Busy

We finally decided to go to S.C. for the fourth. Tuesday morning found us packing it up and heading up north a ways. We made sure we left in order to arrive in S.C. before 5 p.m. because I wanted to turn that blasted license plate in to their DMV before closing time. Fred was gracious enough to take it inside where there were no problems and he did, indeed, get a receipt saying we no longer are renting a license plate from their lovely state. I say rent because if we owned the durn thing, then there would have been no conflict now would there?

I called my brother when we were less than an hour out and asked if he would go over to our house and turn the air conditioner on. When we got home, we walked in to a mess. My Dad was inspecting my kitchen floor because THERE WAS HUGE GAPING HOLE IN IT. Yeah. Apparently the tubing out of the ice maker had become dislodged from the back of the fridge and it was continuously pouring water and that lovely water saturated the wood to make it weak. My fridge and dishwasher were in great danger of being damaged. Great.

It was decided right then that the hole would be replaced before sundown. This is where I get tickled. My husband is a Chief. My brother is a supervisor at his work. My Dad has been in charge at his job for the past...oh, I don't know....25 years? There were no peons to do their bidding. No others for them to order around. Vitt and Cayden are far too young and little to be of any help. When I brought this to every one's attention, my father immediately said..."Well, I am the Master Chief." The highest ranking enlisted around. Guess that meant my husband and brother had no choice but to follow the man with the most experience. That, and my Dad has ALL the nice power tools that he might let them play with.

A few hours later my husband came next door to fetch me from visiting my Grandmother so I could clean up the mess left behind. Yay. They had pulled out the fridge, dishwasher, and stove. Yuck. It gets so nasty behind appliances because it's not something you clean every week. Well, I don't. I was wiping down walls and we were spraying bleach to prevent mold from taking root. It just wasn't what I planned to do with my visit home, Internets. We even got up the next morning to finish scrubbing the floor. Reckoned I may as well get a good clean going on while I was at it.

After all of that, we had a marvelous fourth. We got to see amazing fireworks. My son ran wild and free and stayed dirty as he could. He finally got brave enough to swing from the rope and piece of board my Dad put on the oak tree out back. Almost gave me a heart attack to watch him, but it was okay somewhat when you would hear him holler, "Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!"

My brother was insistent that we go to the river to ride the innertube the next day. ~sigh~ Put it this way, we were so tired when we got home, we couldn't hardly function. We wanted to drive home Thursday night but it just wasn't happening. I rode in the boat to be a spotter and got some amazing pictures with my mom's camera. I will stay on her to send them so I can do some Show and Tell. I'll post more on the tube riding when I get them.

You know I took a picture of the kitchen. I whipped that handy dandy camera phone out and snapped one just for you, Internets! It's an after picture because with my Dad barking orders? I just got out of there before he thought he was going to tell me to crawl under a house or something equally stupid like that. Hope don't do dirty dark places. That hole would have stayed right there. What you are going to see is, from left to right, my stove, dishwasher, and fridge. The light colored wood is the area that had to be replaced. The white outline is duct tape my Dad provided for us to cover up seams and seal cracks. We did not replace the flooring because all of it in the kitchen would have to come up and I see that happening another time in the future. As long as the problem was fixed, the cosmetic stuff can wait. We are the only ones who stay there and I'm all about a cute rug to cover up until further notice. Good thing we decided to go, huh? Imagine the mess if we hadn't. No one goes over there much and we would have lost some good appliances.

Sometimes being a homeowner ain't all it's cracked up to be.