Day 200

Happy Halloween!

The kids are exciting about going Trick or Treating tonight. But before this we went into Lincoln. We needed to get some more insulation and do a bit of shopping. :) We have not been seeing any more bats. This is a HUGE YYYYAAAAYYYY! Now we can work on getting a bit more of this finished. We kind of took it easy today and ate some pizza at the buffet. It was a nice day.


Then this evening we all went out trick or treating. Jonathan usually stays home to pass out the candy. But we don't even have a porch light, or a working doorbell. And there is no where for him to sit down on first floor. It is still a maze of boxes and bookshelves. So he decided to go out walking with us. It was very different then in our old neighborhood. There were no children. Back in Hickman there were swarms of children. But here we didn't seen any but one other small child out walking. At one of the houses we stopped at we heard that they had 8 trick or treater's (3 of them being ours). Wow. I guess my bag of 80 candy bars would have gone far. Usually we need two or three of those bags. But the kids were very excited and came home with the pumpkins full of goodies. Plus we got to meet some of our new neighbors.

Day 195 - 199

This week we will not really be working on the house. Jonathan and I are in charge of the Cub Scout Halloween carnival again this year. So we will be working on getting everything ready for the carnival this week. Wow, if it isn't one thing it's another. I do know that I will be happy when this week is over and we can kind of sit back and decide what we would like to do. :) We are making up 9 carnival stations. And preparing for around 300 children. Have you ever wished it would snow and they would cancel Halloween? Hmm, I wonder if that would work. ;) We are having a cake walk, a guessing game, a coffin dig, a bat tree toss (and no we aren't using our real bats, just the rubber kind), a bone/tombstone toss, balloon popping, face painting, witch hat ring toss, and a scary maze. We were going to do a scary campground. But it turned out to be too wet and cold outside for that.

Happy Halloween!

Well, we had a good turnout. There were just over 270 children. It was a busy night. Now we are ready for a bit of rest and relaxation. :)

Day 189 - 194

This was the week of the bats. As you might have read we have discovered that our home is also the home of bats. We had a nightly visit from one of them for four days. And it was not the same one. Jonathan was able to get rid of them each night. The last of these fun visits was in the morning. Up till now the children did not know that we had a bat problem. They had all been happily sleeping when the bats came to visit. But the morning visit pretty much worried all of us. Melinda decided that we must live in a haunted house.

Well of course we decided that we had to do something about this. I mean we wouldn't mind bats flying around outside eating the bugs. But we didn't want them flying around our heads and all.

So on Friday I took the kids over to Mom and Dad's house again. We thought it would be better if they were not around as we didn't know what we would find. And we got yet another dumpster. Saturday and Sunday we tore apart the 2nd floor landing room. This is where we thought the bats were coming in. We got all of the plaster and lathe off of the walls and ceiling. We also were able to cover up the holes (from the inside). Next spring we will work on fixing the holes from the outside. And we got most of the exterior wall insulated. Hopefully this will all help the bat problem. After the weekend we were very tired. But we half filled the dumpster and now one more wall of the house is insulated. YAY! :D


This is the part of the ceiling that the bats are coming in from. They are getting into the house from a hole in the wall and a hole in the box gutter. Then they come up from the joist in the ceiling. Then as you can see they can just get in.


This is another reason we had to send the kids to my parents'. All of the rest of the furniture is shoved into their bedroom.


Now we have all of the woodwork taken off and safe down in the basement. This part takes so much time.


No more plaster and lathe.


Now there is insulation in the north/exterior wall. We do still need to get the wiring in this room.

Saturday was another sad day for me. My friend, Myrta, died. We are all really going to miss her. :(

Day 188

Today has been a busy, creepy day. I start out tired from our bat fun of last night and still a bit jumpy about that as I know there is likely still a bat in the house somewhere. Zeb throwing his paper airplane about made me jump off of the couch. Then there were the bugs. I was trying to bring in a load of things that we had left in the van yesterday, there were all sorts of tiny bugs by the front door. Then by the edge of the porch, hundreds of lady bugs. And by the 2nd floor bathroom a swarm of bees (and in the 2nd floor bathroom as well). I was almost hoping the bats would be back to eat the bugs, almost.

Just a little while ago, as the kids were getting ready for bed, we noticed Merlin looking towards the ceiling. Not a good sign. Then we hear the bat noises again.

Right now Jonathan is stuffing insulation in some possible BAT entry places. Hopefully we will have a much better night.

Bats, oh no.

Well, this was not a very restful night. After we got the kids in bed, Jonathan and I went to our room to watch a little TV. And that is when the fun started. There partway through the show a BAT fell from the ceiling just outside our doorway. We quickly shut the door and hoped our cat, Merlin would take care of if. Or actually wondered if he had done something to it. After all of the running around and closing doors and putting Merlin in places and all, we discovered that there was not one but two bats in the house. The night ended with Jonathan getting his gun and trying to take them out. In the end we had one dead bat and one missing one. Now believe me, I don't really mind bats as long as they are not swooping around over my bed. It was a long night. And I am not looking forward to it happening again tonight.

Day 187

Mom and Dad went home yesterday afternoon. So the rest is up to us. We have tons of stuff yet to do. So we got an early start, Jonathan pulling the trailer with his car, and me with the seats still out of the van. When we got over to the house we started packing up the remaining stuff and putting it in the van. We also were trying to vacuum and sweep up the cleared out rooms. Surprising ourselves, we mostly got everything in the van. And with the trailer still empty started working on the shelves in the garage and the shed.

We are not quite finished. There is still a bit of stuff in the garage and shed. But we got a lot more finished today then we thought that we would.

The funny thing is that we went over to the gas station and ordered a pizza for lunch, sat down in the middle of the floor in the empty kitchen and ate the pizza straight out of the box. The reason that this is even interesting is that when Jonathan and I first bought the house in Hickman, our very first meal there was a pizza that we ordered from the gas station, that we brought home, sat down in the middle of the empty living room and ate straight out of the box. We didn't even plan that. I didn't even think about it until we were eating our pizza today. It is funny how things work out.

After we got everything loaded we headed back to Beatrice. Before we could unload the trailer, we had to rearrange things down in the basement. So we worked at getting the workshop in order just a bit. It is actually starting to look pretty nice down there. Then we were able to get all of the stuff off of the trailer. The van is still full of stuff. But we are tired and Jonathan wanted to see about hooking up the washing machine. It is so exciting that the washing machine is now usable and nothing leaks. YAY!

Day 186

Saturday....
Moving Day: Part two

Mom and Dad came over again to help us out. We made three trips filling, the the trailer and the trunk of Jonathan's car, the Van (without the back to seats and full cargo capacity), and the back of Mom and Dad's car.

Wow, another tiring day. And we still aren't finished. I know that we have way too much stuff. :)

It is starting to be hard to find places to put things in the new house. It is amazing that you can fit this much stuff in a smallish house. And when you move it over in boxes it seems to take up even more space.

Day 185

We found out last night that we really need to get the rest of our stuff out of the house at Hickman this weekend. Not sure that is going to be possible or not. But we are going to give it a shot. The kids and I brought over a ton of things today. I am tired of driving. But I am more tired of carrying things up and down all of the stairs. The good part of all of this is that if we get everything over here, we will be able to start sorting through all of the boxes and try to get everything organized. I feel like I am living in a tunnel of boxes right now. The first floor is a maze of things piled high. But I am going to have a good start on having the kitchen a bit more organized by the end of the night.

Day 184

Spent most of the day with all of my family. :( It has been a busy, hard couple of weeks; moving, Myrta, Aunt Verona. I think I need a long vacation. I wonder if the house elves will work on getting my house organized if I go away for a couple of days.

Day 183

Well, today is a busy day... but not much to do with the house. I brought over another load of things from Hickman. Then I packed up what we would need to take to my parents' house. A sad trip home for my Aunt Verona's funeral tomorrow.

Day 182

My work has continued, the search for clothes... I have found enough of what we need to get by until I can go through a lot more of the boxes. I have also been working on the windows again today. I am getting close to having all of the windows on second floor covered with plastic. Then I will move on to one of the other floors. Mostly we will be living on 2nd floor so this is the most important area. But I do want to seal in as much heat as I can, even from the other two floors. I also started getting out some of our books and putting them on the shelves.

Jonathan was working on getting the washer and dryer hooked up. He has the power run and working for both of them. And the drain is in place. He also has the pex tubing hooked up in the basement and ready to be hooked up to the washer.


Here are the girls and Merlin in their mess of a room. This is something I want to work on tomorrow... getting their clothes and things in dressers instead of in bags and boxes on the floor.


Jonathan's and my room / my plastic cutting station. :) You can see my roll of plastic on the floor.


Zeb reading a book that I just put up on the shelf. This is going to be our dining/living/library for a bit. Hopefully I will get rid of the piles on the floor soon.

Day 181

The kids and I headed over to Hickman, to try and pack up some more stuff and bring it over. We brought along all of the boxes that we had already emptied and filled them up again. Some of the main things we were looking for were, clothes, the other TV and stuff to get the internet up and running.

After Jonathan got home he got our central server running and the internet up. Yay!

We have been using that wood stove. All of the plastic work I have been doing seems to be helping with the heat loss.



Here is our stove, keeping us warm. Merlin's new favorite place to be is right in front of the stove soaking up some heat. He has been having an interesting time exploring our new house.

Day 180

Today we went back to Hickman to get some more stuff. This was the first time I had been back since the first trip over to Beatrice yesterday morning. So I really didn't know how much of our stuff was still in the old house. All I can say is WOW do we have a lot of stuff or what. There is still so much for us to move over.

I continued my work of putting plastic over the windows today. We also continued to set things up and see what we could find. We are having a bit of trouble finding the clothing that we need. This has been one of my main missions.... making sure everyone has socks, underwear and warm clothes.


Here is our mirror up in our bathroom. And look there are our toothbrushes, I guess we did move over. :D

Day 179

Moving Day: part one



We woke up the some of the fluffy white stuff. Boy were all of the kids excited. Us grown-ups, not so much. But we were glad that we didn't get as much as they had said was possible. Here we are filling the van, Dad's truck and our trailer full of stuff. It was a long tiring day of moving. And then it ended on a sad note, Dad got a phone call telling us that Aunt Verona had died.

After my family headed home, Jonathan, the kids and I got our beds ready for our first real night in the new house. We had the wood stove going, and it was still cold in here. It took quite a while to get things heated up. And then there are lots of places that leak. We started covering the windows with plastic and blankets.

Day 178

Mom, Dad, Philip, Andrea and the kids (theirs and ours) were coming down. We are planning on taking over as much of our big furniture as we can. When Mom and Dad got here we loaded up their truck (I already had the van full), and we drove over to the new house to unload.

When we got back to Hickman, Philip and Andrea had gotten there, bringing my children. After taking them over to Mom's on Monday, I was really glad to get them back. Now it is time for hugs and snuggles. Then one big sleepover to get ready for Moving Day Part One.

Day 176 - 177

Wow, I have gotten a little bit behind. But you will see why in a few minutes...

Wednesday and Thursday: I am not even sure what we were working on these two days, beside loading and hauling boxes over to the new house. I know that we finished hooking up the wood stove and we put some wood in and tried it out.

Day 175

Happy Birthday Jonathan!

Jonathan used his last personal day and took the day off. We started the day off in Lincoln, hello Menards. We got the last few things we thought we would need to hook up the stove. Then we went shopping (the relaxing kind). We checked out the thrift stores and an antique store we hadn't been too. Then we went and had BBQ for Jonathan's birthday lunch.

Next we headed over to Beatrice. Before we went to work, we wanted to check out the two antiques stores in town. That was really fun. At the last one we found boxes and boxes of hardcover science fiction books. We I am sure you guessed that we couldn't pass that up. We wished that we could have bought more of them. But if we are lucky, they will still be there next time we go.

Over at the house, it was time to start working on the stove. The first order of business was the pipe in the chimney. It wasn't quite in there the way that it needed to be. So we messed around with that (Back UP on the roof... oh, no) and got that to be more like it needed to be. Then we took the stove out of the box. These things are heavy. But we got it in place and started planning how to do the pipe to connect it with the T. We were able to almost finish it. Too bad that last pipe couldn't have been just a little bit longer. But we needed to stop there for the night.


Here is the stove setting on the hearth pad and ALMOST hooked up to the pipe in the chimney.

Day 174

Bright and early in the morning, I pack up the kids and take them to meet Mom. They are going to spend a week at my parents. They are so excited. Now it is time for me to get really busy and see what I can get finished.

After I got back to town to took three loads of stuff over to the house in Beatrice. Wow am I tired. But I did get a lot moved over.

We decided to take it easy tonight. It was quiet in the house without the kids. Jonathan rented a movie for us to watch.

Day 173

Today we finished up with the insulation. Jonathan covered the hole from the gutter, so we should not be getting any more animal friends through there. Now we just need to insulate that gutter area. We also put the plastic over the east side of the room and around the tower. All it needs now is the sheetrock. :)

Then we went up to 3rd floor to work on insulating the stove pipe. Wow was that a job but we got it done, and mostly in place down the chimney. That was really not a fun job.


Melinda is standing next to our shiny, silver, insulated stove pipe. Now it is time to haul that thing up to the roof and put it down the chimney. :P



The hardest part of this job was getting the stove pipe connected to this T. But we got it done. Now I hope getting everything hooked up to the stove is a bit easier.

Day 172

Time to insulate. :D It is a cold day over at the house. So insulating seems like even a better idea.

Here you can see one of our newly insulated walls. It looks so soft and fluffy warm. We also got plastic that we are going to cover the walls with as well as all of the windows in the house.

Day 171

We are celebrating Jonathan's birthday just a little bit early. Sunday or Monday we are going to send the kids over to spend the week at my parents' house. So they won't be here for Jonathan's actually birthday. That is why we decided to stay home and celebrate this evening. We made chicken tacos and refried beans. And Daddy's cake... carrot cake. :) It was a yummy meal. Then Jonathan got to open his presents. :) And now it is time to relax. Watch a couple episodes of Jonathan's new anime and then play Beatles Rock Band.


Here are Jonathan, Zeb and Ella playing Beatle's Rock Band.

Day 170

Time for insulation. So we head into Lincoln to get the insulation for the walls. We are hoping to finish up the wiring and be able to put the insulation in the walls this weekend. We will have to wait and see how much we get done.