A Smattering of Duehrings

As usual, when Damon leaves town for a week I head to my parents house with the kids. Well, we had some exciting times here at the Neir home today. It was a scene that I vividly remember happening once before a few years ago.

Around 5:00 tonight after one of my dear children (no names here) got done going to the bathroom I noticed that the toilets were gurgling a bit. I tried flushing it and it didn’t seem to want to flush. I plunged for awhile and nothing seemed to help. I searched for my parents and couldn’t find them. I then collapsed into a bed and was going to try to take a mini nap forgetting all about the toilet girgling.

I was soon woken up by my sister telling me they needed my help and they needed it now. My brother in law was in the bathroom trying to control the dirty water flow that was spewing out of the toilet and the bathtub. My sister was running to find more towels and buckets. She told me to get downstairs. I was still a bit out of it, but I ran down there. What I found when I got down there was like a horror scene.

I stood there with my handful of buckets and didn’t know what to do. It seemed that every pipe in the entire basement was spewing out filthy water. It was like walking into a rain forest. A few places it was dumping as though a huge water spicket had just been turned on. I went over to the biggest spew to try to catch it and the water was just spraying all over me and none of it was falling into the bucket. I yelled for my sister to go get the swimming pool from outside. (Ok, so maybe I didn’t think through that one long enough, but my thought was that it would catch more water than a bucket. What I would have done with a swimming pool full of sewer water… I don’t know.)

I opened up another door to where the sump pump was and it was a similar scene…water falling from the ceiling and the sump pump overflowing everywhere. Apparently, the fact that the laundry water was draining at the same time as the toilets were backing up didn’t help the problem. Thinking back now one solution that might have helped would have been to turn the washing machine off. However, at the time it was such a chaotic mess none of us could do anything fast enough. (Don’t forget we have 9 children in the middle of this chaos.)

So, a few hours later we finally made it to the food that my dad had made that was still sitting on the grill ready for us to begin eating about the same time that the mess began. Our appetites were a little bit disturbed by what we witnessed, but we still managed to enjoy the food. We can now laugh about our day, (actually, I was laughing during the ordeal too, but that just seems to be how I deal with stressful situations), my kids eyes have been opened to the whole world of plumbing, AND another fond memory was made while visiting grampa and gramma’s house.

It was another busy week. The kids had Vacation Bible School (called VBS but called PBS KIDS by Eli) all week at church. This year the 4 yr olds/pre-K were included which made me very happy. I was left at home for 4 hours a day with only Molly. In other words.. I was able to get lots done this week. Molly did not like being an only child and constantly asked where the other kids were.

I had someone pick up my kids so I could let Molly sleep in. Then when I went to pick up the kids at 12:30 we went straight to the pool for the afternoon. The kids were exhausted by the end of the week.

Thursday night was the VBS program. I had a market research job to go to so I missed it. As I was loading the kids into the car about 1 minute before they were to leave with daddy they informed me that they were supposed to dress in Hawaiian clothes for the program. Like we have a lot of that laying around. So, this is what we came up with in about 1 minutes before they left. Micah’s buttons popped off as he was putting his shirt on so I told him that I was pretty sure the cool Hawaiian’s wore their shirts unbuttoned.

Friday night Gramma Jeri came for a short visit. We had pizza and went out for slushies. It was beautiful outside. Eli missed out on the fun because someone from church wanted to take one of our boys to the Royals game with them. Eli was the lucky one that got to go. He seemed to provide them with some great entertainment as they were laughing when they dropped him off at midnight. It felt really odd having him gone all night. It was so quiet around here.

I don’t know why any mamma bunny in her right mind would have her babies in our back yard but they all seem to pick our yard as the perfect place to have their bunnies. The kids have been more interested in the baby bunnies than ever before this year. Eli will sit out there for hours and watch them in their hole. The other day they had pulled some babies out and were making a home for them in a bucket filled with lettuce and carrots. I made them put the bunnies back into their home.

Then yesterday I went out to check on Eli and found him giving the baby bunnies a bath in a bucket. I was sure he had drowned them, but he said that they had fallen into the mud (imagine that) and they needed a bath. They were all still alive. So, some neighbor kids came to the bunnies rescue and took them home to take care of them, warm them up, and feed them. Phew! No more bunnies. Today they magically appeared back in their hole again during church.

Today, Maggie left for church camp. This is her first time away to a camp without family. She was really excited. Then this coming week Damon leaves with our church youth for a missions trip to New Orleans. They will be working in the 9th ward to help clean it up after the flooding from the hurricane a few years ago. He has had to miss the last two mission trips and is excited to get to go this year.

Most of this will post will be about Eli. He is just such an interesting character that there is always something to tell about him.

The boy doesn’t like his bed. He has always been this way and I have so many pictures of him sleeping everywhere but his bed. He tells me that his bed just isn’t as comfy cozy as the floor. He spends the first half hour of his nap time building a bed on the floor before he goes to sleep. In the morning he is always on our bedroom floor on a pile of pillows.

He loves playing on the computer. He always wants to play on “ABC’s” which is www.starfall.com. It is an awesome sight for teaching sounds and reading. Micah learned to read by playing on it and I may just not have to teach Eli to read either. (Evan would rather be doing wheelies on his bike and playing in mud than this phonics stuff)

This net thing is at a new park we have been visiting lately. The other night we were there and there was a big family reunion thing going on. A grampa and gramma with all of their kids and grandkids were getting a picture taken up on this net. There were probably 25 people up there. They asked me to take the pictures so I did. When I was ready to take the first picture I looked up there and Eli was about half way up there posing with the family.

Eli is the most outgoing kid in the world. He acts like he knows everyone and gets in the middle of everything. I will never forget when we were standing in a waiting line in a restaurant once and lost track of him. We found him sitting in a booth with another family. That’s Eli.

Molly totally looks up to Eli and is starting to act and talk just like him more and more. She does everything he does. It is a little scary. Eli is very protective of her in the pool. He watches her like a hawk and has almost drowned her a few times trying to get her out of the deep end because he was afraid she would drown out there. I have found that water wings don’t hold kids up very well when they are clinging to each other.

Molly is in the early stages of potty training. On our trip to Silver Dollar City she started doing something really funny. When she would go potty she would tell me she had to go and then go hide behind a tree or something and stand there just like the boys do and go (in her diaper). I then realized since Maggie goes to the bathroom downstairs that all she sees is how the boys do it.

Since then I have had Maggie use the upstairs bathroom some with Molly watching and now Molly is telling me she needs to go and actually sitting on the toilet instead of thinking she had to stand like the boys do. Ha!

Maggie - because he is funny, because he takes care of us, because he helps me with stuff and teaches me how to do stuff, because he is my daddy. When I grow up I want someone just like my daddy that I can marry.

Micah - because he is cool, because he loves me, because he plays starcraft with me, because he is the best daddy in the whole world, because I like to read with him, because I like his name - it is a good name for a big daddy.

Evan - because he is always nice to me and because he loves me.

Eli - I love my daddy when I hug him and when I hug someone else- because God made him and God makes all the people in the whole wide world, and because he has a Bible.

Molly - I love daddy

Happy Father’s Day, Damon! We love you.