Insulation

It is crazy how some things on the house seem to take FOREVER, and then some things go crazy fast! Last week we had our electrical/plumbing/framing/hvac inspection and we passed! Yay! The inspector was shocked that Matt had done the electrical work himself. He said it looked professional. Another proud moment from me.

He gave us the go-ahead to schedule the insulation, so Matt called and they said they'd be out sometime during the week, probably the end of the week. Well the next day, we stop by and HOLY CRAP! This is what we saw:

Kitchen

Entry and stairs

Basement living room

Vault above stairs and dining room

Garage

Vault in family room

I basically started freaking out because all of the electrical was all covered up in the insulation! We spent so long putting that all in and in one day it was totally covered up! Not to mention that we don't actually know if everything works! Ah! Cross your fingers that we are good!

Speaking of electrical, here is the last update on that... Matt had to run all the wiring for tv and internet and here's how it looks:

Update on siding... a week ago, Matt and my dad were able to put up most of the siding on the east side of the house. We still have a few feet of the horizontal siding, and then we'll do a different type (vertical with wider spacing) on the gable. On Saturday (so 2 days ago), my dad, Laurie, Matt and I worked on the siding on the west side of the house, and got to the same point. So we are officially done with the back, close to being done on both sides, and need to do the siding on the front, which we haven't even started yet. Making good progress! We need to order rock soon!

Finally! The lumber package that has been cluttering the backyard since December is all used up! My mom helped me move everything a few weeks ago, and now all we have sitting there is a few pieces of siding. Now that I can actually see my yard, I am getting excited! On Saturday, it was a pretty nice day and all the neighborhood kids were out on the big hills behind our house playing in their "forts". It looked like so much fun! I can't wait to someday see our kids out there playing! It made me love our lot even more.

Today the sheet rock was stocked, and Tuesday and Wednesday this week they will get going! Keep posted for new pictures!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Siding

Matt has been working hard on the house, as always. And now that we're almost done with electrical (inspection tomorrow), we get to work on some other stuff, like putting siding on the house. Matt got the entire back of the house (with the exception of a few feet) done in one day while I was at work! When I showed up to help, I didn't get to help with the siding. Matt made me help him move a huge pile of siding. I know, I am VERY important.

All the windows will be trimmed in white to contrast the darker paint we'll use on the siding.

Matt was able to finish one side of the house on Saturday with the help of my dad. He has this side and the front to do the horizontal siding, and then he will do vertical siding on the gables.

The front of the house is just about ready for rock!

A few weeks ago, we had the sheet rock guys come and hang some sheet rock in our garage so we could have some break from the cold and have a chance to close up the house. It makes me excited to be able to start doing sheet rock (hopefully by the end of this week?) but also makes me scared! Everything looks so different with sheet rock!

Matt is looking pretty disgusting with his mustache...

Cassie Goes to the MTC!

On February 26, Cassie entered the Missionary Training Center in Provo. She was so excited! There are so many rules about who can be in the car to drop a missionary off at the MTC, and Cassie had so many people who wanted to see her off, that Matt and I decided not to go down. My mom did take a bunch of pictures, which I'll share here, so thanks mom for making us feel like we were apart of it!

My mom took some amazing pre-mission pictures:

Saying good-bye to living at home:

Pictures with family at the Provo temple:

Saying good-bye at the MTC!

Going, going...

Gone!

My mom sent me a video of Cas in the car and walking in to the MTC and it was only about 3 minutes long. She was so excited that she practically ran into the MTC! We have gotten a few emails from her so far, and she is doing great! It is so much fun to be writing a missionary! We love her and miss her so much already!

Electrical... AKA the Last Three Weeks of My Life

One advantage of doing a lot of the work on our house ourselves is that we save a lot of money. A disadvantage is that some things take FOREVER! Running electrical has taken forever! Not to mention that we don't know really how to do this, so we've had to have an electrician teach us how to do everything, and he's had to come check on our work throughout the process so that we didn't mess anything up and burn our house down, which again, takes forever.

Three weeks ago, we started drilling holes to run wire, nailing in outlet and switch boxes, and pulling wire. Matt hasn't had much work so he's been working at our house a lot and did most of the work by himself. I have been able to help out at night, however we got to a point where I couldn't really do much. One night after work I went to help Matt at the house and we both were really tired and frustrated after a long day. Within minutes we were both yelling at each other and from that point on, I decided that I would be at the house for support, and spent a lot of hours sweeping. I am basically a professional sweeper now.

Anyway, this picture shows what the boxes look like once all the wires are in and tied together. However they didn't all start off this way...

Before we could tie the wires together, we had to stick them in the boxes. They actually didn't even get put the wire in the boxes until we had approval from the electrician, so they were just hanging out all over the place for like two weeks.

After the wires got put in the boxes, Matt had to tie them together and take off the plastic part to get them ready for the electrician to tie together. Matt was a champion through this whole process. He didn't really know what he was doing, but he had the electrician explain everything and he was able to do it mostly by himself.

You can see how the wire was run to all the outlets. This is just one of like 75 outlets in the house. Poor Matt. I made him run outlets all over the place. I love making practical decisions for my own home. Like how many rooms have an outlet right in the middle of the wall that gets covered up by a dresser? I made Matt run all my outlets on the edges of the rooms in case I put furniture up against the wall, and I also made him put a light switch in our bedroom next to our bed. We have lots of fights about who has to get out of bed to turn off the light... well, problem solved!

All the outlets and lights had to be run on "homeruns" down to the breaker box in the basement. We will barely have enough room in the box for all those wires!

It's going to look a lot different once all the wires get put in the box!

We had to run the "homerun" wires all over the house to get them into the box. It was pretty rough pulling wire all over the house knowing how much that stuff costs per foot. If you have a hard time spending money, DO NOT BUILD A HOUSE. Seriously, you would die knowing how much every little dumb thing costs.

Matt is working on finishing the last few electrical things as I sit here typing. We will have an inspection to make sure the plumbing and electrical looks good and then we can call in the guys to insulate and sheet rock! After that comes finish work, which I can start helping with again! I really want the house to start moving again, this month has been so slow and long!

***I forgot to mention the amazing help of my mom and Jeff a few weekends ago. Jeff was awesome at helping Matt with the electrical, and my mom was a champion of moving lumber. She didn't quite realize how much lumber there was, and how heavy lumber is, or that sometimes lumber tends to get moldy when it is sitting outside from December-February. Haha! Our backyard is totally empty of all lumber now! I need to take a picture of it soon.***

T.G.I.F.... I think....

Okay, I am usually so happy for Fridays. But today made me wish that it was Monday. Here's what happened:

8:00 AM- I'm teaching the early morning math group, and I cannot get kids to participate. It didn't help that it was a hard lesson. So here I am, doing the teacher show, and the kids are either half-asleep or off in la-la land.

9:00 AM- School starts. I have three kids ask if the ski field trip note is due today. Every day this week I have reminded them that it isn't due until March 5. I have another student turn in book order money. I submitted our book order yesterday. Awesome.

9:20 AM- I have a student crying  because he forgot his math homework. Again, I am teaching this difficult lesson in math, and I have zero participation. However, they won't shut up when I ask them to get a red pen out of their desk. It takes a full minute for all students to turn to the right page in their math book. I have five kids who are making zero effort on the math assignment, even when I am sitting next to them and telling them what to do.
Me: "What's 3x3/5?"
Student: "9."
Me: "That's the numerator. Now you need to write the denominator and you're done."
Student: "9 and 3/5."
Me: "Try again."
Student: "9 and 9/5."
Me: "Look at what we did before. You just need to write the denominator below the 9 and the denominator is just staying the same, so write 5."
Student: "9 and 3/5."
Me: "Just write 9/5! Actually, I'll write it. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH."
(This actually went on for much longer and with five different kids at the same time)

10:20 AM- I am working my butt off to get the kids to wake up. We are doing a fun vocabulary lesson, an interesting comprehension lesson, and the kids are barely awake. One of my kids who has been hard (who hasn't had a bad day in a while) had a terrible day. I had to remind him a billion times to stay on task.

11:20 AM- We start a science experiment. Now they're awake and won't shut up. I'm trying to give instructions and I have kids walking around and talking. I wait forever and give them a million reminders to get them to listen. At the end of our experiment, I have three groups who did not follow instructions and 10 other kids just standing by me looking at the experiment, even though I told them to sit down so I could explain everything. I was going to do a little activity but did a read aloud instead.

12:15 PM- I have 10 kids who are in from lunch today. I am frantically running copies of the science homework.

12:45 PM- We were supposed to use the iPads today, but there was no way I was going to deal with a million kids with their hands in the air because they didn't listen to instructions and are lost, or because their battery is low, or whatever other million problems I always seem to have with the iPads. We did a writing activity instead. Again, pulling teeth to get the kids to participate, and then when we are grading the assignment, I have 10 hands in the air at all times with questions like, "What if I put 'is' instead of 'are'? Do I still get it right?" We didn't have time to put scores in the computer because it took 20 minutes to correct the assignment.

1:00 PM- Little boy tells me he is feeling sick. I ask him, "Can you make it for one more hour? We are taking a math test and if you are feeling okay, I'd like you to try to stay to take the test. If you are feeling too sick though, I want you to go home." He says, "I think I'll stay."

2:00 PM- I am explaining homework and getting everyone ready to go home. We are all sitting and listening to instructions (five minutes left of school) and my sick boy starts throwing up all over his desk. All the other kids start dry-heaving while I walk him, with the garbage can, to the bathroom. I frantically tell the kids to get cleaned up.

2:05 PM- School is over, but I have a million kids still in my room, taking their sweet time getting ready to go home. One little boy had his papers taken out of his box by mistake by another student. I find him some other papers, and then miraculously, his papers turn up. Then another girl can't find her papers, I get her taken care of and the boy comes up to me and says, "Mrs. Fischer, aren't you proud of me that I didn't start crying when I couldn't find my papers?" AHHHHHH! Yes, I am proud of you because if you started crying I probably would have freaked out!

2:20 PM- Faculty meeting about the new testing that is starting in six weeks. Totally overwhelming. Too much information to process, and then the lady tells us that it's all probably going to change soon. Why did we have this meeting again?

4:00 PM- We start signing up for times to take the end-of-year tests. It takes 45 minutes.

It is now 5:00 and I am about ready to kill someone. Good thing it's the weekend right? Although I've never had a Monday this crazy...

Happy Birthday Kailee and Cassie's Farewell

On Saturday, February 15, we celebrated Kailee's first birthday! She was sooo cute and there were so many people there to celebrate her special day (which was actually on February 11). Of course there was lots of food, which the boys wasted no time giving to miss K. She quite enjoyed eating ice cream off of Randy's plate! She also dug right into her birthday cake! She had so much frosting all over her, I'll have to get the pictures from Kendra one of these days.

Birthday girl was so shy around all the people. We finally got her opening presents and she wasn't really interested until she opened up a toy with lights and sounds and then she was mad when they took it away!

One of her presents had this cute crown as part of the bow and she put that crown on and wouldn't take it off! She wore it and just her diaper while eating cake!

Harrison was pretty tired by the time the party was over.

After the party, Matt and I got to go to the Verizon store to update our phones. It is ridiculous how much phones change in just two years, and how much they cost! It is also ridiculous how long you have to wait to get someone to help you at that dumb store, even if you already know exactly what you want. We were there for almost two hours by the time we were done.

Then we got to go out to dinner with Lance and Kendra, Tim and Kamie, and Randy and Jenny. We decided as siblings that we'd rather spend time together than buy each other gifts for Christmas and everyone's been so busy that it took a while to find a night we could go out. We argued for a while about where to go and finally landed on Hires Big H. After Hires, everyone was craving some other treats, so we went and got churros. Yes, very random. I'm not sure where that idea came from. Then some people wanted Italian ice, so we ended up at some ice cream/shaved ice place in Sandy. Again, I'm not sure whose idea this was, but it was random and fun. The boys for some reason had to sit at the kids table. It was pretty funny watching these big guys get into those little chairs and then even funnier as they were all laughing hysterically at each other. If there's anything you should know about the Fischer boys, it's that they all think they are pretty funny, so when all four of them are together there is more laughing and giggling than 12-year-old girls at a slumber party.

Matt would rather be with his brothers than anyone else. It's a good thing I love the Fischer wives so much, otherwise we'd definitely have problems!

Even though our night ended fairly early, we were all home by 9:00, it was soooo much fun. I love getting together with our family and am so lucky to have such great in-laws.

The next morning was Cassie's farewell! I can't believe how fast time has passed! She did soooo great! I was so proud of how hard she worked to write a nice talk and share her testimony of the gospel and share her story of how she decided to go to on a mission. There were so many people there to support her, I couldn't believe it! All of our grandparents, with the exception of my Papa who is in a rehab facility after his shoulder surgery, were able to be there. My Grandma Decker and Aunt Diane both came, along with Grandma and Grandpa Norton, Grandma Fox (Jeff's mom), and Grandma and Grandpa Pullan (Laurie's mom and dad). That is the first time ever that all those people were in the same place! Cassie also had Jeff's sister and her whole family, many of our Norton aunts and uncles and cousins, Matt's mom and dad, a bunch of my parents' friends from our old neighborhood and even from the house in California, tons of Cassie's friends, and of course Alex, my mom and Matt and I were there. It was so fun saying hello to everyone and I think I hugged more people than I have in a long time!

After the farewell, my mom hosted a gorgeous brunch at her house. She had a build-your-own yogurt bar with doughnuts, orange rolls and sugar cookies. Everything was so good and looked so pretty. My camera had a dead battery so I didn't get any pictures. I couldn't believe how many people showed up to support Cassie. I loved talking to people that I haven't seen forever, like Kathy and Brad Collings, my mom and dad's friends from our Old Mill neighborhood, and John and Lori Witkowski, who have been friends with my parents forever. It made me feel so old remembering those times when I was little. I hope I keep in touch with all my friends so someday my friends will be there to support my kids when they are all grown up.

After breakfast, we got to stop by the rehab facility and visit my Papa. He just had his shoulder replaced and he is getting taken care of at the rehab place. I love my Papa so much. He is so cute. My Grandma told me she liked my jeans, and my Papa says, "She could be wearing a plastic bag and she'd still look beautiful." Can you see why I love him so much?

After visiting my Papa, we drove up to Midway for birthday dinner for Matt's Grandpa. Everyone else was already there, and it was fun to see some of Matt's cousins and aunts and uncles. I would love to build a house up there in Midway one day, it is so beautiful. Again, it was fun to see everyone and catch up and visit for a while. Matt's Grandpa and his wife, Ramona, are both so sweet. We love them so much.

Matt and I had a fantastic weekend visiting friends and family. We couldn't have asked for a better weekend down in Salt Lake.