We have not disappeared......

It has been quite awhile since I took the time to update the blog!  

Jeremiah and I have been very busy as always.  I am getting used to being an intern, still don't like being up all night on call.  I finished my first two months of OB and of course loved it!!  I am now doing Pediatrics, not as fun as OB but a bit more of a relaxing

 schedule.  Jeremiah came home from Ranger School this week.  He did not make it through, but decided it was not for him.  He is very skinny and tired, so we are working on fattening him up!

The house really came around while J was gone....mostly because I hired a contractor to do some work for us!  My mom also came to visit for a week and helped me decorate.  She has such a sense for bargain shopping, so she of course found all kinds of gr

eat deals while she was here in Columbus and made quite a few new friends here along the way!!  

Here are some photos of the living room....BEFORE, DURING, and AFTER our very own HGTV Project!

These are pictures from when we looked at the

 house, can you believe we decided to buy it???

We really could see great potential!!!

It was quite a mess for a month or two.  J worked hard on scraping layer upon layer of old paint off the plaster walls.  When he couldn't finish it all before he left for Ranger School, I hired someone who could!

We are still working on the room....needs curtains, some knickknacks, etc, but we are loving it so far!  Little especially loves looking out the front windows and making sure she can bark at every creature that walks by the

 house!

Hope ya'll enjoy the photos!  We are enjoying relaxing in our new living room!!

It's a mirror-acle!!

Erin really wanted me to contribute to our blog, so...

This weekend we almost finished remodeling our bathroom.  Here is a list of everything we have done so far (in the last two weeks)

1)  Peeled the wallpaper and stripped the paint off the walls.  Now that may not sound like much, but it if we got a few square feet per hour we were making good time.  For this we alternated between the steam maker, scraper, a hand sander, and a sanding wheel for my drill.    

2)  Removed the medicine cabinet, old sink, light fixture and outlet box.  I then patched all of the holes in the wall were these had been, using a combination of drywall, joint tape, and joint compound.  I was not too happy with the result so we got a really big mirror to cover it all up!

3)  On the built in storage cabinetry (3'x8') we removed all the doors, tore off the old face frame, and tore out the walls on the bottom laundry shelf which were rotted out from water damage.  We then built a new poplar face frame and we put plywood along the walls of the bottom shelf.  

4)  Then we primed and painted the walls, ceiling, and the insides of the built in cabinetry.   Erin also did a really good job painting the trim on the windows, repainting the door, and the built in cabinetry.  It probably took as much time to paint it all as it did for Erin to pick out the right colors.  Love you Erin!

5)  Now originally the bathroom only had a very ugly light (just an exposed bulb with no cover) above the sink, which had a single receptacle in it.  This is old ungrounded cable from the 1950's as well.  So I dropped new 12/2 cable from the attic into the wall cavities and replaced the single switch panel with a double (so we could also have a vent fan).  Then we installed a new light fixture, a double receptacle, and a vent fan.  This alone took four or five days (and I still have to run the vent duct through the attic to the roof), but at least it is all working now.

6)  We bought a new pedestal sink with a new faucet, and I ended up having to replace the drain, since the old one snapped in half the first time I tried to attach it to our new sink.  I played around with semi flexible copper supply lines for a few days before I went with the much more user friendly woven rubber type.  The hardest part by far was anchoring the lavatory to the wall as I had to go through almost 4" of ceramic tile and plaster wall.  After much frustration I went with masonry anchors and they worked like a charm!

7)  The first mirror we bought did not cover up the repairs from removing the medicine cabinet completely so we ended up returning it and getting a much larger one.  Unfortunately I had already installed the new light to match this mirror, so that had to be removed, the wall patched, and the light moved a few feet higher (same with the wall receptacle).  Needless to say I am a pro at cutting out holes for outlet boxes and wiring them up now!  The second mirror (mail ordered from Pottery Barn) worked out great and was very easy to install. 

   That was the big stuff.  Let's see... Erin also put up some new bamboo shades, we hung a towel rack above the toilet (not quite finished, more to follow on this), and we got a new air register to match the metal on the faucet.  After all this work there was a quite a mess, so we have also spent a good deal of time scrubbing the inside of the tub and the tile walls and floor.  It is not completely done but it is already a completely different bathroom.  There are just a few things left we hope to finish this week.  Hope you enjoyed reading this!

   

Let there be light...

This week (in my words), Jeremiah has made light, water, and fan!!!  (And also really impressed me with his electrical wiring skills.)  He rewired our bathroom and installed a new light fixture.  Then he put in a new pedestal sink which is now working (with no leaks!!) and he installed a vent fan in our 1950's bathroom!!  We are about finished with the bathroom remake.  We ordered a mirror for over the sink and it arrived today.  We'll put it up this weekend along with a little carpentry work on the built-in shelves/hamper by Jeremiah and we will be finished, yay!

In other news, we went to the "Hope for Africa" concert on Tuesday night.  It is a group 

of 23 Ugandan orphans who tour in America singing and dancing.  It was very fun to see them and it reminded us of Sierra Leone.  They were asking people there to sponsor orphans at the school/orphanage in Uganda for $1500 per child per year!  Quite a lot of money!  We decided we have a much better deal supporting Ngeimah in Sierra Leone where it costs about $150 to pay for school/board/food/etc for the whole year!

In honor of the children of Africa, here are some photos from Sierra Leone!

Above is some children that were selling fruit on the side of the road.  All of the children loved to be photographed or "snapped" as they call it.  Notice, several of them are carrying things on their heads...  We were amazed by how they are able to carry huge loads on top of their heads.  Most impressive to us was the ladies who were carrying dozens and dozens of eggs and walking along so gracefully!

In Sierra Leone, all of the women carry the children on their back like this with the cloth wrapped around them.  They even carry the very young ones like this and I often wanted to go hold their little heads up for them, but I 

think they must learn fast there to hold up their own heads!  Most women with a baby on their back like this would also be carrying something on their head and in their hands.  The women are unbelievably strong there!!  On the right above is some children in Baiima village who were waiting to be seen at mobile clinic.  As you can see, underwear count for clothing there!  Bras also do...many of the women seemed to wear bras just like they were shirts.  I don't blame them though--it's so hot there with no air conditioning to cool that that it makes sense!

Here is me "doctoring" at Baiima village.  One of the nursing students insisted on taking this picture because she wanted my father and husband to be able to see what I was doing there.

The little girl to the left is Mammy.  She was in Baiima 

village when we went there for mobile clinic.  That day, Dr. Missa was called back to the hospital to do an operation for a "chronic ectopic pregnancy"....and yes, I said chronic...never quite figured that one out.  Anyhow, I was left in the village that day to see about 25 people on my own.  It was quite an experience!  This little girl happened to be very sick.  Her temperature was about 104F and she was tachycardic, tachypneic, and VERY listless.  We gave her Tylenol for the fever and an oral rehydration solution.  Her family had no way to transport her to the hospital, so she had to wait until we left to go back to the hospital.  She was then treated for malaria, amebiasis, and received two units of blood.  This is a picture of her five days later when she was ready to go back home!  She is my one child in Africa I know I saved....I hope she goes on to have a wonderful life! :)

My aunt Sarah (who works for UTHSC in Developmental Pediatrics)

sent lots of children's books with us to hand out in SL.  My mom joined us for mobile clinic one day at Jao Village and she brought along books to take to their school.  First let me tell you about their school....it was

 a tiny hut smaller than most of our living rooms sectioned off into four

four rooms.  In each room, there were probably 30-40 children scrunched together on benches, not even proper desks for them.  When mom took them the books, they were so excited!  They screamed and followed her through the village out of excitement!  The teacher told her that no one had ever brought them books before and they were touched by the gesture.  Thank you to Sarah and the publishers for helping provide these children with new books which will hopefully broaden their horizons and help encourage their education!!

While I am talking about Sierra Leone, I also have to mention the Tetteys.  They are a family from the UK (she is originally from Jamaica and him from Ghana) who have dedicated the next two years to working at missionaries at Nixon Memorial Methodist Hospital in Segbwema.  They are doing wonderful work there at the hospital.  We enjoyed getting to know them while we were there and will enjoy hearing what more they do during their stay there!  We also could not have made it through the trip without all of their help!  Here I am with their family...

None of the above photos had my mom in them, so here is one of her!  She was a really great sport to travel with me to the other side of the world and live with no running water, electricity, and very bad food for four weeks!!  Here is her enjoying a beautiful day at Number 2 River Beach...we made a quick trip to the most gorgeous beach ever before we flew out of Freetown.  It was a well deserved day of relaxation after our time in Segbwema.

If you want to see more photos from our trip, here is a link to Picasa (sorry the photos don't all have captions yet, one of these days I'll get to it....):  

http://picasaweb.google.com/karengeckhart/SierraLeonePictures

Our First Post!

Hello from the Wagstaffs!!

Thanks for stopping by our new blog....  We 

will be using this to try to keep everyone up to date on what is going on in our lives here.

  

Since I finally arrived, we have mostly been 

working on the house trying to get it fixed up! Before I got here, Jeremiah had the wood floors refinished, a new roof put on, installed new appliances in the kitchen, and many more things!  

Right now, our big project is fixing up our bathroom.  We thought it would be an easy little project, but boy was that wrong...  We have the wallpaper peeled and a fresh coat of paint on the walls, trim, ceiling, and shelves.  Now, Jeremiah is going to be working on some rewiring to put in a vent fan, a new light, and a new outlet.  He also has to install the new (very pretty) pedestal sink and faucet.  My contributions to the bathroom remodeling have mostly been finding good decorations! :)  I will add before and after photos once we finish up!

Little is adapting very well to her new life with us in her new home!  The first week she would not touch her dog food at all, but she is back to her normal gobbling up of all the dog food and begging for all the scraps!  She knows exactly who to look at with her big eyes and it works on him every time!!  She has also gotten to go on lots of walks around the beautiful neighborhood!!  Her favorite spot is to sit on the back of the sofa that has two windows looking over the backyard....she can snooze, but still be on alert when a squirrel might enter the yard.

In other news, the Camry hit a milestone yesterday....100,000 miles.  It happened to be right on that number when it was parked in the driveway, so I thought that it was worthy of a picture to commemorate the moment.  

Anyway, I'll sign off now and we'll post more later!