Recap of the past few days…

Saturday my friend Sara came to help us at the house.  It was awesome to see her again and hang out.  You’ll remember her from when she came to visit us in Congo, of course!  We met in Alaska, but now they live just on the other side of Boise.  Anyway, she is a talented artist and painter, so now my kitchen is painted.  The beautiful butter-colored walls now make the cupboard doors look terrible, but she hopes to tackle that project on another day.  How awesome is that!?

The other thing we hadn’t decided how to handle was the kitchen floor.  There were stick down tiles over some ugly linoleum, with enough tiles leftover to finish the gaps (don’t ask me WHY there were gaps).  However, when we moved the fridge to paint, the smell of dog waste came wafting out of the floor.  All of the cleaning we attempted, including dumping a bucket of Pinesol and letting it soak, did not get the smell out.  So, the floor had to come up.  But what was UNDER the ugly linoleum, under the sticky tiles?  The kitchen floor was about an inch higher than the room next to it…

So, Matthew took his ice pick from Alaska and went to town.  Under the ugly linoleum (80’s print) was press board, about half an inch thick.  And under that was pristine linoleum (60’s print).  It was in great condition, minus the staple holes used in the pressboard, but it was also ugly.  I left to run errands with the kids and came back to the kitchen floor completely destroyed by one curious husband.

However, he had discovered that under THAT linoleum we were greeted with beautiful hardwood, the same as in the rest of the house!  We were so excited!  We still are, but getting the adhesive from the linoleum up hasn’t been easy.  Tomorrow we hope to finish that process.  And, best of all, the dog smell went with the pressboard!

In other news from around the house, the living, dining and hall are also completely painted.  The trim and doors now stand out a bit more, but that can wait until after we’ve moved in.  The ugly orange and creamsicle blend is finally gone from our view.  It is a fantastic feeling.  We’ve also made progress on other small jobs and little things.  While parts of the house were cleaned (as part of our closing requirements), some parts got missed.  I’ve spent a lot of energy scrubbing and cleaning.  My best example, though, came from the top of the fridge.  Under a half inch of dust and dog hair (I severely wish that was an exaggeration…but it’s not) I found the greatest thing of all: a tiny dentist’s box with a TOOTH in it.  A complete molar, with two roots, and little bits of blood.  Seriously?!  I didn’t even get a picture before tossing it in the trash, but, yeah…that was a fun find.

Sunday was a wonderful day of rest from the work and we enjoyed it very much.  We love our church here and the automatic family it brings.  We are looking forward to getting to know the people there better as well.

Monday, in addition to completing a lot of the jobs mentioned above, Levi and I went to see the midwife.  It was a good catch up visit, going over my summer of getting my prenatal visits done around the country.  I now have scheduled the rest of my midwife visits through baby’s birth, whenever he or she decides to come on out of there…hopefully not for another few weeks!

Yesterday we had an unexpected day off as Matthew woke sick, probably from something he ate on Monday.  Yuck.  It was a dreary gray day outside, too, so it matched our mood.  The kids did enjoy playing all day at this house (Lisa’s parents’), since most of their toys are here.

Today was another dreary, rainy day.  And cold!  I woke up with the sniffles and a sore throat and just generally not feeling well.  We went to work at the house, putting some finishing touches on the rooms that are ready.  As we speak, Matthew and some helpers (I haven’t even looked out the window since I’m feeling so miserable) are loading a truck with all of our belongings from my parents’ garage, where we dropped it off at the beginning of our road trip in June.  They’ll move it to our new garage, where we’ll sort it – some of it will continue to be storage, some will be put to use and come to Africa and much will be liquidated.

So, hopefully the remaining urgent projects go well and smoothly so we can be settled and living in the house next week.  We begin training very soon!  Training at MAF is classically known to be intense, long days, so we’ll want to be ready for it when it begins.  No pressure!

Since our focus right now is getting our housing situation ready for our short stay in the area, for future renters, and for long term investment purposes, I suppose that will be the focus of the blog for at least a week or two.  However, if you don’t know us very well, then maybe you don’t know about Matthew’s amazing talents in the home remodeling department.  Of course, it was these talents (and many others) that led to our first term in DRC, but it’s great to see him using them again after a six month break.

Actually, it’s LOVELY to be working again!  The months on the road were hard work, don’t get me wrong, but it was mostly mental.  Constantly being social, in other people’s houses, being prepared for the next stop, etc. – it wasn’t the same as some good, old fashioned manual labor, though.  Matthew and I are doers and we missed it!  Of course, that’s not to say I’m loving it at this point…32 weeks pregnant and seriously quite huge.  I know most pregnant ladies say they’re feeling huge, but if you saw me right now…yeah, huge would not even begin to describe it.  And the first two times around it didn’t bother me, but third time’s the charm – any comments I’ve received usually do not get a warm reply.  I apologize, but then…I don’t, because, is it really polite to comment on how HUGE I am?  Nope.  It isn’t.  Blame the crazy pregnancy hormones, if you must.

Anyway, I digress…the house is coming along well…though, as to be expected, the unexpected things come up.  We have been super blessed to learn that every appliance in the house works (and works WELL, actually, including the heat)!  Painting has been going great and we’ve finished with one color (it’s in two rooms)!  Woo hoo!  We had a cleaning party yesterday with a huge help from a lady and her two teen daughters from church and an adoptive mama I first met in Kinshasa who lives in the area.  It was AWESOME to get so much done and prepped for paint (so. much. ew. the walls were terribly dirty!) – paint is all most of the rooms need to be brought back to their original charm.

Another highlight to my day was meeting our elderly neighbors behind us.  Our backyards meet and they were out tending to their garden while I was forcing sending the kids outside for some get-out-of-our-hair play time.  The yard is fenced, which is lovely, but it was destroyed by the previous renter’s four large and one small dog.  Oh well, wrong time of year to fix that, so on we go without a lawn.  Anyway, their names are Frank and Thelma – they are adorably old, at least 85.  They gave us tomatoes, beans, and cucumbers from their garden and chatted briefly about how happy they were that the renter lady was gone and that we had bought it.  Frank said he was sad that the road had become so busy and dangerous.  I wasn’t aware it was dangerous…

Not twenty minutes later I was back inside painting with the windows open when Matthew and I heard the classic sounds of metal and plastic being crushed violently.  A car accident!  Right out our window!  No one seemed to be injured and our small town brought out not one, not two, but THREE police officers, each in their own vehicle, an ambulance, and a tow truck.  It was quite a sight and a few minutes of entertainment.  But both cars are likely totaled.  And, more importantly, Frank was right: the road is dangerous!

The cable guy came today to set up our internet and told us stories about the house – he has visited three times.  The first, he thinks the owners were living there, and it was very nice, though the paint was ugly.  Then there was the messy dog lady renter – and he talked about how she was completely horrid, made him install all sorts of stuff, had other people in and out of the house, and he remembers six dogs tearing up the place.  He, too, seemed happy someone else had bought the house.  It IS adorable, after all.

It’s fun to be working and fixing up such a lovely old house and something we know is a good investment.  It’s fun to have a new focus after such an adventure (with its own focus).  It’s fun to be able to nest…because, again, at 32 weeks pregnant, I need to do these things.

And now…to sleep.  Because all this work and growing another person at the same time…it’s tiring!