Sunday, December 21, 2008

23 weeks today & other Casa Buendia updates

So today I am 23 weeks--one more week & I'll be a whopping 6 months!! Things are going well, I feel pretty good I have to admit. I did not have time at all this week to workout I am sad to say. It was a very busy week & I had appointments & places to be very early every day of the week. I will definitely make an extra effort for next week to be sure to get at least some of my workouts in.

My email that updates me on my weekly progress states that the baby is now 11 inches long. As for formula: I went & checked out the organic formulas in a couple of different grocery stores (mothers kitchen & whole foods) & both stores had the same 3 brands. After looking them over I am almost 100% positive I want to make my own formula. I talked to hubby about it & of course he is supportive of the idea. My biggest issue is how to travel (& just be out & about) with a liquid formula instead of the usual powder variety. Hubby says that Karla & Vincent were both on a liquid formula, they never used the powder kind & they had no problems with that issue. I am still doing lots of research on the topic & learning lots though.

I am also looking into the whole vaccine debate. I really feel I need to educate myself on the subject before I can make a decision. I've never taken sides either way with that topic & now I feel I must. I got a couple of books when I was at mother's kitchen yesterday, I am reading one of them already.

The baby still moves softly, but I definitely feel it more often now. Pretty soon I think I'll be able to let other people feel it.

As for Casa Buendia--the nightmares here still continue. We still haven't gotten very far with our insurance. They say they'll pay for the repair of the water leak, but NOT for the replacement of the carpet, which is ridiculous in our opinion. And now the whole water leak situation appears to have gotten much worse--we have discovered that it ruined our heater & the ducting for the heater/air conditioner as well. So that's gonna be a whole lot more work. As for the smoke damage repairs--we are still stuck with the insurance--our estimate is for $40K & they are willing to pay $13K. We told the guy we hired to come & do the attic so we can have our heater back cuz we are FREEZING!! They came out yesterday morning & took out the insulation (cuz it needs to be replaced after the smoke--almost all the houses in the area are doing this) & then they went to clean our ducts & found water in them (also yesterday morning we found we had water dripping out of the vent into the guest bathroom floor so we had asked for a roof inspection--that guy will be here Monday morning, but now it looks like it was just coming from the duct probably). So they inspected the heater & it is full of rust now from the water leak. They said they can't put new insulation in until they put the new ducting in--so now we are REALLY FREEZING--we have no heater AND no insulation!!!! (for those reading this who are out of state, we are having a record breaking cold winter here this year to top it off) Life is grand, aint it??? So our guy we hired put in an emergency call to our insurance to get things moving quickly & he says we should have a new heater & ducting by Tuesday. I am not holding my breath for that to happen though based on everything else.

My neighbor on the other side (up Alder Creek) came over Saturday & asked if I was aware that I've had water pouring out from under my garage door for several days now. I laughed & filled him in on the whole story. He was shocked, but said he kept seeing the water coming out & he said he tried to get into our garage a few times to turn off whatever was leaking, but our garage is always locked. He said he figured we must be aware, but he just wanted to make sure. Thank God there's no one patrolling water here because of droughts, we'd be getting fined pretty big me thinks, LOL!!

Karla & Kahlil came home Friday from Puerto Rico. We picked them up at the airport & went out to dinner & brought them home. I had bought an electric heater for Karla last week, but then started using it (quality control, you know??). So after the whole insulation/heating issue yesterday I went back out & bought two more heaters so we could each have one in our rooms while we sleep. We have never had electrical issues at our house, we rarely trip a breaker, but for some reason we were instantly blowing fuses with these three heaters. So we had to pull out extension cords & get each of them on a separate breaker. It took a little trial & error to find out which outlets went to which breakers, but we did eventually figure it out & we all at least had those heaters going last night, but it's still at a maximum of 60 in here even with these heaters going (& that's the daytime max, I didn't even look at how cold it was during the night!).

So last night at 1:30 am we were awakened to the lovely sound of the smoke detector. We have a total of 3 of them I think--one in the master bedroom, one in the hallway, & one in our entrance. The ones in our bedroom & hallway are the standard type that run on batteries. The one at the entrance is wired into the electricity of the house--& it's SUPER loud & SUPER scary sounding. It was, of course, the one wired into the electrical that went off. Hubby & I both flew out of the bed faster than we ever have I think. We ran to check on the kids & they were fine. There was no smoke or anything. I have set off that fire alarm in the past & normally the air has to be thick before it will go off. We have no idea why it went off. It either has to have something to do with the insulation above it being gone or else we are now having some sort of electrical issues (I'm wondering after setting off the breakers with the heaters, which isn't usual for our house). Hubby somehow managed to disconnect it & we went back to bed.

I guess that's all the updates I have for now......they are still working away at Victor's house & the Hicks house is still just sitting, waiting to be bull-dozed. I see workers at my cuz's house off & on, but I have no idea what the status is there or what they're doing or what's going on. We are dreading the water bill (because of the leak), the gas bill (because it's a hot water leak) & the electric bill (because of the electric heaters) this month!!

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