We're actually alive and kicking and will finally catch up on blogging!!!!

As usual, the holidays are crazy and because we are also still in the midst of the kitchen remodel, the holidays passed by being behind schedule and sad to say, not nearly as festive as I have been my whole life.
There is nothing is in the cabinets yet and there are still some things to be done, but the appliances are in and we have water, fire, heat and electricity...so we christened the kitchen on Christmas day by cooking our first meal!

I am going to start posting events that happened before the last posting because I am so behind in posting the actual remodel.
I will post remodel updates beginning Oct 15, 2014.

I first must explain that we have had contractor problems since the middle of June...yes, it's been a very long road.  We received the contractor's name from a colleague of R's so we thought all would go OK.  He is a boisterous and confident man and made us believe that he could do it all.
He started on a project in our house in June and he never finished it...the entire summer.  I believe I've posted pictures of that and wasn't sure how this relationship would turn out with the contractor, so I never really said anything about our issues, but just the project...hoping for the best.
Well, "best" never happened;  "worst" happened and although we are very surprised and disappointed, we did learn a lot.
More on that as we go along.....

To add to the hardship of a home remodel and contractor issues, R had two awful events happen back to back at work.  Both life-threatening and life-ending so he was beyond heartbroken and stressed.  The first was a shooting in the city he works where a crazed man decided to unload his automatic weapon on multiple police departments. After this crazed man shot up two other police departments, they put an "all points bulletin" to warn all police departments in the area.  The officers in the city R works in saw the man driving and as soon as the man saw the police car slowly following him, he pulled his automatic weapon out and started shooting at them putting officers, homes and businesses in danger.  One of the officers was shot in the leg so we were at the hospital most of the night.  That's the worst call anyone can ever get....until one week later, he received yet another call he thought he'd never get.   A high school shooting.  This horrific event was and still is gut wrenchingly awful as you can well imagine. I can't even describe in words the sadness, desperation, and bewilderment felt at the funerals of the children that died.

Our contractor issues and remodel don't compare to the devastation in the lives of the families of the fallen children or to the memories of the first responders responding to the school shooting scene or to the police officers that were in the previous shooting.
We continue to pray for the families and first responders involved and pray their nightmares subside and their hearts heal.

WATER HEATER BROKE!!!
Randomly in the midst of the demolison of the flooring and kitchen, the water heater decided to start leaking.  Yeah...that was an expense we weren't expecting and due to Rick being so unavailable because of work, we just had to buy another one.

I'll just post the video because it says it all.....and states the first sentence out loud about our contractor issues (that's why I thought I would explain the contractor issues in the last paragraph).

NOTE:  if there isn't any sound on my videos, try another computer.  My laptop had no sound and I worked on it for over an hour, but then looked at the blog on my desktop and the audio was there.  I realized it's my laptop and I'm not sure how to fix it on my laptop, but there IS audio on the videos.