She's Growing Up

So the transformation continues. From bare land, to a foundation into a peek at what the finished house will look like. I guess at this point I can say that the house is "potty trained" as it is officially "in the dry." We flew out to Franklin the first weekend of April, ignorantly bliss of tornado warnings and golf ball sized hail. And even though it was a bit unnerving for me, it wasn't all that bad. What does that tell you about living with 5 kids? It does tend to get a little chaotic here at home, even on what should be a typical quiet evening. Like one not too long ago.

Rick was off on a business trip and I was holding the fort down fairly well. That particular evening the house was a mess and the Mac & Cheese dishes sat in the sink, but those were things I planned on tackling after the kids went to bed. However my plans were going to be changing. I soon found out that the 3 year old had an explosion of a poopy diaper. I put baby daughter in the baby bouncy seat and started with the diaper changing. It didn't take long for me to figure out that it was going to take more than a fresh package of baby wipes to clean up that mess, so in to the shower he goes. Looking around the bathroom it became obvious that with 3 older boys sharing a bathroom, letting the place go unchecked for more than 2 days was a bad idea. I begin to wipe things up when I discover that the toothbrushes are on the floor in a puddle of pee next to the toilet.

I take toddler son out of the shower, towel wrapped and into the hallway. Then step over various toys and Playdough creations taking the toothbrushes downstairs for sanitation rituals, which included running them under the sink and zapping them in the microwave. Now because my husband just happened to be on a business trip that evening so there was no back up for me in case I unexpectedly happened to go brain dead, which unbeknownst to be was just about to happen. One of the older boys was upstairs playing on the computer, the toddler freshly showered and baby daughter was not screaming her head off to be held. I was in charge and boy was it showing. It was a crowning moment!!

But then this strange smell began wafting through the house. This electical short ciruit wiring smell. Something was smoldering and it seemed to be coming from the computer. I pull a few plugs, inspect a few wires, palm the drywall for hot spots, but turn up nothing. Now fearing an electrical fire regardless I do what any calm, cool and collected Mom would do. I dial 911 and ask for the fire department to please come quickly. I was instructed to get all the kids out of the house. So out we go. Into the dark. Then we hear in the distance the sirens coming. Dogs start howling. Crickets stop chirping. Flashing lights start arriving. The kids start jumping up and down so excited to see firetrucks coming to our house. In OUR driveway. Mom is a hero!!!!

Well I knew it wasn't good when I take the first fire fighter dressed in full rescue regalia into the house and he can't smell a thing. I tell him to get someone else in there then! Of course you can smell an electrical fire. You are a fire fighter and have been trained for these things. I am a mom on the edge and I could smell it. How hard could that be?!? A huge older calming fire captain arrives next. Yes he could smell it. Yes it was stronger upstairs near the computer. Then he starts asking questions. When did the smell start? Where did it start? Did you turn on the oven?

"No" I tell him, "We just had Mac & Cheese, no oven involved!"

He calmly climbs the stairs and has a sniff. The smell not so strong anymore. Then we hear the young "can't smell anything" cowboy of a firefighter yell up, "We found the problem!" Oh thank God. The children and I will be saved tonight. He opens the microwave and pulls out 3 melted, exploded and otherwise disfigured toothbrushes from the microwave. The calm fire captain glances out at my brood who are running all around out on the driveway and asks, "I wonder who put those in there."

I sputter ... cough... then answer as quickly as the words could come out of my mouth "Well I did. You see my husband is out of town on business and I have these 5 little kids and one had this HUGE poopy diaper and I had to get him in the shower, and well, I saw all the toothbrushes in this pee. And well I have 4 boys you see and they share this bathroom and well they HAVE to brush their teeth every night right? and gee, well, I didn't know that one of the toothbrushes used to light up like 3 months ago and if I did I certainly wouldn't have put it in the microwave where it would SMELL like an electrical fire with the wires and lightbulb and batteries and all melting like that and well I know you can understand because, like, I am here with FIVE kids and my husband is out of town and did I mention I have 5 kids?"

That 8' tall calm fire captain gently tells his crew that it's time to go on and all is secure and that the kids can come back into the house for a good night's rest. And he didn't even issue me a fire citation for the condition of the kids' bedrooms. I once again, counted my blessings.

Packing continues

Well what can I say? Packing this house with the kids in it is like herding cats. I want every box packed up neat and orderly; all game pieces together, all marbles in their rightful place, all Army guys sitting in their respective jeeps so when we unpack in TN it goes smoothly and things are put away neatly. Rick wonders why I just don't take some Prozac and either throw everything out and buy new, or just throw it in the box and be done with it, letting the sorting take place in the middle of the floor amongst a pile of knee deep toys the way it always does. After all, aren't the kids supposed to feel at home in the new house? But I press on and I continue to look like a little hen scratching through closets and pecking out a few things here, a few things there. Little piles of things that match with other things which go with other things that I am sure I just saw the other day while pecking through another closet. A true test of my mental capacity! Imagine my feeling of fulfillment when I have found the last game piece and placed it all in a well organized box ready to be inventoried, taped and sent off to storage!!

But what happens after I do find that last golden nugget and set it in the box with other matched treasures is that life calls me away for a few minutes. The lone box is left. Unattended. Open. Unmarked. Unsealed. I hear faint voices squealing in delight, "I CAN'T BELIEVE MOM FOUND THIS!!"
"Oh wow, I haven't seen this forever!"
"Look what else is in here!"

My work! Hours of searching gone in an instant. Puzzle pieces, action heroes, Hot Wheels track scattered again about the house. Pushed under the sofa, stashed behind the toilet, tucked between the wall and the bed. My pride swirls around me and won't let me seal the box until the contents are all back together! I search, I stack, and peck around some more until all pieces are together once again. The items are once again packed, but now the tape is missing. Certainly one of the 28 rolls of 150 yard packing tape must be around here somewhere! But I don't dare to leave the box! Scotch tape can hold it all together right? The marking pen! Holy cow, where did that run off to? I don't even want to see the movers' expression when they see how many boxes are marked in purple crayon. Inventory book?! Where did I leave that? I figure I'll just write it all on the back of an envelope, I'm always finding those laying around the house. When I find the inventory list I'll just transfer it all into the book then. I'm sure once I find it again there will still be a few pages in it that Amanda hasn't scribbled on.

Did I mention that packing seems to be going slower than I expected?

Making the House Look Perty

Well it looks like the home site in TN has been plotted, cleared and ready for take off. The weather just needs to hold in order to get the gears turning and the wheels spinning. We have the utmost confidence in our builder so we'll just leave the experts to that house. But this house we're in now is a whole 'nother story. It's time to fix this place up and make it seem like a nice place to live.

Now there's not a whole lot of fixing to do really. Just some basics and clearing clutter out of the way. Maybe a few concrete cracks filled and weeds pulled. It's not like one can just sit back and enjoy the view when raising 5 kids who happen to live in, use and invite the neighborhood friends over to the place to enjoy. So we have had our share of fix ups to do along the way. They say that paint is the fastest, easiest and cheapest way to spruce up a room. But I wonder if "they" have ever painted with a 2 year old?

It's been a little while since I have been silly enough to have a paint can and a 2 year old in the house at the same time. The last time I attempted that I made sure that I had an iron clad plan. In fact, the plan was I would paint at night while the kids all slept. The first hurdle was getting the kids to go to bed and I stay awake. Then at around midnight, I would sneak downstairs and start painting. I would paint for a bit, seal up the cans, rinse out the paint brushes and hide them all under the drop cloth. The kids would never even know I was painting. I was so proud to be outsmarting the toddlers; it was brilliant!! But after only 2 nights of secret painting, the paint cans and paint brushes were discovered by the 2 yo who turned out to be quite brilliant too.

It happened in the raw light of the noonday sun. I had been upstairs folding laundry and humming the whistle while you work tune and feeling pretty proud of myself and of my stealthy painting plan. Heading downstairs to do more laundry, it didn't take me more than 4 steps to figure out my plan had within 5 minutes become a failure. How a child could so silently and quietly paint a hallway floor and wall in those minutes is beyond my comprehension, yet there I was as a witness that it had indeed happened. I can't in all honesty say that I handled the situation with cheerful grace; after all, I had planned on the paint only coming out at night during the hours of midnight and 4:00 am. My eyes seeing wet paint during the light of day just didn't sit well with me at that moment, yet I was too tired to have any energy left over to deal with the toddler after I was done with the paint. This pretty much saved the life of my toddler so I can say that yes God works in mysterious ways!


Undaunted I decided to press on and continue my painting journey and finish the living room. This time I would be more careful and not keep any open paint cans in the house at all. This seemed to be a little more work and somewhat humbling, but it was easier than cleaning paint off the hallway floor. The next day I of course need to buy more paint. I still planned on painting the living room that night, so I put the 3 gallons of unopened freshly custom mixed paint cans on the coffee table. The kids look at them a little quizzickly, but seeing how the cans were unopened and every screwdriver in the house has been lost anyhow, I wasn't much worried about it all. Later I decide that maybe I should get a quick nap in before I need to start on the late shift with the living room wall. It wasn't long before I hear one of the kids calling to get a towel. I didn't want to even think it! But in my groggy haze I stumble downstairs to see a white towel soaking up toasted toffee paint on the living room carpet. Apparently a can of paint somehow became liberated off the coffee table and ended up upside down with a popped off lid. Mysteriously all the kids had run off to the safety of the neighbor's house. Proving once again that God is still in the miracle business.

Grinding the Tranny

We pretty much assumed that life in 10-OC would be at a little slower pace. Time to sit back and watch the grass grow a little. What a welcome respite from the constant on the go caffeine induced driven world of California. We figured it would take a bit of time to acclimate to the new ways of life, but if we were in it with the whole herd there, then it wouldn't be such a stretch to settle into the new routine. Problem is, we are not in Tennessee yet, we are in the fast lane of CA. And trying to have a house built in TN. Our clutch is smoking here.

We received the contract from the builder and real estate agent fairly quickly. We reviewed it, signed it and Fed Ex'd it back faster than I could change a diaper. Then we waited at the window for the Fed Ex truck to return it to us signed by the builder; our approved floor plans in hand, our contract, tract map, CC&R's...the whole thing. And we waited. And we waited some more. Actually we are still waiting. Oh we have gotten word that the terms were great and everyone agreed to them and everything is a go but the contract just hasn't gotten around to being countersigned. What's the rush? Over at the Country Boy we were told a house would be built for us, so let's not sweat the details of actually having a contract. Tennessee is just on a whole other time planet. So the challenge begins for us impatient CA folk wanting to hasten the whole house thing, to the TN folk who want to do it the way it's been done since time began.

Now I have been in similar situations before. I have tried to get 2 year olds to put on their shoes, 3 year olds to sit in a carseat, 8 year olds to do their homework and 12 year olds to get to sleep. I blew a couple of trannies during those times and some gaskets too for that matter. Sometimes one just can't force the issue, especially when the intention is good. Sorta like potty training.

For some reason I have not been blessed so far with a kid who actually cared about using the potty for going potty. They got along with the potty just fine, however. It was great for learning hydrodynamics like if things would sink or float, water suface displacement and the amount of mass needed to hold back 5 gallons of flushing water. But when it came time for thinking outside of the box and actually using the toilet for the intended purpose, well they just couldn't use their imaginations. It was always day after day of my asking, "Would you like a sticker for going potty? Would you rather have chocolate? A new toy? A trip on the space shuttle?" with no result.

So then why would it surpise me when the day came when one would decide on their own to use the potty? Well what I got on one of those delightful days was a 3 year old who just couldn't quite make it in time to "do the doo" in the potty. But not wanting to wake the baby yelling for Mommy for assistance, he instead pulled his half filled pants down to his ankles and hobbled up the carpeted stairs to ask for some help "wiping." What I find down the stairs and hall carpet is a fresh bunny poop and Hershy kisses trail leading to the pot of poop gold, slathered in gooy chocolate brown fingerprints and surrounded by yards of pooped streaked toilet paper which are then knotted up and sealed to the bathroom rug by a runny poop drop stamped in place by the soul of a Blue's Clues shoe. At least the baby was napping.

On 2nd thought, I will wait a little longer for the contracts.

Leaping into Leiper's Fork

And there she is. Lot 22, 7.6 acres of our little leap into Leiper's Fork. Enough timber and weeds to keep us warm for the next 18 years. Even though the formality of the contract was just completed I think the deal had already been sealed with a handshake and a smile while indulging in a meat and 3 lunch at the Country Boy on the day we headed back to CA.

Now Leiper's Fork is a small town, a very small town. The proverbial stone's throw, don't blink town that is too small to have a good side or a bad side. But I imagine the competition between Puckett's and the Country Boy can get mighty heated, and I don't think I would want to be in the middle of all that. We will eat at both places equally as not to show favoritism and to keep the peace in this tranquil community. As much as we hope to just blend in, I have a feeling we will somehow be noticed.

Rick & I met some fantastic people in Leiper's Fork. People who made a difference in their town. People who took pride in what they did and what they did they did well. They seemed to like us well enough and indicated that they would surely welcome us into their well kept world. And I must admit, I was quite proud of our performance. We came off as confident but not pushy, friendly but not phony and with opinions but not opinionated. Yes indeed, we were at our finest. But we were in rare form....we were sans kids. Leiper's Fork will be a whole new place once the "children" arrive.

Now there is nothing too extraordinary about the kids, only that there are 5 of them and 4 are boys with a little baby sister. And after finally having a girl, I can now say for certainty that there is a difference between boys and girls. Boys like to play....A LOT. They like things messy and dirty and preferably broken. If it's broken they can fix it, or turn it into something else, or use the parts to dig in the dirt. They like water and if it is mixed with dirt, that's even better. There's nothing better to them than an old mud hole filled with fresh water streaming from a 120psi garden hose turned up to full tilt recreating the Grand Canyon in their own backyard. All the more fun if the water and mud flows out of the yard causing neighbors downstream to fire up their BMW's to get a status report of the flooding control channel in order to determine how much time they have left before evacuation orders arrive. Only after I receive at least 10 disgruntled looks do I stick my head out the door to yell, "I told you kids to turn that water off!"

Now as fate would have it, we ended up in an upscale neighborhood. We didn't plan it that way, it's just once you have 5 kids, housing choices become limited. We tried to get away from people so we wouldn't have to worry too much about the kids breaking neighboring windows with baseballs and golf balls and footballs. So when we found a place in the aptly named "urban wildlife interface" we jumped at the chance. Problem is eventually newer homes came in. Million dollar homes. The BMW, Benz, Hummer and Escalade crowd came upon us. Now if these people actually stopped at stop signs or put down their cell phone long enough to make eye contact, they may not bother me so much. Maybe after driving by our place, they decide not to make eye contact. It's probably better that way because I probably don't want to know what kind of contact they would really like to make. In return I dutifully don't go to great efforts to keep our exposed backyard "pristine." Oh it's not urban blight, we have a Gardner to come mow what lawn is still left and the grass is mostly nice and green. I just prefer to leave the kindercrap strewn out all over. The ride on toys that have become spider hotels. The remnants of the miniature golf course. The Sponge Bob beach ball smiling from the top of the hedge. The Army guys who are still stuck in the mire of the Grand Canyon. Now that's not to say that we don't care at all what the neighbors think. After all, we did move the trampoline back a little bit after catching the 3 year old jumping naked and waving to the horrified soccer moms driving by who immediately picked up their cell phones to alert their psychiatrists that they needed an appointment ASAP. It's just having the yard a little "rustic" helps make it seem more appropriate when I am outside ringing the triangle "come and get it" bell that can be heard for at least 14 houses in each direction.

I can already imagine the celebration calls being made up and down the street when the For Sale sign goes up in front of our house. "Hot damn! The Bumpus clan is moving out!! They're headed for Tennessee!!" I won't be surprised to hear banjo music wafting on the open breeze played just for us to make our transition that much smoother.

A change in the works!

This southern California girl is heading to Tennessee....The state with the long name only using 4 letters to spell it. Our big uprooting will take place in the summer of 2006, bringing to 10-OC my hubby Rick, 5 kids, 3 mouser cats and our trusty Australian shepherd. This is not a move based on the premise of getting back to the good life, or let's check out this great nation of ours, nope, it's a "if you want to keep your paycheck come work in Tennessee" type of thing. I hope Tennessee knows what it's getting itself into by welcoming us in!

Never being one to fret about the future because of great planning, Rick decided a trip out to 10-OC far before the summer move date was in order. In December we caught the $99 one way non-stop from Ontario to Nashville on Southwest and began our adventure. On our approach to Nashville we could see smoke rising from spot fires. Oh fantastic, we are landing in a firestorm, surely to be fueled by Santa Ana winds then followed by rain and mudslides. But apparently not. People in TN cut down trees and rake leaves and pile up cardboard then set fire to them and walk away. TN is not a smoke-free state.

So after check in at the hotel, Rick & I decide that there was plenty of daylight to see what we could see. Off to explore our new Rocky Top and Dollyworld home. Certain to see more Elvis's than Vegas. Our adventure took us out of Cool Springs and out toward historic Franklin. And historic it is! We come to a Civil War monument. Holy cow, the Civil War was here! We are going to be living in a place with some real history. Not just "used to be part of Mexico" history. We come to a unique intersection and we sit at the red light and count how many streets meet there. There are 5. And a traffic circle! We head out to Leiper's Fork and Puckett's "Grocery". This isn't Albertsons! This is an 1920's version of 7-11, except they aren't open that many hours. We get a few snacks and keep driving and driving. Out passed the houses on wheels with lawn mowers that fertilize as they go. The theme song from Green Acres spins through my head and I get the uncontrollable urge to put on some pearls, dye my hair blonde and start peering up telephone poles looking for somewhere to make a call. We eventually pull off the road, open up our laptop to check where we are. After 10 minutes of making a plan, we saw one pick up truck and one hound dog checking us out and neither looked too neighborly, although the hound dog got close enough to steam up our windows, maybe that's why the guy in the pickup truck didn't stop. We head back to the hotel and am I glad we didn't have time to unpack because I was booking the next flight back to the world I came from.

However, then next few days Rick & I traveled around with a real estate agent that made Franklin seem quaint and friendly. We looked at homes that were so big that they should have come with their own gift shop. We looked in town and out of town. Old homes and new homes. And finally on our last day as the day promised snow, we decided on a parcel of land and a builder to create a place where we can lay claim to and be one with 10-OC and its folk. So this is where the story begins....