Halloween Preview

Our church held the annual Halloween party early this year.  After judging at Amanda's Speech Meet all day I raided her prop closet to build a spooky trunk display.  What good is having a drama teacher in the family if you can't mooch off her?  Sam insisted on helping.



Not long after that we all suited up and went to the party!  As Sam has been reciting all month, he was a dragon, Jack was an ewok, I was a vampire, and Ben was a ghoooooooooost.




I'm didn't know the kids looked so grumpy in this pictures.  I blame that on the sealed container of candy corn someone left in plain sight at the entrance.  Don't show kids candy if they can't have it!





It was a whirlwind party.  Quick pizza dinner, then a quick round of carnival games.









I wish I had more time to set up my trunk - I barely got it decent looking before kids arrived!  A lot of the the things I had planned didn't happen because I had no time.  But there were many ooo's and ahhh's and I had many kids try to come back for seconds and thirds or more.  (Seriously.  Ben packed me two 36 packs and one 18 pack of full-sized candy bars and I ran out well before the kids stopped coming.  I'm POSITIVE there were not 90 kids there).   I didn't have time to replace my fangs or put on black gloves and pince nez.  I did my best impression of Sam's preschool teacher with the thick Slavic accent, put spooky music on my old timey speaker, and tried to keep the cauldrons bubbling. I might have sounded like this at times, but people seemed to like the effect either way.



The party quickly wrapped up and the boys dived into their hauls.  It's only October 22.  I hope we have more fun to come.  (Sorry if I sound grumpy.  I have a splitting headache.  It was a fun but crazy day with a lot of emotional kids to handle for a variety of reasons.  I really really wish I could sleep in tomorrow.)

10pm in the Mason Maison

Reading Champ!

When Jack asked why all his friends have medals and he doesn't have any, Ben was happy to get him a medal celebrating Jack's best skills. Any ideas for a silver and gold goal?

Housing Update: Waiting for Reconstruction

The reconstruction team has come and made an official estimate, that our insurance company has accepted.  The floor guy came this morning to take measurements and inspect the existing materials.  I should be hearing from my guy early next week about a schedule for drywall, texture, painting, and plumbing.  We're looking at being done before Thanksgiving even if there are some minor hiccups.  

I had the mitigation company take out all the plastic tarps so we can enjoy the full room again.  Despite the powder room displacement to the living room, I'm happy to have the walls down and the sunlight streaming in.  The kids IMMEDIATELY starting running circles around the house again.  I didn't realize how much they loved and missed their first floor race track loop.

Leaf Piles

We are enjoying a lovely Colorado fall this week.  The leaves are getting thick and crispy on the ground.  The kids found motivation to help with the yard by making a leaf pile for playing. 

So industrious!

Somehow their little child brains decided that the logical solution to making a bigger pile was to knock more leaves off the tree.  Never mind that there were thousands of leaves already on the ground elsewhere :-)

An unquiet quiet time....

When I checked on him, "I'm a ninja.  It's Halloween night and I look for the jack-o-lantern."

October fun

Sam is feeling better after six days of fevers. He was able to go to school this week! The water damage mitigation is all done and I have an appointment to meet with the reconstruction team tomorrow.

We decorated Halloween cookies Ben and I went to see Shaun of the Dead at the Alamo last night. Today I woke with a cold but was able to teach my primary class still. Ben let me take a nice long nap. Now we are watching a classic together. The boys think Snoopy is hilarious. Things are pretty good.

Brian's Quilt

The Omuras popped by yesterday to drop off a new heirloom:



Linda quilted this blanket out of Brian's shirts.  The front framing and the back fabric are new, but all the square piecework is authentic Brian shirt.  She had enough to make a quilt for Travis, for me, and for herself.

Brian had some real snazzy shirts :-)  I'm sure friends will remember several of these prints. 

Linda made a beautiful quilt and I'm so honored to have one!

Phase 1 is done. Dry out in progress.

Mason maison is making progress.  Tuesday they set up the extra work areas for decontamination and by Wednesday night they were done.  We got our living room back to partial use.  Here's the before and after:

But we lost use of the last toilet, so now we can only use the outhouse. 

Here's a shot of the exposed, offending pipe:




Thursday they disinfected all the surfaces and took out the damaged wood floors. They put a high power fan/dehumidifier thing in there to dry out the wood.  





Our project manager came over this morning and took measurements.  He said it's still a few marks shy of normal level so we should leaving it running another night.  A crew should arrive first thing Saturday to take the fans off.  Then Monday they paint on the encapsulation barrier to prevent future growth/contamination, and let that dry over night.  So we are looking at mitigation being done by Tuesday next week if all goes well.  I've put out a couple requests for a plumber but haven't been able to get one over here yet.  Hopefully this afternoon.  We'd really like to get the leak fixed so we can use those upper bathrooms again.

Particularly for this guy:



Sam came down with a virus.  Diarrhea, high fevers, croupy cough, and stridor all night.  Poor guy.  He's doing better today.  Taking a nice long afternoon nap now.  But it's hasn't been fun for him to get dragged out to the backyard loo when he has to go in the middle of the night.

We had tickets to see Miss Peregrine tonight but I cancelled so we can be closer to home.  My new sitter's mom is ok with her watching a recovering kid, but I'm not comfortable having her be in charge for 4-5 hours while we are all the way across town in a movie theater with limited communication.  We're just going to get dinner closer to home.  A nice meal out with my husband, away from the noise and disorganization of home, sounds lovely. 

In other news, I stopped by a locksmith shop and they gave me a couple locks they were going to trash.  Got them picked within an hour each!


Also I bought Jack these Chewbacca jammies.  Couldn't resist. 

Abatement begins

To my surprise they got the permit first thing this morning and were over before 8:30 to start the real sealing.  They had to put in additional taping and decontamination units.  They let the kids poke around at the end of the day. 








We also got a temporary outhouse.   I suggested this as an alternative to staying in a hotel and they readily agreed.  I'm sure it's cheaper for them, and a lot better for us to sleep in our own beds, have all our possessions nearby, and to be able to care for the animals ourselves. 


The worker was very sympathetic to locking off the bathroom and offered to leave it like this overnight, doing the final seal in the morning.  (Weird fluorescent lime paint and vintage wallpaper revealed in the bathroom tear our.)


My kitchen is filled with overflow from the work area.  I didn't feel like making a mess in the kitchen and dining area, so we did Mcdonald's for dinner.  Now we are watching The Force Awakens in the basement.  Things are crazy, but we are making it work.

Halloween is coming

Mini-movie night for me and Sam. He picked the movie.

Locking picking

I have a new hobby.

This summer I started picking locks.  I love it.  That feeling when it releases is euphoric.  You can tinker mindlessly, or meticulously tease each pin like a puzzle.  

I'm a huge Sherlock Holmes fan.  I was watching the Houdini & Doyle TV show and decided to finally jump in and learn picking.  I got a started set and within ten minutes had my first padlock open.  

Reddit has a great community and sources for learning.  I have no nefarious intentions, it's purely a hobby.  In fact, there are two rules lock pickers uphold:

1) Do not pick a lock that doesn't belong to you.

2) Do not pick a lock in use.  

I only had three pad locks to play with.  When my parents were out here I let my Dad in on my hobby.  Yesterday I was thrilled to find he and my Mom sent me three new (old) locks to pick!

The cylinder locks were fairly easy.  The circular padlock gave me trouble.  After a few sessions I put some lubricant in and finally popped it today!

I picked all my locks again for fun:

Got any old locks?  I'd love to take them off your hands. :-D