Today's Thoughts...

I got a chance to chat on the phone with my parents last night... Twas a good chat and nice to touch base again! (Hi Guys!!) Was excited and thrilled to find out they are trying to arrange to come back here this summer to visit us again!! Yay :)

It's been an "adjustment" (to say the least) for all of us... We've always been very close to my parents and have seen them often over the years, usually a couple times a week. I know I am going through withdrawal these days!!

My mom said on the phone last night that Sunday supper just isn't the same... well no kidding!! I haven't had any decent Sunday meals in what seems like AGES now!! I think I may be in steak withdrawal!!

So anyhow, the point is... I was glad to hear from them last night and find out all is well with them... and that they may come to visit! Hopefully the logistics of such a trip can be easily worked out :)

I know I'll be heading back out that way at the end of August / beginning of September to get Jess settled at University... (but we are NOT discussing THAT just yet!! uh uh, no way!) and figured that would be the next time I got to see them... but now I'm excited and feel I should get a bunch of stuff done around here so they can see the (small) improvements around the house when they come :)

I'm also hopeful that there will be other company this summer... I invited my sister to take a (small) detour during her car trip to and from the east coast... I know there may not be time or energy for such a detour, but you never know :) I'm also hopeful that perhaps a favourite Aunt of mine might make it out here at some point before September.

I believe Shawn's Mom is planning to make a stop in the area this summer as well. That will also be fun to see her again... but I wonder if this time there will be a little less running and trying to "do everything"? :) We don't even really know what all there IS to see here, so its harder to play tour guide.

On to house updates... last night we bought a gas powered weed whacker... its a Husqvarna and it can use either string to cut or a rotating blade (for tougher grass and thistles, etc). Shawn used it last night and it worked excellently! He used the blade and it whacked down really tough stuff along the fence line.

We bought it at the same place that fixed our gas push mower that Shawn busted up the other day. The recoil ... it failed to... recoil :) (For those of you like me... the rope thingy you pull to start the mower didn't go back in). They changed the oil, replaced the spark plug, air filter, fixed the recoil, sharpened the blade AND added a discharge chute (so it wouldn't have to mulch and bag all the time!!) all for $125.62. We thought that was a pretty good deal... the mower is 3 years old and never had any real maintenance done to it yet... it also never hardly did any work.... so it seems good. I gave it a pull last night to fire it up and it started real easily! yay :)

This past weekend we got some stuff done. We installed two closet organizers... one in the mudroom closet and one in the master bedroom closet. They are so nice... we used the Rubbermaid Configurations system again, just like in the last house. I finally got my big wardrobe box unpacked and my clothes hung up which was nice! The mudroom closet organizer made a huge difference too! We bought the show rack add on for it and now all the shoes have places to be... plus room for coats and even a shelf for things like flashlights and dog poop bags :)

Shawn also got some hooks installed, one behind the mudroom door for dog leashes. Nice to have them accessible.

We also started to install the laundry tub in the bathroom/laundry room. We just bought a big plastic laundry tub at home depot which is CHEAP (around $30) and then I bought a really nice faucet that's technically a kitchen faucet. The faucets they sell for laundry rooms are always so ugly and not as useful as I'd like. Obviously the sink isn't made for this setup so we had to customize it a bit... only drilled out 1 hole, instead of 2 and made that hole a bit bigger than normal. The faucet I picked out has a very tall spout and the end of it comes off to be a sprayer... something I think will be very useful in a laundry tub. Its also nice enough looking to be part of the bathroom, I think. I took a couple pics and I'll try to get them posted ASAP.

The water supply lines are ready to hook up but we do need to buy all the pieces to do the drain work yet, but one (probably two!!) trips to home depot should resolve that ;) Maybe we'll stop at HD after work tonight and try to get what we need to make it work. Would be really nice to be able to wash your hands after using the bathroom without walking all the way to the kitchen... such luxury ;)
-- LW