November 13, 2016 was a life changing day here. Which totally knocked my socks off. One day I'm still recovering from. Don't know if I ever will. So first I get a call that my husband fell out of a truck. Not only fell out of a truck, but he had a tape measure hooked to his back, which he landed on. Took him to the ER for x-rays. Nothing broken, but bruised bone. So after a lot of ER stuff and work stuff and this and that, brought him home and on the way home I side swiped a deer. Kid ya not. I saw the ditch and I'm like sorry deer, but I wasn't going into the ditch. I hit my brakes and he hit his, our sides hit and he ran off, no damage on the van.
Get home finally and get Russell all settled and kids to bed and the phone rings. My mil was rushed to the hospital. I was the only one able to race up and be with her. We now knew she was never to leave. We believe it was a serious of strokes. She fought hard to get moved to rehab and she won. I got the joy of moving her over there. It was a three week battle, but she left us to be with her husband of over 50 years who died a few months before her.
So my husband lost both his parents last year. It was a tough year. A lot to do, a lot to take care of, a lot of things got set aside. We paused school for about two plus months. The garden suffered.
Then this past summer we thought we were moving. We had nothing stopping us. No more 3am calls and putting our lives on hold to take care of in laws. Hubby's job may be moving south a wee bit. So let's move south. I tell ya we looked and looked and looked. We gave ourselves until September. And then onto plan B or plan C. We gave up looking and are onto plan B. Which is expanding the house. Plan B seems to be going well. We just ok'd house plans to add two bedrooms onto the house. Maybe later we expand out the kitchen and add a food room, but take it in sections. If all goes well we start after Christmas.
Plan C. Was to build an outbuilding for Ethan's bedroom, an outbuilding for my craft room. Not a fan of Plan C because it's going outside in the rain and the yuck of WA state. But it would be something we could do ourselves and not have to wait or hire anyone.
This past August was a life changing event. We never ever, ever never thought we would ever have to deal with a forest fire. But we did. So hubby and I headed up north, our dishwasher was just done and I wanted to hit the outlet appliance place. But they were in Tacoma, so we were going to be gone most of the day. We hit that, and nothing we hit a few more spots. We stopped for lunch. We headed back to town and Lacey and got a dishwasher ordered. Few more errands. Hit Home Depot and my phone started to go off??? My sister asking about the fire? what fire? I get on the neighborhood site and there is a massive fire. It started out as a controlled fire that got totally out of control. It was really windy that day and he blew around and jumped.
It jumped across a six lane freeway and took out a business. So we load up the wood and race home. But got stopped our back roads were closed. had to go back north and take the freeway home. The freeway was Black, and smoky and dark. Something out of a nightmare. We got to our main road and people were stopping us from going home. We finally get home and gather the kids and pets and leave. Although I forgot one animal. So hubby had the kids and the bulk of the pets, he went onto my sisters house and I turned around. As I arrived home the police were there telling my neighbors they had to leave NOW. I got the cat and left.
We sat at my sisters house for hours. Watching a plane drop fire retardant. For hours he dropped fire retardant, we now know he was dropping it on a 500 acre wooded area. The road that we were stopped on and had to turn around, once it opened and we could use it, was just red. The amount of fire retardant was just WOW. Still today it's red on that road.
We came so close to loosing our house that day. The fire fighters stopped the fire inches from our neighbors old wooden fence. If that fence would have gone our whole block would have been gone, because they were on one side of the fence, they were not on our side of the fence. The neighbors in front of us they stopped it before it hit their garage, if that would have continued it would have jumped our road and took out our house. So we almost got hit a few different ways. As we were playing clean up, we found ashes everywhere. We got lucky, because ashes jumped 6 lanes of freeway and took out homes and a business, but landed in our back yard and our yard didn't go up.
The irony of that day. We have been spending the summer building sheds. We got the garden shed all done, we got our storage shed all done, and we were in the process of putting up shed three. This is our emergency shed. So if we get ten feet of snow and loose power for days we will be ok. If we have an earthquake, we will be ok. So now next spring I will be buying a couple of hoses to put out there in the shed. One of the big things I didn't know, because of our location, the fire fighters were going around to houses and taking hoses and using our water. Well not ours, they took our hose. Well until they cut the power and we had no water. But if this ever happens again, toss the hoses in to the front yard before leaving.
We spent days without power, days without internet. As they were replacing power poles we would have to live without power for 1-2 days a week. We still have spotty internet. Heard the powers above are debating if we get a new main road. So internet has not dug up wires to replace. So we are hooked into this box thing. We were hooked to a truck for the longest time. Although one kick of this box and we all loose internet.
A very eye opening day. Wouldn't it be something to loose the house, but have a dishwasher delivered two weeks later?
We started school. A bit late. But we are hitting it now. It's going well. We lost our outside cat this summer. He just came in and basically told us it was time and within a few days left us. We haven't had an new animals in over two years. So put it out there we were ready for a new cat. Well we were answered and received two. One needs special love and attention. As she has kidney disease. We give her fluids every other day. Which involves needles and a bag and someone holding her and someone poking her and someone holding the bag. But we've done it twice now and it's going well.
The garden really sucked this year. But hoping for better next year. We are building a green house. Not just any green house, it's a massive 10 x 20 green house. It will have room for ten billion starts. I plan on hanging cherry tomatoes in there. We added two very large tomato beds this year. We also added a massive garlic bed. So I will be diving back into gardening and doing a lot of it. We went light in case we moved, well plus we had a ton going on.
We've had birthday's, I have a 14 years old with massive amounts of hair. And we won't talk about the smell. Which I hope won't get any worse. We did a playroom make over. It was awesome. Tons of floor space now. I did a built in couch because it's a size you would never ever find. tables along the wall are actually closet doors. Totally re-organized the Lego pieces.
As we are getting ready to add on some bedrooms I will be re-doing Cole's room. It will be a massive remodel as the closet is coming out. Lots of table space and shelves. Just hard to do at the moment because we have crap everywhere. So can't wait for more space. My crafting stuff is in the living room, well some of it. I put away the crafting stuff for a long while, but had the itching so bad to craft so I took over the living room. Tuckers stuff is boxed up in his room, Ethan's stuff is half here and half there. We are just out of space.
So it's been a year. A lot has gone on. A lot more coming up. I will try to get back to the blog. I have Tucker in the kitchen for school. So some interesting stuff is coming out of the kitchen. Need to get the recipes up. Because frankly I loose them and have to look here for them. HA!
Cole at Brickcon
Apple trees were not that great this year.
This is a massive minecraft quilt for when I re-do Cole's bedroom.
The baby. Buddy, just the love of our lives.
