E's Big Weekend

E had a couple big events this weekend. On friday night he had belt graduation at Karate. He earned his 2nd Green belt moving him from the beginners to the intermediate class.

On saturday night was his Blue and Gold banquet for Cub Scouts. He earned his Wolf badge and won first place in the cake decorating contest :)

Tornado Alley!

Praise the Lord we escaped tuesday nights tornados with only a few lost shingles. The kids had an interesting adventure though. The girls had gymnastics on tuesday evening ( E was supposed to go to boyscouts but we missed that event) W had left town earlier in the day. I debated taking the girls to gymnastics but there was nothing yet on radar and well ya just never know with the weather so off we went.


About 30 minutes into their classes some of the parents were outside the gym watching a funnel cloud to the north west of us- very near our house, it never touched ground. A bit later the owner of the gym, Gus, was telling us all to go into the main gym with the kids. Once the tornado sirens actually started going off we sent all the kids down into the pit- a concrete hole filled with foam used for landing in when the big girls are practicing dismounts. The pit was covered over with a big mat and Gus sent a fan down to circulate the air. The adults huddled under some of the beams with mats across them. When there was a break in the storms Gus sent a box of snacks and water bottles down into the pit. E tossed them out to everyone. All in all the kids spent a little over an hour down there- singing songs and eating snacks LOL.





I was worried that they would be scared- the big kids because they knew- sort of- what was going on, and T because she didn't. E had fun starting the "food fight", G had fun cuddling on the laps of some of the big girls and T wants to do it again next week!

Update on Kitchen

Well if you don't look to close our kitchen is done LOL. The cabinets are finished, new floors are done and the countertops are on. But if you look close you might notice that the corners of the counter tops don't actually meet!

The counter tops were put in last friday. W and I (mostly W of course) took out the sink and removed the old countertops thursday night and the installers came in and "did their job." We weren't thrilled with the corners but were told it was the best they could do on a bar top. Then W went to reattach the plumbing to the sink and discovered that the sink wasn't installed correctly and the counter top wasn't actaully attached to much. In fact I could lift the counter top and one of the seams wasn't even glued.

Monday I called Home Depot to complain. The owner of the installation company came out and inspected on tuesday. He said he would have the guys come back out on wednesday and fix the sink and caulk the corners to make it look nicer. The guys came and did their thing. The corners looked better and presumably the sink was in correctly. W came home from work and the sink still wasn't in correctly. At this point we decided it was the best we were going to get.

Thursday Home Depot called to ask us how the installation went. W answered the phone. He told them we weren't thrilled but it was livable. The installers had said they would leave us a tube of the caulk they used but they forgot. We were hoping another layer of caulk would make the corners appear more flush. W asked the woman at Home Depot about getting some caulk and she decided she needed to come check out the job fer herself. She came yesterday afternoon and wasn't happy with the job either.

SO.... next thursday the installers are coming back to remove the countertops, and do whatever theh have to do to get them to fit right. And, hopefully, put the sink back in correctly. FUN!