Garbage Insanity!

When we moved away from Colorado, I called Waste Management, our then-current garbage company and let them know I needed to stop our service starting Wednesday, May 1st. It was perfect because it was the end of the quarter, the kind lady on the phone told me that we wouldn't owe anything else, and wouldn't get any more bills in the future. Great! We moved to North Carolina. I got an invoice in my email saying I owed $92.12, so I called them just to make sure - they said "Oh, no, you don't owe us anything! Disregard the bill. For some reason it didn't clear out your account, so I'll do that now. Have a great day!" Okay, great. I got the paper bill in the mail and ignored it.

We bought our new house! Time to find garbage service. I called Waste Industries, the company that all of our neighbors had, and our house's previous owners had. We still had the trash cans, so I asked if we could just continue the same service with the same cans and change to our name. They said "No, sorry. We don't service new customers in your area anymore - we're stopping service to your area the end of July. We'll pick up the old cans though."

*Sigh* Bummer. Oh well, I tried Republic, the other company that some of our neighbors had. They said exactly the same thing! No new customers, and we're not going to service your area anymore. Weird. So I asked, okay, I don't know any other garbage companies around here, do you have a recommendation? She said that the ONLY place that services our area is a little company called Rural Garbage Service. I called them, and they said "We'd love to get you started - but you have to come into the office, we don't do payments or new customers over the phone. What??? What is this, the 90's? Okay, so I dragged my VERY (39 weeks) pregnant self to the office along with all 3 kids. 

The office was tiny, busy, and rather ghetto, but whatever - it was a garbage company, after all. We signed up for trash and recycling. The next day was the day before trash pickup, so Will put the can out. And then we had a baby that night! What with the craziness of having a baby, we didn't realize or care right away that they never picked up the trash. I tried to call the next week about it, but I just got voicemail and couldn't talk to anyone. I waited until the day after the NEXT trash pickup, when it didn't get picked up again, and I brought my brand new baby and 3 big kids back to the office. I let them know what happened, and the lady was SO nice. She was extremely apologetic, and told me that our service never actually got into the system for some reason. They would be out to collect the trash within 24 hours. Okay, annoying, but no biggie. Trash got picked up and we went on with our lives.

Until...the next week, it didn't get picked up again. And this was the 3rd week, and our recycling hadn't been picked up once yet. I called again. Ohhh, it was a new driver that day, so they missed us somehow. They came and got it later that day, so all was well, I supposed.

Until it wasn't. Recycling was FOR SURE supposed to be picked up the 24th and it definitely was not. I called, and they're like "Oh, sorry! We'll come get it right away." They did, and they picked up our trash as scheduled the next day. From then on, they picked up our recycling as scheduled ONCE. ONE TIME. The rest of the time I had to call and ask them to pick it up. 

Sometime around the end of June I got a bill for $15. No clue what it was for. I called. They didn't answer, I left a message. They never called me. I called again, they picked up! They had no clue what the bill was for. They said they would find out and call me back (yeah right). They didn't. I called a couple of days later, they said the same exact thing. They DID call me back that time. The guy said "It's because you have 96 gallon cans, and you only paid for 64 gallon cans."

Except we only had 64 gallon cans. *sigh* They put the money on my account for the next quarter.

July 22nd I called and let them know we needed the recycling picked up. The lady on the phone said

"Oh, well, recycling is only every other week." 

"Umm, yeah, I know. It was supposed to picked up yesterday."

"Let me check...It's supposed to be picked up on August 5th." 

"...Yes. That's two weeks from yesterday. I needed it picked up yesterday."

"It says here that they DID pick it up yesterday."

"Well...my can is full still."

"Is it out on the curb?"

"Yes..."

"Did you put it out in time?"

"Yes...it's been out since Sunday night."

(I can tell at this point she's getting frustrated with me. But seriously, I've been putting trash out for the last 10 years. I know how it works.)

"Well, put the extra in a box and I'll make a note that they need to pick it all up on August 5th."

In the meantime, I got a bill from Waste Management in Colorado. Basically saying hey, you owe us $92.12. If you don't pay this bill immediately, we're sending it to collections! I called WM and explained the situation. They apologized profusely and spent a good 5 minutes working on it, because for some reason it didn't clear out like it was supposed to the first time. Finally that got cleared up and I haven't heard from them since, thank goodness.

I called a couple more times to get the recycling picked up over the next few weeks. I had a quick chat with a neighbor, because now it was September and everyone still had Waste Industries, that had told me they were stopping service in our area. Neighbor knew nothing about that, and as far as she knew they were current and active in our neighborhood.

September 5th it came to a head when they, yet again, did not pick up the recycling. I gave them a couple of extra days to account for labor day (according to the website it should have been picked up Tuesday). I called Waste Industries again, planning on telling them that all of our neighbors still have their service, so what's the deal?? They told me "Oh sure, we'll set up service for you right away!" WHAT????

I called Rural Trash Company and got no answer, as usual. I went to the office and told them I wanted to cancel our service and get a refund for all of our recycling. She was extremely sweet and kind and promised that we would get our money back, and she felt SO bad that we had such a bad experience. Good riddance to them! I just really hope this new company is much, much better.

Danielle's birth story

Danielle's due date was June 10th. We were really hoping she would hold out till June and not come super early, partly because we already have a May birthday, but also because we were set to close on our new house on the 31st of May.

Tuesday the 4th, I was awakened at 1:30am with some pretty strong and consistant contractions, 10 minutes apart. They were pretty painful so I was quite certain labor was starting. I tried my best to sleep, but wasn't able to, until they ended up all but stopping at 5am. I had a few contractions throughout the day, and while they were very sporadic and far apart, they really hurt! I wasn't able to walk or talk through them for the most part. Of course I still had lots to do that day, including closing out the apartment lease, getting the kids to school, etc.

I met Will for lunch and he decided to go home the rest of the day with how I was acting. I wasn't feeling quite right all day, I didn't feel like I was "in labor" but I felt slightly shaky and queasy, and very achy all over. When we got home from lunch I decided to take a nap, and Will came to wake me up at 3:20 for us to pick up the kids from school. I had another really strong contraction and had to stop and breathe through it. At that point I decided I better call my doctor to get a quick check, and see if anything was actually happening or if it was just false labor.

We went in and I was dilated to a 5 but still not feeling many contractions. They did an NST and said "Umm, you need to go to the hospital NOW. Baby looks great, but she's going to be here soon."

Oookay. Well. I wasn't really concerned, I tend to have gentle labors that aren't super fast, so I figured I had a few hours to go. We went home, got our bags and things and found someone to watch the kids till Jon and Melissa could come up from Charlotte to get them. By then I was starting to feel regular contractions every few minutes.

Just as we were leaving, a furniture delivery truck pulled up. It was our new couch and chairs for our living room. We really didn't want to miss it, so we decided to stay. We told them our situation and asked them to just really quickly drop it off and go, not set it up. They set it up. 😑 It took forever. I was outside leaning against the car at that point breathing through the contractions which were starting to pick up.

Then an ADT salesman walked up to me. I wasn't very capable of holding a conversation and told him we were about to go to the hospital to have a baby. He was like "Ohh, like, your water broke??" I said no, but I'm in labor and we need to go. He said he wouldn't take up our time then. And went and found Will, and asked if he wanted to sign up for security service. Will said no, not interested, and we're going to the hospital in a minute here. ADT guy kept at it! "Well you can just sign up for 30 days free and see what you think, blah blah blah." He finally left and the furniture people were wrapping it up. As we're getting into the car, one of them started in with "I see you have a moving pod here, did you like it? How much was it?" Will and I were both kind of like, ummm, can people not take a hint here??

Finally everyone left and we were free to leave for the hospital at about 6:45. All the way to the hospital I started shaking terribly, going through transition. I was handling the contractions okay but had the familiar feeling of "I really don't want to do this. Why am I doing this again??" Pulled into the parking garage at 7:05, and had to stop a few times on the way to the maternity area to get through the contractions. They were very intense now.

Got up to the maternity area and they were supposed to have a room ready to go for us - they didn't. They put us in the waiting room there. There was one other couple waiting, presumably she was also in labor. She was quietly watching TV. At that point I was really uncomfortable and feeling the urge to push. It was pretty awkward trying to hold back in the waiting room there. Apparently the husband of the other couple was looking pretty freaked out by it. 😂 I was nearly past the point of caring but still felt embarrassed to be in that state in front of random strangers in a waiting room.

I was quite literally crying to Will that if they didn't get me a room right away, the baby would be born in the waiting room. The nurse shows up and says....we don't have a room yet, hold on. You would think she would see the state I was in and be more concerned, but she was completely indifferent. The other lady in the waiting room asked in what seemed to me, to be a very whiny tone of voice "What about meeeee??" I was kind of floored by that. 😲 It was like she hadn't heard a thing the entire time. The nurse said in a slightly annoyed tone "We'll get to you." She FINALLY brought me to the delivery room around 7:45.

I was slightly disoriented now from being stressed out and trying so hard to NOT have a baby yet. I changed into my hospital gown. They asked if I needed to use the bathroom and I said yes - at which point they handed me a tiny cup. I kind of cried/laughed and said forget it. I can barely stand up and the contractions are directly on top of each other.

Got on the bed, the nurse checked me, said I was complete (not surprising, as the baby was crowning already...). It went from 1 nurse in the room with us to suddenly 10 people, everyone was in a huge flurry to get ready. The doctor ran into the room, just barely had time to put on gloves, and caught the baby at 7:59pm.

Funny note, they put me down as a patient at another facility, so it was a totally random doctor that came and caught the baby rather than mine. I really didn't care at all at that point of course, it was just, someone please catch the baby!

Interestingly my water didn't break until the baby was already halfway out, so that was kind of cool. I have never had the midwives or doctors NOT break my water so I always wondered what might happen if they didn't.

It was overall a very easy labor and delivery, despite being stressful at the end! Thank goodness Will was there to keep me grounded and not panic. (And be able to hide his own panic, haha.) We are settling in at home now and getting lots of sweet baby snuggles!

Drumroll Please...

Yes, it has been a year and three months since I last posted. Yikes! Here's what I was hung up on. I wanted to post a before and after picture of our family room. I got it 95% done, and then I got stuck because I wanted a really big picture on the wall behind the couch, but it took me a year to 1. Figure out what I wanted, and 2. Actually find it or make it. Here we go! This room was so, so very dark. As you can see...

Believe it or not, this was one of my favorite rooms in the house when we bought it. Not because I liked how it looked, but I was very excited about the brick fireplace! I've always wanted to try whitewashing. Not to mention, I LOVE dramatic before/after projects, and if this one isn't that, I don't know what is!

I thought this would be a pretty simple remodel. Pull down the paneling and the ceiling beams, lots of paint, some decorations. No big deal, right? Turns out there was some water damage in the drywall around this room because the balcony attached to our room, which is right above, leaked at some point. They fixed the leak, but not the damage! So we ended up basically gutting this entire room, drywall and all, down to the studs and starting over. While it was a much bigger project than anticipated, it was SO worth it! And the hard part of the drywall, replacing the window, and installing new lights only took a couple of weeks. We're a pretty good team. :)

And here is the after!

Here's the painting that took me so long to figure out. I am happy with how it turned out! It has a few quirks that I don't love, but that's the beauty of it, right??

House update

Well, we've been in our house for two months now. We love it! It's so nice having more space for the kids to run around and to have people over.

One of the first things we did after we bought the house was take those trees out. I was sad to see them go because they were such big, pretty trees, but honestly they were just too big for in front of the house. They needed to go. You can actually see the house now! I'm not sure if that's good or bad because it needs quite a bit of work, hahaha! But it does brighten up the inside of the house a lot. We also got the front doors replaced right away, the new ones are the picture. That makes a big difference in the entryway, it was just SO dark before. Now we just have to update the rest of the house so the doors don't look out of place!

My first decorating project was the kids' rooms. I painted all of the dark trim white, and I added trim to the doors and painted them dark gray (you actually can't see that in any of the pictures, sorry!). Poor Ben has been in a pink room for the last couple of years so I decided to work on his first! He wanted a Shark/Ocean room. I think it turned out really cute!

Elizabeth's room was next, because all I had to do for hers was paint and then put up her old decorations from the last house. Well, I had to make curtains too, but that wasn't a big deal.

Kaylee, of course, was bugging me by this time to do hers too. I wasn't planning on doing them so quickly but I figured, why not? My amazing sister Mary helped me out when she came to visit a few weeks ago! We got everything ready - the decorations, curtains, etc. - on Wednesday and Thursday, and then on Friday when Kaylee went to school we painted and hung everything up, so it was all done when she got home. She was very surprised and excited. The funny thing is both the girls' rooms ended up being butterflies. That was what I chose for Elizabeth's originally, and then Kaylee fell in love with a butterfly comforter, so that is her theme too.

Somewhere between all of that, we bought a play set at Costco and put it up. It took FOREVER to build that thing. At least, it felt like it. But the kids love it so it was definitely worth it.

After all of the kids' rooms were done, I decided to work on the dining room. I was going to do the master bedroom next, but the dining room was driving us crazy because I took down the curtains and the afternoon sun shines in there extremely bright. Not great for eating dinner. I wanted board and batten, so a couple of Saturdays ago Will and I put it up, and also put casing around the doorways to bring it all together. It was pretty easy and went together very quickly. Then I spent all week priming, caulking, and painting - that was the hard part! We bought a new table and chairs, and a chandelier (better than the old green crystal chandelier that was in there before!) and had it ready for our big dinner on Easter Sunday. There are still some things that I need to do - we need some more furniture (hopefully I'll find a china hutch somewhere that I like) and I need to hang things on the walls, but I love how it looks already.

I started my herb garden in the kitchen window. I usually don't have a lot of luck starting seeds, but they did awesome in this window. They didn't need a grow light or anything special, they get so much sun here. The plants are still pretty small of course but they are growing fast. I'm excited to cook with them. Yes, there are two basil pots, no, that's not a mistake. We just really love fresh basil. :)

That is all for now! We're probably going to take a little break before starting another project around here. We need some energy and money recovery time. ;)

New House Tour!!

Here are some pictures of our new house. We have been here a week already! I'm awesome and forgot to take a picture of the front. Oops! It's really hard to see because it's all trees but I'll try to get one tomorrow and add it. I was mainly concerned about getting some pictures before we moved all our stuff in and it got too chaotic. :) Which it definitely is now. I wish I'd been able to get more done and unpacked this last week, but it's been a really rough week with Elizabeth. She caught a nasty cold right after we moved in so she's been extremely clingy and crabby, and not sleeping well. Hopefully we're nearing the end of that. Poor girl has been miserable! And Mommy a little useless with house things, haha. Lots of toddler snuggles happening here.

Anyway, here we go!

Update: here is the front of the house! As you can see...you can't really see. Lol!

This is the hallway you see when walking straight into the house - stairs on the right, the living room is on the left of this. There is a wall on the left before the living room, I didn't get a good angle here. I'll have to get a better one.
                                                           

Entryway looking from the living room. We already changed that light fixture. It hung down WAY too low.

                                                                    Living room

                                   Other direction in the living room, looking into the dining room

                                    Dining room. I love this huge window facing the backyard.

The kitchen. We have a Wolf oven, a Sub Zero fridge, and some sort of fancy dishwasher. Fisher and Paykel or something like that, I can't remember. We're getting rid of all of it but the oven! The fridge makes weird noises a lot and is very small (it's only about 18 cubic feet), and the dishwasher is broken.

Loving this beautiful kitchen window! I hope to put an herb garden there. We'll see if I can keep anything alive in there. ;)

      Just another angle, you can see the breakfast nook on the right and the two pantries on the left.

And turn around. There's the very dark family room! I can't wait to get in here and paint.

 

If you go down the hall when you first walk in this bathroom is on the left. It doesn't look like it from the picture but it actually has a really nice shower in it, that apparently used to be a coat closet. I'd rather the coat closet, but...it's a really nice shower. So I think we'll keep it. Our coats can live somewhere else.

                        To the right, is the office. Will is really excited to have an actual office!

                                                                          Up the stairs!

Master bedroom. It has this cute little balcony area up on the roof that overlooks the backyard. I'm kind of in love with it.

Master bath. We're hoping that we can find enough room in here to make a 5-piece bath, but we'll see. It's still an upgrade from our last one. :)

                                                                     Kaylee's room

                                                                    Elizabeth's room

                                                                        Ben's room
I probably didn't need to post all three of those pictures because they look basically the same. They won't soon!

     Kids' bathroom

                                      
These are of the main room in the basement. Lots of wood to take out! It's going to be the playroom, soon hopefully...

                                                         Spare room in the basement.

3/4 bath in the basement. It's HUGE. The open door leads to the furnace/laundry/storage room. I didn't get a picture of it either, I realize. It's not too exciting, you're not missing much.

Here is a picture of our back yard. It probably looks cooler in this picture than it really is, I just happened to get it at a good time. But it really is a great yard! We have a third of an acre and the kids especially love it so far.


Well, there ya go! It's not awful but it definitely needs a little love. We're very excited to get going!

Before and Afters

This last month has been a total whirlwind for us! The last few months Will and I have discussed the idea of getting a bigger house, but the conversation never went anywhere because the housing market here has gone completely nuts the last couple of years. While that meant of course, the houses we were looking at were very expensive, it also meant the amount we could get for our current house was quite a bit, so it was doable.

Long story short, we found a house we loved, and we're moving on Valentine's Day! I wanted to share some before and after pictures of our current house. They leave a little bit to be desired because the day that I took most of these pictures, it was a blizzard and SUPER dark outside (I got the outdoor pictures when it had just started snowing). After our house was on the market for only 3 days, we started packing up, so you don't get the full effect. But here's what I have if you want to see! :)






I got those mums for $1 each at Lowes. They were itty-bitty little plants and I wasn't sure what would come of them. Seems like they did okay!


  
This room was difficult for me because of how small it is. It took me a very long time to figure out how I liked the furniture arranged. I like how it ended up, but it always felt a little squished to me. I did get lots of compliments on it from showings, though!


  
Please take note of all the lack of popcorn ceilings in the after pictures. ;)


  
This wall had our crocheted "Castrey" picture on it, but unfortunately I packed it away before taking this picture. The problems with taking after pictures while moving...


    

  

  
I have to say that the fireplace was possibly my favorite project in this whole house. It was pretty easy and made SUCH a big difference.


  

  

  

  
Notice the hideous fluorescent light above the vanity. That was a last-minute project we did and it was SO worth it!


  
I had dreams of making this room a super cute girls room for Kaylee and Elizabeth, but Elizabeth hasn't been the best sleeper so I had to keep them separate, and never got to it. Poor Ben had to have a pink room for a long time.

   


  

  

  


As you can see, this house was more paint and decorating than anything else (other than of course, the popcorn ceilings and the deck - those were a lot more work). It's been fun!

We have absolutely loved living here. It has really been home to us. Here's to hoping that our new house feels as much like home as this one did!