Kyle has been looking into getting me a new computer for a while now. My old computer has been slowly falling apart. The ‘o’ button is loose, the track pad hasn’t worked for months, the battery only lasts for about half an hour while unplugged, and the whole laptop keeps over heating. He kept asking my opinion on certain things, but honestly they all look pretty much the same to me. I don’t know much about all the technicalities of the different options out there. Eventually we settled on a nice new computer and it arrived yesterday! It has a much larger hard drive than my old computer. That was important to me considering one of the most important things I use my computer for is scanning and cropping family history pictures and storing home videos that I have collected from either VHS or our digital video cameras over the years. Pictures and video takes up a LOT of space. 🙂 My new computer also has a cd/dvd drive. Which is awesome because I will still be able to burn cds of pictures or dvds of the home videos to be able to share them with the rest of my family. The battery on my new computer can last hours before I have to recharge it, and it has a web cam thingy in it. The only thing, is it’s got a newer version of windows than my old computer. So I have to figure out where to find all of my stuff. Also I don’t like the version of excel that is part of this newer version of windows. I can’t figure out how to do all the things that I used to know how to do. But hey, I have LOTS of space on the hard drive to fill with more scans of pictures. 🙂
Category: Our Family
Jeremy turns SEVEN
Jeremy’s birthday ended up being celebrated over the course of a few days. I had a service unit meeting to be at on the evening of his birthday, and just everything else that was going on made it difficult to celebrate on his birthday. So we let him open his presents yesterday.
We sang to him and had cake today.
I really need to be better about celebrating birthdays on the right day. I did pretty well through all of the summer birthdays, then it just seems that every birthday since Adam was born, I haven’t been very well prepared for. I’ll get back on top of things eventually.
Jeremy is enjoying first grade. He is the king of goofy faces in our family. And in general, he is just a really good kid. His primary teachers tell us every week about how much they love having Jeremy in their class. They tell us about how reverent he is. His first grade teacher, Mrs Peterson, also tells us about what a good kid Jeremy is, and how much she loves having him. She was actually quite surprised when we told her that at home he is always making silly faces and when he doesn’t want to answer a question that we have asked him he says “Ba boo boo!” (I honestly don’t know where that phrase came from).
Christmas Tree
So, we have spent the whole year sorting through the stuff that was in the basement. We got rid of a bunch of stuff, either by throwing it away, or giving it to DI, but we have kept a lot and everything that we kept was moved to the garage. We fully expected to have the basement finished before Christmas but one thing led to another and it has taken longer than we hoped. First it took us longer to clear it out than we would have liked. Then the process of getting quotes took longer than we anticipated. Then when we had selected a contractor, we had to wait for the permit to be approved. Once that happened we had to wait for the contractor (his name is Dave) to work our basement into his work schedule. And well now work has begun but it’s nowhere near complete. When we moved everything into the garage we had figured that the basement would be finished well before the holidays and so we left the buckets of Christmas stuff next to the wall of the garage. We then proceeded to fill the rest of the garage with the stuff from the basement. So the later start means that we are not going to be uncovering our Christmas stuff at all this year. I was concerned that this meant that we would not have a tree or any decorations at all this year. But then I found that a neighbor of ours was getting rid of their old tree because they were given a new one as a gift this year. I jumped at the offer and so Kyle picked it up last night.
We were at home depot this morning so the kids could go to the kids workshop and while we were there we picked up some lights for our new tree. I’m so happy that we will have a tree this year. It just didn’t seem right to deal with not having a tree through the holidays, but I just couldn’t justify buying a new one when we have two buried in the garage. So now we have a tree, and it has lights. We don’t have access to any ornaments, but I am ok with that. It has lights and that’s all I really care about right now. 🙂
Parents don’t fart
At least, that’s the conversation we overheard between Jeremy, Ethan, and Tyra, as Rebecca and I were in the kitchen.
First, they are eating and we hear a prrbpt sound.
Laughter.
Then, someone declares, “Parents don’t fart.”
And someone adds, “but Liesl does.”
Basement Construction Begins!
So this morning, I was wondering what was going on with getting the basement started, and Kyle and I had this conversation on pidgin:
(10:22:50 AM) Rebecca:OK so have you heard anything from Dave yet?
(10:23:03 AM) kyle: no
(10:23:27 AM) Rebecca:ok well can you try contacting him again?
(10:30:40 AM) Rebecca:ok never mind
(10:30:50 AM) kyle: what?
(10:30:54 AM) Rebecca:the guy is here to move the duct!!!!
Yup someone showed up this morning to move the duct that went straight down the middle of the ceiling in one of the bedrooms! Had I known that he was coming I would have known to go downstairs beforehand to get a “before” shot of where the duct was originally. Instead, he showed up this morning and went down to take the duct down. He made some measurements and then went home to build the pieces he would need to move it. While he was gone, I went down and got some “in the works” shots. 🙂
That open duct there is where it used to continue down the middle of the room. And these are the pieces of the duct that he took down so he could move them over:
He was actually home making the new pieces a lot longer than I had expected. I ended up having to call Kyle and ask him to come home right away, so that we could get the kids to the dentist and still have someone at the house when the guy came back to finish the duct. It was a good thing too, because shortly after Kyle left to take the kids to their appointment, the guy arrived to put the duct back together. We have been waiting so long for the basement to be done that I would have hated to not be there when he got there to finish. He worked on the vent for quite awhile. Kyle and the kids were back from the dentist before he was finished. But now he is done and the duct now runs along the wall of the bedroom:
I’m so excited! Work has finally begun! And the guy that moved the duct said that he would be back Thursday or Friday to run our gas lines. Basement construction has officially begun!