AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

The other day I was trying to vacuum. I plugged the vacuum in to the outlet and turned it on. All of the sudden I hear a *pop* and the vacuum stops working and the ceiling fan light goes out. Nothing else on the circuit goes out and all of the breakers in the box were fine. Our friend/electrician has been out twice and can't find the problem. Yeah for old houses.

P.S. I am taking this as a sign that I should stop vacuuming.

Land of the Living

Life has been a little hectic lately. On the 16th we headed up to Utah for Chris and Megan Jackson's wedding at the Bountiful, Utah Temple. It was a beautiful sealing, but an awful long drive. We spent over 20 hours in the car with the baby that weekend. Yuck. The second half of the trip was worse because we had our niece, Andi, with us. It was bad enough having one baby but two was nearly enough to put us over the edge. Luckily, we had some time out of the car and we got to visit with Thad and Brittany and watch Andi and Little Walter play. All in all, I have to say it was a good weekend, despite all of the driving.

As soon as we rolled into Bakersfield we got into the kitchen remodel. This past week we demolished the counter tops, put the new tile in, grouted, installed new blinds, put up new curtains, removed the old appliances, fought with and eventually installed new appliances, put in a new sink and made about a thousand trips to Lowe's. I am still working on the cabinets. Hopefully those will be done by this weekend and I can post finished pictures.

I have a feeling the baby won't be so thrilled when the cabinet doors are back on. Right now he takes the tupperware out of the cabinet and throws it around the kitchen a few times a day. The same thing usually happens with the pots and pans but they are heavier and don't seem to be as much fun. I tried to put up a baby gate to stop him but he just sat by the gate and cried every time I put it up. By crying I don't mean that he just sat their and pouted. Oh no, he had real tears. I guess the baby gate is highly offensive. I felt bad and took it down so it now appears that I wasted money on a baby gate. Oh well.

On top of that we have had work and church responsibilities. I finished my training for my receptionist job at Weight Watchers this week. I am now an official receptionist rather than a trainee. Next Monday I will have my first meeting without my trainer. I thought it would be a super easy job when I signed up but it is turning out to be a little more difficult than I thought. There are a lot of codes to remember and forms to fill out for each meeting. Once I get used to it I am sure it will be easy.

Last, but not least, Walter and I celebrated our third anniversary on the 19th. We spent the day tiling the kitchen. We are quite romantic. We still owe eachother a nice dinner out. I am sure we will get to that one of these days.

The basic point of this post was just to let everyone know that we are still alive. Busy, but alive.







Since you can't live without pictures. Here is a pic of Walter and Andi from last weekend. I don't really think she wanted him touching her toy. Lucky for him, she was a good sport.

Wanna Play?

Things are a bit hectic around here lately. We are in the midst of a kitchen remodel and it looks like a tornado swept through the place. All of the cabinet doors are either on the floor or in the back yard. We haven't done anything with the counter tops or appliances yet, but just taking the doors off and having the inside of the cabinets exposed is enough to make it look pretty bad.

The part that is the most nerve wracking for me is that the little boy is crawling everywhere these days and it is a little difficult to baby-proof when you don't have anything to attach locks to. We are trying to hurry as fast as possible to get at least the bottom cabinets done so that they can be put back and hopefully stop the baby from trying to get to any cleaning supplies.

Over the next few weeks we have quite the project slated. We are refinishing the cabinets (as I already mentioned). This involves two applications of the paint on/scrape off stripper followed by two coats of polyurethane. It is the messiest job I have every done, but the cabinets look really good. Making 20 year old cabinets look new with minimal cost is totally worth it. After we get the cabinets done and put back up with shiny new cabinet hardware we will move on to the counter tops. We picked out some nice 12"x12" tile in a pretty beige color. The grout will be a "latte" color which will be much lighter than the dark brown that we have now with our lovely yellowish tile. After the tile is done we will put in the new stove and dishwasher. Our current stove will only turn on if you use a lighter or match and the dishwasher shakes the whole kitchen when it is running. Very scary. We will complete the kitchen transformation with a new coat of paint followed by a really long nap, I hope.

I like that we are doing this project ourselves because we are not only saving a bunch of money, but I am learning a lot. However, I wouldn't mind letting someone else do it in the future. I told Walter that I don't EVER want to refinish cabinets again. It is a stinky, slimy process.

Hopefully, we will have the whole kitchen done in a few weeks. I took some before pictures and I will take some after as well and post them.

If any of you are in the neighborhood and have a desire to work on the cabinets or lay some tile, let me know. I am sure we could find a little work for you to do. : )

Off and Running...or crawling

Walter is now a force to be reckoned with. Last week he started to crawl. It has taken us a solid week to get it on video but I have finally done it. Every time the camera came on he would stop and stare at it. We would try to sneak up on him but for some reason we couldn't get it. Finally, after a week of bribery we got it. I am now trying to baby-proof the house. Luckily, he hasn't figured out that he can go from one room to the next yet so I have a little time to get things in order, but it won't be long.

In other news, Walter III is almost done with his Winter Quarter classes. He has a final due on Saturday and another test next Thursday and he is done for a whole week and a half. Of course he will start back up again and we will be back to all of the fun, but at least there is a week and a half of freedom. Once he is done with the current classes he will only have four classes left in his MBA program. We can hardly wait until he is done.

Who Knew?

Apparently Walter III and this pillow are the funniest things EVER. Make sure your sound is turned up because I am pretty sure he is snorting.