Friday, October 31, 2008

Rule #5: Tigers are wild, unpredictable... and cute.



Evan had his first halloween, and paraded as the most ferocious of all cats, an adorable tiger. He played the part pretty well. At Grandpa Guy's house he was all smiles and purrs, but soon decided he was tired and let us all know it.


After sleeping through our next visit he woke up to give mostly sullen looks of interrupted rest. Finally he woke up a little more to watch some TV at our last stop. And even though he was well past due for some milk he turned his nose up at it until after we got home.

I don't know about y'all but I always preferred to horde my candy throughout the year, and setting aside some candy to keep forever as purely sentimental staleness. So to help instill this I'll think I'll put away his candy from his first halloween (I mean he can't eat it yet anyway) in his baby box, and maybe pass on some of my ancient stores.


Rule #4: Rocks should be free.

I'm putting in a rock "garden" all along the north and east sides of the house. Consequently, I need alot of rocks. Originally I planned on just stealing them from the mountains, I mean, money doesn't grow on trees but rocks do, and not just on trees, rocks grow pretty much everywhere.

So anyway, rocks were 15$ per 3 gallon bucket at J&L, alot more than free. (But then everything at J&L is alot more than free...) Later I found some bags at Home Depot that were much more reasonable at 3$ per large bag of golf ball sized river rocks, but then I saw them...

On the end of the isle was a mysterious pile of larger river rocks, baseball to grapefruit size, just what I was looking for. They were on a decaying pallet wrapped in a sort of chicken wire. No signs, buckets, bags or anything else near the pile to indicate how much they were or how they were even sold. And since winter is setting on, the garden section was associate-free.

I asked someone back in the store and they sent two self proclaimed 'hired muscle' associates to help me. Neither had any idea how much the rocks cost, though one thought he vaguely recalled them being sold individually for around 1.50$ a piece! I thought he was joking, that would've been around 500$ for the pile, or so. So they got on their talkers and no one in garden was in the store at the time, and the guy covering garden had no idea, but the manager had some interesting knews. She said they were looking for someone who wanted the whole pallet, and they'd sell it to me for just 20$. Perfect.

I had borrowed my dad's pilot and they fork lifted the rocks up to the back of it. And when I thought they were going to load the pallet into the back, they started placing each rock in the back one at a time by hand. Twenty minutes later there was a pile of rocks in the back. And that's pretty much the whole story, I paid money for a pile of rocks.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Rule #3: Hands are a privilege

This is my son, Evan. Just look at that face! I think I was trying to get him to smile, and this was the look he gave me. Every time I see it I just giggle. My boy is so expressive. I am amazed at what he is able to do in his three short months of life.


He has found his fist recently, in the past few weeks. I love to see him discover that they are his, he still has trouble with controlling them, but he is constantly bringing them to his mouth and sucking the daylights out of them. It's adorable. I'm hoping with this new discovery he will connect his hand movements and the scratches on his face. I'd love to leave his mittens off permanently so he can explore even more. But when he draws blood, what else am I to do...my hands are tied (so to speak).

He also LOVES to sit up. Not that he can do it on his own, but if he had his way I'm sure I'd stay on the floor and support him all day long. He loves to see the world from this view! We practice sitting up, I guide him by his arms when he's lounging on his boppy and we sit. When I stop guiding him he lifts his arms up and gives me this look...and if I don't respond quick enough he starts giving me a talking to. Not crying, just noises, along with a "look" and I know what he means. So we start practicing again. I'm a pushover when it comes to my baby...and I think he's going to figure that out pretty soon. But honestly, how can I say no to this face?


Rule #2: You can't teach an old house new tricks


This is Alex installing an outlet in our kitchen, with the help of Dave (not shown).

As most of you know, Alex and I recently moved into our "new-to-us" house. We love many things about this house, the hardwood floors we refinished (that look fabulous if I do say so myself), the yard, the enormous walnut tree...the list goes on. And while we love the charm and character our old home has...the list of "updates" keeps getting longer and longer. We "updated" the kitchen outlet to accommodate our needs, only to find out that we need to add yet another outlet for our updated gas range. But that's not a big deal, outlets are fairly easy to come by when you have two handy men as fathers...teaching Alex every step of the way how to improve our home. But we have been in our home for almost two weeks and we still do not have our washer and dryer hooked up. And not for lack of trying either. We needed extension hoses to connect our water supply, needed to extend the duct/lint connection, connect the gas and install yet another outlet. Tonight at last I thought we had done it. I thought everything was complete and I was finally going to be able to clean the burp cloths. That's what we really needed. We had already done one load of laundry at my in-laws last week and I have been holding out this week knowing we were going to hook up the dryer soon! We've been using pre-used burp cloths for two days now...ones that were only mildly dirty, or had dried enough for us not to care anymore. (Don't judge my parenting..he was just going to spit up on them again anyway).

At 9:15 tonight, my loving Step-Dad Dave left after helping install the last roadblock to laundry freedom. Then Alex turns on the water....

...and quickly turns it off again shouting for a towel. *sigh*

We inspect the water hoses, made sure thread tape was everywhere possible, tightened beyond belief and try it again. Cold water...on. No leak. A celebration in my head starts....next up, Hot water....still leaks!!! How is it possible?!?!? There are a number of maybes, maybe it's this, maybe it's that...but the celebration comes to an abrupt end.

*We only use cold water for our laundry, maybe we can still clean the burp cloths!! I think desperately.

So, we turn off the hot water and start the laundry, Alex is skeptical this will work. No leaking initially, then suddenly the hot water hose is leaking!?!? They're connected? What!!

If only that was the end of this sad tale.

I drain the water from the washer...and a few feet away water starts overflowing in the doorway. *sigh*

A gas repairman accidentally kicked our drain out last week, and the seal is now broken...one more thing to be "updated."

But what about the burp cloths?! Two days of pre-used is one thing...but three is just pushing my limit! So, I had no other choice. I went old school. That's right, I hand washed them all in my bathtub. Since our dryer is functional I didn't have to line dry them all...but it has made me appreciate those who lived in that era. It wasn't particularly difficult, just tedious and my hands were awfully dry by the end.

Ahh, the joys of home ownership.




Tuesday, October 28, 2008

My Blog List

I'm new at this blogging thing, and I can't seem to figure a few things out. I'm sitting here at work completely stumped. I was trying to make my blog list, and to those of you who have made your blogs private...I can't seem to add you to my list. I don't want you to think that I've ignored or overlooked you, I just don't know what I'm doing. And why do some of the blogs have that annoying orange symbol by their names and others don't? I don't want it there at all...sigh. (This is one of the reasons I didn't want to get into blogging...too many options and me with no know-how) So, if there is anyone out there with some answers, I'd love to be enlightened on this blogging world. Thanks!

*side note* Look at me, started blogging an hour ago and I already have two posts! I can feel the fever comin' on!

Rule #1: Persistence pays off...

After much "encouragement" from family and friends, Alex and I have decided it is time to start blogging. I guarantee nothing as far as the frequency of posts, but I'd like to shoot for at least one a month. We'll see if I get the blogging fever like so many of you and post more often than that. So to everyone who was more or less begging me to start a blog, congratualations, you've won. At least in this case persistence was effective.

*Pictures will be coming later...I'm starting this at work and don't have acess to any of my cute family at the moment.