Lead

Nearly a year ago, at Miles 9 month checkup. I had the doctor check Miles' blood for lead. We live in an old house that has been in the middle of a remodel for his whole life. The results came back very quickly that his lead levels were fine and there was nothing to be concerned about.

I was completely confused when a couple weeks later the county called saying that Miles had lead in his system and they have some free procedure available to check our house for lead. I told him that Miles was fine and it was confirmed by the doctor. I was pretty confused on why the county had his health record and lead results but I followed along. They said that Miles' lead level was at 4.8 (whatever units they measure that in) and they get concerned when the level is 5 or greater. They recommended I go have him checked again by the doctor. When I was at the doctor, we weren't able to see his normal pediatrician and the pediatrician that we did see seemed completely confused by the phone call we received. I started to think it was some sort of scam to get me out of my house at a certain time. (I had to report back to the county that Miles had a follow up appointment with the pediatrician so they knew when I would be gone) At this doctor visit, the doctor called the same number and got an answering machine. She pulled up Miles lead count numbers and saw that it was in the healthy range and basically kindly sent us away with no test. Since I was so confused by the county calling, I went along with this. After Max, the pediatrician and I had spoken with the county a couple times we realized it was a legit concern.

The county said they could come out to our house and do a free test to find the sources of lead in our house. Once I knew it was legitimate I was happy to have them over to get to the bottom of it.

It took awhile to get the results back but it turned out that some of our exterior paint had lead in it (and it was chipping) also our kitchen cupboards had a amount, as well as our upstairs bathtub (which we haven't used since) When he was here doing the inspection he told me of a program from the Portland Housing Bureau that provides a grant for your home if you have young children exposed to lead.

We decided to apply for the grant. We got accepted but the process took forever. So, to make a long story a little shorter, we ended up receiving a grant for our whole house exterior to be repainted, receive 5 new windows, have our kitchen cabinets be reworked and painted (and now we have cabinet doors!!!), and they gave us money to stay in a hotel for 5 nights while they did our windows and cabinets! What an amazing blessing. And the contractors were all lead certified so it gives us the peace of mind that our house is so much safer for the kids. The grant didn't cover our bathtub repair but they are just starting a new program that may cover it so they are sending us info on that, if it isn't covered, we will be resurfacing it soon, And luckily Miles is completely fine. His lead levels were still below the minimum for worry and I have continued to have them checked at each of his appointments and the levels have gone down. We just feel so blessed that our kitchen is actually done now after living here for 3 years and that it is a much safer place for our family.

They cleaned up thoroughly after each day they worked on the exterior so we were still able to go outside.

We have cabinets now, They put the old knobs back on and we have since changed them but we haven't taken a picture yet because our kitchen has yet to be this clean again.

Also, our drawers and cupboards to actually shut all the way, I was just taking a quick progress pic before we moved back into our house.  

I

California

So Max and I went to California for 5 days and the kids went to Grandma's house.

Max has been wanting to get more information and training in real estate investing and we eventually found a good honest program to do that. I wasn't planning on going with him but thanks to Grandma and her willingness to take on the boys, we set off for a little vacation/business trip together. 

We took lots of random photos that we could text to the boys, but I never actually took out my good camera, until the flight home, so they are all phone photos. 

Getting to the airport was a frantic sprint. Well, let me backup, about a day before our trip we found out that our kitchen cabinets were going to be refinished while we were gone (there will be more details on this event in a future post) So, on top of packing my boys for grandma's house and Max and myself for our trip, I then had to pack up our kitchen, completely. Everything! It got a little crazy, and then on our way to the airport there was insane traffic that left us with 30 minutes to check our bag and run to our gate. Just before getting to the terminal, Max realized he had totally forgotten his wallet and ALL ID! So, we missed our flight. Max had to go through extra security, and for some odd reason, I had his hunting license in my purse so that helped but he still had to go through extra security measures. Luckily there was a flight a half hour later than ours and we still almost missed that one. 

We landed at John Wayne airport later than expected but we were happy to be in a warmer climate. 

Our first selfie we sent to our boys, my mom told us that Miles would play peek a boo with our picture on her phone. 

Anyway, we received 4 days of very thorough training on making wise investments with real estate. We also got to go on a bus tour to check out some properties. So we took a bus selfie!

We loved being back in California. It is where we spent our first couple summers of our marriage. Max has always pointed out these birds of paradise flowers. He loves them!

And I didn't take many photos at all. We were busy learning,

On the last day we had a little extra time in the evening and Max and I were able to go to the pool and hot tub. We were laughing so hard at this sign! It was reassuring to know that the pool was clean.

Palm Trees!

Anyway it was fun to stay in a nice hotel with Max and act like adults who throw around words like business trip and investor.

Oh yeah, and did I mention that once we got to the hotel they asked for my ID and I realized that my license was gone. After going through all my luggage I realized it really was gone and it had been lost in our crazy sprint to our gate. So there we were, two travelers without ID. Whatever, we made it back. And we enjoyed this flight over the ocean.

My mom was able to come pick us up at the airport with the boys. We were so happy to see them. We brought them Pez as a souvenir.

And when we got home, we weren't actually able to go home since the lead was being removed from our cabinets so we made our way to the condo we were staying and continued our vacationing.

T party with Teddy Bears!

A couple weeks ago we did the Letter T for preschool. I was debating if I should put this on our blog now or save it for a recap post when I share what we did for the second half of the alphabet.  You can see letters A-L here. The T party was just so fun and I took a ton of photos so it gets it's own blog post. 

Marissa hosted this week and she had it packed full of super fun activities. 

First we taped Ts. I was super impressed with how well the kids did. 

Charlie turned out to be quite the perfectionist on this activity and would not move to the next activity until every little bit of T was covered.

Then everyone had their own Teddy Bear and the kids did the teddy bear song which goes like this:

Teddy Bear Teddy Bear turn around,
Teddy Bear Teddy Bear touch the ground
Teddy Bear Teddy Bear tie your shoe
Teddy Bear Teddy Bear that will do

Teddy Bear Teddy Bear go upstairs
Teddy Bear Teddy Bear say your prayers
Teddy Bear Teddy Bear turn out the light
Teddy Bear Teddy Bear say goodnight!

We sang the song as the kids led their bear on the path to do all the things in the song.

And then they made teddy bear bread! Charlie has been asking to make bread for awhile and we haven't because I have not been baking much these days while trying to be healthier :) He was so happy! And now we will probably be making more bread soon.

Both Marissa and Lindsay are so awesome at involving Miles. He has been loving preschool as well.

Charlie made a teddy bear and a turtle. Miles bear is on the top right. We kept trying to add chocolate chips then Miles would immediately snatch them.

And then, while the bread was baking, we had a T party! We have been having lunch at preschool for awhile now so it was so fun to set up a fancy tea party with lunch to share with the Teddy bears. The kids loved it.

They ate hot cocoa "tea" and apples, mandarin oranges, muffins, and flower sandwiches. 

Then their teddy bear bread was done.

And that was our Teddy Bear T party! We seriously love preschool!

Halloween

So between life being crazy and my boys already owning costumes that they wanted. Halloween was not super monumental. My sister in law had given Miles a scarecrow costume so we were planning on doing The Wizard of Oz theme. I've always wanted to be Dorothy. We started introducing the kids to The Wizard of Oz. ( I don't know why I hadn't done this sooner.) But as Halloween got closer, I wasn't sure how I would go about this without spending a fortune. Charlie didn't seem to care much about this idea and would tell everyone that we was going to be a dinosaur for Halloween. Miles also had a Monkey costume that he thought was the wonderful, so once again, we lamed-out on Halloween. I just really have a hard time spending any money on costumes and I'm not crafty...maybe someday.  So this is how our Halloween went.

Like most Saturdays, Max was running around between properties doing projects. We have two vacancies, one is in the tail end of a remodel and the other is switching tenants and needed some work before that happens. The boys aren't always that helpful with these projects so we went out to play in the drizzling rain.

No this is not Miles' costume...it is just what he was wearing :)

 But Charlie wanted to put on his dinosaur costume early. (yes, it was filthy by evening-time).

The day was crazy trying to work on projects, Max and I tried to take some business-like photos, it took us a long time to actually go take them so it was pouring rain and our (my) hair was super frizzy. Haha, luckily we went to one of the vacant houses which has a whole room of windows and tried to take photos there.  

And since this I've chopped off a bunch of my hair. 

Then it was time to load up in the car and start some Halloween celebrations.

 It has been our tradition to go visit all the grandparents and great grandparents on Halloween. Since last year, both Max's parents and my mom have moved away. We made our way to Green and Red grandmas' house. We enjoyed sitting by the fire and a nice visit at Green grandma's house. My Red grandma wasn't home but my brothers and Dad (another grandparent) were holding down the house. We enjoyed some chocolate chip cookies there which are 500 million times better than Halloween candy! Then we made our way to our church for our ward Halloween party. We enjoyed some chili and indoor trick or treating. The rain really was crazy! After the party we called it a night and got our sugar filled children in bed. 

Also, these are some other random photos that I feel I should add here. Our Halloween decorations.

Max's pumpkin

 Charlie and Miles' pumpkin

My pumpkin

And our last decoration...haha. Our house was being fixed and sealed off so we are safe from lead paint. There will be more on that later...