Randoms

The swing set is OFFICIALLY done. Seriously. We put the decorative/not-functional-in-any-way dormers onto the roof, and now it's finished. Yay!


Caleb is enjoying learning new skills.

He LOVES the picnic table, and wants to sit there and eat as much as possible.

I somehow got the broom to stand up straight all on it's own. I wasn't even trying to, THAT'S how awesome I am.

And Caleb was looking cute yesterday, walking around with his hands in his pockets. He is getting so big and looking older all the time, and I'm not ready for it.
He also actually looked at the camera and smiled normally for once. Amazing.

My garden is making me sad. :(

It's true--I've lost the joy and enthusiasm I previously possessed concerning my garden. I think the problem is that I killed most of my plants, and I'm having a little trouble getting past that. See, with all the 'water leak' troubles we had, I had the most stressful week, probably, of my life. So I needed a way to wind down, so the afternoon after we went to the zoo and we were waiting for the first plumber to come, I decided it was time to transplant my seedlings into the garden beds.

This was a BAD idea. VERY bad.

But why, you ask? Well, because it got COLD again. And it was very rainy, and cloudy, and not warm enough to help the plants get used to their new surroundings. And, I didn't have them outside long enough to acclimate. And, they probably weren't big enough. And, I don't know. But it didn't work.

Here's what they looked like the day I did it--nice, right??



And here is what they look like now.
Two marigolds dead, the yellow squash plant dead, BOTH cantaloupes dead, and I still don't know if the broccoli and cauliflower are going to make it or not.

I think I'll cry.

The Water Leak of 2010

Kenn here on what has now become my wife's blog... I thought I'd lay out what happened with our leak.

January -
In January we got a large water bill for $156 (normally ~$80). We also had some leakey toilets and so we figured that was the culprit so we rushed to fix them. We used 23,000 gallons that month, which is actually a reasonable number if you have 3 leaky toilets.

Monday -
Then came February's bill last Monday night (I check it online) and we had used 30,000 in month, and that was from 1/17 - 2/16, and we fixed the leaky toilets on 2/4 or 2/5, so it was still possible that it was the toilets.

After speaking to the city Utility Manager we were told that yes it could be the toilets, but they would send someone out to check the meter in person and verify it's operation. In cedar Park they have a transmitter inside the meter box that allows the meter reader to literally drive by the house to pick up the reading.. It's pretty cool actually.

Sure enough they left the infamous note from the city "May have a possible leak." ::Chandler Bing voice:: Could you BE any more helpful?

Then began the STRESS... the most stress I've ever faced as a homeowner. Is it in the slab? is it outside? Where is the water going? Is someone stealing it? Can we use the water have now paid for to put in a pool?

Wednesday
I had a plumber come out on Wednesday night to see if he could find it, and his lack of equipment and knowledge prevented him from doing so, but he didn't charge me so it could've been worse, so the stress did not lift, if anything it got worse. However, with his help we did narrow it down to the cold side. Which didn't really help much in terms of locating it, but it was something. At this point, I felt it was between the meter and the house outside, or at least I was hoping it was.

Saturday
Saturday morning came and another plumber came with really nice listening equipment and was able to rule out most of the house and the loudest he heard the noise was in the laundry room, and that was because that is where the main comes into the home inside the wall.

So he decided to rule out the exterior portion of the home by digging out the portion of the line by the meter and the portion where it first comes to the home. The leak was FOUND right where the main line switched from PVC to copper just before it T's off for the first water spigot outside. $500-$600 later... we have water.

Here are some photos.

The broken pipe
They had to tear out some bushes.. I replanted them later that day.

The final repair.

I'm a sucker for a giveaway

Especially when said giveaway is for something that I had JUST seen, and was JUST thinking, "man, I'd love one of those."

My friend Emily, over on Emmy Mom (and she really is my friend, we were roommates in college) is hosting a giveaway for a gift card to MikaRose. MikaRose is a company that has dresses, shirts, and skirts all tailored toward a more modest way of dressing. Their dresses are seriously pretty, and even though none of them will look good on me, I want to give it a try anyways.

So this blog post is a shameless plug in order to get 2 more entries into Em's drawing. :D hehe hehe hehe

Trip to the Zoo a.k.a. Family Reunion??

I know it's not really a family reunion, but since I am constantly calling my kids monkeys then it kind of makes sense, right?? :)

We went to the Waco Zoo, and it was all us Joy-School-ers, but Kenn took the day off and came with so, so we kind of did our own thing.

Here's the gang! (l-r) Lily, Kloey, Carlie, Garrett, Caleb, Bryn, Beckett, and Isabel

Does anyone else find it slightly creepy that Caleb and the monkey have the same expression??

This sloth was just funny, and look! I'm in a picture, too! (and none of those, 'well, which is which' jokes, thank you very much)

Beckett and Lily, checking out the playground at the zoo

Ok, I know everyone has seen pictures of all these animals before, but you haven't seen THESE pictures of THESE animals. They deserve their time to shine, too. And plus, check out this giraffe. He was like, RIGHT THERE. It was fabulous. :)

Hello Elephant!!! I love you!!!

Cute shot of my Beckett-man. :)

Ok, the lions were kind of boring, but this guy was asleep RIGHT next to the window, and look at those paws! They could take your head off! He's a killer, alright...

Speaking of killers, this turkey kept acting like it was gonna attack at any moment.

And who doesn't love an orangutan drinking from a plastic bottle? They looked kind of sad, though. Made me feel bad that I paid money to keep them locked in a cage.

Oooh, Kimodo Dragon. Caleb kept hissing at it and asking if it breathed fire.

New friend! But which is which?? ;)

Awww, a lovely family picture to commemorate our day at the zoo. Such a perfect specimen of affectionate family life.

Some sunshine with the rain

So even though I'm stressed and worried to the max right now, I realized I should post a more recent picture of the swing set. We got a few little things added on. ;)

Caleb is loving it, and I gotta say, I love it, too. We do actually still need to add some small things-- the telescope, the tic-tac-toe board, some decorative dormer things on the roof, and safety handles on the ladder--but those shouldn't take long. It's cool, right?? And we love how it makes the backyard feel more structured and useful. Totally worth it. :)

And Caleb already asked to eat lunch out at his picnic table, but then it started to rain while I was getting lunch ready.

Oh well, we're taking him to the zoo tomorrow. He can't really complain.

One of these things is not like the other...

Or maybe two. But one of them is definitely worse than the other. This is our water usage for the past year. That really tall line, the one that goes up to 30,000??? That would be our current bill for Jan 16-Feb 16. Yah, the previous month was pretty big, too, but we thought it was because we had leaking toilets. So we fixed them. And then THIS happened.

YIKES.

Apparently, we have a major leak somewhere on the property that is wasting tons and tons of water on a daily basis, and we have the almost $200 bill to prove it.

A professional "leak-finder" is coming tomorrow afternoon to hunt down the culprit for us. In all honesty, I hope it's right underneath the house somewhere, because then it will definitely be covered by our homeowners insurance.

I don't really like right now. :(

More Caleb-isms

Oh my goodness, Caleb is getting so hilarious. The things that he says sometimes... we don't know where he gets it from. Tonight, for example:

Caleb, roaring and growling: "I'm a dragon!"

Me: "Ok, dragon, eat your dinner."

Caleb, with a fierce facial expression, almost yelling: "Dragons don't eat dinner!"

(insert laughter here)

Then after he was done, Kenn was saying something about waiting for his computer to boot. Caleb said "what? a boot?" and Kenn and I started laughing, wondering if he is secretly Canadian or if he's just been watching too much of the Olympics.

(insert more laughter here)

Wacky child.

This is his hair after being out in the snow in his cap all day. Nice, right?

The Swing-set Saga, Part 1

So, I suppose calling it a 'saga' isn't entirely accurate, because getting this bad boy together really hasn't been so bad. It certainly hasn't been as awful as all of you "oh, hire someone to do it for you" people told us. ;)

We picked up all the pieces on Monday night. Tuesday night, Kenn and Caleb sorted all of the hardware pieces and then Kenn and I counted them all after the boys were in bed. LOTS of hardware, but we had everything except for 1 C-ring. Not too shabby. :)

Then we had to sort through all the wood pieces and make sure we had all those. I ended up doing that on Thursday during naptime. It actually didn't take as long as I thought it would.

So Friday night, to start things off, we did Step 1, which is putting together this cute little picnic table.



Saturday morning was when we really got to work. Our good friend Rob came over to help Kenn get this bad boy together (he also helped us get it home from Costco, because HE owns a truck and WE do not). They got the main frame together on the driveway, and then carried it over their heads into the backyard.

12:15 pm-->



These frames for the roof were a pill, because the wood was super thin and kept stripping when they were trying to get the screws in, but they did it. And Kenn was even still happy. They also built the ladder and put the roof supports onto the main frame.

3:18 pm--->


Hi Rob! Thanks again for helping, you are fantastic!



Still getting those roof-frames up.

3:45 pm-->


The roof is on! Looks good, huh? Also, a bunch of edge pieces and framing pieces were added on.

5:27 pm-->


The super-cute bay window

5:27 pm-->

The fan decoration and the hole for the bubble window.

5:27 pm-->


Where Kenn is sitting will stay the opening for the ladder, next to it is where the tic-tac-toe things will go.

5:28 pm-->


Beckett and Caleb did great yesterday, all things considered. It was a long day for everyone, as I was trying to help Kenn and Rob by getting pieces together for each step so they were ready to keep moving. The boys enjoyed sitting at the picnic table, though. And Caleb was SOOOOOOO excited about the swing-set, especially once we allowed him to actually climb on it. For some reason, I didn't get any pictures of him on it yet. Enjoy these instead.

5:55 pm-->



Basically together! The beam that the swings attach to is together, but sitting on the lawn waiting to be attached. The rock wall is also together, and in the garage. There are some dormer pieces that will be attached to the roof to make it prettier, but we're missing some of those pieces so they'll have to wait.

What do you think?? :)

done about 6:30 pm-->

I have ESP. or something.

I totally knew that the carrots were about to come up, and THAT is why I took a picture the day before. Cause the next morning... there they were! Carrots! Good thing, too, cause I planted those things almost 3 weeks ago and hadn't seen a thing.



These are the spinach plants, and they look so good! They just keep pluggin' away and getting bigger.


And the peas! Can you see how many there are?? See if you can spot all 9. :)



And finally, my babies. My sweet little seedlings that I grew from scratch. Not much longer, team, and we can move you all outside, into the lovely compost/peat moss/vermiculite garden beds that are waiting for you.

Day 26!!!--->