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Twisters
Our Monday started out pretty wild with two tornado warnings in the afternoon. We got a rare hailstorm barraging the house with some pretty strong winds, and then all of our phones sounded an alert that a tornado had been spotted in our area. We turned on the news to keep up on it, but it looked like it had just passed our area and was headed northeast. A few minutes after that, we got another alert that another twister had been sighted heading our direction, but we never saw anything aside from some strange cloud movement.
Tuesday was a project day for me. We have two outlets that are ungrounded, and that’s been bothering me since we moved in. So I decided to finally try and trace the problem to see if I could find what was up. I went into the attic where I found a wire that had been cut, so I fed it back down through the wall in the garage and used it to ground one of the outlets, though I had to drill a hole into one of the wall studs to get it through. I patched up the hole the next day, though.
Kira and Hannah went on a branch youth trip to the LDS Temple. Avey opted not to go, as she has been feeling under the weather for several days, mostly with just a cough and fatigue. It’s been going around, as the boys remind us. Poor Merritt has been going to bed much closer to on time these days because of the illness, but he wakes up at least twice most nights, feeling bad and coughing. If the other boys are any indication, this should let up soon.
The kids all had some shots and blood drawn this week so that we could look into allergies and other health checks. Uncharacteristically, Hakan worked himself up something fierce before the shot, so that no matter how it went he was convinced it would be the worst thing in the world. It was no surprise when he passed out on the couch afterward.
He has had a couple of bad days like that this week. Hannah and I took them to the park this week, and just heading to the playground from the parking lot, Hakan tripped and scraped his knee. It was a decent scrape, even bleeding a bit, but he really worked himself up about it again, like his leg was hanging by a thread or something. I got him cleaned and patched up with our first aid kit, but it took him a good 15 minutes to finally calm down enough to enjoy the park.
Later in the week, I took the kids to a summer reading kickoff event at the library. Hakan went over to a door to see if he could see what was going on inside the room, and some people came out. Once the door opened, he slid his finger in the gap. I saw in slow motion what was going to happen, and shouted at him to move his hand, but he never listens to me, so the door shut, pinching his finger in it. I dashed right over so that I could get him out, wishing that I had just dashed over in the first place to prevent it from happening. He had a small scratch, but it was clear the finger was going to bruise and swell. He lost it again, sobbing nonstop and inconsolable so much that he fell asleep on the drive home. He’s feeling just fine now, of course.
Anyway, on Wednesday I tried to tackle the issue of the second outlet that was not grounded. I thought I had narrowed it down to an issue inside a light in our mud room, but I took it apart and everything seemed in order. I tried some more troubleshooting and thought it might be an issue with a different light in a storage closet, but didn’t find any issue there, so I ran out of steam on it and just put everything back together. I’m going to have to think on it some more to find out what the problem is, and tackle it again some other time.
I’ve been meaning to get down into our crawl space again to check out some things, so I did that this week, too. I was impressed that both of the younger boys wanted to join me, so we had a grand adventure down there in the dark, and I answered all of my questions. Now I just need some funds to complete the projects I want to do down there.
Thursday was a big day for Kira’s family when her older sister gave birth to their 8th baby! We’re so excited to hear that everyone is healthy, and Kira is looking forward to meeting her in a few more weeks when she flies down there.
Kira also finalized an arrangement for her to sublease an office here so that she can start taking on Indiana clients. She’s starting to get the word out, so we hope to have some calls soon.
This coming week is going to be full of swimming lessons and more projects. Hakan is thrilled to swim, but Avey just isn’t in the mood for lessons. We’ll see what happens…