Living in my own private Idaho

Well, not actually. In truth I am squished into the smallest room in the house with both boys and a couple of suitcases at my mom's house. We aren't there much though since I have been working like a fiend on our properties. I thought I had finished the duplex until the windstorm on Friday knocked out all the rain gutter shields and dropped a ton of branches from the neighbors' trees into our yard. I still don't have a tenant yet so I am buzzing over there all the time showing the apartment to no avail. I am also trying to paint one last door but for some reason it is raining all the time here, which never happens, and I can't get it finished.

We also bought a foreclosed property that seemed like a slam dunk until I got into it a bit deeper and started to find weird things like broken tiles and rusted out shower drains and walls that weren't really walls just 1/16" paneling that had to be torn out and replaced with dry wall. Argh.

But Matthijas is in a pre-school that specializes in kids with Autism and Downs and other learning disabilities and he loves the structure and is out from underneath my feet. Arcadia is my "apprentice painter" focusing on painting the shelves inside closets and may soon move up to painting the inside walls of the closets. As for Jasper, I am so glad he sleeps so much still because Trouble would have been a more appropriate middle name. He is Curious George incarnate and can find all sorts of ways to make mischief that i can't even predict.

I am just working up a storm with my sister. It's been very empowering for Arcadia to see us at work. She keeps saying "look at all that we can do without boys". I say, "all you need is a crowbar and a hammer and a set of screwdrivers and you can demolish anything." We are 90% done with the deconstruction part and are almost done putting in the new wood flooring upstairs, so things are starting to move along. the plumbers come tomorrow and I now have someone lined up to install dry wall (not an original expense I budgeted for!) but we seem to be staying on budget and finding really good deals. Thank goodness for the 10% military discount at Lowes and Home Depot, because I am there about every 24-36 hours.

Johannes is holding up pretty well on his own without us. He has been living the bachelor life for a little over two months now between the time he was in Alabama and with us in Idaho. Luckily between TDY to South Carolina next week and Scout Camp the week after the time will go quickly for him, but by the time we meet up again in North Idaho it will have been 3 months since we all lived together and Jasper has changed a lot. Poor daddy has been missing birthdays and will be all alone for Fathers Day. Good thing I got him some cool gear from REI to make up for it! Now if I can just remember to go tot he post office tomorrow to mail it off...