Long Time, No Post

Things are going pretty well here at the Litter's nest. When things run smoothly I don't really have much to post about because frankly craziness is funny and laundry is not. So today I post just because I'm feeling guilty.

Since moving back to the original nest in Wisconsin Hubby and I have decided we must do some much needed work to the old house since property values have crashed so much we will be living here for quite a while now. In the fall we had a flexible roofing material put on the porch roof (it's a flat roof and was leaking) and installed a new high efficiency boiler and hot water heater so we could remove the chimneys when we re-roof. Currently I have a pallet of OSB in the yard and I'm waiting on the contractor to finish a job before he comes and opens up our roof down to the rafters to remove the chimneys, insulate the walls, re-sheath (there is no solid sheathing up there, just 2 layers of asphalt over the original cedar shakes), new shingles, install a bathroom vent and a tubular skylight. When that mess is over we plan on giving the old girl a new coat of paint. We plan on changing the color and exactly what color to paint has been a big topic of conversation. The most helpful thing I've found on line is Sherwin Williams Color Visualizer Tool which is pretty cool. This thing lets you upload a picture and "paint" the house or room different colors to see how they look. I haven't done any of the interior stuff but it works pretty well with the exterior. Of course your not getting the perfect nuances of the color on your computer screen but it gives the general idea. I'll most likely buy a few quarts of paint and patchwork on the house before I go whole hog but at least I'll have the field narrowed down a bit. We also have the power company lined up to top out a couple of trees and get them out of the power lines so Hubby can play with his chainsaw and drop them the rest of the way. Removing one will open up the front of the house a bit and allow us some room to re-do some landscaping. The other two will be to hopefully allow some grass to grow and be down when we ever get the money to build a new garage in a few years. Ah, big plans.

Sonny Boy is now in full force Rookie League baseball. Here that means machine pitch. He's only had a couple of practices so far and both have been so cold I hid in the van. The weather is just miserable for April.

School is out next week for spring break. What a late spring break! I suppose they are tying it into Easter and that falls late this year. We had hoped to travel a little, visit family and such but I got a summons for jury duty for that week. Yuck. I could have had it deferred once but was worried it would crop up when Hubby was scheduled for one of his long haul training trips and I would really be up a creek for child care. Currently the plan is IF I have to go in Hubby will work from home and let the kids watch entirely too much TV. I understand it's a real pain here as there isn't much parking near the courthouse. The court did send a pass for my dashboard so I could park in the meters but I don't really want to advertise I'm going to be away from my vehicle for hours in that neighborhood. I hope I don't have to sit on some long drawn out case.

Today is a holiday from school for Sonny Boy and it was supposed to be for Hubby. I don't think Hubby's customer's quite got that memo though as he's off working with one today. Hubby did have his first emergency "run to hold a customer's hand" the other day after a customer from Brazil had issues in Chicago. I hope that doesn't happen too much.

Well I suppose that's about it. I've let the kids veg in front of the TV too much today. The weather stinks so there is no throwing them outside and I'm not in the mood to listen to their craziness. I've promised them a trip to the movies to go see the 3:00 showing of Rio. Hope it's worth the $6 a head to get in, not to mention the $20 of popcorn.