Reverse the Curse!

I have decided I am cursed - at least for the past few days I have been. It started Thursday night after Rob got home from work. We have been trying to organize our house and donate things we don't need to try and eliminate clutter. Rob's chosen project for Thursday night was the storm closet, which holds all our food storage, but still needs to be clear enough for all of us to fit somewhat comfortably when the tornado sirens go off. Rob cleared the whole closet out, then reorganized the whole space. He called me in at the end to show me what he had done. Part of our food storage is quite a few 50 lb bags of wheat (I keep meaning to get an electric grinder so I can use it, but we have a hand held one that would work if there was an emergency at least), which we have stacked along one edge to form sort of a seat that historically we have had the kids on. Rob and I wanted to make sure an adult would fit up there now since that would make things more comfortable. I fit, but as I started getting down, we heard a sound that confused me for a minute as I wasn't sure how a waterfall got into the closet. It was more of a wheat-fall, not a waterfall as 50 lbs of wheat cascaded through multiple rips to the floor. We had to take every single thing back out of the closet to make sure we got every grain of wheat. It took several hours. Most of the wheat is now in large, sturdy plastic buckets rather than bags.

Rob had Friday off work and had discovered the night before that our Norton Antivirus program wouldn't open or run any scans, so Friday morning I called Norton tech support. The tech couldn't figure out what was going on, so he had me log into an online program that allowed him access to my desktop so he could try and fix it. I don't know what the heck he did, but he restarted the computer and managed to freeze it in safe mode, although he did something else too, because we can't access any of our programs or do anything else except turn it on and scroll through Microsoft's help menu. A friend who fixes computers very generously came over and spent several hours trying to fix it. He determined that we are going to have to replace the whole operating system. So what we assumed would be a pretty simple call into Norton resulted in a six hour ordeal that left us without a computer (my sister lent us her laptop, so that is how I'm online) and having to buy new parts for our computer (yes, I called Norton again and they reimbursed us for the product and I will call again when we know how much the computer will be, although I am not going to use our priority number as when I do, they don't answer our calls).

In between the hours we spent on the phone and watching our friend try to fix the computer, I baked our traditional 4th of July cake (Rob is working all day today at his second job, so we had our 4th celebration yesterday) for the kids to decorate. The cake turned out fine, but I burned my hand pretty badly taking it out of the oven. Things could have been worse :) Aloe is awesome, although I would strongly suggest not getting aloe that has green dye in it as it dyed my hand green. Every 4th of July we bake a cake, top it with whipped cream and let the kids decorate it with blueberries and raspberries. Last year Jack "helped" (by which I mean he ate berries while watching until he grabbed a handful of whipped cream and cake and I removed him from the area :) ), but this was his first year really helping. We always get large containers of the berries as we know that at least half of them will end up in the kids' mouths. All of them had a lot of fun!





Jack had lots of fun sticking the berries as far into the whipped cream and cake as he could ~


And then licking the whipped cream off his fingers. Good thing the cake was just for family! ~


The finished product with the artists ~


For dinner we had homemade hamburgers. After watching an episode of "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives" about burger joints the other night that made our mouths water, I decided to try my hand at making a killer burger. I seasoned the meat and then added chopped onions and grated cheese (a sharp Irish cheese). The burgers turned out fantastic! I made homemade baked fries to go along with the burgers, but of course even though I put them in to cook 45 mins before starting the burgers, they still weren't done until 30 mins after the burgers were done, so we had two dinners sort of. I even made fry sauce for the fries (which for those of you who have never lived in ID is mayo and ketchup combined).

After dinner and dessert, we went to go see our town's fireworks. We took the back roads through the industrial park near the town park that they set them off at and parked about a mile or so away. We only walked a little bit - just until we found a promising-looking stretch of grass in front of one of the companies that had a clear view. The kids seemed a bit bored with it all.







Then friends of ours from church showed up with their two little girls and things got more fun :) Meg, Kylie and Jack ran around with their oldest, Sydney, who is about a year younger than Kylie. Beth sat on my lap. Once the fireworks started the four kids that had been running around had lots of fun clapping at the fireworks and jumping up and down in excitement and doing something that looked like playing musical chairs on the grass and curb. Sydney's dad said it was difficult to watch the fireworks because it was so funny to watch the kids ~


The most recent victim of my curse is Rob's head. This morning I gave Rob a haircut. I always start by using the clippers (with attachment) to trim the sides, then I even it out and trim the top with scissors. Well I started cutting and realized that I hadn't put the attachment on the clippers, so Rob had a swathe of completely shaved skin running up the side of his face. After an emergency call to Molly (times like these I am very grateful to have a sister who is a stylist!), I gave him a sort of military style haircut which incorporated my mistake while still leaving as much hair as possible. Molly assured us that it grows out in about two weeks ~




Rob cavalierly offered to tell people he was trying out a new haircut due to the heat so I didn't need to tell people I messed up, but obviously I decided against that approach. I'm sure we will laugh about it soon and I hope it's bringing smiles to the faces of our family and friends :)

Rob did remark before he left for work that he would advise me not to try any more projects (like the closet or the Norton issue or the haircut), especially regarding things like auto repair as I'd probably blow up the house with my current streak of luck . . .