Archive for April 1st, 2013

Moving Day

Monday, April 1st, 2013

mv

We don’t know how we did it, but Moving day landed on the 3rd anniversary of the first day of meeting Jayme. You know… because moving isn’t emotional enough for our family.

We woke at 6:30am and the three of us loaded into the family car for a short ride to the U-Haul center. Anthony and Jayme headed in and got the keys to our 24 foot moving monster.

It took a few tries to back our moving truck into position in front of our townhouse’s garage, the townhouse street and all of our neighbors parking on the red fire lane stripes didn’t really help.

Our plan was to make three trips. First trip to load everything we could ourselves, second trip to have paid movers get the heavy stuff and then the final trip for everything else.

The three of us started to load the garage into the truck. For weeks we have been packing and stacking boxes in the garage. So on moving day it was just about moving those boxes a few more feet into the truck.

By 11:ooam we had our first load ready to go up the hill. With a few exceptions we just reversed the process and unloaded the truck into the new garage.

We grabbed some McDonalds for lunch and Joshua stayed behind to clean up the Laundry Room (see our last post) while Anthony and Jayme headed to the townhouse to get the cats locked in the bathroom and meet the movers who were coming at 1:00pm

Paying the movers was the BEST money we have ever spent! There is just no way we could have completed without them. Within 8 minutes of their arrival they had more on the truck then we had in 2 hours. They moved the washer and dryer, our 300 pound latex bed, Jayme’s bunk bed, our big screen, the dining room table, the sofas, and much much more. They filled the 24 foot truck from front to back.

Once back up the hill they unpacked it all as well. But this time we asked them to unpack into the house, rather then the garage. Everything got in ok with 3 exceptions. First our huge sofa was too big to go in the front. So the movers had to take it in via the kitchen sliding glass door. The second issue was they moved Joshua’s rope out of the truck and into the garage, so on our third trip we had to improvise (we thought they had taken the rope by mistake). The third issue we didn’t find out about until the next day, our washing machine was broken. Turned out the suspension rods were dead, they were well used and the move killed them, not the movers fault. The movers did run over our set time by 45 mins but they worked the whole time and we feel the money was well spent.

Third trip we ran back for the last of the items that could not come by car. We have the townhouse until the 30th so we knew we could just run back and forth with the cars for the little things. So we made a real effort to get the large times on this last run.

With the last of the big times in our new home, we got ready for a little welcome home party. We promised Jayme that if he was good and we got all our stuff moved in we would buy Wreak-It-Ralph and have a pizza party.

So at 7:30pm Anthony and Jayme headed out to Papa Murphy’s and picked up a family sized Chicago stuffed pizza. Then stopped at Safeway for sodas and then all three of us plopped down in our new family room with our TV jerry-rigged to the PlayStation for an impromptu party. No one got to sleep until 11:00pm.

The next three weeks we have been doing something every night. Cleaning the old house  and getting the last bits out is proving to be a MUCH bigger task then we thought. Jayme’s bedtime is at 8:00pm so we have a very small window to do anything at the old place before we have to feed, bath and bed the little one. This upside down schedule has been murder for the Dad’s and made the transition to the new house much harder on Jayme. In the end we decided to only have one person at the old house and keep Jayme at the new and on his normal schedule. But this added more issues as doing the work alone after working hard all day slowly draining our will and we are really starting to doubt this move.

But the end is within sight. Easter weekend we are going to be all done and have a nice family weekend with NO DRAMA or house work!

 

 

Posted in Anthony, Jayme, Joshua | Comments Closed

Jayme’s 8th Birthday

Monday, April 1st, 2013

jayme-invite-8th

This year with our plans to start the adoption process over again and buy a new home, We decided not take Jayme to Disney World for his birthday again.  We would only take him down in the fall for Food and Wine and Mickey’s not so scary Halloween party. We are such cruel parents.

Jayme’s wanted another big birthday party and the Dad’s were more than happy to fulfill the request. But just like last year Jayme’s birthday landed on a weekday. In our world this means two (2) birthday events that had to be planned. We had a long talk with him and let him know that we could have a special family only dinner on his birthday and on party day we would go all out. Jayme was fine with the plan; he even knew where he wanted to eat on his birthday… the Cheesecake factory. He kept calling it the cake place, but we knew what he meant.

The night before his birthday we pulled out his life journal and looked at all of the photos of when he was younger. It was a nice way to sum up and take a pause on his life’s journey. He got to do a little reflection and so did the Dad’s. But it was so hard to tuck our 7 year old into bed that night, knowing that the next day he would be 8, and our 7 year old would be gone forever.

The next morning we woke Jayme up with the Birthday song and his favorite breakfast (German pancakes with lots of lemon juice). The night before Anthony and Jayme had haircuts, so after breakfast we got to put up Jayme’s new hair style a mini little faux hawk. Super cute we sent our 8 year old off to school.

It was kind of a well-managed military style maneuver getting all three of us to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner that evening. Anthony driving in from Camas, Joshua had to make a cross town trek from Lloyd center to Milwaukee then across town again to Washington town center.

Jayme had only one real request for dinner, he wanted dessert first. So when our waitress came around we all ordered dessert first. Jayme ordered a huge slice of triple chocolate cake. Joshua ordered a yummy coffee cheesecake and Anthony had the strawberry cheesecake. As we waited for our first course of desserts to arrive the table next to us was surrounded by waiters and they all sang the happy birthday song to someone. It was a little bit after that Jayme started to worry that he would not get the same treatment. About 10 mins later our desserts arrived and with it a small army of waiters who also sang happy birthday to Jayme, he was thrilled!

We decided to skip getting main course meals and instead opted for a small feast of appetizers. Jayme can be a picky eater, but he had ate a little bite of everything we ordered. By the end of the meal we all were very full and Jayme was getting tired and so were we. So we got what was left boxed up and we headed for home.

Home, we let Jayme open one of this birthday presents (we had a small pile for him to pick from). He picked the biggest of course which turned out to be a Disney fireworks maker, you point it at the ceiling and it makes firework images with fun firework sounds. We of course loaded up the real Disney fireworks music for him and he was making Disney magic before bed.

Party Day

The big party day arrived. We had a 3:00pm table reservation so we headed out early to the rink. Arriving at 2:00pm we checked in and Joshua and Jayme got their skates and hit the rink. Anthony stood watch by the door keeping an eye out for any of our party guests.

We had confirmations from 7 adults and 2 kids, but at 2:55pm no one had arrived yet. While Jayme skated we started to come up with some back up plan of how we would save the party with just the three of us. It was then a small boy and a Mom arrived at the front door holding one of our birthday invitations. Then a few moments later another Mom and child and then before we could even point to the table everyone showed.

In total we had 4 kids (two from Jayme’s class), our family friend two Grand kids (whom we traveled to Disneyland with), two of Jayme’s teachers and many family friends. In fact the pile of presents was a bit overwhelming.

We got all the kids down at the table. Each kid had a bag of cotton candy, a balloon hat, ice cream and soda. Then came Jayme’s cake and all the kids sang to him… it was too cute. After the feast Jayme opened his mountain of presents. Anthony then handed out all of the goodie bags he made for them. Like last year we tried to put some good stuff in them. Some colorful rubber bouncy balls, a metal ring puzzle, 2 wacky pencils, a coloring book, a packet of seeds to plant and a bottle of bubbles.

We then all hit the rink. Jayme headed right back out and it took a bit of reminding to hang out with his guests. But once we connected with them he didn’t stray too far from the group.

The weird upside to the party was being able to connect with the other parents and the kids from Jayme’s class. One of the kidos who came is a classmate of Jayme’s who… well lets say Jayme has some very strong feelings about. It was so nice that at the party they both were able to have some real positive interactions with each other outside of the school setting. Fingers cross that on Monday that keeps going.

But talking with the two mom’s was great, both of us are looking forward to running into them at future school events and birthday parties.

The party ended in the video arcade, with the two moms, Joshua and Anthony all feeding the kids quarters. Everyone had a great time! It was a great 8th birthday celebration!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Jayme | Comments Closed

Popcorn

Monday, April 1st, 2013

pop

With a week to go before moving day and Jayme’s room completed we wanted to do one other room. We choose the laundry room now known as the cursed room.

We first took down the florescent work light fixture and started to remove the popcorn celling. This proved to be a HUGE job. We bought a portable water sprayer and put down 2 layers of plastic sheeting on the floors. Jayme and Joshua sprayed and Anthony scraped, and scraped and scraped.

At the end Anthony was covered head to toe in wet white goop. It was a hard call what looked worse the floor or Anthony. But thanks to the double layer of plastic sheeting the floor cleaned up very easily. So I guess Anthony looked the worse!  The whole process took 2 hours if you count prep and clean up.

Step two was to add a ceiling fan. This involved making a whole bunch of holes. Our first hole was around the old light fixture. We wanted to look up and see if we could just add a light/fan combo unit. But we found out that the ceiling joists ran the wrong way. So we had no way to run the venting to an outside wall. With the laundry room backing up to the garage we thought we might be able to vent into the garage and the out to an outside wall. Again this proved undoable.

Third hole we cut a large corner piece of the ceiling out hoping it would land under a little secret utility room we found between the master bathroom and the garage. But it too did not appear to be achievable. A bit heartbroken and tired Jayme and Joshua headed out to find lunch as we had spent the whole morning trying to find a spot for the ceiling vent.

While the boys found lunch Anthony keep drilling holes. First one landed just on the inside of the Master bedroom but only 6 inches from the wall and the secret utility room behind it. It was a true EUREKA moment. The last pilot hole landed in the secret room!

The solution for the venting had us cut a 6 inch hole in the floor of that secret room and running insulated ducting from the fan location through the floor, into the secret room then out into the garage attic space then finally to an outside wall.

Next was a trip to Home Depot, were they now know us by our first names. We picked up the wall paint, wall patches, joint compound, a ceiling fan, double wall light switch, 15 feet of wire, 25 feet of insulated venting, a 4 inch hole bit, new switches and a new wall switch plate.

We had to cut two final holes in the popcorn free celling to allow us access to run the wires and expand the light switch box. Running the wire proved to be the easy part. Rewiring 2 switches for 3 hours was beyond us. Now in fairness two ourselves we ran into 2 messed up issues. First, the switch was wired in series and once we finished adding our new line the downstairs bathroom wall plug stopped working and second the old box was very narrow. Took us 3 trips to Home Depot before we found the right type of box to install that would work. Luckily we had our main fuse box scheduled to be replaced the next day and Joshua was able to ask them to figure out why the second plug stopped working. Turns out it had nothing to do with our perfect wiring job. A tripped GFCI outlet on the 2nd floor was the issue. Itwould have taken us years to figure that out!

Once we had installed the fan and Anthony nearly cut off his finger and gave the required blood offering to the demons living in our cursed laundry room, we wired up the fan and switched it on. We bought a super quiet version since the cat box was destined for this room and we normally have it running 24-7. We turned it on and the first thing we noticed was it sounded loud. Looking at it we noticed that the fan drum looks lopsided. So the curse strikes again, clearly more blood was needed to appease the spirts. At some point we have to take it apart and see if we can re-center it. The troubleshooting shooting book has the how to… but we just have not had the time to fix it yet.

Anthony spent 2 days patching the ceiling and sanding it smooth. But as we got to the night before the move we just didn’t have the strength or will power to stay up all night painting. So we decided that we could just push the washer and drying into the middle of the room and at some point paint around them.

After the movers left we plugged in the washer and you guessed it, it didn’t work. A $275.00 house call later we had a working washer. Jayme and Anthony painted the room changing it from a ugly peach to refreshing light blue called “refresh”.

The last item will be the new blinds for the room, we have them but we are feeling a little blood weak, so we dare not risk it now.

Posted in Anthony, Joshua | Comments Closed

A new house and a new plague

Monday, April 1st, 2013

house

 

We signed on our new home on Wednesday February 27th. The signing was in Beaverton and took about 40 minutes of writing our names over and over again. An adult version of lines… punishment for some unknown infraction.

Thursday evening we met our realtor at our new home and she handed over the keys. It was a painful event, as both Joshua and I were sick as dogs. Both of us had called into work sick and we spent the whole day in bed asleep. So no celebration over our house just body aches, fever, congestion, tummy &  plumbing issues (trying not to be gross). This was the first sign that we had purchased a CURSED house.

The first weekend with our new cursed home we pushed past our sickness and did too much. We started in Jayme’s room. Four coats of magnetic paint and 2 pints of TARDIS blue and Jayme now as a place to stick up all of his artwork. We also repainted all of his trim, door, ceiling and walls. Added new a new light switch new plug sockets covers and door hardware. Jayme’s room has become test room for our color scheme for the whole house…. and we LOVE IT.

Joshua fixed the dining room light switch, it made scary crackling sounds (another sign of the curse?). It now is a very cool dimmer with light level programing. Yeah… he geeked it. He also got a temporary fix for our garage opener and rekeyed all the exterior door locks.

Knowing that Jayme is too little to really help with the heavy lifting on move day, we decided that doing Jayme’s room first and filling it with his toys would give him a place to go that us not under foot. So we have moved his computer to the new house and most of his toys. But that doesn’t mean Jayme is not helping or wanting to help. Anthony had Jayme help remove all the base trim from his bedroom, Anthony gave him a special hammer to use, the hammer that Anthony’s Grandfather gave to him when he was a bit younger then Jayme. Yes… the hammer is being handed down again and Jayme is THRILLED to have his own hammer. Yes, Anthony cried.

We had been concerned about Jayme signing off on the house. We have been looking for a year and he has only been excited when we would look at a home with a swimming pool. Any other time and he would state that he did not want to move. Who could blame him, this kido has been moved around from foster home to foster home. So we have been doing a lot of work to make him feel apart of the process, so he has the feeling of control. And all the way up to the signing he flat out told us that he did not want to move.  So we have had out fingers crossed for the past week. We didn’t know if all our extra work with Jayme would pay off. That is until we drove down the hill from our house to our rental one evening. Anthony said “ok let’s get in the car and head home” Jayme climbed into his booster seat and said “Dad, this is our home, we just rent the other place.”.

Posted in Anthony | Comments Closed