Birthday Pictures

M's 7th Birthday Party was today. Here are a few pics...

Super Cool Go Kart that goes 12 miles per hour. I put an elephant Webkinz on the seat, when we did the "unveiling" he was more excited about the Webkinz than the Go Kart....

However he quickly figured it out and we couldn't get him off of the thing until the battery needed charged again. ( My mom bought him the helmet that goes with the Go Kart.. This pic is the only time he will be riding it without. )


Family came a little later... which is when he he opened the helmet.

All 3 "boys" got to go with friends to sit in box seats at the Mud Hens game tonight. A perfect ending to his Birthday Day!
Monday, on his actual birthday, he gets to go on a zoo field trip with his class.
Happy 7th Birthday!!

Play Ball!!!

Tuesday when it was 65 degrees out this is how the boys spent the afternoon. This was SOO cool to me, because we have waited forever for them to have friends to play with in the same neighborhood, as well as space to run. You know in our old house, not only were we cramped inside, but we had no yard to speak of and there was no way they were playing in the street.

The cul-de-sac was home plate, the stop sign first, the streetlight second and the mound in the front of our house third. Also cool was the ages ranged from 4 to 12, and they all helped little Sammy, the 4 year old, make a home run each time he was up for bat. M has the red shirt on, H is in the bright yellow.

A Moldy Revelation

My husband is a wimp. My super strong, sticks-12-inch-long-needles-in-peoples-back, benches-3-times-my-body-weight-husband, is a huge wimp.

Sunday we went to the old house. We have been paying the neighbor there to shovel snow, rake leaves, cut the grass, whatever, until the house is sold. So we went over to pay him and read the gas meter.
I went in to read the meter, but then couldn't get the front door open because the last person who showed the house put the dead bolt on. We hadn't used the deadbolt in 10 years, so it was a little stiff, and I was too weak to budge it. Howie had to come back in the house after I came out to open it. ( Get it? STRONG). He thought he smelled something odd, so took it upon himself to investigate.

His side of the story is that he opened the freezer door and encountered inch thick mold inside. He got a lungful of spores, quickly shut the door, and came out side coughing, hacking and spitting these spores to the ground. I, of course was to blame, as I defrosted the fridge, unplugged it, and forgot to prop the door open.
We left the house with him hocking out the car window and vowing to get a prescription for and antifungal the next day at work. I really thought we were going to have to take him to the ER for a chest x-ray.

I waited until yesterday morning to go back to the house. Howie brought masks home from the hospital so I wouldn't suffer the same affliction as him. I dropped E at a friends house, and stopped at Kroger to load up on bleach, paper towels, a scrub brush, latex gloves, and a new candle so the house wouldn't smell like bleach and mold to the people who were looking at the house at noon.

I thought about putting caution tape across the front door of the house. I garbed up like I was going into an isolation room at the hospital. I opened the freezer door VERRRRRRRY slowly. And laughed. Inside the freezer was an ever so faint dusting of mold. Like powdered sugar on chocolate cake. There was a tiny bit on the ice maker and the basket in the door. That was it. It wiped out easily with a paper towel. I sprayed it with bleach for good measure. It took like 10 minutes.
I'm really glad Howie made it out OK.