Monstrosity & ABM

We spent Wednesday morning at home trying to get caught up on things again. It's amazing how enjoyable the NORMAL things are when you're involved in a big remodeling project. I love it that our house is a WRECK and we can go and work and work and work... then come home to a house that ISN'T all torn up and just do normal things like paperwork and laundry. We're so blessed. :-)

We finally got to the Monstrosity at about 2:00. I tied a bandanna around my head to try to keep the dust out of my hair as I sanded (my hair was WAY more gray than usual the day before--ha!) and got some more work done on the kitchen cabinets. I've been working with a coarse "paint stripping" sandpaper, then moving to a smoother "leveling" paper to finish up with. It's making for lots more work, but the cabinets will look soooooo much nicer when it's all said and done.

I took the five big drawers out of the kitchen and sanded them down too, then got them cleaned and got all excited and primed them. :-) We had stopped at Lowe's before going to the house that day and picked up a 5 gallon bucket of primer and had it tinted gray since it will be going under all of the dark colors I'll be using all over the house. It felt sooooo good to pick up a paint brush and prime something. Those drawers already look and feel so much cleaner! I had to laugh when I realized how excited I was to PAINT something, even just with primer. It made me think...

There was a time in my life when I was FINISHED painting--forever! Ha! My Mom & Dad and Grandmother & Granddad had some arrangement worked out to invest in a giant house just up the hill from our house in the mountains of Colorado. They got it cheap and we all worked to get it cleaned up, fixed up, and freshly painted, then sold it. I was one of the primary painters. If my mind isn't playing tricks on me, it had seven bedrooms and three full stories. We painted and painted and painted... and painted... and painted........... and painted... HA! I remember thinking, "I'm DONE--I don't ever want to see a paint brush or roller again as long as I live!" I had probably painted more in one week's time than most people do in a lifetime. I don't know how long it took us to work on the house, but I'm sure it was weeks and weeks--at least. And by the end I was soooooo sick of painting and never, ever wanted to do it again.

And now I'm in another GIANT house... and I can't wait to START painting! Crazy. I have no doubt that the former feeling about "The Big House" (that's what we called it) will settle in soon enough once we get started painting. But for now, I'm going to enjoy the anticipation of painting and making things nice and fresh and clean and new. :-)

Kody and Michael came to the house to work again that day. They spent quite a while crawling all over the "new" kitchen floor (where they had ripped out two more layers the day before) and hammered the staples flat. There were tons and tons and tons of them. Michael actually counted as he went and he made it to 900 before he lost count. Ha! So they were beating the floor with hammers, I was using the electric sander, and James--of course--had the Christmas station cranked up on the radio. The boys went home and told their grandparents about how noisy it was there all day long. They said it was: WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! -- BBBZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!! "HERE COMES SANTA CLAUSE! HERE COMES SANTA CLAUSE..." Ha!

We had CPMA service that night and closed by coming to the altar and praying for our upcoming Revival this next week. We went to Taco Bell afterwards and the Washburns joined us but only for fellowship, not food, since Brother Mike ended up in the ER last time he ate Taco Bell!

Then James and I went back to the Monstrosity and slept MUCH, MUCH, MUCH better since Brother Powell e-mailed and said to dig around in the bathroom closet and find the air mattresses to take with us up there. THANK YOU, BROTHER POWELL!!! :-)

Brother Hopkins showed up bright and early Thursday morning with a Spanish guy he'd hired to sand all of the sheetrock mud he's been slapping all over the house. It wasn't too long after that when Brother & Sister Cogburn and Sister Bishop showed up. They'd all come to help with the house, too! Wow!

I was still working on the kitchen cabinets, so we set up a bit of an assembly line. I sanded, Sister Cogburn wiped the dust off with a dry cloth, then Sister Bishop wiped them down with a soapy sponge. Before long we had all of the doors READY TO BE PRIMED! We never made it far enough to get the primer out that day, but it's exciting to know the doors are READY. :-)


Brother Cogburn is an electrician and he did lots of wonderful things all over the house that day. :-) Most importantly, he put a light in the living room where previously there was none. It makes me very, very happy to have a light in my living room. :-) As you can see, it required a few new holes in the sheetrock that Brother Hopkins has been working so hard to make pretty! Ha! Wouldn't you know it.


He also put in a receptacle in the odd location I had requested :-), put in boxes for ceiling fans in all of the bedrooms, removed the fluorescent lights from the kitchen, replaced them with a normal like, added four additional lights (after I FINALLY settled on four instead of five--that was an all day decision in the works!), and fixed three lights in the house that didn't work at all. Wa-Hoo!!! What progress.

The ladies also did another marvellous thing. They brought lunch! Nice, hot, home cooked lunch! Stew and beans and cornbread and apple cake and some sort of checkered chocolate/vanilla cake. It was all soooooo good. And fun to have company at my house for a meal again. HA! Well, sort of...


After we were finished with the cabinet doors I spent the afternoon sweeping sheetrock dust off the walls while the other ladies used the shop vac to clean the dust from the floors and stairs. Sister Bishop just wouldn't quit--it's tough to make that lady sit down and take a break!


In the meantime, the boys were outside raking up 30+ bags of pine needles again. Those boys are SUCH good workers. Hard and steady the whole way, never taking a break. They've done such a great job on everything they've been asked to do!


The crowd all left at about 6:00, I think. James and I had to run by the bank, get a bite to eat, and check our e-mail. We opted for MacAlister's since they have free Wi-Fi. Well, in theory they have free Wi-Fi. ;-) It wouldn't work, so we stopped by the Ridlespurges house to use their free Wi-Fi. We were still covered in sheetrock dust though and Sister Ridlespurge wouldn't let us sit on her couch before she spread a blanket out on it. Hahahahaha! Okay, so that's not exactly how it went, I just thought she'd enjoy seeing that on here should she happen to read this. ;-)

We went back to the Monstrosity and did some clean up, then called it a night--on that great air mattress! :-)

The next morning we got up and did minimal things around the house, then headed back to Brierfield. We stopped in Alabaster to do some grocery shopping (we were in serious need!), then had ham sandwiches that were delicious but WAY over priced at the Honeybaked Ham Store. Got home, unloaded the van, unpacked... and crashed in the chair with my computer for about an hour just because I could! It was great.

Then I got busy cooking and cleaning for company. Wa-Hoo!!! Things didn't start out very well though. I mixed up some gingerbread, put it in the cake, then sat down to copy the recipe over for Sister Dudley because she had asked for it. I got to nearly the last ingredient before I read "salt." ~GASP!~ Salt?! I didn't put any salt in! So I ran and grabbed the pan out of the oven, put the salt on top, stirred it up, and shoved it back in. Then when the timer went off nearly an hour later... it was still batter, though somewhat stiff. The oven had somehow gotten turned off! HA! I had to ad lib from there with the bake time, but it somehow turned out okay anyway.

The Washburns and all the Dudleys were coming for dinner and I was scared to death that I wouldn't have enough food! I have NO IDEA how to cook for that troop of Dudley boys! There are the three brothers as well as a Dudley cousin living with them now. I made two poppy seed chicken casseroles and the biggest pot of chicken and noodles I could manage, the pan of gingerbread and two pineapple upside-down cakes. Sister Dudley brought cornbread and a FANTASTIC "Death by Chocolate" dessert. Everything turned out great and in the end, there was just the tiniest bit of food left-over. I feel a very rewarding sense of accomplishment having cooked for the Dudley crowd and actually having left-overs at the end of the night! HA! And a whole new appreciation for Sister Dudley. I've always known she was amazing, but I have NO IDEA how it is humanly possible to cook that much food on a regular basis!!!

After dinner we moved to the living room to visit and ended up playing Catchphrase--which was hilarious. We had lots and lots of fun--I can't believe we've failed to have everybody over for dinner up until this point!



(Jonathan can't help but strike a pose when he sees a camera!)

It was a GREAT night. :-)

~whew~ I'm fading fast--I'll have to cut this short!

We got up at 4:30 this morning and drove to Moulton for the ABM workshop. Brother & Sister Zimmerman had come and she taught most of the classes. There was lots and lots of good information shared and I felt encouraged to be a much better Band Leader. :-) We enjoyed great fellowship and way, way, way too much food. :-)

We are now in a FANTASTIC motel in Gadsden. They were out of regular rooms, so upgraded us to a king suite at no extra charge. It's BEAUTIFUL. And nice and cozy. But I'm bushed. Tomorrow we visit the church in Lebanon, then hopefully Collinsville tomorrow night. Then on to Cleveland to pick up our children and go back home on Monday!

Oops. I didn't categorize. Wednesday and Thursday were Days Fifteen & Sixteen. :-)