New room, meeting Stubby, and a day off

Blog readership is down by 75% as all of us are in the full swing of summer. Life is busy, busy, busy for most. Around these parts it is no different; we are busy, but not with typical summer activities. Jeff  works his normal long summer hours and I do my best to corral the girls while maintaining some kind of order around here, and get something done.... is that possible?

Last week we moved the girls upstairs to share the big room and us downstairs to our old room. This will make Mandy's old room the new baby's room, and the little room upstairs as the guest room. I could go into detail about all the reasons for this switch-er-oo, but I fear your eyes would start bleeding with the tedium. Suffice to say, the house has been in a complete disarray as I try to organize and sort and clean. I was able to contribute to a garage sale put on by my sister-in-law and her husband in town and I am so thankful for their willingness to sell my stuff for me -- it was good motivation.

I have a list still a mile long of things to do, but I'll share what I have done so far. The big room upstairs just "needed" to be painted (my dear hubby would disagree that the girls really cared). I painted one wall Robin's Egg Blue, arranged the girls' furniture about 14 times, put some pictures on the walls and spent a rediculous amount of time hanging curtains -- these are the times I miss my Handy Man so much! I found cute twin sheet sets on Amazon.com for $4.99 each and need to make curtains for three windows and the closet out of the extra set that I bought. I also bought matching headboards for their beds on Craig's List for $20 total. They will be painted, but will be great once they are done.

You know I live for a deal, I can't even imagine admitting if I bought something that WASN'T a deal! Like the sheet sets were $5 each, but the ones that inspired me from Serena and Lilly were $189 for a set. No worries here, my budget and my conscience won't allow such things. Check out this deal on wall art:

Picture frames from Goodwill: $4

11x14" prints $1.99 each

Photography: snap shots turned black and white

Spray paint: free leftover from another project

Ribbon: $.99c at Michael's

Total: $9 for eye catching wall art

Here is another peak at the room. I'll post the finished project after I finish all the sewing and painting sometimes before 2019.

Leaving the residual moving/organizing mess inside, we were outside on Friday afternoon when Emma came running to me saying, "Mandy put her finger in the door and now there is blood. There is a lots and a lots of blood. She needs a bandaid."

That was the understatement of the century as I ran to find Mandy on the steps in the garage with blood flowing everywhere from her hand. After getting the bleeding stopped, I determined that Mandy's finger was in the hinge side of the door when Emma closed the door. The door frame acted as a knife and filleted a piece of skin from the bottom of the nail to the tip, taking off the entire nail and about 1/8" of the end of her right ring finger. I actually found the intact nail and finger tip in the door later, confirming my theory. I would say I am now ready for CSI, but my constitution can't handle it. This was the nastiest thing I've had to deal with and it was all I could do to not pass out.

The poor baby will be in pain for quite awhile I fear. She doesn't sleep well at night, frequently waking up needing comfort and more morphine... I mean children's Tylenol. She is also cutting 2 top teeth and life is rather miserable at times.

This is why on Sunday, my wonderful husband said, "You need a break. Let's go to the beach!" We didn't have to teach Sunday School this week, so we headed off to enjoy the sunshine. It was terribly windy, but we went to Newport and looked at boats, ate at Mo's, bought salt-water taffy and some sugar-free chocolates for me, went shopping, and took naps.

It was windier than I've experienced at the OR coast in many years, so we carted our sand toys right back to car after Emma melted in tears with sand in her eyes and blasting her legs -- or was that me crying. It is all a blur now.

It was such a good day and just what I needed. The summers on the farm do not get shorter or easier, but a good attitude makes all the difference.  I realized that there is no way to be both bitter at my husband's absences and also glad for his limited presence. If I wallow in the bitterness when he is away, it permeates our time together like a poison. We fight and everyone is in a bad mood -- guaranteed. This would apply to anyone whose spouse is gone often for work. It is very easy to think of how hard it is to have him gone instead of how wonderful it is so have him there. I have much to be thankful for. My goal this summer is to make our limited family time a joy, filled with happy memories for the girls and for me... tears of bitterness not included.

Now back to work.... :)