We finished our work on Sunday by removing the tape and putting the furniture back in place. Even though I thoroughly cleaned the house right before the painting party it was a wreck come Sunday. I would have left it for another day to tackle, but we were being blessed by some friends who were coming the following day to steam clean our carpets! So Sunday night and Monday morning was a flurry of pick up and vacuuming. My two friends came late morning to tackle our floors. Kim worked on scrubbing, and I do mean *scrubbing* my kitchen and the girls' bathroom floors. Melody worked on cleaning the carpets. When I left she had already done one pass of the boy's carpet and the family room. I seriously did not think there was any hope of them getting any where near cleaned. I was greatly surprised when we arrived home later that day to very clean carpets! She had to do a lot of elbow grease, but the carpets look wonderful. Plus just when they were walking out the door (they only had 5 minutes before they HAD to leave), Melody asks Kim what she would do differently with our living room set up. It appears I wasn't the only one bothered by our living room arraignment. Ha, ha. Kim threw out an idea and Melody announced that they were going to make it happen. Kim thought she had lost her mind! But they rearranged our living room furniture. So when we walked in, it seriously felt like I had the wrong house :-) Everything looks WONDERFUL! Each day someone here is making a comment about how different everything looks.
The children are having to get used to eating all their food at the table. When we first moved in this house Jed was only six weeks old. With a newborn and a whole house to unpack we were not diligent to keep the children and their food at the table. Unfortunately soon after we had the stress of Jed's medical issues, and it just went down hill from there. But all food is off limits to the rest of the house now, so that we can keep the carpet clean.
When the carpets were getting clean I took the kiddos to Jed's speech, a new to us park, and the library. It was a full afternoon! The great thing about the park was that it was all fenced in. With all the work that I did over the weekend the thought of having to keep track of six children at a park boarded by woods was just not sitting well with me. So I drove a little extra to a park I had heard about months ago. It was so nice to not have to worry where everyone was every moment.
Tuesday found us finishing some cleaning and then having to deal with a very sick chicken. The chickens have had this AWFUL illness. The first one that came down with it was laboring to breathe for five days!! Poor thing. A few others started to fall ill, and I knew I had to do something quick. We tried a couple of antibiotics that did nothing to help. As a matter of fact more chickens became ill even though we had the whole flock on the medicine. So I decided that I needed to find a homeopathic remedy to see if we could get them relief. I really did not have a lot of time to devote to it, so I made up a remedy with multiple medicines in it. Not sure if that was what helped but all the chickens, save one, were able to breathe fine in 6 to 12 hours after the remedy. And that's saying a lot since the first chicken suffered for five days. However it did not prevent some of them from getting swollen eyes. But we persevered with the remedy and within a day or two their eyes were much improved. We do unfortunately have one chicken who is sooooo very sick though. I went online to see what could be done. Not knowing exactly what they have I had to go based on symptoms. I came down to two things it could be, one a bacterial infection, one a viral. I went out to get the injectable antibiotic. First time I had to give a shot to anything!! They said if it was the bacterial illness we would see improvement in 24 hours. Um, that didn't happen. Sigh. Thankfully this very sick chicken only had the breathing problem for a few hours. However both of her eyes swelled up HUGE! Not only that but her throat swelled up such that she can not close her beak. Poor thing. She was really weak this morning with not having enough food or water. So I told Isabella, it's her chicken, that if she wanted to give this chicken a chance we were going to have to dropper feed it every fifteen minutes. We made up a solution of egg yolk and water and went out there every fifteen minutes to feed her. We did that for the first hour and a half. Then went to every thirty minutes as she was taking in more solution. At one point I got the idea to give her some ibuprofen to see if it would help with the swelling. I have no idea if it is safe to give to chickens, but at this point, well, I was willing to take our chances. We held off a feeding to give the medicine some time to work. Isabella went out at the next feeding and said her throat was a little better and although her eyes are still very swollen, one of them has gone down enough that the chicken could open it up a bit. And with that feeding she took in the most food yet (still not a ton, but I think the steady supply will help better than one full tummy's worth). At this point it is looking more hopeful. If she wasn't eating then I would know she was just getting ready to die. But with her continuing to eat I feel she at least has a chance right now. One other chicken was nearly as sick as she was, and we thought she was going to die, but she if fine now, out and about acting like a chicken :-) She lost a lot of weight, but I am sure that will come back on in time.
The funny thing is I was telling my friend Melody about all of this and she said that it would have been a totally different scenario at her house, with mostly all boys. She said it would have gone something like this: "Hmmm, see those sick chickens.....what do ya think, get the gun?" Ha, ha! Well, with a house full of girls we have a whole lot of nurturing instincts that prevent that conversation from happening at this point. This will just mean that come this weekend we will have to spend a LOT of time disinfecting the barn and barnyard area. Not looking forward to that. But regardless if the chickens had died or lived we would have had to do it, so as to try to prevent this from spreading. The bad news is that it is possible our chickens that got sick will be carriers of this disease. So any future birds we bring in, or even for the chickens that somehow escaped the illness, may end up coming down with it if is carried. I am hoping that doesn't happen.
Ok, lunch time is over, and now it's time to get back to work. We've had a much more normal day as far as getting schooling and cleaning done. Hopefully we'll be able to get to the rest of our studies so that we can go outside before it gets dark out.
Here are a few pictures of our new to us house :-) They did not come out very well at all. We have horrid lighting in here. I also took some pictures of the new living room layout. I wish I had before/afters to give you, but I was having issues with windows explorer and don't want to deal with photos any more!
Look at that CLEAN floor!! Looks like new! We do still have some stains here and there, but even those have been reduced in their intensity.
Our kitchen! I LOVE this color. It really helps to bring out our cabinets. With a light flooring and all the woodwork being maple, including our table we really needed something on the darker side to bring them out.
This is a poor picture, I was trying to get the two colors of both rooms for the full effect. Didn't really work. In one of the pictures of the living room, down below, you will see more of the true color of the above wall (both the living and family room are the same color).
Our magnetic wall!! So cool!! It really could have used a third coat, but we didn't have enough to do that. So we'll only be able to use small magnets, and only hang up single sheets of paper.
I'm in the living room now, standing in front of the door. This wall had one of our couches on it and it really made the flow of traffic not work smoothly as the couch stuck too far out into the pathway from the door into the kitchen. It works much better to have the book shelf there.
I'm still standing by the door, although more at the end of the staircase taking this picture. The color of the paint looks more like it does in real life. That door you see is our bedroom door.
Panning to the right a bit we see the rest of the living room. I wish I could get the whole room into view, as these pictures don't seem to do the room justice. It's a really nice change though, you'll have to trust me :-)
Oh, I forgot to mention that I had an appointment with my midwife on Friday (it was one busy weekend!). Everything looks good. The baby happened to be transverse! Never had one do that on me. But I was only 32 weeks pregnant, so plenty of time to get the baby to move. Let's hope he cooperates. Talking of 'he' we got to listen to the baby's heart beat. I thought that this time we would get a better picture of it being a boy or girl (not that it's 100% accurate) and wouldn't ya know it was 140. I thought that was definitely a boy's heart rate. But my midwife said that at this stage of the pregnancy it could actually go either way with that number. What? I am quite sure she is mistaken :-) Ha, ha. Well only around seven or so weeks to go now!!!
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