Hello Friends! It’s been a while since I’ve posted. The Marriage Monday posts have been missing for two Mondays now and the Blooming Blogger post wasn’t posted either. So what gives? This is a long post, I”m warning you now, feel free to take a nap about halfway through.
Well first off, I have been digging out from under this pile of laundry. Just imagine more on top of that not including my couch and chair slip covers. This is my life because my children had head lice.
I was so grossed out on Thursday night when I discovered it while washing little children’s hair, one child was so grossed out herself that she was dry heaving in the toilet. Head lice makes me feel very unclean and dirty even though I know it’s not true. I have vacuumed and washed everything I can….I am surprised my washer and dryer are still working at this point. The sanitize cycle takes almost 2 hours so you can imagine how slow going this has been. Then add in our regular weekly laundry of clothes and I’m afraid I’ll never ever be done. We all have new pillows, new hair brushes, new hair accessories and if this comes back I may just shave our heads and burn the house to the ground. I’ve heard that mayo and olive oil work well so if the NIX doesn’t work, that is my next option.
Add four parts head lice to two parts of a cabinet painting fiasco last week and you have one crazy lady. I thought I had a solution when I painted over the bond coat from the Rustoleum Cabinet Transformations kit with my Ace Cabinet, Door & Trim paint. I let the cabinet sit for a few days and then tested it out to make sure it was sticking and not easily peeling off like last week. It was great, it looked beautiful, passed the scratch and peel test, we are all systems go! I set to work on Saturday morning painting all my cabinet doors and frames, so excited at how lovely they were looking. It was magical. (If you aren’t you really need to, that is where I post all the fun stuff, like pictures of my cabinets, talks about how we have head lice and other fun stuff.)
On Monday I went to hang the cabinets and encountered this problem when I scratched a cabinet door:
So I didn’t throw my cabinet doors out in the road and run them over (sorry to disappoint you Rebecca) even though I really wanted to. For now we have hung the cabinet doors back up sans hardware because I will need to sand them down and repaint them.
I get this handsome guy to make me coffee in the morning, am I lucky or what? Love that he makes me coffee!
Just in case you thought might kitchen was really clean, here’s the truth. This is what it looks like today. Stuff on the countertops drives me crazy so I’ll be cleaning those off in a little while. I also think I’ll deal with repainting the cabinets in a little while, like another month or four. Like maybe September? When the kids are back in school and I can still sand these down to nothing and paint because it’s warm out but it won’t suck up my summer and time away from my family. (Although maybe after a few weeks home with all 4 kids I will want an excuse to get away for a bit. ) Does anyone else ever feel that way? You look forward to summer and have all these fluffy beautiful dreams of family togetherness and children playing happily but in reality those first few weeks are an adjustment of everyone learning to get along together again. There is usually a happy few days then the bickering and fighting set in, soon followed by a peace treaty of sorts.
Hopefully this will help stop the fighting and also the “I’m bored” whine of the summer. Hubby accomplished setting up the pool this weekend! We were still filling it up when I snapped a quick photo, as you can see the kids were already in testing it out.
The playset is complete and the kids have been enjoying it! Which is good. They have even had some clubs forming up in the top part, we found a notebook with voting for President, Secretary and Vice President. Pretty cute stuff, love that my kids like to play together!
The school year is winding down but the calendar is getting full. Last Thursday our oldest daughter who is finishing up 5th grade, planned a surprise retirement party for her teacher with three of her friends. They did an amazing job organizing this thing, all I had to do was show up to supervise the decorating in the morning and bring the pizzas for lunch. Their teacher was so surprised she really had no idea! It was really wonderful to see how much love she has for her students and how much they love her!
So if you don’t see me around these parts for a bit, I”m getting packed for our family vacation and my Haven blog conference! I’m off enjoying time with my family in our backyard. My goal this summer is to enjoy it for all its worth which means less time blogging, painting, editing photos, being on the computer and more time loving, laughing, having fun, eating ice cream, swimming, riding bikes and all the other stuff we are going to cram into this summer!
If you want to keep up with all the fun, you can follow me on instagram, just search for bloomingange and I’d love to follow you back! You can also follow me on fb for now, although the pay to promote your posts isn’t going over very well with me right now. I hope you are all gearing up for a great summer as well and we are going to be back with Marriage Mondays starting next week! Thanks for reading and I hope you’ll come back!
I know all too well that ‘peeling paint’ feeling…misery loves company! Knock on wood, never had to deal with head lice, but looks like EVERYTHING is cleaner than clean…the bonus?
Good idea on holding off on the cabinets until fall! We’re on summer vacay as of last week and we’re definitely in the “adjustment” phase. All the girls want to do is watch TV and fight…not quite the version of family togetherness I was hoping for. I’m so sorry to hear about the lice. That’s one of my biggest fears! Good job taking care of everything Ange. Now, go relax by that fun pool!
Good for you!
oh girl my laundry looks like that and we don’t have head lice! What a bummer on the paint job – painting cabinets is such a pain! Looking forward to meeting you in a few weeks!
Oh, my word! Lice is the WORST! I feel your pain!!!! Get through the lice mess, and you’ll probably feel better about tackling the cabs! Hang in there!!!
This may be a long shot, but what about a coat of poly? It stopped my chairs from peeling. I just repainted them in those spots and then sprayed them with poly. I dunno if it’d work for you, though, but maybe you could save some of them. Love the keeping it real shot!!! What a week.
ugh
our friends’ girls
had head lice a few weeks ago
and i was nervously checking our kids’ heads
every day to see if they had gotten them
we were lucky
but i’m told
most kids get them at least once
the cabinets on top
certainly look great
and i hope you can find a way
to make that paint stick!
can’t wait to see it
all finished!
alison
Bless your heart! I totally have had kids with lice and it is such a chore to get rid of. I will tell you the only thing that worked for us was making sure after we washed everything I had to comb my girls hair with the “comb” every day for 2 weeks. I would dip it in alcohol every so often to rinse it. It worked. Now my girls had very long super thick hair so we did get some cute bobs to make it easier to comb through! Good luck and the cabinets are coming along nicely!
Head lice + Peeling Cabinets = YUCK
I’m so sorry that this has gone so poorly for you! Make sure you get your money back from Rustoleum! That is absolutely crazy. I completely agree that you should take a nice long break from them. I actually think I probably should have in the midst of it, but I didnt and because of it, I still have spots on them that drive me crazy.
On another note, didn’t you tell me that you’re going to Haven?
Oh my, I feel your pain with the head lice. We had several rounds of that last summer. It didn’t matter how much I washed or treated, we just couldn’t shake it. It officially went down in the books as the WORST summer ever! Chemicals didn’t work for us, I ended up resorting to mayo and it was the miracle cure. Totally disgusting but totally worth it. Good luck, friend.
well,maybe i can make you feel a little better. i used a primer that was supposed to stick to anything without sanding on our trim when we first moved- in the living room, dining room, and guest room. go scrape it with your nail… go ahead. yeah, it comes off. i have to touch up a nunch of places. lesson learned and i sanded the trim in the kids rooms first and will be sanding from now on. ARGH.
Oh no! I am so sorry Ange! There was an outbreak of head lice in my son’s class and I think it was a minor miracle that he didn’t get it. Ugh. And I am SO sorry about the cabinets and how frustrating that all must be. Hang in there friend! I think you are smart to just let it go for awhile and enjoy this time with your family. I was thinking about you this morning because I was feeling some anxiety about leaving for Haven and I prayed for us!
Love,
Vanessa
Bummer week!! Things can only get better, right??
Thumbs down on the cabinets, head lice and laundry! But I’m just WAY too excited about haven!
The lice thing sucks… seems like each child has to get it once in their lives.
But I have to tell you how much I LOVED your *keeping it real* photo. I can’t tell you how much I appreciated that.
I hope you can relax soon! I love your plan to enjoy your family and relax more! We all need to refresh ourselves. I liked your comment about the fluffy dreams of summer. I am a teacher and I always think that I am going to get like a million things done, my kids are going to have the best summer EVER, I am going to read 20 books, learn 100 new recipes, learn to sew, you get the point. The point is I need to let summer come, relax, try new things, and learn to enjoy the simply things more. Putting all that pressure on myself to be this perfect mom and person is just more stress!!! Have a great time at the Haven Conference! Since I just started blogging, I hope to maybe go next year! Can’t wait to hear about it!
Oh man, I stumbled across your site while looking for tips on how to fix my white cabinets that I painted using the Rustoleum Cabinet Transformation kit. I apparently should’ve found your blog first, and then I wouldn’t be in the same position that you are in. Blech. I’m not looking forward to sanding and starting all over again!