Crazy Lights

When we first knew that we were going to buy this house, there was a room that we knew the kids would fight over.  It is not only one of the rooms connected to the Jack-and-Jill bathroom, but is also the room that has a really cool light system.  We dubbed it the "Crazy Lights Room."

There has once again been some room switching.  It's my thing, I guess.  In each of the homes we've lived in- minus the last one, since we only lived there for a few months (in fact, we've lived in this current home longer than we lived in that one-- crazy!)- we've moved rooms a few times.  Caden and Keilie tease me about it.  Randy does too, sometimes.  However, it makes me super happy that I am always looking for ways to make our current home work for us, instead of just complaining when things don't.  How else could we have lasted and loved our first home here with only 1,732 square feet and seven people and a dog?  Or when we added Ashlee's family of six for 6 weeks when they moved from Dallas to Washington, and made it work just fine?  I can make things work, but it does take some thought and furniture arranging. 

Keilie has Mira sleep with her now.  She is the messiest of my kids, always leaving her things out and never putting her laundry away, so I needed to look for a way for Mira to have her own space in the room despite Keilie's poor habits.  Instead of fighting her on it, I thought she should be the one to sleep in the bonus room, since the boys no longer wanted to share.  {Still hurts my heart}  We shoved the two Twin beds together and put her Queen comforter over it, making it look like a massive bed.  It doesn't matter, that room is so huge, the bed looks normal. 

 Tyson is now in the room that Caden wanted at first but gave to Keilie for her birthday in August, with a built-in desk and connected to the Jack-and-Jill.  Shelby moved from the Crazy Lights Room when she moved into Caden's room last month, and Brennon is now in the Crazy Lights Room.  Phew!  We're done moving rooms and homes for a LONG time.  Hopefully forever.

Brennon has been saying for a few weeks that his lights don't turn on sometimes, or that they turn on by themselves randomly.  He has only been in the room for six weeks, but it always struck me as odd that the anomaly started when he moved into the room.  I thought he was just pressing the switch half-way, no worries, user error.  We would always tell him to just use his lamp and not worry about using the Crazy Lights that night.  Last night, I was already upstairs when he went to turn them on.  Sure enough, he pressed the switch up and down many times, never turning on the lights.  Since the rest of the upstairs had light, I knew he hadn't tripped a breaker, so I called Randy up to look at it.  Like many things in this home that were not done or updated correctly, Randy knew that the previous owners must have installed the lights themselves.  He told Brennon not to turn them on, saying that he'd look at it tomorrow (which is today).  I'm not sure what changed his mind, but I am so thankful that he took the time last night to check-- the main box was BuRnInG hot.  Hot enough to need gloves.  We immediately started to take the lights down, stunned that it was that hot. 

The whole time, I prayed thanks.  My babes have slept in that second-story room with windows that they would need to jump from if a fire had broke out in the night, a very-possibly-could-have-been fire trap every night.  I was sick to my stomach all night at the thought of what could have happened.  It is the furthest room from ours, so it would have taken us a long time to get to that room, making the need to jump from the window a very real possibility.  Oh my gosh, even typing it makes me skitty.  That box was SO HOT!  I'm so grateful that nothing came of this, that those lights are gone, and that Randy is installing a new light at this very second. 

 Crisis averted.  Gratitude magnified.