More Cake?!?!?!?

Well - so the sewage started backing up again late Sunday night, Dan noticed it while he was up at 2 am with a sick Anna who was covered in diarrhea and needed a bath. We stopped all water use and called the plumber again.... So at this point Dan and I are rather upset and discouraged thinking that this may cost us a lot of money and a LOT of hassle. Well we get the plumber here and he makes an interesting discovery. Our house has 2 sewage lines. All the work that has been done up to this point has been done on the smaller and less used line. The back up was occurring between the two lines under the house. So he pulled out the downstairs toilet to snake the other line. He got it cleared out and then we had a person come over and scope it (put a camera in the pipe to see if it's ok) and we found that all was free and clear now - we would not need our yard torn up, we would not need our basement torn up (any more than it already was) and we shouldn't have any more trouble. So after all that stress - it turns out to have been a fairly minor problem that would not have happened if they had realized that there were 2 pipes in the first place....

The rest of the week has gone fairly smoothly. We had another plumber in on Saturday because we saw a drip inside the wall where the dry wall had been removed - and oddly enough - we wouldn't have known that this drip was there until it had done some damage, except that we had the dry wall removed because of the sewage problems. Maybe a small reason to be grateful for all we went through - but it's one less thing we will have to worry about in the future. LOL - he only had to cut out a couple more small sections of dry wall to fix it.... But the holes he made allowed Dan to run our internet into our basement with out a cable going into our window and going all around the floor of our basement. So I might have chosen for things to go more smoothly, but it seems to be working out now. :)

Eileen had a birthday party this weekend. She hasn't had a birthday party with her friends for 3-4 years now, and I figured it was time she was able to have one. She invited a few friends over and the kids had a blast running around the house and outside. Dan did balloon animals for all the kids - which was a HUGE hit - and they fought each other with balloon swords, tromped around like balloon elephants, and walked balloon dogs. We fed them lunch, let them eat cake (and ice cream too) and finished off the party with a pinata. I think she really enjoyed it, and it wasn't even that stressful for me. Plus I can stuff the kids stockings with the left over party favors :) Then her friend Morgan (from her old school) stayed the rest of the afternoon to play.


Here they are all lined up to take their turn whacking the pinata. They loved it - they liked hitting it more than they liked collecting the candy....


The most amazing part to me was when Eileen and I sat down this afternoon to write Thank You notes - not because I made her - but because she wanted to. I helped her with the writing and spelling, but I was so proud of her wanting to do this. Such a big and responsible girl!!

Finally one last picture - I made Dan take another pic - I now officially have 2 more pictures of me pregnant that I have had with the last 2 pregnancies. This is me at about 29 weeks - ish. Amazingly I still feel good (most of the time) and while my belly noticeably impedes my ability to bend and pick things up, it is still not too uncomfortable. The baby is very active and the kids love to feel him wiggle. Anna will sit there and push gently on my belly until he starts kicking her back.


Evie has started potty training herself. She will tell me that she has to go potty and then we will go and get her sitting down and she will go. Really the only dirty diapers she has had the last couple days have been wet ones from bed time and nap time. She is so cute sitting there and so proud of herself when she does something. And she sings on the toilet - "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" of course.