life is interesting

Life has been interesting since Evie was born. There are 2 ways to interpret this statement - interesting in a ways that are enjoyable and interesting in not so enjoyable ways. Evie is a doll and is a real joy to have in our family. Both Jo and I feel our family is more complete with her in it. And Adelle has taken the whole change amazingly well. But that's mainly because Jo and I prepared her the best we could (you could also say 'brainwashed' her) for Evie's arrival. And Jo and I have been enjoying each other. So from that side of life, things have been interesting in a good way.

But also since Evie has been born, so many other things have been springing up, just life things that can happen anytime, but things that we wished weren't all coming at the same time. Two examples are termites and our recently purchased used minivan.

Almost 2 weeks ago I found termites in our kitchen. The exterminators are coming out Monday to treat our house and that problem will be fixed (hopefully) soon. We'll probably have to replace the window that they've infested.

And also about 2 weeks ago we bought a used minivan to hold our family since our Saturn is just too small with 2 kids and car seats. It has gotten to where Adelle has to be folded in half to get her in the car. And we can forget actually taking anything with us if we go somewhere. Anyways, we bought a van and had it for about a week and a half and had driven it maybe 4 times when it started doing crazy stuff. We took it back to the dealer 2 days ago so they could fix it (its covered by a 90 warranty). They then called this morning saying it would be at least another day or 2 before its fixed, and it might even be next Monday or Tuesday. Praise God the van is under warranty so we don't have to pay to have it fixed and that the Saturn hadn't sold yet so we still have transportation. But its frustrating that we dropped all that money on a van only to not be able to drive it.

There are other things too that are going on which I won't bore you with, but these are 2 of the big ones. Anyways, life is interesting, in some really amazing ways and in some really ridiculous make-me-want-to-bang-my-head-against-the-wall kind of ways too.

home improvement

I'm no handy man. I didn't grow up in a family that did a lot of jobs around the house. My parents did some small things from time to time, but as a whole, they never really did much to the homes we lived in. There is really only one thing I remember them doing - when I was a kid they had to repair the floor under the toilet because of water damage to it, but that's really the only thing I can remember.

Well, being a homeowner for the past 1 1/2 years has forced me to do handy man/ DIY type stuff. I'm really not thrilled (to say the least) to have to do things like this. One reason is that I really don't feel competent doing them. Stemming from this, I always feel like I'm going to do more damage than repair. I am more like Tim 'the Toolman' Taylor (Home Improvement the TV show) than Bob Villa (formerly of This Old House). I'm afraid I'll make a huge whole in the wall or break a pipe or electrocute myself. So I'm hesitant to jump into any home projects.

But after a 1 1/2 years in our house and after 1 1/2 years of us saying we need to trade our huge water guzzling toilets for newer more efficient ones, I finally made the plunge. I did the upstairs toilet 5 or 6 weeks ago and it wasn't too bad. It only took me 2 1/2 hours, which for never having done it before and not knowing what I was doing, was not too bad (or at least I think so).

Having lots of confidence from having done the first toilet, I set my mind to replace the basement toilet. And it only took me a little over a week to get it installed. Yes, a week. Not an hour, not 2 hours, not even five hours, but more than a week. There were so many issues with removing the old toilet. And once I got it up, there quickly arose many issues with getting the new one in. Whoever installed the old one took a lot of short cuts which meant I couldn't just take the old one out and put the new one in. It was a lot of stress and hassle to figure out what needed to be done and then to execute the correct course of action.

I won't go into all the details. In fact I'm going to try really hard to repress the whole experience. I'm going to shove it down deep inside, deep down in a place where it can never bother me again. I'm joking. Well mostly joking. Well maybe I'm joking a little and the rest is mostly serious. I am really glad that the toilet is installed and I will never have to do it again. Until we get another house which has an old toilet. Please no, just please no... And now I've got a ceiling fan to install in Adelle's room. But I've told Jo that once the fan is done, I'm done with home improvements for a while.

In other news, we got a minivan. I never thought I'd be excited about a minivan. But we got a cool one. Its a Mazda MPV which is described as 'the sports car of minivans.' But who am I kidding, its still a minivan.