So many things...so little time

It's been a crazy week, with the holiday and the snow storms. I love the fact that the "Blizzard of 2010" dumped a whopping 1.5 inches on my driveway, but this last "little" storm on Sunday left us with 10 inches to clear off Monday morning. Yeah, so glad we hunkered down for the big one. I'm sure the kids were hoping for a snow day on Monday, but then they'd just complain come spring and no makeup day for not having a snow day. You just can't win that one.

I have a ton of pictures on my camera to download and post here, but that will have to wait until a little later. Here is a list of things that I need to blog about (just in case I don't get to them):

• Beatles Lover's 17th birthday
• Fun, fun, fun movie time after Thanksgiving with Game Boy
• Snow and more snow
• Christmas decorations making a return to the living room
• Dexter the Xter having more clutch problems (but it's not as bad as it sounds -- thank heavens!)

Yeah, that's about it. Hoping everyone in the path of the snow is staying safe.

Thanksgiving

I have so much to be thankful for this year, I don't think I could start listing everything. I'd leave too many important things out.

So, I'm just going to say "Thank you".


Have a wonderful holiday, everyone.

Wordless Wednesday (once again on Thursday)

Psycho Wunderhund and the snow

Here's a picture of Psycho Wunderhund's dog run with all of the mud and snow. Poor thing. Glad it's not me back there. He will be getting a Dogloo for Christmas, if we can determine he's past the puppy stage of chewing everything in sight.

The sun'll come out tomorrow...maybe

It's has snowed. A serious, major snowstorm. 10-12 inches of the fluffy white stuff, only it wasn't so fluffy. It was wet and heavy. Not the normal Utah power. But the first major snow of the year is rarely the beautiful stuff that truly is the great snow on Earth.

Sunday morning we awoke to it everywhere. Mr. Perfect shoveled Dexter out so we could go to church. He also helped Sweet Neighbor Lady with her driveway. After church, it was apparent that it wouldn't be sticking around too long (another quality of the first major storm of the year), but we just heard that there should be more coming. Yeah, us. There is a major blizzard warning from North Dakota through Colorado and on into California. Yes, we are in that path. Hunkering down should be an Olympic sport.

Mr. Perfect put up the first round of Christmas lights the night before, when it was just cold and very windy. He's such a trooper.

 Okay, so that is the pile after shoveling the driveway, but it's still a significant amount.

I just love this picture, that's why it's here.

So, what's the best thing to do when trying to stay warm and out of the messy, messy white stuff? Enjoy a pot of elk stew.

Beatles' Lover in Annie

Beatles Lover is showing off her acting, singing, and dancing chops as Miss Hannigan in Annie at Cottonwood High School this weekend. Mr. Perfect and Most Happy Girl caught opening night, and it was fabulous. It's a little scary how well she plays a mean drunk. Come see the show. All of the cast does a great job!

Wordless Wednesday (a day late)

Mr. Perfect's new phone

Mr. Perfect has a new toy. We finally broke down and bought him a Motorola Droid X. He is a happy, happy boy. We stayed up until after midnight setting it up. And he's already used more data than I get in my entire package. My phone has just a cheapy data package because I don't really know how to use all of that fun stuff yet -- but I'm sure I'll learn.

Picture dump from Page Ballooning Rigatta

This will be mostly pictures with very little commentary.

Loves to Travel Sis in her crew jacket. Very cool

You have to hold on tight, or things will get away from you quickly.

Horseshoe Bend overlook. Loves to Travel Sis hated how close we were willing to get to the edge. Kind of strange for a woman who loves to travel through the skies in a balloon.

This shape is called a tetrahedron.

A few shots from Glen Canyon Dam.

Mr. Perfect was fascinated by these footings.



So, here's our bathroom

As you can see from this picture, our floor is not as bad as the one in the previous post (thank goodness), but it's not far from it.

Here's the toilet in full view. It's a little hard to distinguish the linoleum from the sub-flooring. (Yes, that really is Mr. Perfect's foot. I surprised him this morning. It's a good thing he can be a bit slow moving in the mornings. Please don't tell I told you)

And here's how what the old carpet looks like, because it's not "old" yet in the rest of the bathroom, just by the toilet. But soon, very soon, it will be the old carpet for the whole bathroom, I will only have fond memories of it when I find strange remanets while vacuuming.

Just in case you were wondering, yes, we are getting rid of the butterfly wallpaper and all of the blue trimming.

This is NOT our bathroom

I now have something to be very, very thankful for: our bathroom floor is not this bad! This picture is not from our bathroom, but I couldn't resist sharing it with you all because I did promise a picture. I'll post again soon of what our floor looks like, along with the remains of the carpet.

Wordless Wednesday

Did I mention that Mr. Perfect is, well, perfect?

November has landed with a bang. It has snowed, it is cold, and it the weather isn't going anywhere for a good five months (ya gotta love Utah). On top of that, the last two or three weeks we've noticed that something wasn't right with the furnace. It would heat the house to 63.5, sometimes 64.5, but it wouldn't go any warmer despite being set at 70.

Mr. Perfect said that last year he had to reset it a few times before it started running consistently. This year, nothing doing. We reset it, and it would climb to...wait for it, wait for it...62.5. Brrrr! We even moved the new water heater, thinking that having it so close to the heater, and thus changing the line of the gas escape tubing, might be affecting it. Nothing doing. Still wasn't getting above 65.

Yesterday morning, I climbed out of bed and read the thermostat: 60.5. We couldn't live like this for the entire winter. So, Mr. Perfect called our handy-dandy fix-it guy at 9:30 last night. After a few questions, Mr. Perfect had most of the information he needed to fix the furnace (clean the burner sensor), just not all the details (where the burner sensor lives inside the furnace).

That's why we pay the big bucks for the internet, right? I located a site that had all the details for cleaning a Lennox furnace burner sensor, and thirty minutes later it was a done deal. Guess what the temperature was this morning when I left for work? 69 and still climbing. *sigh*

Don't you just love a man who can get things done? And the hand-dandy fix-it guy won't be coming over to charge us $100 to do it. Actually, we like him a lot and really appreciate the fact that he provided the information we needed over the phone so that we don't have pay him $100 to do it.

A post not for the faint of heart

In the next line of home improvements, we are now tackling the bathroom. Yes, we know that the kitchen isn't finished yet. Yes, we understand that this part of the home project may take the better part of the rest of the year and a good chunk of the beginning of next, but it had to be done.

Why?

Carpet. Yes, you read that correctly: carpet. The previous owners had decided (though no one really knows why) that carpet was a good idea in a bathroom. And not just any carpet. Shag. Tan shag. Around the toilet, too. It had to go.

What we found under the carpet was almost as bad as the carpet. The previous owners had just laid down the carpet over the old, cracked, warped, and rotting linoleum. Couple that with the smell coming from the carpet around the toilet and you understand our dilemma. Picture coming soon.

So now we've decided to wall up the little toilet room from the tub area, re-orient the toilet, wall it in from the master bedroom (along with the sink that's currently part of the master bedroom), add a shower, and create a 3/4 master bath. Then we'll move the sink in big bathroom, add a toilet there, and increase the value of the house because it will then have 2-1/2 complete, functional bathrooms, where now it only has 1-1/2. That extra 1/2 a bath is downstairs in the laundry room. Am I the only one who thinks that's a little weird? Oh well. It's amazing what they did when building track housing in the 1960s.

Go us!

High flying in Page, AZ

We had a great time in Page, AZ with Loves to Travel Sis and her ballooning friends. We crewed the balloon and each had the chance to take a ride in Aerpography (the name of the balloon).

Love this shot of Mr. Perfect with Pilot Man.