Any time you move, you have the adventure of discovering all the interesting things about your new house. Some good. Some bad. For instance...a few of the good surprises with our new house are all of our great neighbors, the fact that I thought I would hate the low bar in the kitchen but I love it, the trees in the back yard shade the entire yard now that they have leaves, we have every color of rose bush, we have tons of irises, and I keep discovering empty cabinets that I haven't filled yet...just to name a few. The bad...our first water bill was $250 which led us to discover that we have a water leak with our sprinklers. We thought we had it fixed until we got this months water bill for $200. Not fixed. And what we thought was going to be an easy fix has turned into a nightmare. Our once beautiful backyard is now an eyesore of rubble.
But before I get to that...just a side note of frustration...if you ever think that just because you hire someone that they are on your side...you are probably wrong. Almost every dealing we had with "the professionals" in buying this home really showed their colors. This may sound cynical, but I now know that the only person looking out for us, is us. I also learned that I am far more naive than I thought I was...and too trusting. If you think someone has your back because they are all nicey nicey to you...all they really care about is their bottom line...their payday. Once they've gotten their money...you are on your own and they no longer care about what happens to you. What happened to character, ethics, customer service, or just doing what is right by people???
Off my soap box and moving on.
SO anyways....I had trouble getting in touch with our regular sprinkler guy and the water was pouring out of our front yard. We ended up getting hooked up with a friend of a friend who supposedly knew what he was doing but not s'much. I finally heard back from our regular guy and, bless his heart, he came over on Sunday and at least fixed it so we could have running water. We had to shut it off to the whole house for 3 days to keep it from leaking. Not fun. He will come back Friday to get the sprinklers working. Meanwhile, Brad had to jack hammer up the slab at the back of the yard because, of course, the leak was UNDER the slab. Of course it was, why would it be somewhere easy to get to? That would be so silly.
So Brad rented a jack hammer and spent an entire day jacking up that stupid slab. I will say this much...whoever put that slab in did a mighty fine job. And they had no intention of it going anywhere. It was well done.
After he jacked it up he was left with these really long pieces of rebar that I was certain one of our children was going to impale themselves upon if they weren't removed. Mom and Dad to the rescue! They bought Brad an early father's day present to make his life so much easier! So nice of them!
After cutting the rebar down, he then had to dig 2 major holes to access the...ummm...the whatevers. I don't really know. A pipe thing I guess. Clearly not my area of expertise. Brad has one more day of digging and then we will be ready for the sprinkler guy to come back and do his thing. And let me just say...Brad has done all of this after working 13 hour shifts. The man is a machine! I'm so grateful for my strong, hard-working, awesome husband!
James was on stand-by, ready to help in any way he could. That child loves to help! His job was to haul off the rebar after Brad cut it.
Hopefully we will have this little surprise project all wrapped up by the end of the week.
You know how you have those moments with your kids where you think, "I want to remember this moment forever"? How their face looks, the precious things they say or do, an expression, a sweet act of kindness? I've been trying to be better about getting the video camera out to catch some of these sweet moments. They constantly amaze me.
I can't believe I get to be Mommy to these 3 amazing little people. What a blessing!
James reminds me so much of Brad here.
Jude didn't get the memo that boys shave like Daddy, not like Mommy.
The other day, Mom and Dad kept the kids for me (it was jack hammering day) and they came home with a box of Toaster Strudels. The next morning, James said, "I want some of those turtle snoodles for breakfast." A few minutes later he said, "what kind of dog do we have??? A snicker doodle? A poodle doodle? A SNOODLE DOODLE!!!!" (It's a labradoodle) He had too many snoodles, strudels, and doodles rolling around in his head.
James gets all sorts of special alone time because he doesn't nap like the littles do and he gets to stay up later. Tonight, James went to sleep before Jude and Jude snuck out and came and found me in the kitchen cleaning. He noticed my moment of weakness and capitalized on it. It was good to have a little alone time with my favorite 2 year old. And notice the healthy snack I gave him. Don't judge.
I'm such a sucker for this kid.
Off my soap box and moving on.
SO anyways....I had trouble getting in touch with our regular sprinkler guy and the water was pouring out of our front yard. We ended up getting hooked up with a friend of a friend who supposedly knew what he was doing but not s'much. I finally heard back from our regular guy and, bless his heart, he came over on Sunday and at least fixed it so we could have running water. We had to shut it off to the whole house for 3 days to keep it from leaking. Not fun. He will come back Friday to get the sprinklers working. Meanwhile, Brad had to jack hammer up the slab at the back of the yard because, of course, the leak was UNDER the slab. Of course it was, why would it be somewhere easy to get to? That would be so silly.
So Brad rented a jack hammer and spent an entire day jacking up that stupid slab. I will say this much...whoever put that slab in did a mighty fine job. And they had no intention of it going anywhere. It was well done.
 |
| Yeh right. I squeezed the go button, screamed, and turned it back over to Brad. It's better if I stick with babies and cooking. |
After cutting the rebar down, he then had to dig 2 major holes to access the...ummm...the whatevers. I don't really know. A pipe thing I guess. Clearly not my area of expertise. Brad has one more day of digging and then we will be ready for the sprinkler guy to come back and do his thing. And let me just say...Brad has done all of this after working 13 hour shifts. The man is a machine! I'm so grateful for my strong, hard-working, awesome husband!
James was on stand-by, ready to help in any way he could. That child loves to help! His job was to haul off the rebar after Brad cut it.
~~~~~
You know how you have those moments with your kids where you think, "I want to remember this moment forever"? How their face looks, the precious things they say or do, an expression, a sweet act of kindness? I've been trying to be better about getting the video camera out to catch some of these sweet moments. They constantly amaze me.
James gets all sorts of special alone time because he doesn't nap like the littles do and he gets to stay up later. Tonight, James went to sleep before Jude and Jude snuck out and came and found me in the kitchen cleaning. He noticed my moment of weakness and capitalized on it. It was good to have a little alone time with my favorite 2 year old. And notice the healthy snack I gave him. Don't judge.
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