Mixed feelings

Most of the time, when a family embarks on a home remodeling project, the general mood is that of excitement for the changes mixed with dread of the disruption caused by workers in your home and, of course, the cost! Yesterday a backhoe started digging a hole in the ground behind our garage. Today the digging continues, along with some sawing and other noisy pursuits. We are building a first-floor bed and bathroom for Erica. She is getting too big for us to carry up and down the stairs and our home's bedrooms are all on the second floor. We talked about moving, but we love our house, our street, our neighbors and our elementary school. And then there was the housing market - we certainly would have taken a big loss on the sale of this home if we decided to move! So... we are adding on. And, I have to say, any shred of excitement that I should be feeling is overshadowed by the fact that 1. This is costing us a LOT of money. Erica is on a Medicaid waiver, which helps us out with a lot of costs relating to her medical and therapeutic needs. And if we were on a bigger waiver (with a bigger budget, as opposed to the Level One we have) it would have paid for a lot of the specialty products needed to finish the rooms we are adding. But no waiver will pay for new construction - only adaptation of existing structures. 2. I really liked our house the way it was; it was plenty big for us already; now I'm going to have even more rooms to clean! 3. I really, really, wish that all of this weren't necessary. I don't often fall into wells of self-pity or waste time asking "why my kid?" but major upheavals like this bring it out of me.

Oh, and did I mention the girls and I all have the flu? That helps my mood, for sure!

When this is all done, it's going to be great. I have to keep telling myself that...

Pumpkinpalooza

We took the girls to a family festival that was a fundraiser for the local children's hospital NICU. They had a corn maze, pumpkin patch, hay rides, face painting, carving demonstrations, and the big hit with our little ones - the barrel train. This was at Lynd's Fruit Farm - the same location as the apple orchards of my last post (the class field trip to the apple barn). Although it was very windy and overcast, therefore much colder than we anticipated, we still had a great time. I walked alongside the barrel train as they rode, just in case Erica leaned too far to the side and started to fall out. But she never even came close - she hung on to the little "steering wheel" like a champ and she and Natalie both kept yelling "CHOO CHOO!!" the whole time and giggling away. Fall is such a great time for family fun!