empowerment

so, i woke up two mornings ago to find my kitchen counter covered in water and a huge water stain on my ceiling. (i had noticed some water on it earlier-after midnight, but cleaned it up and never found any drips). i am not a happy camper in the morning, and adding something that needs my immediate attention and is possibly a very large problem, makes me a very grumpy mommy. that, and i didn't understand how nate could have seen it and not done anything about it (he claims that he never saw it, which i don't really understand either). anyway, so i looked up in my bathroom and discovered that the tank of our toilet had been leaking. i finally got it all cleaned up (well, not the stain on our ceiling, that will have to come later) and had nate pick up a toilet on his way home from his meetings. now, until now we have been scared to tackle any plumbing issues, but figured we could probably do this. and---nate did it! all by himself!!! we are so proud of him! now, of course, he's talking about wanting to conquer remodeling the kids bathroom all by ourselves. we'll see how that goes--i'm quite nervous about doing the bathtub! but, it's exciting to have another skill down on our list of home-improvements.

in other news, i've wanted to put down something jeremy wrote for school. every week they write about what they did that weekend. a few weeks ago, he wrote about the show "man vs wild", which we watched for about 20 minutes. but, he thought it was really cool and remembered a lot more than we did. here it is:

I watched Man vs wild. The water was 11 C you could die in 2 houres. onec (once) when he got to land there was no way to get on top so he jumped back in the water and he was very highe. onec he found a better place to climb on the rocks got slippery so he put socks on the out-side of his shoes and that made it less slippery and the camera guy fell. he saw a de(a)d sheep he cut of(f) the head, legs and wool and he used the wool and skin for a sleeping bag. he found a big group of ded crmint crabs he eat a few crmint crabs they war nasty but they have lots of vitimins.

in even other news (b/c who really knows when i'll do this again), adam just got his 3rd tooth (caleb is still toothless) and they both love to stand up on anything they can--especially my legs when i'm trying to cook, and the dishwasher when i'm trying to load it. liam is almost potty trained, but can't get out of the rut of having an accident every other day. he's done that pattern for almost 2 weeks now. seth will be starting speech soon. katya is finally getting the hang of reading, i feel like i'm running around ALL the time, and nate feels like he's doing too much charity work. that, and it seems like our house is falling apart.

so, life is crazy as usual.