Day 2 with no school at the Profancik house. It was actually nice yesterday…after a week of sickness traveling around they were finally all healthy and happy. We played Apples to Apples, made cookies, turkey burgers, played some SimCity, and drew. Fun times! However, 4 kids home means little time for posting so this is a quick one. Stay safe everyone!
A happy Lilly in her new crib.
It seems like every year there is a photo of my kids that I just completely fall in love with. Because of our insanely busy summer (new baby, house remodels, moving our family to a new home, new schools) there are so many photos that I just didn’t have time to blog. Well, this is my favorite from the summer. It just screams “summertime” to me. My kids outside playing after dinner, a friendly race, the golden grass that we have here in late summer, Bella barefoot, the boys being so sweet and giving give her a head start, giggles and screams, beautiful blue skies…sigh. It reminds me of my childhood playing the hayfields with my brothers and sisters, hoping mom didn’t ring the bell that told us to come home.
More snow here in Indiana today! I’m like a kid sometimes, I never get tired of snow-at least it hasn’t happened yet. I know, I know, some of you out there are so done with it. But the kid in me can’t help wishing we would get THE BIG ONE soon. It’s exciting! 3-6 inches is wonderful, but how about a good solid foot? Okay, I will stop now for all of you snow haters. 
Here’s Lilly in the snow. She takes after me and is fascinated by it.
Today is the birthday of my first daughter, Emma Rose, who was stillborn 2 weeks before her due date. She would have been seven years old today. Seven years ago I gave birth to my little girl who never cried, never opened her eyes, never got to grow up to be a little seven year old. She was perfectly beautiful and I will always carry her in my heart. I will never forget that day and how it felt so wrong and at the same time so right to hold her in my arms. I will always remember how she was just as wriggly in my belly as Bella and Lilly…all of my girls have been little firecrackers. I will always wonder who she would have been. And until the day that I see her again I take comfort knowing she is in the presence of my heavenly Father.
I will always love you Emma.
Today was the last day of winter break with the kids and we decided to make the best of it. I’ve had this recipe for a couple of years and break after break we kept forgetting to try it. Call it a pre-new year resolution or something, but before this break started I promised myself we would try it. Nothing like waiting until the last minute, right?
We gathered up all the ingredients and within a few minutes had our batch of slime brewing. The kids loved it and had a blast braiding it, making pretzels, snails and much more. And hey, we used up a bunch of half empty glue bottles we had lying around. A great project for one of those winter days when you’ve heard “I’m bored” one time too many. Find the recipe after the picture.
*Best for kids ages 3 and up due to the fact that Borax can be toxic if eaten in large quantities.
My crazy children.
HOMEMADE SLIME
Materials
2 Mixing Bowls
Measuring Cups
Spoons
1 cup Elmer’s Glue
4 tsp Borax
Food Coloring (we tried to make it red, but it wasn’t strong enough and turned pink)
3/4 cup and 1 1/3 cup warm water
The slime can stick to clothing. It may seem a little soupy at first, but after a while it firms up. Save in ziploc baggies for another day!
I should change the name of this blog to “My Comically Insane (but good) Life With 4 Kids And An Old House”. OMG. This weekend was nuts. So we had an open house this weekend. Great, we want to get the house sold, an open house sounds like a good idea, maybe it will generate some interest. So, two weeks ago we schedule it for this weekend and plan on getting some final little projects done around the house. No biggie.
Well, Friday night D comes up from the basement saying he thinks our house knows we want to sell it and is breaking so that we stay put. Apparently there is a small leak in a pipe near the furnace, but it isn’t too bad. We talk about it and decide we’ll fix it after the open house since it’s pretty minor and can probably wait. Sigh…one more thing to fix, but at least it isn’t that big.
Saturday D goes back down to put some things in the basement, comes up and says the leak is worse and we’ll have to fix it before the open house. Eek! I’m not horribly worried at this point, after-all he did run new plumbing to bathroom remodels and did a great job there. I do know he’s a perfectionist so this could take a while, but better to have it fixed. So around 12pm he heads down to start working on the pipe. I’m upstairs cleaning the house (you know the, “company clean”), planning to run to the grocery for flowers and drinks to set out, thinking I’ll blow our open house visitors away with my pretty, staged, spotless house. All of a sudden I hear banging…not all that unusual when we have to work on the pipes in this house, but I just get this feeling of, uh-oh, this is going to be much bigger then we thought. After a while I hear “shoot!”. Hehe. You know where this is going.
Sure enough, D comes up and says the pipe is old and there is no easy way to get it off and his efforts to un-twist and bang the thing off failed. And it seems, made the leak worse. At this point I freak out. Knowing how long it takes him to fix plumbing I realize there is no way he’ll get this done before the open house and still have time to mow and help clean. Even though I’m sure he could eventually fix it (with a 1/2 a dozen runs to Lowes for parts) we know we don’t have the time. So we call a plumber. The first time we’ve given in and paid someone to fix a pipe for us. Blech.
Three hours later the plumber arrives and before he starts, gives us the warning that the pipes are old (yup, we know that) and the connecting pipes could break as he starts to work on them (yup, we’ve figured that out before too). He asks are we sure we don’t want to just re-pipe the whole basement? Umm…maybe another time? So he gets started. The connecting pipe does break. Great. He fixes that, another connecting pipe cracks. And another. Oops-there goes an elbow thingy. Let me just sign my savings account over now. He fixes a pipe and a leak springs up a foot down the line. He’s chasing leaks across the basement. SEVEN hours later, it’s nearly midnight, most of the basement is re-piped and we still don’t have water because the pump switch cracked with all the banging and no store that sells pump switches is open at 12am. Wal-Mart, you might consider carrying a 30-50 psi pump pressure switch with low pressure cut-off. I’m sure they would sell like hotcakes.
We decide there is nothing to do but call it a night and try to finish in the morning. The house is as clean as it could get without water. Which isn’t clean at all. Think a day’s worth of dirty dishes piled up, wet plumber tracks all over the kitchen, bathrooms waiting to be cleaned and more. Open house in less than 14 hours.
We’re up bright and early Sunday morning which would normally mean heading to church, but today we’re all stinky and dirty due to our lack of showers and our house is still a mess. So church is not happening for us today. I rush out to Lowes and get there as the doors open, grab the pump switch from the shelf and race home. Fortunately this part of the repair went smoothly and by 10:30am we have running water again! Unfortunately the yard still needs mowed and the house needs cleaned. Open house in 3.5 hours. It normally takes us 3-4 hours to mow our nearly 1 acre yard (we have a gazillion trees so it takes a while) so you can imagine the panic that ensues. I run around the house, taking breaks to feed and change Lilly, D mows at breakneck speed and we race against the clock. 20 minutes before the realtor is due to arrive D races into the shower, I’m running the kids (AKA pack mules at this point) around putting things away while setting up the flowers, setting drinks out and loading up the diaper bag. 10 minutes ’till 2:00 we rush out of the driveway and pass the realtor on our road. Haha! D’s hair isn’t done, Bella and Garrett haven’t had showers and we’re all starving. But we did it! The house is sparkling, calm music playing, flowers in vases, drinks out for the visitors, and all of the house info is laid out neatly. Whew! If only they knew the insanity that had taken place only minutes before.
Since we were hadn’t had lunch we head to a restaurant, park and start to unload looking forward to relaxing while we watch the Colt’s game. All of a sudden Christian yells “oh no!” In rush to get out of the house in time, he ran out to the van barefoot and now has no shoes. Of course. All we can do at this point is laugh!
It all worked out okay and was a great day in the end. We went to my sister’s and had delicious homemade pizza, watched the Colts lose (boohoo) and relaxed. The open house was busy and there is some interest from a couple of the families that came through. Yay! And the good in this whole fiasco is that we have new pipes in the house and it was SO nice to go back to a house that looks like a model home. And with 4 kids and a dog I expect that model home look to last, oh, about 30 minutes. : -)
And for a picture…here’s one of my house. As much work as restoring a 120+ year old house has been, I’ll miss this place terribly when we leave.
During the first 2 weeks of Kindergarten (yup, she’s in school this year!) Bella’s class has been doing a color a day. Here she is snapping green beans into a green bowl, wearing a green dress on green day. Note the beans sticking out of her apple cider slushy. That girl is constantly building, tying, stacking and connecting things. I find crazy, elaborate creations in her room all the time-hairbows connecting rubber snakes to sundresses that are tied around bedposts with a stuffed octopus hanging on for dear life-kinds of things. She’s a funny girl!
And a bit belated…the kid’s back to school photo.
Lilly’s first portrait, taken at about five days old.
This post is about a month overdue, but there’s something about having a sweet newborn in the house that seems to slow everything down. The newest member of the Profancik family arrived with much ado on July 22. Little Lillian (Lilly) was born via c-section after she decided to turn sideways after my water broke. She seemed to think her shoulder was the best part to come out first-crazy girl! It wasn’t the delivery I had planned and anyone who knows me, knows I was terrified of having a c-section. While I would choose a natural delivery over a c-section ANY day and I still think it could have been avoided (grrrr), I am grateful that my baby arrived safe and sound. That’s what really matters.
Lilly has been such a good baby. She is a good sleeper, great nurser and even though she sometimes has a gassy tummy, she still is an even tempered baby in spite of the fact that she is probably uncomfortable at times. She’s already gained over 5 lbs and is starting to smile and coo-LOVE it! She’s a rolly-polly little doll baby and we all adore her to pieces.
Life is good.
Last week during a private mentorship I took Christian out for a fun session. I just love urban backgrounds with fun and funky colors for boys his age and we had a blast exploring my favorite spots with him in my hometown. I don’t know what happened to this kid of mine, but over the last year he went from hating being photographed to being my most cooperative model. He actually asks me to do sessions with him. And that big, sweet, dimpled grin of his just melts this momma’s heart…sigh. Okay, so I know I’m biased, but I just can’t help it.
And two from the country part of the shoot…
Yesterday I was organizing my images from last summer and had to stop to edit just one photo. It was so cold and snowy and this photo was so full of summer warmth that I just couldn’t resist. I hope you enjoy it too.
