Not My Day

Today was not my day.  The power went out in our house.  I'm not sure exactly what time because I was upstairs and the power was working fine in most of the rooms upstairs, but not at all downstairs.  When I noticed this I was really confused.  I had never heard of this happening before.  I went to the breaker box and nothing had been flipped.  I flipped some breakers to test it out, and it didn't make any difference.  I went outside to the main breaker, flipped it, went back inside.  No difference.

I used my phone to google "half house without power" and a Yahoo! Answers came up.  (What did we ever do before the internet, especially on our phones?)  The question was similar to my problem, and the person that answered suggested that the house wasn't getting the full amount of volts (i.e. 120v instead of 240v) that it required to run everything.  He suggested calling the power company.

So I called Rocky Mountain Power and the electronic voice said they'd send someone soon.  5 minutes later I called back to check on the status and it said that it should be fixed by 2:30 pm.  It was noon.

So, I played games on my cell phone, and around 1:15 the doorbell rang.  It was the guy from Rocky Mountain Power.  He said "Half of your house has power." I never told them that when I called, so obviously he had figured out the problem.  He had some strange looking part in his hand which he said had died and he was going to replace it.  Then he said that everything would work except for the dryer, and the range.  There was something else that needed to be fixed first, and that would be done later in the day.

Around 4:30, our doorbell rang, but I ignored it because I wasn't feeling well.  About 2 minutes later, our power went out.  And it was out until about 7:15.  I am glad I bought us that emergency kit.  It had one of those chargeable flashlights, and a solar charger.  I used the flashlight to charge my almost dead iPhone.  (I thought it was pretty clever!)

I checked through the window to try and see what they were doing.  It looked like they had to dig up part of our neighbors yard to fix the problem.  (They were affected by the outage too).  I'm glad they didn't have to do that to our yard.

In addition, I think our smoke alarms are possessed.  We've had problems with them since before we moved in.  Sometimes they will just randomly go off.  It's obnoxious.  And it drives us crazy.  Me more than Connor because I'm home more than him.  So, today, to make things worse, one of our smoke detectors wouldn't shut up.  I tried everything I could thing of.  At the end it was beeping 3 short beeps/minute, which according to the back means that it needs serviced?  Ugh.  I ended up unplugging it and taking the battery out.  I think the whole thing just needs to be replaced.

The bright side: I wasn't scheduled to work today.  If this had happened on a day that I was scheduled to work it would have been way more stressful.

A Photo

We painted the entrance.

Here's before.  (Thanks, Mom, for the 2nd picture)

And here's what it looks like now.  Isn't it so much better?

Connor and I were both off today.  We spent the day getting things done around the house.  I ended up staying in my PJs all day long.  So what happens?  We have visitors.  Of course.  2 people from the Elders Quorum presidency came over.  I looked like crap.  But whatev.  They were nice and didn't mock my appearance.  :)  They stayed for a few minutes and chatted.

We actually got to know people from the ward this last Sunday.  It was the first Sunday that we were able to stay for the whole 3 hours since we moved here.  Our first actual Sunday in the ward Connor couldn't find his dress shoes, so we only stayed for Sacrament Meeting.  The 2nd Sunday we both had to work.  The 3rd Sunday was Christmas, so church was only an hour.  And then last Sunday we finally were able to stay the entire time.  People were very nice and introduced themselves.  I don't remember anyone's name, but I'm sure we'll have a nice time here.  This next Sunday Connor has to work again, so I get to go all by myself.  Boo.  At least he only has to work 1 Sunday a month.  It could be a lot worse.

2011

This year has been full of ups and downs.

We celebrated our first anniversary.

We gained a new member of the family.

We lost a member of the family.

We moved into a new home.

2011 had its ups and downs.  It was a good year, but I'm glad to see it go.

I hope 2012 is better.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone!  Sorry for the lack of blogging.  It's been a little busy around here lately.

We successfully moved, and nothing got broken!  I'm very happy about that.  We closed a few days early, and because of that we were able to move in a whole week before we had planned.  The original plan was to close on Monday and move in on Saturday after taking the week to clean and paint.

Instead we closed on Friday, painted/cleaned on Friday, and moved in on Saturday.  It was a really busy weekend, but we were so happy to be in our new home.  We didn't get everything painted before moving in so since then we've been busy painting to get rid of those horrid colors from before.  We've successfully managed to remove all of the salmon colored walls, and kept 1 red wall in the kitchen.

Anyway, back to Christmas.  Connor was scheduled to work today so we opened presents on Christmas Eve.  We had Christmas Eve dinner with most of Connor's family, then came home and opened gifts.  I finally took some pictures of our house.  Here they are for your viewing pleasure.

Packing

Most of my day today was spent packing.  I don't feel like I've gotten much done, but I've packed about 15 boxes, plus more of those rubbermaid containers that we have.  I'm hoping to be able to move quickly and easily (or at least as quickly and easily as possible).  I've never really had to pack and move breakable things before.  I'm afraid things are going to get broken.

Happy Thanksgiving!

This year we spent Thanksgiving with my family in California.  We had a really good time.  This is the first year since 2006 that I've spent Thanksgiving with my family.  In 2007 I was in the MTC (although technically we had a pre-Thanksgiving a week before I went into the MTC), 2008 I was in Argentina, and 2009 and 2010 I spent Thanksgiving with Connor's family.  So I was definitely due to spend Thanksgiving with my family this year.

We drove out to California on Tuesday.  That was a long drive.  Connor drove the entire way.  I used to love driving, but now I love sleeping on trips.

On Wednesday the stars aligned and I was able to see my friend Melody who I haven't seen in probably 10+ years.  It was a short visit, but it was great to finally meet her husband and cute son.  Hopefully it won't take us 10 years to see each other again.  Later Wednesday night Crystal, Kari and I saw Breaking Dawn.  I had already seen it but it was just so good that I had to go again!  Just kidding.  It kinda sucked.  But Crystal and Kari hadn't seen it so we went and laughed at the incredibly cheesy parts.

Me and Melody

Thursday was the big feast.  We had a TON of food and my stomach wouldn't let me eat all that I wanted.  It was all delicious.  The most memorable part was when I noticed ants in our pies.  I was helping set the table and I walked by the pies and noticed something strange.  I looked closer and saw an ant.  I thought if it was just one, or a few, I wouldn't need to say anything.  But, alas, there were many, and they were all over the pies.  I yelled something along the lines of "Oh no!  There's ants in the pies!"  And everyone came to the rescue.  I don't think the ants had been there very long and we were able to salvage the pies.  They were just on the surface of the pies, and you can't have Thanksgiving without pies, right?  So we ate them anyway.  And they were delicious.

Friday we celebrated Alex's 5th birthday.  It's not until next week, but we celebrated early.  We gave him a Thundercats Sword.  I had no idea what that was, but he was very excited when he opened it.  He said "yes!"  And then Cameron cried because he wanted to play with it too.  He's so cute.  We saw The Muppets, which was a fun movie.  Then we had lunch at Fuddruckers.  Later we had pizza for dinner and watched the first 2 Lord of the Rings' movies.  We were too tired to stay up for the third.

Saturday we drove home, and I started to feel sick.  Joe had gotten sick while we were there and his kids were sick, and I guess my mom was sick before we got there so somehow or another it was passed along to me.  The drive home sucked.  The last 2 hours I just wanted to get into bed and go to sleep.  Connor drove the whole way, again.  Thank goodness he likes to drive.

We got home and Connor told me that he would bring everything up so I came upstairs to our apartment, opened the door, stepped inside, and it was freezing cold.  That's right.  No heat.  Again.  I'm so tired of all of these issues with the heat.  Connor tried to restart the boiler, but when he did the pump that works for our section of the building was making a really awful noise.  So it probably needs to be replaced.  And of course, it's the weekend, so nothing can happen until Monday.

All day today, Sunday, I've just been in the bedroom.  It generally stays warmer in here and I've got my electric blanket and a space heater.  I'm ready to move.

Anyway, it was a really great Thanksgiving.  Strange without Ryan.  His birthday is coming up on December 3rd.  Every year for my dad's birthday we go out to Burger King, as that was his favorite restaurant.  I think for Ryan we're going to go to Outback for his birthday.  Plus we have to make brownies.  Two of his favorite things.

November 14, 2007

This is what I was doing 4 years ago today.  I can't believe it's been 4 years!

 We started out with breakfast at IHOP.  Then we drove down to Provo and took some pictures.

This day was kind of surreal.  I had never really wanted to go on a mission (before deciding to go) so this wasn't a day that I had ever really dreamed of or anticipated.

Apparently they've changed how they do MTC drop-off's now, but at the time your family would go in with you, watch a video, and the MTC President would speak to you and then tell you to say your goodbyes.  I remember him saying that saying goodbye was like ripping off a band-aid.  The quicker you do it, the better.  And then he said we had 5 minutes.  Once he said that I started to cry.  A lot.  And then I started to laugh at myself for crying so much, so it sounded even worse.  I hugged everyone and left.

I must have still looked really distraught because one of the people who was there making sure the missionaries went the right way pointed out to me where the kleenex was located.  Then I had to go wait in lines to get my MTC card, take a picture, find out who my companion would be, verify my immunization records and get some supplies.  The whole time I was trying to keep myself from bursting into tears. Some Elders in front of me asked me some questions and I answered as quickly as possible.  I knew if I said too much I'd start crying again.  The whole time I was thinking, "Oh crap! What am I doing?"

Luckily it all worked out.  I absolutely loved my mission and cried way more when I left Argentina, than we I left my family at the MTC.  (No offense.)