April-May update

It's been a very month.

We put together a play set for the kids. It took the two of us about nine hours over two days to put it together. Two of that was just labeling all the wood and parts and putting them in separate piles - which really sped things up. Both of us got a real bad sunburn out of that but the kids really loved it.

Then I took the second row seats out of the minivan and got wood for a new gate (see below) then went to WalMart and picked up a new picnic table and umbrella for outside where the old play set was. The kids really love eating outside now.

We got the DVD player in the minivan and the kids do love it. The problem there is with the wireless headphones. Lexi has a tendency to pull them off and back on but when she does that she keeps hitting the on/off or the volume wheel. I am considering getting a normal set of headphones for her.

We took the Corolla over and signed it over to Carol so she as a newer car now :)

We bit off more than we could chew the last couple of weeks. I built and installed a new gate in the back yard to replace the ones that were rotting. And I cleared off the counter tops and sealed the granite. We just finished both of those today.

I am also trying to clean up my desk area and rewire it. We are having the floor replaced on the 21st and the 22nd and I we will be swapping desk so I want to get all the power strips, USB hubs and routers that are attached to my desk attach them to the wall so it will just be a matter of switching desk and plugging everything back in. Then when we get Chris' fathers old roll top desk (old as in the printer drawer has a slot to feed a dot matrix printer ) we will only have to move/remove one desk instead of two.

Right now I am typing this outside while the kids are playing in the sandbox. The weather is a little warm but there is plenty of shade and a small breeze makes it comfortable.

I will try and get some pictures of the kids on their swing set posted tonight. :)

Got a new minivan

Well Chris and I have talked about it off and on for over a year and with this years tax refund and stock I sold at work we put down a down payment on a 2007 Toyota Sienna LE (no pictures yet but I will take some as soon as possible). The kids love it! And they will love it more when we get the dvd player put in.

I am already planning my first road trip in it :)

Got rid of the stump finally - no luck on the floor

I rented a large chainsaw from Home Depot this weekend and finally cut down the stump in our back yard. It was a five foot diameter seedless/fruitless mulberry (that's right - five feet) that was there when we bought the house but it had a split down the middle going all the way to the roots. After talking with several tree places we picked one to cut down the tree but left a waist high stump figuring we would make a picnic table out of it (that never happened). I was able to cut it down to just below ankle height.

Hopefully this year I will rent a stump grinder to get rid of the rest. If not I will try and make a large planter out of it (and watch the kids destroy it).

Chris found all the original paperwork for our floor last week and has called around to see if we can get a replacement. Unfortunately they don't make our brand/color/locking type anymore so she is trying to call the local floor/builder warehouses to see if they have any old stock. If not we have to get back with the insurance and replace our old floor. I hope we don't have to do that as its a pain to move all our stuff out of the den.

The "Joy" of an older house - day out with thomas

After the second flooding of our playroom we decided to have a camera run down our sewer line to see what was causing it to stop up so easily (we needed to have it roto rootered four times in the last three years). When we got the camera down we saw that the bottom of the 40 year old cast iron pipes were gone. Fortunately the sewer line comes out diagonally across our front yard so the plumbers think they can run the kitchen line outside the house and connecting it in the front yard (as opposed to jackhammering up the floor across the entire length of the house).

I took Nate to a day out with Thomas Friday and he loved it. I posted pictures in the photo gallery - enjoy.

Kids are doing Better

After I did my last post Lexi got sick with a stomach virus and could not keep anything down for a day. Once she started to feel better Nate got sick and could not keep anything down for two days. Lesson learned: when you child has not had anything for a day and a half no matter how bad the cough - cough syrup is a bad idea! Poor Nate went instantly drunk.

Fortunately I was able to work from home to help out with the kids.

This weekend my mom and dad came up and Me and Chris went and got her a new computer: A 15" MacBook Pro. I am currently working on getting all of Chris information off of her old computer and on to her mac.

floor flooded again

The long story: about 18 months ago we put in laminate wood floor in the house then last year the air conditioner condensate line clogged up (our AC unit is in the middle of the house and drains into the sewer line) and then the water fell down into the air intake area and under the floor. We ended up replacing the floor in the play room.

Well last week the sewer clogged and while we were doing the laundry and the water came up the condensate line and flooded under the floor again. Well we got the condensate line fixed and the insurance adjuster came by and was very helpful. We got some tips on how to keep the air intake area from flooding under the floor again (spray insulation - I will try and do that today) and when to run the soaker hoses outside (twice a week for one hour).

Hopefully today I will get to work on cleaning the wood fence - we will see.