New Dishwasher

He said...

Hello again. We're still alive. As you can see, we've kind of slacked on the blog writing lately. I hope we still have a few followers that care to read it still.

Anyways, last night I installed our new dishwasher. Our old one was kaputz. It never worked even after Mitch spent a few hours in January helping me install it so we decided to buy a new one. And because Mitch showed me how to do it the first time, I was able to do it all by myself the second time (I sound like a little kid). I was pretty proud of myself.

Here are  a few pictures:

Hooking up the direct wiring.

The finished product....

with dishes inside ready to clean.

Home Repairs: Taking out the Old Box Freezer

He said...

One of the "lovely" perks of our new house was an old box freezer left in our storage room. It would have been really nice if it was functional and clean, but it was neither of those descriptions. We wondered why the last owners left it in the house until we realized it was too wide to take out of the storage room. The freezer measured about 25 inches wide and the door to the storage room was only 23.5 inches wide at the widest measurement.

After measuring the freezer again, I thought it might be a chance that I could get the freezer out if I took off the back coil. I tried to do that but the coil and coolant lines were still attached. Even with cutting the coolant lines and taking off the entire air compressor assembly, the outside frame of the freezer was still 24 inches wide, still too big.

Luckily my parents had a sawzalll that we borrowed about a month ago. The plan was to cut the freezer in pieces to get it out the door. I was able to cut off the front panel of the frame which made the freezer just narrow enough to fit through the door with about 1/4" clearance on both sides. I let out a huge cheer!

What I thought would be a hour long turned into 3 hours. The freezer is now sitting in pieces on the driveway waiting to be hauled off to the county dump. That will have to be another weekend project.

Positioning the freezer to carry up the stairs.

carrying the freezer and parts up the stairs.

Preschool - Valentine Day Party

She said...

Monday Austin had his first Valentine Day Party at Preschool and he LOVED it. :)

Austin loves most holidays anyways but for some reason he has always had an affinity for Valentine's Day.

1st Official Day of Preschool

She said...

We were going grocery shopping a few weeks ago and noticed the "Preschool Registration" sign outside Country Loft and thought we should look into it assuming that they were registering for the next school year (because Preschools are crazy and do that sort of thing - though I am sure it probably isn't just preschool tat does it). It was only about 3 blocks from our house so we figured it might be worth a shot. We found out their prices are pretty decent and they would get us in immediately. I didn't know if I was ready for that or not but Austin was super excited and we decided to work things out so he could go. They even offered us a "free day" to try it out and see how we liked it. I took Austin last Wednesday (or was it the Wednesday before?) for his "free" day and he loved it! We signed him up starting the first of February but because he has been on again/off again with a cold I kept him home Wednesday. I didn't think it was fair to the other kids or his teacher (she is pregnant) to take him if he was sick. He has been acting a little better and he has been so excited to go so this morning I got up earlier than normal to try and get started on work before having to leave.

There is no such thing as separation anxiety with this child! Both on his free day and today he ran right up and in, hung up his things and started playing. They said he did really well last time and I am confident he will continue to do well. He really does like being able to get out of the house and be around other people so it will be a good thing for him since he has always been cooped up with me at home.Right now every time he meets someone new or sees someone he hasn't seen for a while he likes to tell them, "I am signed up for Preschool now!" Can't you tell he's pretty excited?

I did take a few pictures before sending him off this morning:

 He loved this picture of himself. Mr. Tude!

 I even took a moment to take one with him. :)

For his age group (3-year olds) we have him in the MWF class from 9:-11:30. I guess if all goes well then we will just keep him there next fall as well. (I'm hoping all goes well) They use the Lehi School District Kindergarten curriculum to prepare the children to acclimate well when they do enter Kindergarten so that's reassuring as well, at least they are using some sort of curriculum right?

Jack Sparrow

She said...

Yesterday morning Austin and I were in the Work/Play room trying to get started on our day and we heard this scratching noise in the other room. I followed the noise and realized that there was a bird stuck in our dryer vent tube. I ended up having to pull out the dryer and unhook both ends of the dryer tube. I put a pillowcase with some bred inside around the end of the dryer tube but that bird would NOT come out. I was afraid to remove the pillowcase completely and have this bird fly straight into my face (honestly I kept having flashbacks to the Alfred Hitchcock classic "The Birds" and didn't know what would happen)! David was at work obviously and I tried to reach in and grab the bird (I think it was a sparrow since I did see him sitting in the tube at one point) but when I would try and reach in for him he would work himself up inside the tube and sit up there on something, but he couldn't climb out the top and wouldn't climb out the bottom.

This is the first time I attached the pillowcase and tried to coax the bird out.

I really didn't want the bird to die while in the tube and since David couldn't help and I couldn't do it David contacted the Elder's Quorum in the ward to see if anyone would be home and could help. One of the brothers called his wife, who called another sister in the ward who's husband works the night shift and would be home during the day. Unfortunately because he works at night he was sleeping during the day so his wife ended up coming over with her brother-in-law. Between the three of us we took the tube out of the wall and tried to shake the sparrow out into the pillowcase. That bird was hanging on for dear life and refused to come out so we ended up carrying the whole tube outside and shook it until the bird came out and flew away.

And here's the war sister's brother-in-law with the pipe after having shaken "Jack Sparrow" free.

After several hours of listening to that poor bird calling for help and scratch at the tube I was so glad to see him fly free. And when David got home he took Austin to Lowe's to get a vent cover in the hopes of preventing another little bird from getting stuck in the future.

With this experience I am grateful for several things.
1. Since there was no vent cover I am grateful the bathroom is still unfinished and we could remove the pipe so we could get the bird out.
2. I am grateful it wasn't laundry day.
3. I am grateful someone was able to come over and help.
4. I am grateful the poor bird didn't die. 
5. And I must say I am so grateful it was a little sparrow and not a big rat! Can you imagine what that would have been like? Ew!

P.S. Austin named him Jack Sparrow while we were telling David some of the story. :)

Welcome to our Home Part II

She said...

We have been working on a few more projects to finish up the rooms I hadn't posted pictures of last time, including getting blinds up. Our front room blinds aren't up yet but should be within a week or so. We had ordered some but they came looking a very different color than intended. Luckily we were able to work something out with Blinds.com and we have some replacement blinds coming later this week or early next week.

As for the rest of the house...

Our front room:

Our kitchen:

Our bedroom:

And now you have basically seen it all. There have been little additions here and there but nothing that changes the previous pictures too much.

Pocket Door Part 2

He said...

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about our pocket door that needed parts. A nice person at Stanley sent me a free part that I thought was going to fix it, but the wheels were too large and it wouldn't fit on the door track, so I was back at square one. I did some more internet searching. Still no luck.

We took the piece that was too big to Home Depot to find something similar with smaller wheels. While there, the door guy asked what we were doing, so we told him. He first took us to the door hardware section (which we just came from and didn't find a piece ourselves) and he couldn't find the piece either. Then he asked us why hadn't we just changed the whole track. We said all the tracks we looked at were like $60 and we didn't want to spend that much. He took us back to his track section and found a track for $20. I was skeptical at first, but conceded and bought it. (At this point, $20 seemed reasonable for a new track and wheels that would fit for sure.)

A couple of nights later (last Monday), after finding a leak in the upstairs ceiling and a water leak in our storage area from all the rain/snow, I finally got to installing the new track. True to form, I ran into some snags and it took longer than I expected. I had to move the dryer away from the wall and take out a few extra screws to lift the door out of the pocket before taking out the old track.

Once I got the door out, the rest was easier. I put in the new track, reinstalled the door, put all the screws back in (most of them) and tried the door. Success! We now have a sliding pocket door to our laundry room/utility room/downstairs bathroom. Yeah!

Friends

She said...

Last Monday my friend (and old roommate) Michelle and her son Jonathan came to stay with us for a few days. He husband was attending a workshop in Salt Lake City and she and Jonathan came down as well.

Unfortunately I still had to work in the mornings (especially since I had already taken time off for moving) so we didn't get to spend as much "fun" time with them as we might have liked, but the boys still had a lot of fun together.The first day they came and then left to run an errand and Austin was so disappointed. He took a chair, pulled it over to the kitchen window that looks out onto the driveway and would just stand there looking out and asking when they would be back.

It really was fun to have them come visit, especially since I have not "seen" Michelle since we lived in our first home in Provo, a few years ago.

It's also a little unfortunate that Michelle and I only really got to talk in the evenings. Unfortunate because then we had little boys to put to sleep, were visited by three groups from our new ward, and both Michelle and I were EXHAUSTED by the time evening rolled around (if we weren't already).

We also caught a couple fun videos of the boys "rocking out" though one afternoon. (note, to those that get this blog update via email: You will need to click on the link to go to the blog entry itself if you want to see the videos.)

Michelle and Jonathan left Thursday morning. Austin tried telling Michelle, "No one else needs you. You should just stay here. Next time you come you need to stay this long!" holding his arms as far apart as they could go. :) Thanks Michelle and Jonathan for visiting and playing with us, and for being patient with my working. :)

Recycling

He said...

Another perk about our new house is recycling. We like to be eco-friendly and were happy to find out that the city provides a full-size recycling bin when they deliver trash cans. Austin loves to do his part too and LOVES to put things in the recycling bin. He gets more excited to recycle than he does to eat ice cream.

To help Austin out, we picked up a smaller trash can to put under our sink as a temporary holding spot of recycling. Jaclyn made vinyl labeling on the Cricut.

We told Austin he could empty the smaller can into the large one outside each day. He loved the idea! He didn't waste any time and couldn't wait to recycle tonight.

A Win-Win-Win Solution

He said . . .

Our new house isn't as close to a bus stop as our old apartment was. It used to be a 5 min walk to the bus stop and then a 1-hour ride up to downtown Salt Lake with no transfers. It was pretty convenient. Our new place is not as convenient, but still pretty close to bus routes. However, the closest bus routes are local routes or routes that require a transfer and thus take more time than I wanted.

I checked a few more schedules and found a solution--biking about 4 miles to the Thanksgiving Point stop and then get on the express bus there. At first I was dreading biking 4 miles (about 20 minutes) in the early morning, but it's actually a win-win-win situation.

The first win is that I get 40 min of exercise each day I ride my bike. It's a pretty flat route so I don't have to climb major hills like the hill from the MTC to behind the Provo Temple or the hill up to the Mt. Timpanogos Temple. I've been thinking how to get more exercise and this is a great solution.

The second win is that I continue to use the bus and save money. Because of available money in the budget, my work picked up the entire cost of the bus passes this year. We figured we are saving about $150 a month in gas/insurance/registration by having only one car.

The third win is that I get home sooner than I did when we lived in Pleasant Grove. Even with the 20-minute bike ride home, I get home about 15 min earlier because Thanksgiving Point is one of the first stops and Pleasant Grove was at the end of the line.