There’s nothing quite like working until 2am and sleeping SO HARD in the morning only to be awoken by the slight noise of your bedroom door opening so you open your eyes to see EVERYONE standing there so you freak out just a bit and then they start singing Happy birthday.
And then I had to hurry and get out of bed because it’s picture day and I hadn’t purchased Owen’s pics so I had to rush downstairs to do that plus take my own photos before they left for band.
Also? Owen remembered on his own that it was picture day and wore his shirt, jeans, AND A BELT! He didn’t shower so his hair was a little crazy but in the grand scheme of things not bad!!
Tom just went to turn off lights to go to bed and he came out saying OH MY GOD. YOU WON’T BELIEVE THE BATHROOM.
I knew Katie had been in there last and could only imagine. Her M.O. is toilet paper scraps on the floor, unflushed toilet, and band-aid wrappers. I told him he’d have to make her clean it in the morning.
He just told me I had to go look. This is what I found.
Tonight was Warren Township High School’s Fill the Drum event! All the local middle School bands plus both high school bands perform for the community in a charity event! Owen had to wear something red, white, or blue since they were performing some patriotic songs. He looked so good we had to take a pic! (We typically only see him in t-shirts and jogging pants or shorts.)
I actually got out my big camera and charged the batteries so I could use my telephoto lens! So I had to take a practice shot!
Owen was so excited for this and had a great time!
Waiting their turn!
And here’s a video I found on YouTube! You can actually see my head in the stands (I am about at the 49-yard line behind a lady in pink and you can see me taking pics)!
And here is the tail end of another song they did, in the shape of USA. Owen is in the A towards the bleachers.
Today Katie was invited to her friend Sophia’s and decided to paint her nails instead of cleaning her room like she’s been asked to do for a week plus multiple times today… while she was obviously supposed to be working on her room.
She has had multiple last-chance warnings about cleaning her room. She knew the consequences.
So Tom and I immediately went up with garbage bags and cleaned it out. Everything just got shoved into bags and Tom gathered all the big stuff (like her new rainbow carpet and cushy chair) and hauled it into the guestroom.
All the crap that was on the floor? Gone.
Clothes, towels, shoes? Gone.
Makeup, Legos, Pokémon cards, games, colored pencils/markers/crayons, books? If it was on the dresser in a mess or on the floor? All gone.
Anything that had been shoved in her closet? Gone.
Brand new clothes she just shoved somewhere instead of putting them away? Gone.
There was sooooo much screaming and pleading and crying. Owen was even crying about it and begging us not to do it because he loves her. But unfortunately she needed to learn we are serious. Eventually she even admitted she didn’t think we’d do it. Now she knows we’re serious.
But we heard it all from her: We are the worst parents ever. We don’t care about anyone. Everyone is going to hate her. She’s going to tell everyone at school about this. She wishes she lived somewhere else. She has the worst life ever. This is the worst day ever. She will hate us forever. We will regret this.
We did tell her she has the power to get everything back—she just has to keep her room clean and we’ll let her pick some stuff. To which she snotted back “Well there’s nothing left in here!” To which we replied “Then it should be easy!”
So this is what the guestroom looks like…again. (You might remember we did this once already. Plus did it once at the last house.) But she’s just not getting it.
Needless to say we are both mentally and physically exhausted after this 1.5 hour-long process.
This is what friendship and love is all about. My friend Cheri invited us to a Brad Paisley concert (at the Hollywood Casino Ampitheatre) because she got four free tickets via VetTix—and Tom isn’t a country fan but he loves me and we all get along so…it happened!
The ride down took forever since it was a Friday heading toward the city, but the time passed quickly and we picked a super delicious place for dinner—Siam Marina. We all shared the:
Roll Me Out Crispy Platter — Two of each: Asparagus, Avocado, Crab & Cream Cheese, Seafood, Shrimp, & Thai Chicken Eggrolls
Signature Fish Cakes Delight — Chilean sea bass, mahi-mahi, salmon, panko, & served with mustard sauce
Calamari Tempura — Calamari rings dipped in tempura batter, served with sweet & sour sauce
I’m apparently an old fogey because it makes me insane that everyone stands up when the concert starts…so you can’t see anything unless you stand up. I don’t want to stand up for that long, thanks. And we were far enough away that you could barely see him on stage anyway…so I just stayed in my seat and watched him on the video monitors! Seriously, I only stood up for the last song and the encore!
Can you see how tiny he is way down there on the bottom middle?
After the concert we got a pic in front of the tour trailer.
As a sidenote, we decided to leave the kids alone all night for the first time (4:30–??). We had a neighbor on alert plus the kids had Anna’s number plus we told them they could have unlimited screen time so we felt pretty good. (It turned out fine! They followed the rules, went to bed when we told them to, and were asleep when we got home at 12:30.)
If you are a veteran, you can grab cheap tix to events like this! Sign up here!
It’s official! We are full-time 100% residents of Illinois! We own a house, transferred our plates and registrations yesterday, and got new (temp) licenses and voter registration cards today! (We haven’t had to do this the last 20 years in all the states we’ve lived in since being military lets you keep your home of record for those things.) We waited this long because Tom needed his VA disability confirmation and they have been a shitshow since the beginning.
The best news, though? We were in and out of the DMV in 30 minutes! And we didn’t have to take the written test!
It started waaaay back in July. We ordered two pieces from The Roomstore on July 3 with delivery on July 10. Easy, right?
Except that the ottoman was damaged—it had a cracked foot (that fell apart when unwrapped) and a badly ripped corner.
Okay. Crap happens, we get it. So we scheduled another attempt—just thankful they had more in stock since in-stock furniture is hard to come by. So they attempted again on July 13 (#2) and…it was ripped on an edge.
Since it was actually functional they let us keep this ripped one until they could exchange it. Isn’t it pretty?
Our friends told us to just cancel it but it’s soooo pretty—it’s the perfect color and perfect size, plus it’s a storage ottoman. We asked for a discount and they refused, saying they’ll just exchange it.
On July 16 they attempted again (#3) and this time we made them unwrap it before they even brought it in the house. Nope. Two of the “squares” were so unbelievably discolored it was ridiculous that anyone looking at it for a second would assume it was good to deliver. I don’t have a photo of this one.
The next exchange (#4) was scheduled for July 20. This one was actually the least damaged of them all but the colors were off. Again. Not as bad as the first one but still unfit to accept.
SURPRISE SURPRISE—delivery attempt #5 on July 23 was a fail. Damaged. The inside edge was really scratched. It wasn’t visible, but the piece was expensive, so we figure it should be perfect to start with. Right? But we told the customer service person that we would accept it at a big discount and she offered us $50. On a $1100 ottoman. Um, no.
They told us it would be another month for delivery because they are getting one straight from the manufacturer to hopefully avoid any issues. UGH. At this point I really just wanted to be done with them, but it’s the perfect color, shape, size, etc.
Previous to this, Tom had talked to managers a few times and they assured him that we would be getting white glove service—that someone would be in the warehouse and looking it over first before it got loaded on the truck. Yeah no. That never happened. As evidenced by the continued arrival of damaged ottomans.
But then! We got a call saying they were going to deliver again. How? What happened to getting one straight from the manufacturer? Honestly at this point I don’t remember all the lies but I do know that they cancelled a few attempts because they discovered before or while loading it that it was damaged. I have texts from 7/28, 7/31, 8/11, 8/12, and 8/19—all of which I think were attempts that got cancelled. So maybe now a manager was actually checking them?!
So, fast forward through almost a month of attempts and cancellations and reschedules and talks with Customer Service (and Tweets!) that accomplished exactly nothing. (Oh wait! Tom had talked to customer service a few more times and they ended up giving us a $75 store credit and another time they refunded our $199 delivery fees. They then turned the store credit into an actual $75 credit but we never saw it on our account.)
8/19 — No idea what actual delivery attempt, but it was a FAIL. The outside had had packing tape on it, so when they ripped it off… OMFG… the color ripped off.
Tom tried to get store managers and it proved to be near impossible. He did finally get one and they basically told him they’d just keep trying. I want to give up but I want this damn ottoman because I haven’t found anything else this size or color or with storage in my search (and I’ve been searching)!
8/25 — Surprise surprise. Ottoman delivery attempt FAIL. It was scratched in two places and when the delivery guys went to try leather conditioner to fix it, it took the color off!
We decided enough was enough and even though it was a perfect size/shape/color, we couldn’t have something that got ruined that easily. (We had also noticed that we were scratching it just in daily use.) So we decided that we wanted to send both pieces from them back. Why both? Well, we bought them together (to go together) and if we couldn’t have one, we didn’t want either. Also? The loveseat turned out to be really crappy and was already getting deformed. We technically don’t need it since we found our real one elsewhere (after) and are just waiting for it to come in.
Well of course they fought it. Tom said if they refuse we will tell them we expect an ottoman delivery every Saturday from here on out until we’re happy…or they take both pieces. It was just ridiculous. Had they just given us a respectable discount to keep a less-damaged one, we would have been done with this in July. I mean, how much time and money did they waste attempting delivery of like nine ottomans?
After like 10 minutes on hold, the manager came back and said they will pick up both pieces! YAY! But also boo because I loved this ottoman. So now we are on the hunt.
Tom just finally heard today about the Abbvie job that they had basically told him they were CREATING FOR HIM… that he’s been waiting for for 2+ months…
He didn’t get it. There was someone with more experience who was hired last week.
What a kick in the ass.
So now he’s like months behind because he worked for them for a few months (instead of looking while he was still in the Marines), then has been off for three months waiting for them to get their shit together. Not doing anything to look for a job because we thought this was pretty guaranteed. (Granted we should have been adults and prepping for this, but we honestly thought it was like 99% guaranteed.)
It has been a shitshow since the beginning though. And he just found out like a week ago that — get this — the HR person he had been dealing with? Was fired or left or something and no one picked up her duties, which included contacting Tom. So they finally scheduled a Zoom call with him…just to tell him he wasn’t hired.
So now we’ll have a mad rush trying to get his CV together and find local jobs to apply for. And hope he can find something quickly because our savings is way low with all the house stuff we’ve been stupidly doing assuming he’d have a good paying job by now.
FYI We have had a few changes since these pics—that teal ottoman and gray loveseat are gone (long and sordid story that ends with us telling you to avoid Roomplace like the plague) and we have a leather loveseat on order. Missing rooms are the dining room and front room because we’ll need to rearrange that furniture again. I finally got around to taking the pics specifically because the ottoman was going away.
My friend Jodi Van Leer (J Van Leer Designs) was amazing in helping us figure out what we wanted, shopping for things, and pulling everything together. We trusted her implicitly and we couldn’t be happier!
Tom got to play woodworker and built:
the walnut mantle surrounds
the cabinet doors
the birch forest (using trees we brought home from my parent’s house in the upper peninsula!)
the stacked wood wall in the bar (my Pinterest idea)
and new built-in shelves for the liquor in the bar (so now he finally has his “me room” (and not just a me wall!)—which we’ve named Ground Control)!
new fixtures to replace contractor-grade boob lights
a new dining room fixture
a new foyer table coming this weekend
new bar footrails
and a new fireplace tile surround and flooring…
We absolutely love everything and when it’s picked up and free of kid shit it’s freaking amazeballs. It was a shit ton of work and expense and we pretty much got it all done in two months to be ready for the big party! But we finally have our forever home that looks put together and adult!!
Anna wanted to take a guided kayak tour at Starved Rock campground and invited us. I know my limits and Katie’s limits (after her kayak meltdown at Grannie and Papa’s earlier this summer) so I passed…but Tom and Owen went. They had a great time! (And I had a good time taking Katie shopping!)
We ate Chinese for our first married meal so for a bunch of years after, we would eat Chinese on our anniversary—we even managed when he was deployed. Then we got out of the routine. We decided today was a good day to jump back in as we had to make an unexpected trip to Milwaukee so we had a lot of good options.
This was a definite winner as every single thing was DELICIOUS but our fave was the Sliced Pork Belly in Garlic Sauce.
We’ve all been cooped up with Covid and missed ALLLLLLLLLL the excuses to party…and you know we like to throw a house party…so we’re doing them all at once!
Post-Covid Celebration
Cascade Housewarming (7/2020)
Tom’s USMC retirement (6/2021)
BFF Anna-versary (8/2021)
Our 20th Anniversary (8/2021)
End-of-Summer/Back-to-School
Saturday morning and the Jello shots are here and ready thanks to Angela (she took the assignment when I ran out of time). But look at how well they fit in our garage fridge? It’s like it was meant to be.
About an hour before the party and I wasn’t even dressed yet. You think “Oh there’s only a little bit to do” but all the little things add up! Angela came over to help with a bunch of it and I’m eternally grateful. (Anna was picking up my kids from a class and getting the cupcakes.) It takes a village to throw a big party!!
Getting closer—getting the mixed drink dispensers ready! Peach Bellini, Rum Punch (empty), Vodka and lemonade, Beergarita, Bahama Mama.
David making his famous Trinidad rum punch! Yes that’s two full bottles of rum going in.
I forgot to take a pic of the food table but the dessert table was insane so I did takes a pic of that! We wouldn’t have needed to buy cupcakes at all! We had a few different kinds of cookies, two smoked cheesecakes, a German chocolate cake, a white cake, mini cupcakes, and Sam’s Club cupcakes!
Local-ish TiVo peeps!
We had to do at least one LipSense selfie!
The ribs were a hit. The pulled pork was amazing. And we have a ton of leftovers!
The only pics I snapped outside during the party!
The slide was a huge hit as expected. A few adults did go down towards the end of the night—butb it was actually cold by then so it didn’t last long.
David ended up making drinks for people at the bar…
And as we were saying goodbye to people, I discovered someone left a fern in our empty pot! (I had wanted to get succulents planted in it but never got to it with all the house stuff.) Turns out it was Ava, one of my gardener friends!
We just have great friends—from everyone who offered to help to the ones who loaned us things to the ones that jumped in to help before, during (putting away leftovers and doing the first round of kitchen clean up, and after (cleaning up the yard and house)… Thank you. We had a great time and I think everyone else did, too! Now to clean up some more and relax…
Tom already had multiple racks of ribs smoked and in the sous vide for a day, but the butts are more last minute! This means we’re getting close to party day!
We Yelped to find a good restaurant for dinner, only to get there and it was closed. So on we went to our second choice—Tine & Cellar. We get there and get seated…then proceed to watch a bunch of other tables get seated—and get drinks and orders taken—while we hadn’t seen anyone. So Tom went to find a manager.
A waiter came up pretty quickly and apologized profusely—he said they hadn’t told him he had a table (which was believable since they didn’t seem to have any rhyme or reason who served what table). He then said all our drinks that night were on the house. SCORE!
So you’re looking at a Smoked Manhattan and a pseudo margarita (I say pseudo because it was called Yolanda Be Cool and was just Blanco tequila, strawberry puree, lime juice, and habañero simple syrup). We were both VERY HAPPY and agreed that these free drinks made being temporarily forgotten about being seated totally worth it.
We went on to order the truffle fries which was about enough for four people (they really should say that on the menu)…but it was okay because they might have been some of the best fries I’ve ever had)
Tom had a fish and chips basket and I had JägerSchnitzel and both were really yummy. We were very happy with our meal!
We weren’t picking up our kids from Grandparent Camp tomorrow.
This was an ocean view on a cruise ship. These windows are awesome but the view is…meh.
What’s the story? We were meeting my dad and Linda in Wausau to make the exchange…and Tom decided he would rather drive up the night before and stay overnight instead of having to get up and on the road super early. I was fine with that.
We pulled out two bags of garbage (sooooo much paper and candy wrappers and broken crayons), did about four loads of laundry, and removed two garbage bags of outgrown clothes. I cleaned the carpet TWICE (but alas it will never be clean because Katie loves to play with makeup and dye and markers and God knows what else and it has permanent stains).
She got a new ceiling fan, curtains, and princess netting, plus we finally hung her initials. Tom will eventually build a window seat with bookshelves IF she can keep it picked up. If not, the new rule is “If you don’t keep it picked up, I will remove the things so you don’t have to worry about it.”
We decided to try out a new-to-us Mexican restaurant and damn if it wasn’t super delicious! They also had pomegranate margaritas on the menu so of course I had to try that!
We have been trying to think of a name for our bar since we moved in. (Granted we hadn’t given it that much thought, but we would throw out random names.) Nothing was right.
The previous owners called it the Long Bar—I thought it was because it was a long bar…but it was their last name (LOL). Doh!
So I posted on Facebook and TiVo and got some good suggestions!
Hudson Bar Time Flies The Dirty Secret The Dirty Habit The Dirty Major H³ Bar – Hudson Happy Hour Major Bar Barry McBarface Bartholomew Drunkins Hold My Beer Pub Club Ground Control Major Tom’s Major Tom’s Retreat The UMF Peep Bar The Jolly Major Oohrah Inn/Bar Semper Fi Saloon Major Intoxication Major T’s FU Bar At Ease Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
AND THE WINNER IS…
Ground Control! Yes, lots of Ground Control to Major Tom references were made and suggested and Tom liked that one the best (and the bar is going to be his “me room” with all of his military memorabilia).
I really wasn’t planning on cleaning Katie’s room (even though I desperately wanted to throw every single thing away because she’s really ungrateful). But it happened. I just could not stand this disaster any more. (And moreso because she swears she’s cleaned it and it’s always still a pit.)
Lots of stuff shoved in the closet. I pulled out about five bath towels.
I have no idea why this stuff was even in her room! Christmas cupcake wrappers and toothpick flags?!
All the clothes we pulled out from all the little hidey holes she shoved stuff into.
Just a regular shot of her room.
Yes, a partially eaten donut. Rock hard. There’s not supposed to be food in the bedrooms for this very reason.
More random stuff shoved into a drawer.
Two bags of candy for my work that she didn’t have permission to eat.
And why put a bed sheet in the drawer in your room where it goes…when you can shove it in another completely random drawer?
And everything that was stuffed in just three drawers of her dresser.
We both worked in there for hours. We did all the laundry (at least 4-5 loads—which she had assured us all her laundry was done), picked up all the toys and crap, tossed all the garbage, organized things, and created two boxes of crap for her to go through and sort. If she doesn’t want to, it’s going straight into the garbage. This is her LAST chance. If she can’t keep it remotely picked up, she’s losing things. I hope she’s having fun at grandparent camp because life is changing when she gets home. I told Tom if he ever wanted to be a drill sergeant, now is going to be the time.
Where we ended the first day.
And when we moved the nightstand…
MORE SHIT THAT HAD BEEN SHOVED UNDERNEATH
Sidenote: I did run across these. Cue ugly cry.
But lest you think we’re just picking on Katie…Owen’s room is getting cleaned out, too. I didn’t move from my initial position (between his desk and the bed) for almost two hours—there was so much crap shoved and crammed in/on/around/behind/under his desk/bed/drawers I wanted to scream. I mean I was duly impressed…but I wanted to scream.
After we’d spent hours working.
Swim shirt and bathing suit he couldn’t find for weeks? Under the bed. A pack of winter thermal shirts? Desk drawer. Missing laundry bags? Under his bed. All the school notebooks I’d asked him to find that he claimed were gone? Everywhere. Dirty clothes? Everywhere. Candy wrappers? Everywhere.
Lots of things shoved in his nightstand that he’s been missing. Plus garbage of course. Detritus under the big Lego bag! It’s neverending!
And of course Katie notes!
I took out two bags of garbage, a bag of recycling, and did four loads of dirty laundry (when he said it was all done) including about six bath towels and 83 socks. I picked up approximately 712 Lego pieces, 128 Pokémon cards, 300 random playing cards and other assorted game pieces, a shoebox of markers/pens/pencils, and about 13 spiral school notebooks that have 2% schoolwork and 98% drawings in them. I steam cleaned the carpet and half-heartedly dusted. Oh, and Tom put up a new ceiling fan!
Done!
Life will sure be different for him post-grandparent camp as well.
I realize most of this is par for the course for kids and kids their age but I just. couldn’t. any. longer. I don’t mind a little mess or being unorganized. But both rooms were flat out disgusting.
David recently got a new truck and the boys are just totally geeking out over it. It has totally refreshed Tom’s want of a truck and he’s been researching so when he’s ready, he’ll know what he wants.
Well we were out today and drove by a dealership so I made him stop. And I had to take a picture of me next to the bed to show just how ridiculous the size of this thing is.
This thing is so high it has running boards that pop down when you unlock it—except the battery was dead so it didn’t work so I had to practically pole vault to get in. Still being in recovery I probably shouldn’t even have tried but I thought I could do it easy.
Ha ha. Ha ha ha. What a joke. I barely pulled myself up and crashed into the seat. I just can’t imagine having a vehicle that high and hard to get into (I know it would have running boards but still—yikes). So time will tell.
It’s time for a road trip to take the kids to Michigan for Grandparent Camp! Usually we go all the way to Grayling but we decided to try something different this year and meet halfway!
Can you see her sleeping buddy?
I’m not sure what Katie is pissy about other than that’s her normal look these days. (I told you!)
One of the few times she’s sweet.
Our meeting point was Bilbo’s, one of our favorite restaurants from East Lansing that we hadn’t been to in 20 years (since we got married and left Michigan). We were excited that Kalamazoo was the halfway point!
Making the actual transfer! We’re free! Good luck and Godspeed!
Seriously though, the kids absolutely love this time with the grandparents and couldn’t be more excited… especially after Covid put the kibosh on camp last summer. Here’s to making memories!!
So Tom and I had been to what felt like every decent furniture store in a pretty wide radius trying to find the exact last piece we needed—and just couldn’t find anything. We finally found something that was comfortable and about the right color (we thought) but we got it home and meh—not it. (It clashed with the other gray couch since they were different tones.) So we decided it was a temporary piece and we could take our time finding exactly what we wanted and maybe even get something made.
FAST FORWARD TO TODAY
We were chatting today and someone said something about La-Z Boy. And I was like wait, whaaaaat?
Yes, we’d forgotten about the huge furniture store in town. UGHHHHH. So we decided we had to go just to say we did—and surprise—we found a perfect piece. BECAUSE OF COURSE.
We did actually go home to get the couch cushion to make double sure it matched!
So good news…we found something we like a lot better. Bad news? We’ll need to sell the other couch when this one comes in in September. But at least we have good seating in the meantime!
