Ha ha ha ha.... Life is So Funny... (plus updated house pictures)

So, as per the norm, just when I think I'm ready to move forward in one direction

something come up and hobbles me:

Or I should say hobbles her, which in turn hobbles me.

Last Wednesday Kid tripped and fell (hard) during gym.  She tried to catch herself and the force of the impact broke her radius.  That girl is so insanely stoic, though, that it was hard to figure that out right away.  The ER splinted it and said that's all she'd need.  We wouldn't even have to go to the Ortho clinic if we didn't want to.  Hmm... not so sure about that advice.  They made a follow-up in three weeks with the clinic "just in case" and said we could just cancel it if everything seemed fine.  The Orthopedic clinic called the next morning and said she needed to come in for a hard cast on Tuesday.  They did not agree with the ER.  While a cast is certainly more of an inconvenience, I'd rather not worry all the time that the splint isn't on properly, or hard enough to really protect her if she hits it at school.  Without a hard cast she's pretty limited in what she can do.

This morning we got up extra early to account for having to dress her.  And I'm going to hit Value World to see if I can't find a cardigan and a coat I can cut the arm off of.  This is one instance where the uniform is a bigger hinderance than it is a help.  Now Mr F will unpack her bag in the morning and I'll get there early to pack her up.  It is her left arm (and she's right handed) but she's not the most coordinated with the use of both of her limbs!  She'll have to sit out of gym and I'm hoping her teacher will let her work on her homework during that time which would be a huge bonus.

In other news, this accident trumped our weekend plans to head to Chicago.  Boo.  And cost us just as much.  Double Boo.

Mr F used the extra time to paint our dining room ceiling in preparation for hanging our chandelier.  It's going to happen, people!  Maybe even before 2013!  He also weatherstripped our doors (why we went through 2 winters with 1/2" gaps blowing cold air in I do not know... I did request it 2 years ago), installed my new programmable thermostat (which has been sitting in the bag for 1 year), new coat hooks (which I love... so I can move some of the 1 million coats off of the coat rack and the kids can actually reach to put their coats and bags away)...

(the door and trim are white... so keep that in mind when you assess our wall color... it is not mustard yellow, I swear, kind of a wheat color.  The hooks are a camel color with red and blue designs from Cost Plus World Market and were $7 each.  I got some green ones for the laundry room.)

See, look not mustard AT ALL:

I told you I wasn't lying.

He also made some serious ground finishing up our exterior paint...

BEFORE:

Note our house had pinky beige aluminum siding, light aqua trim (wtf?!), off white doors and soffits, hunter green accents (window frames, gutters, railings, etc.), and black (with dark bluish tint) shingles on the roof.

 Thanks to the tornado...

We now have HardieBoard plank siding which we have painted a dark indigo (risky!).  All of the trim, gutters and soffits are painted a bronze color (kind of brownish/gray depending on light).  The walk railings are now a deep dark chocolate brown and our doors are a russet color.  Our shingles are Weathered Wood by Timberline... so much better, I promise you.  I think now that everything has come together it looks really great.  Such an improvement over the original house colors!  It only took a EF3 and  7 months to get here ;)

Window boxes scheduled to make their arrival on the scene sometime in spring of 2013!

(awesome terracotta urn style rain barrels are from overstock.com)

I took care of Kid.  Wrote out her book report for her, taught her this week's memory (5th &6th commandments), and did her Science test review with her. I planted 70 spring bulbs, went grocery shopping (and actually put them away!), fed the crew, made curtains for the laundry room, and made these cool Christmas Trees from catalogs:

(surprisingly fast and easy!  Just fold the page in at a right angle toward the seam.  Then fold that page again making a tight paper airplane like fold back into the seam.  Fold the bottom up to be flush with the bottom of the catalog.  Repeat 100 times.)

Mr F and I finally finished the first four seasons of Breaking Bad.  I have mixed feelings about that show, although it picked up a bit at the end.

Kid and I watched Wives & Daughters on Netflix late into the night while we waited for her pain medicine to kick in.  I have only good feelings about that series.

And the girls and I (mostly the girls) have been watching The Road to Avonlea (from the library) and are loving it. It's like everything you remember Little House On The Prairie being until you watch an old LHOTP and you can't imagine how something so obviously filmed on a sound stage and not accurate to the books was so successful.   The Road to Avonlea has 20 more years of TV making know how on its side and it shows.

So, all in all, we used our time wisely.