There's Not Enough O's in Groooooooss

Yesterday morning our main floor toiler overflowed for probably the 6th time in the last 3 or so months. Water went everywhere, Josh just happened to come home for a minute as it happened, so he plunged the toilet and told me to call housing, which I did. They sent someone out right away. He flushed the toilet a few times and it was working perfectly. "Your husband did a great job plunging" he said. Then he snaked the toilet anyway while he was there, and said if it happens again to call again and next time they'll take the toilet off and snake it the other way. Yay.

A wee bit later I heard what sounded like the cat peeing in his litter box, only a little bit weird. And loud because I can't usually hear him peeing when I'm upstairs. Thinking that maybe I should check on him, but not really wanting to get off the couch (I was tired from cleaning my bathroom floor, mopping up all of that gross water), I ignored him. A few minutes later though I went downstairs to put my towels into the dryer. And that's when I saw this:

A puddle of pee ON MY WASHING MACHINE! Of course, I immediately blamed the cat because how else would a pubble of pee wind up ON MY WASHING MACHINE! Sigh. I ran back upstairs for my camer (well, my phone) and for some cleaning supplies. When I got back down I stood there for a moment in disbelief. I mean really, WHY would he do that, it didn't make any sense. His litter box is literally 3 feet away from the washing machine and on the floor. Why would Peavey walk past his box, jump onto the washing machine and then pee? Figuring he wouldn't, and then remembering that our toilet overflowed and flooded our bathroom, I wondered if maybe it leaked through the ceiling?

>I looked up, directly over the washing machine, but the ceiling was perfectly dry. My eyes wandered over the rest of the ceiling to where I saw this:

That is the paint bulging out after being filled with gross toilet water. My guess now is that when the toilet overflowed and filled the bathroom with its nasty water, the water seeped through the floor into the ceiling of the laundry room, where it collected behind the paint, forming this bulge. It then must have sprung a leak and squirted out of the paint bulge onto my washing machine. I know, I know, WHAT?!

Peavey, I owe you an apology. I'm terribly sorry, and will put my "Jump to Conclusions" mat out with the trash this week. And maybe give you a belly rub to make up for blaming you for something you didn't do. But we'll see about that, I am still pretty annoyed with you for crying all night the other night, keeping me awake for WAY too long.

So, after cleaning my machine and what's it, I called housing (again) and got their answering service. As I was trying to explain my situation the guy on the phone I saw one of the housing men outside talking to a neighbor. Praise God! I quickly ran downstairs and as he was about to get into his van I said, "Could you come look at something for me REAL quick please?" He did and confirmed that it must have been from when the toilet overflowed. He then cut away the buldge and all the surrounding area:

Now I have to let this dry over the weekend, and then call housing once more to have them come back to repaint and fix up that portion of my wall/ceiling. Good times y'all. Good. times.

Like Fish In...Well...Like Fish In Water

Yesterday Zeke and Deacon had their first swim lesson and I must say, it went rather well. I had expected a lot of hemming and hawing and "I'm too scared"-ing to happen, but they both went right in and did everything their teacher asked - including putting their faces right into the water.

The boys really did so well, especially considering they haven't ever really been swimming. But they worked on floating on their backs, gliding, blowing bubbles under water, kicking, paddling with their arms, etc. At the end, they even took turns jumping into the pool.

I am sorry for the poor quality of these pictures, I only had my phone with me. Maybe next week I'll bring my actual camera. There is a bit of splashing that happens though, so we'll see. If you look at the picture above, that's pretty much the whole pool their lessons are currently taking place in. Can we say tiny? But it works well for the purposes of the lesson, and their teacher Ms. M is super sweet and REALLY good with the kids. I am pretty excited and am looking forward to future lessons and watching my sweet boys learn how to swim. Who knows, maybe after the first 4 week session is over, I'll sign Finn up too.

When You're the Best of Friends

With Zeke and Deacon being pretty close in age (a week shy of 18 months) they really are best friends. They like to do most things together, even when they get on each others' nerves. Zeke will refer to Deacon as his friend more often than as his brother, and it's a lot of fun to see them pal around as much as they do.

And pal around they do. Awhile back Josh told them they could get out of bed whenever they had to use the bathroom. As we all soon learned, both boys usually have to use the bathroom before I get them out of bed in the mornings. Usually we'd hear one get up and pee, then we'd hear the other one get up and pee. THEN we'd hear one get up and go into the other's room where they would play and play and play until I either went in to tell them to quiet down, or to get them up for the day.

Recently though, we've had to put a pause on this. Zeke is a MUCH earlier riser than Deacon is. Zeke likes to wake up and GO GO GO at 6/6:30. Deacon, on the other hand, likes to sleep until 7:30 or so. Lately, Zeke had been waking up, then waking Deacon up to play, causing Deacon to be a real grumpy kid come 8:30am or so. Yay.

It all came to a head yesterday morning though. Yesterday all was quiet until about 7:30 when we heard that scream/cry thing that kids do coming from Zeke's room. Josh and I both bolted out of bed, ran to Zeke's room to find the door locked, and the crying coming from his room. Zeke opened the door, with tears streaming down his face saying that his leg hurt. We sent Deacon back to his room, and eventually Zeke told me how Deacon had a book he wanted so he took the book from Deacon and in return Deacon kicked him in the leg. (The story later changed to Deacon hit him in the leg, but you get the idea.) So we put an end to "hanging out in each other's bedrooms before 'wake-up time'" time - for now anyway, we'll see how long it lasts before they reinstate it.

The best part? Deacon's take on the whole thing. When I asked him what happened he said Zeke took the book from him then Zeke "bit his own leg off." Oh Dee Dee, where do you come up with these things?

Oh! Easter!

You guys. I'm sorry it's been quiet here again. Last week Zeke was home on spring break, so many things sort of just fell by the wayside. This week has seen me trying to catch up and take care of all the things I sort of ignored last week. Then I sat down to blog figuring I must have something to say, and drew a blank. SO I opened my folder of pictures on my computer and guess what - I have none in there from April. I then turned on my camera and guess what - NO pictures there either. What?! And so I sat here and thought, "I literally have nothing to blog about right now. Has nothing really happened yet this month?" But then I turned on my phone and low and behold, there were pictures from Easter!

Our Easter was very nice. We got up and left the house at 8:30 to head down to Josh's parents' church. We made the trip with plenty of time and no incidents. Church was nice, even if the speaker talked a little too long. Afterwards it was off to Mom and Dad's for lunch, naps, an egg hunt and dinner. It was a beautiful day, and we all had a really good time.

(Josh actually has better pictures on his phone, but he won't share them with me, so I'm stuck using the ones I got on my phone.)

The drive home was pretty uneventful too. Until Finn tried to access Netflix on the iPad and couldn't get it to work because we were in a moving vehicle. But that meltdown happened pretty close to home so we survived.

As for spring break, it was a relatively normal week, except Zeke was home all day every day. I think Wednesday I reached my breaking point as he was just. all. OVER. the place. At some point in the afternoon I actually said to him, "Zeke, if you were at school right now you'd be losing stars." I'm sure it didn't help that Josh had a last minute trip thrown at him and he was gone Tuesday night, Wednesday and Thursday morning.

Thursday was an exciting day for the boys though. My dad and Karen came up and took them to the movies - well, they took Zeke and Deacon. Finn stayed home with me and took a MUCH needed nap. They saw the Lorax. Then, while Josh and I went to dinner at a friend's house, they took the boys to McDonalds for dinner. Can we say best. day. ever?

But now we're all back at school (Deacon didn't get a spring break, so really, it's just Zeke back at school), back on schedule, all caught up, and Josh is traveling again today and tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be back here again soon, even if it's with pictures of nothing but the kids playing at the park or coloring at the table or something.