A thing of beauty

Last year's school lunches were a peanut butter and jam sandwich, a granola bar, and some fruit if they were lucky and we had any left at that point in the week. At some point, and I don't know when it happened, PB&J turned from being a family staple into a family nightmare. Adam hates them so much that he is currently on a sandwich strike in general, and he is being so loud and vociferous about how much he hates sandwiches - any sandwiches, ALL sandwiches - that he is dragging Ellie along in his wake, and all of a sudden she won't eat sandwiches either.

Which means that school lunch planning is all of a sudden even more of a pain that it was before. I actually have to think about it, and sometimes I even have to prepare stuff the night before. So far we have been doing really well, and just about every day they come home with (shock, horror!) an empty lunchbox, which is something that never used to happen. It was always stuffed full of most of their manky sandwich that they couldn't be bothered to eat, or swap, or even chuck out discreetly to spare my feelings.

This summer to prepare for the onslaught which I knew was coming, I invested in a set of new lunchboxes - all cute and compartmentalised. I knew that they would force me to be more creative with lunch, and so far it is working!

I was so proud of myself for today's lunch that I am posting a picture of it! How lame is that. Anyway, I think that it is indeed a thing of beauty - homemade lemon poppyseed muffin, homemade protein balls (oat flour, peanut butter, honey, almonds etc), hummus with carrots and celery, and grapes.

That is a seriously awesome school lunch, if I say so myself. Jeff took one look at it and suggested that I should start making myself one as well. It is certainly better than what I eat for lunch most days!

D-Day

Saturday was D-Day for the kitchen. Jeff absolutely couldn't hold out any longer (even though I am hosting book club on Tuesday and would have preferred to still have a kitchen counter at that point). So after Adam's football game it was time-up for the old kitchen. First the overhead cabinet came down:

Then he got the sledgehammer out, which means we are really in business.

The first strike:

Having too much fun:

At the end of day one the counter is gone, the overheads on one side are gone, and the fridge is in its new position. He has identified four components of a functional kitchen - fridge, sink, oven, and dishwasher - and promised that at all times three out of the four will be working.Right now, the dishwasher is out of action and I actually had to do a load of dishes in the sink. Horrors. Hopefully that won't last too long because that will diminish my support for this latest project very very quickly!

Over-scheduled!

We have survived our first full week of our crazy autumn schedule!

I am not quite sure how this happened to us, as I have never been one to put kids in activities for the sake of keeping them busy. I am of the opinion that the playground and fresh air will keep them quite busy enough! So I am not quite sure how we found ourselves in this position, but we (actually mostly just Adam) have an insanely busy schedule this autumn. And when I look at what can be cut out for the sake of everyone's sanity, I decide again and again that nothing can be cut out. It's all worth doing. And that makes me worry about what life will be like when Kate and Nicholas are old enough to be in things too!

So this is what our schedule looks like:

Mondays - pick the kids up from school to get them to stroke clinic (swim lessons) on time. After swimming, we come home and do homework and piano lessons. Homework deserves a separate post all by itself, I will have to rant about that later.

Tuesdays - pick the kids up from school to get Adam to cub scouts on time. Come home, do homework for half an hour, load up all the kids again to get Adam to football practice on time. Get home at 6:45 and wonder what's for dinner and what can possibly be cooked and served and eaten before bedtime at 7:30.

Wednesday - it's early day at school so the kids can get the bus home! Attempt to get homework done in the fifteen minutes between arriving home and leaving for stroke clinic (Adam can do this, Ellie can NOT!).

Thursdays - kids get the bus home, as soon as they arrive we load them all up and drive to choir practice, then on the way home from choir practice Adam changes in the car and we go straight to football practice. Where Ellie sits in the car doing her homework (which takes her on average over an hour every night) and Kate and Nicholas sit in the car crying about why they can't go play at the playground. Because if Ellie puts one foot out of the car she will never, ever get her homework done before bedtime, that's why not kids, and I would appreciate not having to explain it a million times while we sit here. Get home at 6:45 and a) pat myself on the back for having put dinner in the crockpot earlier or b) hope that Jeff has started dinner while we were out. (So far, we are about even on options a) and b) but I have a feeling that b) is going to win out as time goes on!)

Fridays - pick the kids up, get them to stroke clinic, and breathe a huge sigh of relief that it is Friday and I don't have to fight with Ellie for an hour about her homework.

My main worry in all of this is that all of this running around town happens right in the middle of Nicholas' nap time, and I thought he would never get a proper nap again! But he is doing well on sleeping in the car. And an unexpected benefit has been that Kate, who hasn't napped in ages, conks out every day when you put her in the car at 2:30 and go somewhere.


Stroke clinic runs until mid-November so we have nine weeks of a crazy busy schedule before life starts to settle down again. If they can swim confidently at the end of it it will have been worth it!

The truth about living with a handyman

Last week our fridge broke. After a couple of days of living with coolers all over the kitchen and a visit from a repairman, we bit the bullet and decided it was time for a new fridge.

Jeff really wants a side-by-side fridge. He says he is sick of bending down to see what's in the fridge. If this makes any sense to anyone I would like to know, because as far as I can tell the bottom of the new fridge is still on the floor just like the bottom of the old one, and the food down there is all still at the same level. But anyway, a side-by-side fridge it had to be. And bigger than the old one. That I did agree with.

On Saturday lunchtime just before we went fridge shopping Jeff said that he was itching,  'just itching',  to tear out some drywall. I should have paid more attention. He said 'I don't know how much longer I can hold out.' I should have listened.

We found a fridge that we liked that would fit in the space available in our kitchen. But just before we bought it I pointed out that the doors swing wide when they open and I wasn't sure that it would actually work on the one side in the kitchen where the washer/dryer wall sticks out a couple of inches. Jeff said airily 'It'll be alright' and dismissed my concerns.

We bought the fridge.

We brought it home.

It didn't fit through the garage door.

Jeff took the doors off the fridge.

It still didn't fit through the garage door.

It fit through the front door but to get it past the stairs Jeff had to take the door knobs off the coat cupboard and knock a couple of skirting boards off. This fridge is never leaving this house.

As soon as it was in the kitchen it was blindingly obvious that the door issue was actually going to be an issue. Jeff said with an gleam in his eye 'We don't have to have a fridge to fit our kitchen. We're going to make our kitchen fit this fridge!'

And that is the truth about living with a handyman. People think that my house must be perfectly put together because Jeff does do such good work, but the truth is that when he is doing a project I live in a building site. I am always having to think one step ahead of him and guess what he might knock down next and be ready for it.

So because our fridge broke, I have been talked into a whole kitchen remodel. We are not just replacing the cabinets. We are changing the shape of the kitchen and rebuilding walls. Jeff has exactly what he wanted - a side-by-side fridge that is bigger than the old one, and the opportunity to rip out LOTS of drywall. And I have the prospect of dust, disruption, no cabinets for weeks while he raises the ceiling, and the promise of a temporary kitchen counter made out of planks until we get around to replacing the old ones.

Planks.

On the plus side, the kitchen is the only room in this house that he has not transformed utterly, and I am sure that I will love the new kitchen. The old one is barely functional anyway, it's so small with ridiculously tiny cabinets that nothing fits in. And when the new kitchen is done, this house is done! And then we will probably have to move because there will be no more drywall left in this one for him to rip out.

But spare a thought for me over the next few weeks. Me and my plank kitchen counter.

Let the games begin.

First Day of School!

Today is the first day of school and I am pretty excited. I think the kids are too, but I know I am. We are all in need of a little more structure and productivity around here!

Adam is in third grade this year and Ellie is in second. Adam has the same teacher as last year (we love her!) and Ellie has two teachers who are splitting the week between them, which was her Kindergarten experience and seemed to work then so I'm not too bothered.

This year I want to get Ellie reading proper chapter books. She has been coasting on her reading for a while and she needs to step it up. I need to step up my lunchmaking skills - Adam has been known to actually cry when faced with yet another peanut butter and jam sandwich. So I am going to work on making more interesting and healthy lunches. Adam doesn't really need to step anything up - we got his CST results in the mail yesterday (as well as the fact that I don't believe in them I had forgotten all about the tests and didn't even know we would ever find out his scores!) and they were off the charts good. So he just needs to keep doing what he's doing.

Here's to a great year! 

The Stairs Are All Done!

A couple of weeks ago Jeff finished the stairs. They are all done! And they look amazing. To commemorate their completion I thought I would do a couple of before and after pictures.

Here's what the stairs looked like before:

If we have lost anything it is the function of the stairs to be a ride-able fire-engine for little boys. And it would be hard for anyone to fall asleep on them now, without space for arms and legs to hang free.

Here they are in progress:

And after!

Here is the landing before, with little Ellie proving that a not insubstantial child could easily fit through the ridiculously wide banisters:

And here is the landing after, with a similarly-sized not insubstantial child proving that there is no chance. I am grateful that Nicholas is safe on these stairs!

This was probably the hardest part of the whole thing. The handrail between the two newel posts on the turn had to go at a very steep angle. But Jeff can do anything (I am beginning to think) and made it work.

 The pantry under the stairs is a huge benefit and we are taking full advantage of all the space. When it first went in we were amazed at how much stuff we could fit in there.

And look at it now! The bottom shelf is mostly the product of my own efforts. This summer we picked 55lbs of tomatoes and I made 27 pints of pasta sauce, 9 pints of salsa, and 7 jars of pizza sauce. Before the pantry we would not have a had a home for all of that!

 The new stairs are awesome.

My only problem now is that Jeff is trying to figure out what to do next. One of the kitchen drawers needs a repair, and he won't do it and is threatening to rip out the whole kitchen instead. I feel like Richard III (for the want of a nail, the battle was lost) except in my case it is for the want of a drawer, the kitchen was lost. I am not quite ready to face several months without a fully functional kitchen and I need ideas for holding off the inevitable!