Desolation of the Week

By the looks of the blog, we had a great week last week... unfortunately our most recent blog posts reflect a much bigger portion of the week before. I tend to blog a ton all in one day and then post everything a bit at a time. This process works great in that I don't have to be on the computer all that much during the week, but y'all still feel like you get glimpses into our day to day lives. It doesn't work all that great when we have any major catastrophies strike... other than you still get cute pics of our kid while we go around picking up the pieces of our inconveniences.

Here's what happened: Last Tuesday I started a load of laundry. Ellie and I sat down to eat breakfast. I suddenly heard A LOT of water hitting concrete, ran down the stairs and saw water gushing out of the pipes behind the washer. I stopped the laundry, called Seth and halted my plans for laundry and house cleaning. I didn't, however, think through the fact that the washer and the dishwasher run through the same pipes in the basement... thus I started the dishwasher only to go through this experience for the second time. Eleanor and I continued through our day in pretty normal fashion except that I was a bit more annoyed than normal. Most important detail: I continued to use the kitchen sink.

When Seth got home in the evening he went down to check everything out. He found lint, chunks of broccoli, etc coming out of the pipes and laying on the floor (thanks to me continuing to use the sink all day). He called a friend, borrowed a snake and went to work emptying the nasty clog. Now, I really don't know the details beyond the garbage disposal clogging the pipes, getting a snake stuck in the pipes, several snake attempts not fixing the clog and an entire bucket of super-strength Drain-O-like product being poured into our pipes and stinking up the house so much that no one really slept well Tuesday night and Ellie and I stayed away from the house completely on Wednesday.

By Wednesday night, when it was time for Eleanor to go to bed, I was really tired of being away from the house all day, afraid of the smell and ready to be able to clean up. Luckily, the work of Seth and his friend, Bobby, paid off and by the time Ellie and I left them at Los Agaves to come home for baby's bedtime the house smelled completely of PineSol and nothing worse.

The rest of our week was spent catching up on our lack of sleep and large of amount of stress. The good news is, the pipes seem to be working great.

The consolations attached to this same situation are as follows: Wednesday was a MOPS morning, so Eleanor and I already had a planned, fun, several hour long activity to take us away from the house. While at MOPS we had several very nice moms offer their houses and services to us as we stayed away from our place. (Thanks everyone!) So, Ellie and I relaxed into our morning activity and then called Seth when we were done. We took a short trip to the library, stopped at the local Christian Bookstore and then met Seth for lunch. It was good to see Daddy in the middle of the day. After that, we headed over to our friend, Nicki's, house and played with her kids for the afternoon. This was such a blessing! It was great to be able to let Eleanor play, eat and take a nap in a clean environment. It was also really good to have some adult conversation and continue broadening a new friendship. Nicki, Adeline and Christian, you guys are the best!

Since all this... we spent Friday with Amanda and Kayli, newly returned from a Spring Break trip, and celebrated Amanda's birthday at a surprise party on Saturday and a planned brunch extravaganza on Sunday. Sunday evening a blizzard came through WYO and we got a foot and a half of snow (or more) along with 40-50 mph winds. Yesterday was deemed emergency travel only, so Eleanor and I were very much confined to the indoors. Seth went to work, though, since he works in a hospital...

And in Ellie growth, we've been working on learning "no" (oh, the joy of mommyhood), attempting to retrain the beginning stages of temper tantrums, and have picked up a crying, crashed child many, many, many times as she has decided to work very hard on speed walking. In general, Eleanor is doing very well with her walking, but she wants to run so badly! Ellie is also participating in many more games these days and that is really fun. Her favorite activity before heading to bed in the evenings is chasing Mom and Dad around several pieces of furniture in our living room. She just giggles and giggles when we pop out from behind something and say, "Boo!"

Okay. Enough talking. Here are a few pictures from last week:

The effects of a blizzard... snuggling with Daddy and stuffed animals... our Little Ray of Sunshine... and avocado for breakfast!