Tagging

Idea is you take your 6th picture in your 6th album under "my photos" and blog about it....


Figures my 6th picture in my 6th album would be one of Donna's kids....Just goes to show how much I love them. I think having all these little critters has made me realize a few things...
*It's strange to hear someone call Donna "Mom"
*I want to have kids
*I don't want to have kids
*Kids are better than dogs
*Dogs are better than kids
*My dogs are better than other people's kids
*I can't believe Kelsie can squeal so loud. (For those of you who haven't had the privilege, she can break glass...at the neighbor's house
*Jace never fails to amaze me with his affinity for Star Wars and guns
*Ethan has the best giggle ever, no matter what it can put a smile on anyone's face
*Every birthday calls for cake
*Uncle Jared is a jungle gym, target, horsey, punching bag, & airplane

These things being said, I can tell you that the I want kids/I don't want kids thing changes constantly. Usually, when I am around those three. But I wouldn't trade them in for anything. I have the best niece & nephews ever. (But it sure is nice to go home and sleep through the night)

Let's also remember there was a point in my life, well we better call it a period, or maybe an era in my life that I DID want to trade Donna in. I am sure that those of you that know me well enough know that "my roommate growing up" and I, spent the first 20 or so years of my life hating each other, fighting, etc etc. But now, she is my best friend and I wish I would have realized it sooner. I love you sis! And I hope this made you cry, cause I am sitting her soaking up tears in my sweatshirt sleeves. Is my effing period coming. Jeez!

So, for the official part, I am tagging Becca, ElRae, Caroline, Judy, & two other people, cause not many people read this.

One Problem Fixed, Another One Started

Well, I haven't taken pictures yet but the re-plumb of the house is officially done! I cannot believe how well they matched the paint. You literally can't tell where they cut into the walls. We were so amazed. There had been some loose ends to tie up over the past couple of days which resulted in me losing sleep because people were showing up at the house at ridiculous times. Ridiculous for my standards, since I go to bed around 5:30am. They even sent a cleaning crew in here to clean up the house. We were so happy to have this whole thing behind up. Then disaster struck! I came home Wednesday morning around 5:20am. I was tired and looking forward to crawling in bed. Once I made my way into the laundry room, my feet felt a bit odd. I was walking through water. I turned the light on and made my way down the hall. More sloshing around. Oh no what now? The water looked like it had started in the laundry room, made it's way down the hall, into both spare bedrooms, down the hall even further and into the spare bathroom. It actually made it's way to the toilet in the spare bathroom. I called Dynamic Plumbing & left a message and also called their "emergency" line. What a joke. The operator said she would leave a message at the office. I swear I just did that myself. I made an effort to sop up the mess with towels around the house. I could see where the water had gotten into the carpet in both spare bedrooms. Someone called me from Dynamic a bit later and he said someone would come out once they opened. I told them not to bother until around 9:30am when I knew Jared would be home from work. The damage had been done. While I was sleeping, a rep from Dynamic came out and they are found the problem. A recycle hose for the water softener had been incorrectly hooked up to the drain where the washer drains. It spilled over and viola, there's our mess. I came home last night around 11:30pm to put the dogs in their kennels and everything was fine. But we have the water softener set to recycle at 3am. Imagine the damage had I gotten off later or not gotten up till later, or hell used the front door instead of the garage. They have to come in with fans tomorrow and run them for about 3 days. They are going to quarantine off the area and dry it out. Then the fun begins Monday. They will pull the base boards up, cut a foot of drywall off in the effected areas and then have to replace that, texture and paint it. Looks like more fun and games for us. Probably be another week or so until this is done. Tonight we moved everything out of the office and tried to clear as much space as possible. What a mess. I had to call off of work to be available to clean up and I won't be getting much sleep with all the construction going on. Who knows what I will have to do next week, luckily my boss is going to work with me on it and Dynamic is going to have to pay me for the time lost from work. Well, I better get some sleep before the mayhem begins in the morning.

What a difference a day makes....

So, the inspector showed up promptly 2 and a half hours late today to inspect the plumbing. Spent about four minutes "inspecting" signed off on the work and left. Good news is we passed inspection. The dry wall guys had been preparing the house and the materials all day long so they were ready once they got the go ahead. Again, I was at work so I missed all the fun. Well, I did get to come home to the stench of chemicals in the house. All of the dry wall is done and tomorrow they should be able to paint everything and begin clean up. It really is amazing how much they accomplished today. I am still not enjoying the mess that we have but at least we see progress. I go back to my regular 5pm to 5 am shift Monday so hopefully by the time I need to be sleeping all afternoon they are done with this mess. The dogs don't get to spend too much time indoors right now because of all the work that is being done so they are going to have to get spoiled as soon as we can get them inside for an afternoon. I hope you enjoy the pictures of the progression. Hopefully tomorrow I can show some more with paint on them!!!

Plumbers

So, we have known for a while that our house was part of a class action law suit against Kitec for a plumbing fitting used in our plumbing. We knew it would involve a re plumb of our entire house. Well, things finally got underway today. Well, lets take that back to the 15th of January. We had a guy come out and inspect the house. He then told Jared that by the 22nd we had to have everything cleared out from beneath the sinks and a few things moved away from walls. We had things ready for them, they were scheduled for 9am today. At 7:30 am today, I had them greet me as I tried to leave for work. A man who had to speak through a translator informed me that he was supposed to already be in my house putting plastic down to protect from this job. I went in the house and told Jared they were already trying to start the work. He took his time getting ready, as well he should, and let them in around 8:30. Once the guys got in they told Jared they would have to get to several more places in the house than the first guy told us. They spent the first hour helping Jared move all of the furniture and gaining access to the places in the walls. I got a phone call from Jared around 10:30 and he said our house was all cut up and there was a whole ton of drywall that had to be cut out. Well, as you can see in the pictures below, this is quite an undertaking. We also would have no water for the majority of the day. Our floor was covered in plastic, our walls were cut to hell, and our pipes redone. Long story short, they finished up around 5pm today and water was restored. Tomorrow we wait for the inspector to come in and sign off on the plumbing, then the dry wall guys come in and hang the drywall and texture. Once that is done, they get to paint. And as you can see we don't exactly have white walls that will be simple to match. The room in red was originally painted black. We had to put 3 layers of Kilz over it, grey primer and then two coats of red. Good luck matching that boys! Hopefully this will be a smooth process but I don't see it working that way. Right now, I have to figure out where we are going to put the bed from the spare bedroom, seeing as it is on top of mine. I plan to be sleeping in an hour. The up side to this is that we are getting it fixed now as opposed to if something blows up. So lets see if I get this right....A hole in the front room to get to the outside faucet, holes in the island to get to kitchen sink, hole in the living room to get to the back yard faucet, hole in hallway for spare bath, NUMEROUS holes in office to get to spare bath, huge holes in laundry room, and washer is in garage, NUMEROUS holes in spare bedroom to get to garage lines, outdoor faucet, and master bath, holes in our toilet room. Plus we have plastic everywhere. I have to climb underneath to get clothes out of the closet. This is fun, really it is. I had to have my mom "cat sit" because Lightning would have run outside the first chance he got. I hope everyone enjoys the pictures. Wish us luck. If I can still get to the computer tomorrow I will try and update.

Had to move the couch to get here.

Hallway

Front Room

Kitchen Island, backside

Spare bedroom

Spare bedroom

Office

Laundry Room

Colorado Avalanche

So, I finally figured out how to do this whole picture thing....with Donna's help of course.

Jared and I had the opportunity to go to a Colorado Avalanche game in Denver this past weekend. We had so much fun. We went with our good friends Andy & Kristee and their son Jacob. (Who is 3 days younger than Jace) We flew in on Friday morning and spent most of the day Friday touring the town, going to malls and of course eating. We got to go to one of my favorite places to eat, Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. For those of you who have not had the pleasure, it is a seafood place, (they have other stuff too) that centers around the movie Forest Gump. The wait staff even asks you trivia questions about the movie. We got them all right, in case you were wondering. The game was an early one on Saturday. The Avalanche played the Pittsburgh Penguins. The reason we chose to go to this particular game was because not only did we want to see our team play but we also wanted to see Sidney Crosby. For those of you who don't follow hockey, he is quite the phenomenon. I don't know all his stats but he was drafted at 18 and was the youngest player ever to make captain at 20. He is a great player for being so young.....our team still won though! It was such a fun game and I got to try out my new camera and extra lens. The zoom was amazing. We were sitting in the "club seats." They are on the second level but the hang over the first level. We were in the front row so we had a great view. I won't bore you with all of the 491 pictures I took before and during the game, but they were awesome. I would have to say that it was one of the best weekends ever. We had so much fun. I think the trip there definitely sparked my interest in moving away from Las Vegas some day. Of course if we do make it anywhere near Denver I will have to get season tickets for the Colorado Avalanche. The seats on the glass are only about $8000 per person, per season. That's reasonable right? Well, I wouldn't need seats on the glass but hey a girl can dream can't she? These are a few of the other pictures we took. We can't wait to be able to go to another game. Hopefully we will be able to make it to one in Anaheim in March.