The nice thing about an old House

by Grant

    I came down with a cold this last week. No biggie. I got up thursday morning feeling really rotten and trying to stop myself from wimping out of work. So, I took a shower. Well, most of a shower. Two Thirds of the way through the water quit. Yeah, just quit. So, I hopped out of the shower, grabbed a towel and proceeded to confirm my worst fears... aliens had landed. No! Uhm, yeah, there was no water.

<sigh>


So, I go and wake up my wife and then climb down into my pump house with a heat gun. Three hours later, after calling my Dad and a friend at work I finally concede defeat. Of course, I'm not the only one with this problem. My contact for this has five calls already (dang, I should've called earlier). I call my friend Mark and he pulls some strings and gets his brother out there (who owns Leon's Pumps in Payette) in 15 minutes. A few minutes later he thaws out the area on the pump that tells it when to kick on (pressure sensor). Argh! One of those things that you know what the problem is but not quite sure how to fix it. So, we're pretty good to go. Of course, when the pressure tank goes dry then there turns out to be a lot of sediment. Dirt. black stuff. Forrest got really freaked out when the kitchen faucet came on spurting and spitting and ran into the bathroom where the tub was on full blast. Yeah, he didn't handle it well as the tub was even scarier.I came back into the house to be greeted by a screaming kiddo. The pressure was low but that evened out. The only problem was my bathroom faucet. It still seemed frozen as we could get nothing but a drip drip out of it. I eventually figured out that it wasn't frozen at all but plugged full of sediment. So, about a hundred bucks and several frozen appendages later (did I mention it was cold outside?) we're back to normal. So, one more task that I have in front of me is insulating the pump house and putting some sort of heating light down there.

Life... in the fast lane.

Blogged with Flock

Friday - By Rebekah

 
Just some minor news for the day. :-)

This morning when I went up to give the girls their bottle, I found
Serenity sitting up facing Liberty, with Liberty laying down. But they
were holding hands and talking. It was very cute! Unfortunately, I
didn't have the camera with me (cause I had the bottles) and they
wouldn't have held still while I went downstairs anyway...as soon as
they see their bottles, they go nuts!

I have been potty training Titus for 2 weeks now, but most of the time
he does nothing. He has had occasional accidents but today he actually
told me BEFORE he had to go and he MOSTLY made it. :-)

As most of you probably know, Forrest has been unofficially in preschool
this year, with me as his teacher. Unofficially because we don't do it
every day...we do it whenever we have time. So far he knows all his
letters, upper and lower case, and can write his numbers 1-10. We also
work on drawing shapes and this morning after he drew I heart, I told
him that the heart shape also stands for love. So then I wrote "Mom -
heart - Forrest & Titus" and told him that meant that I love him and
Titus. He then wrote "Dad" and said that I loved Daddy too. :-)

Oh, the other thing the girls have been doing is pulling themselves up
to everything. (they just started crawling after Christmas) Their legs
aren't strong enough to be standing much yet so they get up to something
and then start wobbling like crazy, and cry because they know they're
going to fall. They're so stubborn...just like their dad! haha!!!

That's all for now...have a great day!

Blogged with Flock

Pictures (late 2007)

More pictures (some boring, some not) can be found @
http://s128.photobucket.com/albums/p168/gcballard/December%202007/
Choose "view all" to see them all.

Serenity, showing her flexibility


Liberty, having a grand old time


Christmas (at my parents)!




Forrest "helping" titus

The Fam.
L to R
Amy, Axel, Reagan, Tyler
Beka, Serenity, Grant, Liberty, Titus
(I have no idea where Forrest is)


The "Gallery of Forrest"


Doing a pretty hard puzzle. If you look closely, you can see it's of my truck. Forrest did 2/3rds of it easily.

The Last  Piece

Admiring his work


The inspring picture (My dad takes pictures and turns them in to puzzles)

Blogged with Flock

vocab 101

by Grant


    Learned from the Simpsons this week: Eponymous and Masthead. Eponymous has to do with something being named after a person. So, Rome is an eponym for Romulus the founder. JimBob Payette was the eponymous explorer of Payette county (I made up his first name.I think it's actually something frenchy french).

Masthead is the portion in a newspaper or magazine that nobody reads because it has the names of the important people that own or run said media item.


Oh, and instead of just randomly memorizing words. I credit a large part of my vocabulary to my high school English teacher, Mrs. Brackenbury (or Mrs. B. for short). She had us memorize latin roots (greek too? not sure, it's been a long time). I should have known epi (upon) but I did  know nym which is name. So, literally  -> Name  Upon. See the logic? If that doesn't make much sense I'll try to figure out some more obvious examples.... Circumspect means look (or see) and around (like a circle). So, if you are being circumspect you are being cautious which means you're looking around.

Any Questions?

Blogged with Flock

One long short week

by Grant

    This week was supposed to be easy. I worked Monday, had Tuesday off, and so it should've felt like a pretty short and easy week.


Yeah. Right. (ooozing oodles and oodles of sarcasm).


Lots of stress. Lots of problems at work. I can't even recall most of them. The stuff that sticks in my mind is two layoffs. One of my best friends that had been at the company for 7 years got taken out. Really hard to see that.

But I tell you one thing, the fear of losing your job sure makes you thankful. For me I mean. I'm very grateful that I wasn't the one getting a last cigarette before the firing squad takes aim.


Baby/Life Update
 Serenity got really sick. Another $60 out of our pocket. She had a double ear infection. Liberty still looks a bit peaked, but doesn't have any major symptoms. Forrest and Titus seem to be doing pretty well. Still a bit of coughing. Rebekah is probably the sickest with Serenity. For myself, while I'm not 100% I'm not complaining (much). This is probably the best I've felt in months. I just hope I continue to improve or at least maintain status quo ya know? (hehehe, that rhymes).

But, Serenity is getting the crawling thingy down good. (or is it well?)
Liberty is a closet crawler--meaning she doesn't like to crawl when we are watching. But Rebekah couldn't find her one time and found she had used some method of forward locomotion to change her geographic location.

I still wrestle with spending time with the girls. It's hard to know who to pick up when you've got two excited smiling sweeties so happy to see me. I usually pick them both up, or don't do either. I figure, I don't want to be blamed for playing favorites when I'm older, so I'll just neglect them both equally. Pretty strategic thinking huh?

Blogged with Flock

They're Crawling

by Grant


    Well, sort of. Serenity has some forward mobility and Liberty is very quick to mimic.


Health update:
Titus appears better. I'm holding my breath that he will stay better. Forrest relapsed around Christmas, but he seems stronger. All he has is a cough. That's the persistent issue that we have. The girls are doing better. Serenity got sick quickly followed by Liberty but Serenity pulled out of it quickly. Liberty is still under the weather, but she's cutting teeth (or at least was) so that could have been part of it. Rebekah is fairly miserable with lots of congestion that she can't get rid of. I'm not quite sure how I am to be quite honest. Some stays I feel pretty good and then next day I feel pretty sick. Is that everybody? I'm trying to get an appoint with an ENT doc, but the only one in Ontario is booked solid for two weeks. Maybe by some miracle neither I, nor any of my immediate family will need one in two weeks.

In other news, it's cold! Not compared to Fairfield, but it sure feels that way in my old house.

In other other news, Christmas went well.

Blogged with Flock