a quiet evening at the wood's

ok, so it wasn't so quiet, but it was an evening. and it was at the woods. and it was fun.
andrew and heather graciously opened up their home to a whole ton of people on saturday evening for dinner and a chance to catch up. matt, amy and elias hader were in for easter from chicago and the lawrie family was over this way from grand rapids.
because dave and hayden had gone to the u of m spring football game (pictures on hayden's blog), we were a little late to the party. so when we showed up, there was a houseful to say the least. children were EVERYWHERE. at one point, i believe there was around 21 kids. from about 6 months to 9 years or so.
with all the chaos, the kids actually all seemed to do really well. dave and i were mostly chasing talan around, but we were able to sit and talk for a few minutes here and there.
cordelia wood became dave's best friend and spent most of her evening sitting on his lap or walking around holding his hand.
it was great seeing so many people that we haven't really seen in many years, but we had to pack it up and head home around 8:30 since hayden had such a long day and we needed to get up early for easter sunday morning.
thanks so much for having us all, wood family. we really had a great time. i think the next time we get together with our 5 children it will probably seem like there are only 2 of them!

cordelia and dave. this is pretty much what they looked like the entire evening:
just a few of the kids:

talan would pet millie:
and then crack up:
dinner time:


cordelia and talan:
the hader family. matt, amy and elias. we love them:
jack, jeff and bruce, dave and andrew:
elliot and hayden. they played roof ball together for a long time:

cordelia still hanging with dave:

mike, jen, mia and amy. talan was IN LOVE with mia and i had to use all my strength to hold him back. i believe he was trying to actually pick her up. he couldn't get enough of her:

dunkin', splashin' and crackin'

on friday morning, the boys and i dyed our easter eggs. hayden had a great time and pretty much did it all by himself. he did crack a few while taking them out of the cups but eventually just used his fingers when they were out of the dye to safely maneuver them to the paper towel.
talan kept saying "egg" over and over again but wasn't really happy with what we were doing with the eggs. he did throw an egg into a cup of color once, maybe twice, but he really just wanted to hold the eggs. at one point we gave him some stickers and hayden helped him put them on his egg. he chose all of the football, soccer ball and basketball stickers. then he slammed the egg on the table and cracked it.
dave was at work and said he was more then happy to skip this event.
all in all, it went well and pretty quick. and we even have a couple of eggs that aren't cracked!

right after talan threw an egg into the cup:



talan picked out all of the football stickers first:






uh oh:

dave vs. chicken

dave was allergic to poultry while growing up. then about a year into marriage, dave was smelling some kind of chicken i was making and decided he really wanted to try it. i let him know i had no idea how to get to the hospital, so if he stopped breathing, he was out of luck.
he tried the chicken and had no problems. so for about 12 years now, he's been eating chicken with no real problems.
in the past several months, he has had some small reactions to some of the chicken he eats some of the time. it's very odd since he can eat something one nite and be fine but then have a reaction when he eats it for leftovers the next nite.
well, on top of his chicken issues, he also has had an issue swallowing. i have yelled at him on countless occasions to chew his food properly. he usually ends up in the bathroom, sticking his finger down his throat in order to throw the food up.
well, the other month dave started doing his usual hiccup/food is stuck routine after about his second bite. he headed into the bathroom while the boys and i finished our meals. i was explaining to the boys why it is so important to chew your food carefully. the funny thing was, dave had cut up his chicken into little bites and hayden even commented on what small bites dave had.
dave stuck his finger down his throat for about 2 hours before he finally decided he needed to go to the hospital. he wasn't having trouble breathing, it was simply stuck and he couldn't get it out.
so he goes to the livonia providence urgent care where they try to help him but can't. so they then send him on the the novi er. he called me and told me i would need to come at some point. so mom came over at probably around 11:30pm to sit with the boys while i went to be with dave.
finally at about 3am, they sent us up to the operating room where they had to knock him out, stick a tube down his throat and grab the chicken. once that was done, we were out of there in no time. got home a little after 4am.
when the dr. came out to tell me they were done, he showed me a picture and said that it looked like dave could possibly have a rare condition that makes swallowing more difficult. we needed to schedule an appointment to see him and then he would have to go to the hospital for some tests.
so...after all of these years of me thinking he just wasn't chewing good enough, it looks like there was actually a reason for it. so i apologize, dave!
on march 23, dave went into to providence in southfield where they stuck a tube up his nose and down his throat and had him drink while they monitored his swallowing. after that, they stuck another tube up his nose and down his throat that was connected to some machine that documented every time he swallowed. he had to have that in for 24 hours. so he laid around that day looking a bit silly and being very irritated by the tube down his throat.
he goes in to see the dr. next week and will get the results of those tests. luckily, there hasn't been any more incidents since that evening, however, i am making the same dish he had that nite, this evening. so we'll see!

you know what this did for our property value? absolutely nothing. in fact, i think it went down again.

so several weeks ago we got a lot of rain. on several occasions when we have gotten a lot of rain, our basement has leaked a bit. this time around, it was more then a bit.
lucky for us, we waited over 12 hours at the auto show carpet sale several months back and bought new carpet for the basement. even luckier for us, we hadn't put it in yet.
with talan's 2nd birthday in just about a month, dave decided it would be a good thing to take this project on NOW instead of waiting until after the party. i had my doubts, but dave ended up coming through with just 5 days to spare!
first dave ripped out the old stinky carpet and then started tearing drywall out. the basement then sat that way for about 2 or 3 weeks. that's what made me a bit nervous!
dave spent about 2 days running water against our house making sure he knew exactly where the leak was coming from before he could do anything else. after he saw that there were no other leaking surprises we went out and bought probably 60 bags of dirt to build up the landscaping on the side of the house where it was leaking. of course this is michigan so the bags of dirt were frozen. and let me tell you, breaking up frozen dirt is next to impossible.
so we spent about 2 or 3 days working on the landscaping issue and then dave was able to move back inside and start working on ripping out the tiny bit of carpet that was UNDER the floor stud. he then cleaned the moldy areas on the wall, fixed the crack, and put the drywall back up.
it took the two of us just a couple of hours for 2 nites to paint the walls and then dave cleaned up the floors so they would be ready for the carpet.
on saturday, a co-worker of dave's came over to help us lay the carpet down. that went relatively quickly and easily (for all i know...i was upstairs!) and after he left, dave put the molding up.
we then spent ALL day sunday moving the furniture back in and organizing everything. last nite dave hung a few things and now the basement is more or less done. we have a few more decorating things to do, but at least it's ready for the big party on thursday! of course we'll probably have to rearrange a few things for the party, but at least we know what it will be like after thursday.
we are IN LOVE with the basement now. the new carpet made such a HUGE difference to the room and we feel like we can really spend a lot more living time down here and be really comfortable.
the boys, especially talan, were SO HAPPY to get their basement back! talan spent about an hour just running and jumping around the wide open area on sunday before we started moving things back in.
here are some pictures of the process.

right after most of the carpet was taken out:

taking the last bit of stinky, wet carpet out:
drywall down and the leak is exposed:
drywall finally going back up:

drywalled, painted, cleaned and ready for the carpet:

finally time to lay the carpet:

putting the molding up:



a few more things to do...but for the most part, it's done. i took these before talan came down and destroyed the place this morning!: