Bentley Luke and Lyza Mae Norman

Here is one of my nephews and his new baby sister, Lyza Mae.

I love their facial expressions.....priceless!

What's Yours is Mine and What's Mine is Mine...

Steve and I like to grocery shop for two weeks worth of food at a time. Sometimes we have to go back and pick up produce items that won't last that long...but our main goal is to only shop once every two weeks.

We always buy some sort of cracker brand for lunches. He's a big Ritz fan...me, on the other hand, I don't really enjoy plain crackers like that. So, one shopping trip, I purchased his boxes of Ritz crackers and threw in some Cheez-its for me. I recall packing them for lunch one day, and suddenly they were gone the next. (Steve had a sudden case of memory loss and apparently had no idea where they went).

The next shopping trip, I purchased some Ritz crackers (again), a 'spicy' cheez-it box and a regular cheez-it box. Steve avoids spicy foods, so I was certain that he wouldn't touch them :) Anyways, one night while watching 'The Office'...I had a snack attack. I took the half eaten box of regular cheez-its and devoured them! Steve returned from his trip to Reno to find them long gone. (I let him cry it out...he felt betrayed, but forgave me).

Last night, after shopping and eating dinner...I went to the pantry to pack my lunch for the next day. I grabbed a box of just purchased Wheat Thins and said, "Don't eat the Wheat Thins, baby. You have your Ritz...so these are mine."

He just smiled and said, "I know, but the Cheez-its are mine. I even wrote my name on them." I grabbed the box from the shelf and burst out laughing when I found he had written on every possible side of the box, "STEVEN'S".

I suddenly felt like I had regressed back to the single life of writing names on the food you didn't want your roommate to eat.

So Long...May you rest peacefully in appliance heaven

I woke up this morning, threw some wash in and hoped in the shower. By the time I was finished, I found smoke filling the halls. The culprit being THE WASHER (excuse me while I weep).

I won't lie, right then I felt like screaming, then drop kicking the washer out the front window. Instead, I called my husband and yelled at him (as though he single handedly had been the reason for the faulty washer). I'm sure he wasn't surprised though...he calmly told me we should have someone check it out and everything would be ok.

The appliance repair people came that night and delivered the bad news that it would need to be replaced (only after lecturing us not to buy appliances from Craig’s List...even if you are just trying to save some money).

So, the silver lining to this story??...after we replace the dishwasher and washer...every appliance in our house will be brand new (minus the water heater). Ok, that's more of a GOLD lining...:0)

SLOWLY BUT SURELY...

Well, it's official...we've finally moved into our new home! Now, don't take 'moved in' too literally. We've still got boxes scattered between different rooms, searched for toilet paper, towels, and deodorant that we packed no where near each other, and moved furniture around one too many times.

BUT, the important stuff is done!

• We found the remote to the TV (that's an important one)!
• The kitchen is finally unpacked (it's so weird to not feel like I'm setting up a booby trap every time I strategically put the dishes away!)
• All the bathrooms now have toilet paper! (I tell you this with great pride. Nobody likes to do the chicken dance in search of TP, pants around their ankles, praying that nothing drips and ruins the freshly cleaned carpets!)
• Locks have been changed
• WINDOWS ARE SPARKLING CLEAN (shout out to mom for that one!)
• Disposal has been replaced (go daddy-o!)
• Fire alarms no longer squawk in protest every 3 seconds to remind us to change the batteries (this is an amazing accomplishment considering I did this WITHOUT the use of a ladder...piles of books, laundry and my feeble gift of balance to thank for that)
• Boogers have been cleaned off ALL blinds
• Bed setup, WITH SHEETS

Jim and Anne were gracious enough to hire help to clean our house. This was a gift straight from heaven! It would have taken me until the year 2015 just to skim the surface.

The cleaning ladies showed up and 9 hours later, called to let me know it was finished. When I got there to check things out, Maggie (the cleaning woman) just looked at me, wiping sweat from her brown, and said, "They NEVER clean!" I dare say that I agreed with the understatement! From a quick glance, the house really didn't look that bad. However, once we really started looking at it, we realized that the previous family had zero concept of cleanliness.

So, we knew for sure that we would have to replace at least the stove. We used every chemical known to man (nearly) in attempt to scrub the grime off, to no avail. We were going to use a fridge that Jim and Anne had years ago...but sadly it died the day we moved it into our place...so that too needed to be replaced. The micro was stained and didn't work. The dishwasher was on the list to be replaced as well...but we figured we'd use it till it died and clean the gunk off as best we could.

One Saturday we ventured out to Home Depot, picked out our selection of white appliances and setup a delivery for the following weekend. No more than 2 days after they were installed...Mr. Dishwasher keeled over...but not without leaving us a basin full of water...and no easy way to get it out. Steve is now filling in on behalf of the late Mr. Dishwasher. May he rest in peace.





Here are some pics of the inside of our new place: