any sense.

Anyway, I called the phone company this morning (with my cell phone of course), and they said they would put out a trouble ticket. I gave them my cell no. and assumed someone would call be before they came out. WRONG! I decided to make a trip to the other house just before noon today, I had been there all of 10 minutes when I get a call from the repairman. He's sitting in my driveway...at the farm. So I run all the way back here with an empty vehicle. It's a good thing the gas prices have come down a bit. We're using an awful lot of gas with all these trips back and forth. We have until this weekend to get everything out of there, and we're doing okay but it's still going to take a few more trips. Last night's van-load was all of the Christmas/Easter decorations that were stored under the steps at the other house.

Ray and his DD Ruth and SIL Dan are making some progress sorting through the main garage, but there is still a small garage in back that is STUFFED with who-knows-what that needs to be sorted through. We're getting there though. I have most of my pictures on the wall here, and still have several boxes to unpack and find homes for the contents of on this end, but that can wait as long as we can get through the house.

Ruth and Dan are looking for a small apt of their own, but until they do, they're hanging out here and helping Ray out at work. Hopefully they will be able to find something right in town so that they can ride to work with him or eventually find jobs within walking distance, since they are without a vehicle at the moment too. I'm grateful for all of their help with the moving, but I'd prefer not to have 5 of us living in a one bathroom house for too long. The landlord didn't want a lot of people here either, because of concern about the septic system not being able to handle it. When we told him we had 7 kids, he wanted to know how many of them would be living here. We told him just 1, but the others would be visiting from time to time and he was okay with that.

If any of you in the local area know of an apt for rent, or possible job opportunities...or a cheap vehicle for Ruth and Dan, please contact me and I'll pass it along. Thanks.

We're Back Online...And We're WIRELESS!

This is my first blog from the "new" house. I just got the phone and internet hooked up, and it's all wireless. The phone signal actually comes from the internet thingy, I'm pretty sure that's the technichal term for it, "thingy". There is even a back-up power do-ja-ma-hicky, so that we'll have internet even if the power goes out. Cool, huh? Who knew they had such modern technology available down on the farm.

Well, I've gotta run to town and weigh in now, and then I'll go over to the old house and grab another load of stuff. The majority of our things are moved already, but there is always more STUFF, in closets and storage areas etc. What takes so long is weeding through it all, and deciding what is good STUFF, what is garage sale STUFF...and what is just plain GARBAGE.

I'll post again a little later about my weight loss. I think I did pretty good this week. I haven't had TIME to over-do this week-end, and I keep forgetting to bring my bathroom scales over here, so all I can do is hope I did okay.

Moving Right Along...

Well, we got a LOT done yesterday, thanks to some wonderful family members and friends. Thanks for your help, Mom and Dad, Ruth and Dan, Bob, Rose, Katie and Liz, and Podma and Eric!!!

We got most of our furniture and a lot of other stuff out to the farm, and actually spent our first night there last night, since that was where our beds were. We even managed to get six people to church on time this morning, in spite of the extra miles between our new home and church. Ruth and her hubby and Molly's friend all spent the night with us. I can't imagine how in the world we ever managed when I was a kid and we had 12 of us under one roof with only ONE BATHROOM, but we did.

So far, everything is going well out there. The dog is getting used to things, and seems to know that this is his new home. At first, every time we let him outside he'd try to jump in the van so he wouldn't be left behind. There are good things and bad things about living in an old farmhouse. The worst thing is that there are really no closets in the place to speak of, so we'll have to get creative as far as storing certain items. But all in all, I think it will be kinda cool.

I'm at the other house now, as we need to still go through a lot of junk and decide what to keep, throw, donate, put away for a garage sale next spring etc. I'll be packing up this computer and moving it tonight too, and then they're supposed to be transferring it and the phone service tomorrow afternoon. I'll get back to y'all then and let you know how the wireless DSL works.

The Big MOVE

Okay, here we go. We've gotten quite a few things moved over to the farmhouse already, but as I look around this one, there's still a LOT more to move. I'm not looking forward to this "moving experience" at all, but it must be done.

I actually do think we'll like it out there, I was out there for a couple of hours yesterday, and it just feels very peaceful, (even with the dead bodies hidden in the secret sealed-off room), it's even a very lovely drive out there this time of year.

The thing is, I have SO much packing and cleaning to do, that I need to get off of this computer and get going. I'm not sure how much I'll be on over the weekend, but I'll try to get on after WW on Monday to update y'all on my "progress" there. Our computer and phone system are going to be changed over to the new house sometime on Monday afternoon.

I got a call from Molly's new bus driver yesterday. It happens to be a gentleman that goes to our church. How cool is that? He said he'll be picking her up between 6:55 and 7:00AM! That will be a big change for Mo. She's used to getting on here at 7:40AM and getting home around 3:40PM. She'll have to get her butt to bed at night so she can get up a lot earlier than she has been. She'll get home at about 4PM at the farm, so that's not too bad.

I would like to invite any of my local readers to come out and help us move tomorrow, anytime you can. We'll be making trips back and forth all day, I would imagine. We'll be doing some moving on Sunday afternoon too, but it's supposed to be pretty nasty weather that day, so we want to try to get all of the furniture moved tomorrow and spend our first night there that night.

"Wordy" Wednesday ~ Farmhouse Mysteries presents: The case of the Secret Room

There is a part of our "new" house that I did not share with you all on my virtual tour post. That's because, I don't know how to get to it! In fact I hadn't even noticed it myself, and neither had my usually observant husband.



Last Friday, I went out to the farm with my dd Molly, her bff Liz, and QTpies #5 Hope-Anne, who is also a friend of theirs. We were upstairs looking out the window, (next to the white boarded up door above the laundry room addition), when Hope-Anne asked, "What room is that?", as she pointed out the window to a small dormer on an entire other room. We checked it out, and there is absolutely no way to get to this part of the house! This mystery room is above the kitchen and you can see it here with the white boarded up window, and the dormer with the satellite dish on top of it. My guess is that it was an attic at one time, that for some reason or another has been closed off, but it was pretty funny that it took an 11 year old visitor to figure out that there was a part of the house that none of us had even noticed yet. Curious, don't you think?

Happy Belated 4th Birthday, Christian!

Saturday was my grandson Christian's 4th birthday. I can't believe he's such a big boy already! Here he is sitting on his mom's lap. I made him a birthday cake, but since I wasn't able to make the 600 mile trip to see him this year, I sent it out there with Jessica's dad, who was going out there for CJ's birthday weekend. He ordered a SpongeBob Squarepants cake. This is what it looked like when I had finished decorating it: However, I couldn't get the dome to fit on it with the figurines on it, so I took them back off and sent them along with the cake. When it was reassembled, the characters had switched positions, but other than that, it looks like the cake made its way there in one piece. Here's Christian (CJ) with his birthday cake:

Here he is checking out his birthday presents us. He specifically asked for "lots of robots" so I found this transformer type robot that can either be one big or 5 smaller robots. I also sent him the new "Pirates Who Don't Do Anything" DVD which he seemed to enjoy in the theater on his 3rd birthday.

Here he is with his "lots of robots":

I wish we could have spent this birthday with him, but I was glad his mother got to spend this one with him. She is in the USAF, and was serving in Iraq over CJ's first birthday. He was with us for 5 months while she was there. I believe she did get to spend his 2nd birthday with him, but last year, she was sent to Mississippi for some training over his 3rd birthday, so we met half way and spent a weekend in a hotel with a waterpark where we had an early birthday celebration for him, so his mom could at least be a part of that. I hope she doesn't have to miss any more of his birthays, since she has decided to re-enlist for another 4 years. Happy Birthday Christian! Have fun being FOUR!!!!

Wordless Wednesday #12 ~ What Am I? ~ I SPY

Clue: (It's cicada wonder what this is)

Today's The Day!

The VeggieTales Full Length Feature Film "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything" comes out on DVD today. It is available from Big Idea, (where it comes with a free inflatable sword), or at your local Christian book store, or Target Stores or Best Buy. There may be other stores that carry it too, but those are the ones I know of. I'm thinking about picking this up for my grandson, CJ. For his 4th birthday this Saturday.

Last year, on his 3rd birthday, we took him to a sneak preview of this film, and he really enjoyed it. He still remembers the rock monsters and was telling his mom all about them. Jess, if you're reading this, don't tell him. I don't think he can read yet.

If you'd like to see the full trailer for this movie, you can find it at Big Idea.com.

The Grand Tour

Last Wednesday, I posted a pic of our "new" house from the front. Here is another view of the house. It is absolutely surrounded by trees and the yard is also surrounded by sunflowers. The sunflowers were in full bloom the first time that Molly and I went out to check out the farm a month ago or so.

Below is the 2 car "garage" that we get to use. If you ask me it looks more like a small barn...but we'll call it a garage... if you insist. The great part is, we get to use the "hay loft" for storage, and everyone that know us well, knows we need a lot of room for storage.

Here's a picture of the house from in front of the garage. I'm thinking twice about parking my van in the garage and traipsing through the snow all the way to the house this winter. Hmmm.

Come on inside...I'll put the coffee on...oops... sorry, I haven't moved the coffeemaker yet. Oh well, this is a virtual tour so it was only going to be virtual coffee anyway. Do you take virtual cream or virtual sugar?

If you look to your left, this is what you'll see. If you turn a little more to your left you'll see the next one. (Ignore the date stamp on some of these. The camera battery had died and I didn't take the time to reset the date when I put the batteries back in.)

Are you getting a feel for what it was like to live in the modern farmhouse of 1913 yet? Well, they probably didn't have an electric stove and refrigerator back then, but you catch my drift.

Okay, now just off the kitchen you'll find the newly remodeled bathroom. I'm not sure I would have wanted to see the "before" version of this bath. It's okay now, but just wait until I move my frogs into it. They should liven it up -what with all their hopping about. I also want to get some type of cupboard to use for a linen closet. Then it will be awesome. Well, at least it beats going to the outhouse, which is what I'm sure the original bathroom was for this house.By the way, that door leads to the basement. How convenient! Just think, you're in the bathroom showering, when you hear on your shower radio that a tornado is approaching. What do you do? Why, you just wrap yourself up in a towel and head directly down to the basement. How clever! I never would have thought of that myself in a million years.

Okay, next we'll walk through the kitchen to what is supposed to be a formal dining room, but we're going to use it for a living room. We're such rebels.

The next room you see is what is supposed to be the living room, but we're going to use it for a bedroom, which is why we're using the dining room for a living room. My handy hubby says he can make a temporary wall with a door in it leading into the bedroom. I'm hoping he actually does this before we decide to move somewhere else in a few years. I used to think I was the greatest procrastinator in the whole world. I'm not. My husband is the title holder in that department. Follow me through the "living room" into the "bedroom". Don't you love the wallpaper? Oh well, at least there will be room for our bedroom set in this room...

...unlike the next room, (which is just off of this room), and is supposed to be the main floor bedroom. I'm not even sure if the queen size bed itself would fit in here with room to walk around it. That is why we've decided to use the bedroom for an office, the living room for a bedroom, and the dining room for a living room. After all, we do most of our dining in the living room these days anyway. Anyway, we're using this room for an office. But look, no red wallpaper, or red curtains, or red shag carpet. That will take some getting used to. It has a huge walk in closet too, that goes around the corner under the stairs for even more storage. We like storage.

Okay, now we're going to go upstairs. Don't you just love the alternated green and yellow/brown stair treads? Quaint, don't you think? It looks like the steps end right there, but the stairway actually turns to the left, and there are two or three more steps. Do you understand now, why I don't want to use one of the upstairs bedrooms as a master bedroom? I don't want to have to get that much exercise while I'm making my trip or two to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Here's a view from the top of the steps. Straight ahead is our 11yo dd Molly's bedroom. And to your right, you'll find this lovely guest room, or as we'll probably call it, "the Blue Room". This will have a double bed in it and perhaps a dresser if it will fit. It's not a huge room, but there is a handy dandy shelf on which to hang your clothing. What more could guests (usually our grown children coming home to visit) need? I'm going to try to find a small carpet remnant to put in here and maybe repaint the walls before we move in just to clean it up a bit.

Next, we'll enter Molly's room. Take a good look. This will likely be the last time you'll actually be able to see the entire floor in this room. Molly likes to create her own "carpet" of sorts with the clothing she tries on and then decides not to wear. So I guess I don't have to worry about finding a rug for her. Right? The lavendar color reminds me very much of the room I shared with my sister Laurie for a while when I was a kid. Laurie would love it, but Molly would like to paint it a lovely shade of hot pink, what do you think?

Finally, the last room upstairs, to the left at the top of the stairs is going to be a family room/TV room/rec room/play room and also an extra guest bedroom (with the double futon in it), for when more than one of our kids and/or their spouses and/or their children come to visit at the same time. I will definitely need to find some kind of rug to put on the floor in here to make it a bit more comfy and cozy. I'm not sure where that door led to before, perhaps there was a balcony of some sort, but it was boarded up when they added on a laundry room below it.

Here is the laundry room. You can see the brick here that used to be the outside wall of the house of course. This is where my treadmill is going to go so I can use it while I wait for the washer to wash a load of clothes. Thirty minutes at a time should work. At least that's my plan.
And look! A window to the living room! I figure if I place my folding table under the window and strategically place the TV in the corner of the LR, I can watch TV without leaving the laundry room while I'm folding or ironing clothes. Of course I may have to use the closed captioning. This concludes the virtual tour of the new Grot family home. Here is one more parting shot. It's the view from our back door. As you can see, the nearest neighbor is probably a mile away from us, so someone has suggested that we host an outdoor karaoke bash next Summer. Sounds like a plan. Thanks for taking my virtual tour today. Y'all come back now, ya hear?

The Pirates Are Coming!

Excuse me while I put on my Big Idea VeggieTales Ambassador hat. Okay, I'm ready...



If you didn't get the chance to see "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything" when it was in movie theaters last January, here's your opportunity to own Big Idea's 2nd full length feature film. It comes out on DVD this Tuesday.

We actually saw a sneak preview of this movie almost a year ago. It was pretty funny, (even for adults), and had a good message too. Unlike most of the VT movies, this one isn't really based on one particular bible story, but the lesson is that God can use us to do heroic things even when we don't think we have "hero" qualities.

If you order it now from Big Idea, you will not only get free shipping, but it also comes with a free inflatable pirate sword for you to give your own little pirate. Check it out.

A Little Catch-up Blogging

Because it's been awhile since I had a fully functioning computer at home and a working digital camera, I've decided to post a few random pictures I've taken recently. Here ya go~

Here's one I just had to take of Ray and his son Dan. They almost look like they dressed alike on purpose. Nope. They just accidentally wore very similar shirts that Sunday. Can you see any other resemblance between the two of them? Ray has recently lost almost 50 lbs, and apparently Dan has been enjoying his wife's cooking lately, because he's not the skinny kid he was when he left for Oregon a few short years ago, which makes them look even more alike.

This one was taken at the Olive Garden. Ray's kids, Dan and Sarah and her hubby Brad, decided to take us all out to celebrate our 8th wedding anniversary. Also pictured are my daughter Molly, our grandson, Hayden (in the high chair), his daughter Ruth and her new husband, Dan D.
Here's a close-up of Hayden at the end of the table. As you can plainly see,

he was showing everyone that he was "so big"! What a cutie-pie.
These two are at my dad's birthday party last Sunday. We had planned on going on an old fashioned hayride. But alas, the weather did not cooperate, so we just partied in the garage as usual. Maybe we'll reschedule the hayride one of these days when it's nicer out.

The last picture here, doesn't do justice to the brilliant red color of the leaves on the tree in my front yard. I just thought it was interesting that of three maple trees in the same yard, one was bright yellow, one looked like a flaming torch of yellows oranges and reds, and yet another was still green. God is such a talented artist, isn't He?

Woo Hoo!! I'm Back In Business!!

Thanks to my son Joel, I have one of our original computers back up and running. He's still working on trying to get the files off of the one that crashed, but at least I have a fully functioning computer to use again. That means I'll get to blog a lot more. Well...maybe not for awhile...not until after we're done moving anyway. But I should be able to actually respond to emails now. I wasn 't able to send anything out with the computer I was limping along with.

Wordless Wednesday # 11~ Our New Farmhouse

Just A Quick Note...

Yes, I'm still alive. I still don't have a reliable computer at home, so I'm at the local library. I'm not going to weigh in tonight, just because I've decided to go every other week to save a little money.

I should be getting my computer back from my son this week some time. I think he's just about got it up and running again. I just have to run and pick it up from him.

As far as the housing situation, we have not been asked to leave yet, praise the Lord. We went and looked at the inside of a farm house that Molly and I had seen the outside of about a month ago. It's considerably cheaper rent than we have found in town, so we will likely be moving there. There were a few different people coming to look at it after us yesterday, so hopefully we will still be able to get it. It's about 5 miles out of town, and on a dirt road, which doesn't thrill me. And it's almost 100 years old, and not exactly something you'd see in a Better Homes and Gardens Magazine, but we can make it work. Actually, it might be good for Molly to be out in the country. I was a little worried that if we were right in town, it might be kind of hard to rein her in. And it is still in the same school district, so that she won't have to change schools or anything. Please keep us in your prayers as we work out all of the "moving" details. Thanks.