Pottys, Chain-Smoking Babies, and Trenches

For once my lack of blogging is not because of a lack of things to blog about, it's actually due to being so darn busy being blog-worthy. The temperature is up, and, as backwards as it seems, so is our productivity! Unfortunately, there is another thing that's up... the water level around our house.

How to keep your cat from wandering around the neighborhood

You might remember this moat from last summer, and how it prompted us to look into a pet alligator as a method of home security. Last summer, Derek put in a French drain, and some drain grates in the front yard. But alas, the summer, and therefore the insane daily rains, ended, and so did the motivation to dig a 150 foot trench in the back yard to give all that water some place to go. But with the summer upon us, the motivation has arrived! So Derek began the crazy feat that is digging a 150 foot trench, placing a pipe in it, and burring it in the dead of summer.

Lucy Photobomb

I've been keeping busy this summer too. As I do every summer, I have been doing swim lessons. I've also been doing lots of running and crafting.

But I can't let Derek do all the work this summer, so I decided to finally tackle the wallpaper in the chain-smoking baby room. Yup, you read that right- chain-smoking baby room. No. We haven't decided to have a baby, and no, neither of us have taken up smoking. This room got it's name because of this...

and the delightful smoke stench that accompanied it. Why baby you ask? Because of the delightful wallpaper of polka dotted elephants carrying balloons...

This wallpaper poses more of a problem than the wallpaper in our master bathroom that I removed with ease while brushing my teeth every morning, and  than the wallpaper border in the master bedroom that required all kinds of chemicals and grunting to remove. Why? Because there are not one, but two layers of painted over wallpaper. I've gotten quite a bit done though, and am about 2/3 around the room.

But alas, as much forward momentum that we've gained this summer, we somehow managed to repeat history...

Yup, that's a toilet in the shower. You may remember when the guest room toilet was our only useable toilet because our master toilet was in the shower...

Apparently our toilets like a good warm shower before making their final exit from our home. We've got a lot more ahead of us, and we're back down to one toilet, unless that is you like pottying in the yard...