Play Ball!

Baseball season has begun! This year I just couldn't commit to driving all the way into Bel Air in rush hour traffic so our compromise was to join the Hickory/Fountain Green league which is proving to be a whole new adventure. Our opening day games scheduled for Saturday were rained out so Monday Ben and Philip had their first game of the season. Those player picture packages are a bit pricey so we made up our own version. Here's Ben's 2006 Player Pose:

And here's Philip. They are playing in the 7/8 league and their team is the Cubs (thus the Cubs uniforms). They sure do look spiffy, don't they?!
AND...this year they even got their names on the backs of their shirts. Since we have two Klopcic's on the team, Ben and Philip even got their first initial - big stuff, folks!
They had a great first game, from their perspective anyway. They even played their good friend Gabriel's team which may prove to be a tender spot in their friendship in days to come. The Cubs looked great on the field - they were batting well and fielding well but poor Gabe's team was....well...not doing so well. It was the sort of game where round about the 3rd inning, both sides of the stands are rooting for the same team - just to give them a morale boost. Needless to say, the Cubs walked off with a grand victory - 15 - 0. The highlight of the game for Philip was getting whacked in the back by a ball thrown by a wild pitch. In this league, they actually let the kids pitch and that turned out to be a bit dangerous.
I'm not sure how these two got in here but they wanted their picture taken too. They start gymnastics next week so I guess I'll have to highlight them in their gymnastics leotards later...

On Tuesday, JT had his first game. He's playing for the Ironbirds in the 9/10 league and boy was he unprepared for the changes! This is the big leagues, folks, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Both teams had a couple of pitchers with some impressive arms but still a bit wild and unpredictable. It doesn't help that they seem to hire 13 year old boys with relatively untrained eyes to serve as umpires.... JT was the first to bat for his team in the top of the very first inning of the very first game. He didn't know what was about to hit him! It didn't take long before he struck out and wandered, perplexed, back to the bench. He was feeling pretty discouraged until he watched his next two teammates meet the same fate.
Then it was to the outfield for him. His coach has him playing way out in the outfiled, hoping to use his speed to the team's best advantage - it doesn't take JT long to reach a long hit to left field. He was ready but the other team didn't do a whole lot better that first inning than the Ironbirds did. This was some small comfort to both teams I think. The game became a pitcher's game for the first few innings and then the boys finally managed to marry bat with ball and make a few runs. No one scored more than a double but JT did get walked a base and then batted in for a score. The game was close but the final score was Ironbirds - 3, A's - 4. Not bad for their first time out in a brand new league!
And, well, Davey just wanted to try on the hat! He has a few years to go...

Lots More

Things have been going so rapidly that I've not been able to keep up with the pictures on the blog. The painters have now been through the whole house and all the rooms are their finished colors. Although, I think the trim in the basement still has not been finished. The doors have doorknobs, the windows and floors have trim and baseboards, the counters, sink and double oven have been set and the other appliances are sitting in the living room waiting (although I may be sending back the dishwasher which somehow is not what I thought I was ordering!).

On the outside, the gutters and downspouts are all replaced. The electric fixtures have all been installed, new vanities have been set in place in the upstairs bathrooms...shew! So much I'm having trouble listing it all!! Here's lots of pictures so enjoy the tour!

The last big hurdle is the flooring (and the dang-blasted banister for which we've finally come to an acceptable compromise). The flooring should get started this week. There will be wood laminate throughout most of the house, carpet on the stairs and basic vinyl flooring in the bathrooms. The upstairs tubs still need to be refinished, they do plan to reseed the yard at some point and the painting on the outside trim is being saved for last so that we can get the interior finished up. The girls are thrilled to have a PINK room, JT's and Philip's basement room and the first floor bath color were chosen by JT - a lovely sea blue that just makes you feel like jumping in and doing the backstroke! lol... The basement is a light purple which we also used in the girls' bathroom upstairs and the kitchen is all about blue.

This is the electrician finishing up his install of the outdoor lights and outlet. He's standing in the new French doors which enter into the dining room addition. The little window to the left is the new kitchen window. Hopefully there are some steps coming out of the French doors in the making. You can see the new gutters and downspouts also.




Here are the French doors from the inside w/the two dining room light fixtures. At the this point the countertops s had been delivered but not set - the big cardboard-looking thing to the right is the countertop standing up on end.




This is the guest bedroom. I picked out a nice, bright yellow and it turned out ELECTRIC yellow once it hit the walls. We're hoping to tone it down a bit w/some neutral colored texturing. We don't want our guests complaining that they couldn't sleep because the walls kept them up all night!!





Here is the far wall of the kitchen addition and the old kitchen. The shelving and cabinetry to the right will be for our homeschool materials - YAY!! JT is modeling the spot where the refrigerator will stand. We were wondering if a light would go on if we opened his mouth...






Here is the rest of the kitchen w/the counters in place. There is a hole under the countertop for the dishwasher and the hole in the top of the counter is for the stovetop - a 5 burner beauty! The cut-out over the cooktop is for a microhood.



This is the girls' purple bathroom upstairs with the new vanity in place. They replaced the same flat mirrors but with a light bar across the top instead of thee two light fixtures on the sides.







And this is the Beach Boys bathroom that just makes you wanna put on your suit and do the backstroke! I don't have a picture of it, but JT's and Philip's room is painted entirely in this color - it's pretty intense!


And here are the girls in their PINK room. They love this color! It will be the horsey room and Betsy will finally have her own bed. She's been sleeping on the floor underneath Miriam's bed for the past month or so.

The Lord Is Risen! He Is Risen Indeed!

We celebrated our second major holiday in our rental house. We have just as many Easter traditions as we do Christmas traditions but, unfortunately, many more of them needed to be set aside this year. In the first place, we puked our way through Holy Week so the week we normally spend preparing our hearts, minds and souls for the celebration of Easter was spent laundering linens and passing around buckets. I suppose there's an essay in there somewhere as well...sigh...

We did manage to hide some Easter baskets on Easter morning, get a few pictures of the children in their dressy clothes, get to church and head to Muffy and Granddad's for the annual cousin Easter egg hunt. There were lots of great missed photo ops there - had the camera but didn't seem to use it. David really enjoyed his first egg hunt and he did remarkably well. He and John Michael got their own category and got a head start on the hunting. It was a nice fun and relaxing day but we're all looking forward to having our big cross and our tomb back to continue with our usual observances next year.

The Long Waiting

I had to show off JT's writing skill. He wrote this story about our housefire as a school writing assignment. Of course, I think it's just too excellent to keep to myself!!


A Long Waiting
by
Joel Timothy Klopcic

Chapter one
How it Came to Happeen

Once upon a time on a nice summer evening, the Klopcic's went out to the library. That was very rare ,you see, because there were eight kids in the family. Shortly after they got there it started to rain. JT was ready to go home. So he was telling his mother that their house was going to catch on fire. Before his mom had put meatloaf in the oven. So by the time they left the library there was a thunderstorm. And when they got to the entrance to their neighborhood they saw a lot of smoke, more smoke than you can imagine. There was at least ten or eleven fire trucks there. Fr joel said, "I'll go up and see what happened." Ten minutse later he came running down and said to my mom, "Our house is on fire!!" Then my mom got out of the car and they both went up to the house. A few minutes later, some of our friends came driving up. And they went up to the house too. Then Matt Z came up to tell Colin, our other neighbor. Then he came to say hi to us. Ten minutes later my mom came to us to say she wanted us to go up and see the house. When we went up there, we saw the Prichard's - Ben, Mike, and Steven. We watched the fire fighters tear down our house. Soon we went down to the Z's house where we were going to stay for the night. When we got there they had ordered Papa Johns pizza which our whole family loved. Of course in the mornning the Z's had to go to school. Every one was waking up when Matt was going to school.



The End!

Caution, Wet Paint!

Painting has been progressing nicely for a couple of weeks now but this week we finally got some color on the walls! This was Miriam's room and will now be Cowboy John's room (and David). He gets that sort of Southwest feeling with the beige walls which will be accented with his cowboy pictures.









This is the master bedroom suite. The green is almost exactly the color we had just finished painting our room just weeks before the fire. The bathroom is the same color and we have a color-coordinated closet too! You can see the other big project that happened this past week - the trim around the closets, windows, floors and door frames.






In the upstairs bathrooms we opted to replace the blue fiberglass walls with tile. This tile work is in the girls' bathroom upstairs which is actually painted purple (I promised them a purple room!). Unfortunately, I couldn't get the flash to work to show off that color but you do have a nice picture here of Glen's tile work. He is our construction foreman's boss and tile is "his thing" so we had him on the site for a day or so while he finished up the showers.




In the basement, the gridwork has been hung for the drop ceiling. That had been completely removed and has now been re-hung. I like this perspective shot of Ben. The walls are up in the basement but they have yet to be painted - still rough.








And another dream come true for me. That nasty rust red linoleum in the old kitchen has been removed! Yay!! It will be replaced with wood-grain laminate (we hope - this is one of the last sticking points in our negotiations - the other would be the upstairs banister but that may get a post all of its own since that negotiation has taken on a life of its own!).

Giant Prairie Dog Sighting!

This giant prairie dog was sighted on our construction site about 2 weeks ago. It seems the larger dirt pile has attracted a family of giant prairie dogs which gather there periodically with shovels to create new tunnels and pathways for their prairie dog community.

Doors, Doors, Doors

We now have doors everywhere! Here's the upstairs doors - to the girls' bathroom (which will be the purple bathroom), then the door into the master suite and the last door there is the bathroom door for the suite.









Here Ben is modeling a closet door in what was once John Michael's and David's room and will now be the baby's room.







Mr. Smiley JT is modeling a pocket door in one of the upstairs bathrooms. I've been promised that all the doors will have hardware attached to them eventually...








It was fun to watch the new garage door go up. He built it in pieces starting at the bottom. Notice the dark green trim. This will the color of all the outdoor trim eventually. I do miss our loud and unwieldy vintage wooden garage door.





Here he has all the but the last piece in place.





And this is the finished door!








In the kitchen we have cabinet doors - here is a panoramic view and then a straight on shot of the corner which will house the cooktop, microhood, dishwasher and wrap around counter. Although I dispensed with many of the cabinet doors and had a plethora of drawers installed instead.

IT's A....

We had our second sonogram today officially to detect any fetal anomalies but we all know what we really wanted to know is:

Does it have the Naegeli nose? No, that's not it....

Does it have the wierd Klopcic feet? No, that's not it...Does it have 3 cheeks like Aunt Knee Knee and Miriam? No, that's not it....Well?!!!!...........

Walls! Walls! Walls!

After two days of no drywall folks who were supposed to show up on Monday, they finally showed up on Wednesday and began work with a vengeance. By Thursday they had the entire house walled in. It is still just rough drywall - the finishing crew will come next week but boy has it made a difference to see walls and ceilings everywhere!! They started on the garage ceiling. Betsy is modeling that for us.






They walled in the entire basement. This was once paneling attached to firring strips on the concrete block. They somehow managed to put up drywall to replace it. I sure won't miss that paneling!!!







Moving upstairs. This is the view into the garage door and across the old kitchen from the new dining room. The large blocky thing in the middle is a 3-sided pillar. It is hollow on the kitchen side of it to accommodate a piece of closet organizer I'm hoping will reduce clutter in our lives.



Here is a better view of the new kitchen. The little door to the left of the picture is the door to the built-in pantry. The fridge will go to the right of that and the double oven next to that. The thing on the wall that resembles a question mark is the wiring for the oven hanging out of the wall.








Here is a view from the dining room addition that looks through the new dining room, into the old and into the living room. The whole downstairs is quite open now.







Going up the steps you can see the ceiling. Where the ceiling fan was is now solid ceiling and you can see the new trapdoor that leads to the upper crawl space to gain access to the new HVAC unit up there.







This is the view standing at the top of the steps and looking all the way down the hallway into what is now our bedroom suite.








Betsy is modeling what was Miriam's room. The room which once sustained the most fire damage now looks just like all the rest. We'll be moving John and David into here. The double closet is behind Betsy so you can glimpse into the next bedroom.





The girls are standing in front of the closet in the common area next to the top of the steps.










This is the door leading into what was John and David's room and will now be the baby's room. You can almost see the remains of the car track I painted on the floor but all the floors upstairs should be covered in wood laminate.



And here the girls are modeling the master suite. They are standing in what was the older boys' room and will now be our bedroom. The passage into the other side will be the library/chapel area.

Good-Bye Neil Armstrong!

This week saw the demise of Neil Armstrong. Let me start at the beginning... Meet Paul. He's the unwitting villain in our story. Little did he know when Bill Pilcher Painting hired him to work on our house, he would be the bearer of death to a world-reknown icon. Bill is one of our parishioners and he's hired Paul and Joe (also parishioners) to help with the painting work on our house. Here you see Paul beginning to strip away the hallway wallpaper...
Now if you remember the finer details about our house, you'll remember that just down that hallway is the room my husband once shared with his brother. The same room where each were allowed to choose their wallpaper of choice. So for the past 30?! years, Steve's cars have very....interestingly...contrasted with Fr. Joel's choice of Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. It was in this very room where Paul and Joe violently stripped away Neil Armstrong from our walls - but not our memories! I can't say I'm quite as saddened as my husband is. In fact, I'm campaigning to do away with the paneling as well...an idea which long ago outlived its stylishness.But the story doesn't end there and if you are Tata (also known as Terry Klopcic, married to one Valerie Klopcic - an important point to remember) you may know what is coming next. To our surprise, Neil Armstrong seemed to be hiding the sentiments of a 30 year younger former resident of our home. Look closely at this picture. For those with less-discerning eyesight I'll let you in on the secret. Written in pencil, and still surviving the stripping away of our brave hero, are the words Terry Loves Valerie:

Dad left a more obvious message under the wallpaper in the room he and Mom once shared. I'm sure these sentiments are still very much alive and well in Ohio!! Unfortunately, within the next two weeks they will be covered over with Sherwin Williams Practical Beige.

Carrying Hope

I am beginning to understand why my husband wants to name this baby Hope. As I lie awake tonight, waiting for an inkling of movement within my bulging belly, my mind has wandered down the path we've taken since the fire. We are so unhappy here in this temporary dwelling. It is a place which seems almost devoid of hope. The spirits of depression and fear hang heavy over these people and their households.

Our children have been exposed to more in their short months here than in the sum of there lives. Every day they despair over a new cheat, a new lie, a thievery, insults hurled at lightning speed. The children in this neighborhood are insecure with themselves and frightened to be found out and they take it out on one another, lashing out at anyone and anything. We have been encouraged that our children have stood their ground. Occassionally they have faltered when confronted with something so new and confounding as strings of insults or physical blows offered for no apparant reason, but mostly they have learned to state their beliefs, stand their ground and then walk away when the troubles continue.

The children in this neighborhood have contributed a steady flow of material for our daily family devotions. "Mom, why does this one lie? Mom, why does he act like that? Mom, what does *this* word mean? Mom, why do the parents call their children stupid? Mom, they are so mean to Philip, what should we do?" We have had opportunity to discuss prejudice, fear, insecurity, anger, the dangers of the tongue, living as a witness to Jesus Christ in a crying world. We've examined the proverbs and the Gospel. We've traced Satan's desire to squelch the presence of Christ in His children throughout the old and new testaments. JT and Ben have learned how to defend their less witting siblings against verbal attacks which sting them more than they do their unsuspecting brother. I think they've grown a lifetime here through the school of challenges and obstacles.

And woven through the thread of day is the train - constant, loud, a vibrating presence that punctuates the hours. I loved the train when we first moved here. It gave rhythm to our days. Somewhere in the recesses of my soul it reminded me of the trains I had loved as a child - the train by the Old Mill behind Mom's craft shop in PA, the train that ran by the home of my little first grade love whose tracks we would follow to visit his aunt, the train that ran past my grandmother's house and would blow its whistle in the night. But one day Tiffany and Ava got on the train that punctuates our days here and the train did not bring them back. It swallowed them up and spit them on the streets of DC which are now trying to devour them. The train is a symbol now of a lost Hope, a missing link to our little family, a scar of our family's wounding in this place.

And so in all this Hope was conceived. Hope was born into a womb once called barren. Hope was called into being to be loved by us in the midst of a loveless place. And now I sit and wait for Hope to move within me. Honestly, I am a bit concerned that I have not felt what I want to. I will have another sonogram this week which will hopefully dash those fears but if I have learned anything over the past year it is that God does not make promises just because we are good people or devout or devoted. And if, God forbid, we should lose our little Hope before this baby sees the light of this world, people will say all the wrong things. They will say "It was God's will." They will say that we have so much on our plate already and God knew what we could handle. They will say that perhaps this child would have had such serious disabilities that life would have been difficult, if worth living at all. (This one will pierce me the most because it will make me wonder if these same people would have us snuff out life in the womb for the ones we have adopted whose challenges are ugly and difficult.) What they will not see is that God does not kill Hope. There is only one enemy who kills Hope and he is the enemy of all our souls.

Hope is fueled by progress. If only we can see the progress, we can have more hope. This is why I wait to feel this baby move and wonder why I do not have indigestion. Each time we go to our house and see the progress - a wall constructed, a door delivered, a light switch wired - our hope of moving beyond this temporary place grows. There is so much hope in the place we call Home now that we desire to just drag our sleeping bags over there and sleep on the floors just to be in a place where we can feel It, breath It. Were we to go there and see no progress, I am sure our Hope would begin to grow faint and Despair would take its place.

As a family, we have lived our lives on Hope. We are thankful that God has given us vision so that we do not need to perish in despair but can walk in the Hope that His vision will be fulfilled. We can measure progress over a long period of time and see it clearly, rather than looking at each day's challenges individually and wallowing in despair. Vision is the path to Hope for it shows us that Hope is a journey, not a stopping place. It is clear why the scriptures teach us that without vision the people will perish, because without vision there is nothing to Hope for.

And so I carry Hope. I carry Hope like a beacon in body which flashes in the darkness of this time and place and reminds our family of the Vision which always drives us further in and further up. And should the enemy of our souls try to kill this Hope within me, he will not succeed. We are a people of vision, we are a family who Hopes.

More Trappings on the House

Yesterday we acquired some steps into the trap door leading to the upper crawl space. The trap door runs perpendicular to what was once the ceiling fan and drops down directly in front of the attic and bedroom doors. Here's a picture of one of our favorite guys, actually referred to as "Jr" putting in the final screws. The electrical inspector came yesterday as well and it looks like he approved most of the work. As soon as the final approval comes on that, the drywall goes up!!
They have also delivered all the doors and trim and deposited it in the two back downstairs bedrooms. Betsy wanted to model one of the new doors (most of these go upstairs although you can see the new pantry pocket door to the left of Betsy). Notice her new Dorothy Hamil hair-do. Aunt Beth took one look at the chop job she did on herself and decided that had to be corrected. It looks really cute but I have to admit I've been having flashbacks of being that age w/the same haircut and having all the old men at church call me a "cute little boy". Hasn't happened to Betsy yet, though, so I guess I can stop worrying about it now.

Holy Zeus Batman!

I wanted to share yesterday's fun project. We made little sculpey statues of the Greek gods - and got a good taste of everyone's artistic....er....expression.
Going 'round the pan we have Ruth's artistic expression of the Goddess Aphrodite, then Philip's fine interpretation of Zeus sporting a lightning bolt (although admittedly it does look quite a bit like a hammerhead shark), the lady in pink is Betsy's Persephone (aided somewhat by Ben) and below her in shimmering blue is her mother Demeter, fashioned by Miriam. Next to Demeter is JT's attempt at Apollo who lost his cloak along the way and closely resembles a chicken he once drew. Above Apollo is Mommy's rendition of Poseidon bearing his trident which appears to be stabbing Ben's Hermes in the foot. Now, I have taken a real liking to dear little Hermes. If you look closely you can see the little wings on his feet - how cute is that?! And, last but not least, let's not forget the blue blob by Poseidon's head. John Michael carefully crafted this addition to the showcase of the gods. He titled this work "Apple Pie".