My kitchen -- HELP!

A couple of months ago we noticed water leaking into our basement freezer room intermittently and guessed it had something to do with the kitchen pipes since it would leak when we used the kitchen sinks and dishwasher.  We recently had a leak fixed from the upstairs bathroom that was leaking through the kitchen ceiling and so we were very disgruntled about having another problem to deal with so soon.  The first leak was fairly inexpensive to fix but this one is a different story.  Advanced Restoration came to check it out and the verdict included ripping out the wood floor and breaking up the concrete in order to access the pipes.  They started Monday morning and I am now on day 5 without a kitchen.  To make things worse, Rick was  out of town and so I was flying solo trying to keep 7 children fed and happy and out of the way of workmen.  Day one wasn't too bad -- they just ripped out all of the cabinets, counters, and island and then left for the day.  I ended up having last minute job assignments and so I worked a good part of the day leaving poor Janika in charge.

Day two was horrible!  That jack-hammer was so deafening that you couldn't go anywhere in the house to escape the noise.  I finally begged the kids to go play next door.  They were hiding in the studio.  They said, "But we are pretending that there is an earthquake!"  I guess we should all try to be like a kid and just bask in the adventure, huh?  I made a make-shift kitchen in the basement by bringing down all of our dishes and our little microwave and setting up the ping pong table to eat on.  Janika and I had made several meals ahead which could then be microwaved and I bought a bunch of easy to cook food.  We used some paper/plastic dishes and ended up washing the rest in the bathroom sink.  The water was turned off part of the time and so I had to raid our storage water.  The jack-hammer stopped long enough for Jenna to get a pretty good nap in and then we all left for several hours to get out of the house.

We went to Fiesta Fun and I paid for the five youngest to play in the soft-play area ($2.50 per kid) but it has really gone down hill since I have been there last.  Half of the equipment was  broken down and there really wasn't much for them to do.  The older kids played the over-priced video games with their own money.  We would have been better off just letting them play at a McDonalds playground!   We also went out to eat at Denny's since we noticed the "kids eat free on Tuesday" sign and that turned out to be a GREAT deal!   Our plumber was just leaving for the day when we got home and so we went swimming and then watched a movie.   Here are a few pictures from the day...

   The calm before the storm!

Our make-shift basement kitchen...

The kids were really excited to eat in the basement -- they thought that was the coolest thing ever! 

Fiesta Fun.  Janika was using it for a dance studio...