Stack and Nest Cups

This is one of the most basic toys and it keeps Ellen entertained for hours!

Hot Day

We had a few days of really hot weather so we discovered the hose outside.

Beach

On Saturday, we had a long list of things we wanted to get done around the house until our friend called and invited us to go to the beach. We're so glad we chose to leave our to-do list for another day. The weather was perfect and Ellen really enjoyed herself--I'm so glad! We will probably spend a lot of time there in the future.

Ellen loved putting her feet in the water even though it was freezing cold. When they came back to the blanket after a few minutes, she kept asking for more!

Yep, I got my feet wet too, but I was ready to be done before Ellen! Then Jeff took her out a little deeper than I would have dared, but they came back safely.

Once we got Ellen out of the water, she enjoyed playing in the sand for a good hour.




Jeff has trained Ellen to raise her arms in the air whenever he says "Ta-da!" This picture captures it pretty well.

Stairs

Ellen has gotten really good at going up and down our stairs. It took a little encouraging for her to go down feet first instead of head first. So far, we've only had a few small tumbles.

Playing Outside

We were given this little play structure for Ellen. She loves being outside and playing on it.

Easter Egg Hunt Video

Here is some video of Ellen's Easter egg hunt. She was pretty funny about not wanting to ever let go of the first egg she found!

Easter

We had an Easter Egg hunt with Ellen Sunday morning. She totally got the idea to pick them up and put them in the basket. We got some great video footage that will make it on here eventually.

Jeff and I colored eggs on Saturday afternoon. We ended up doing it during Ellen's nap becuase we knew we would enjoy it more that way and she wouldn't really care. Neither of us have colored eggs for years, so it was fun to do together.

Saturday Hike

Last Saturday, we took a hike around a nearby lake. Ellen did great in the backpack (didn't get a picture of that) and Jeff enjoyed carrying her. When we stopped for lunch, we saw geese in the lake, so we showed Ellen real live "ducks". She loved it and it was hard to keep her out of the water. We really enjoyed being out in the sun!

Home Repair, Part 2

The next home repair project to report is replacing the garbage disposal. On the inspection of our home, it mentioned that one of the blades in the garbage disposal was broken. Therefore, we figured we would have to do something about it eventually. However, the first time I tried to use it, I realized it didn't work at all. That was not ok.

A friend of mine had replaced her garbage disposal by herself while taking care of two kids, so Jeff and I figured we could do it too. We bought a nice one from Lowe's and got ready to put it in after Ellen went to bed. (Once again, we didn't go through our home warranty because it probably would have replaced it with a similar weak-sauce garbage disposal and we wanted a good disposal.)

We got all set up and realized that the disposal does not include a power cord (same experience that my friend had...obviously, they need to make this more apparent for us first-timers). So Jeff went back to the store to get one. We spent about an hour getting the old one off. The instructions said that once we turned a certain part, the old disposal would fall off. We turned it and nothing happened. After trying lots of other things, we both sat down and started pulling on it. It slowly started to loosen and then it came off all the sudden--spewing old, rancid, food all over us. SO GROSS! It stunk too! Once we got that out into the garbage and cleaned up the area, putting in the new one wasn't too hard. Especially because Jeff did all the hard, heavy parts and I read off the instructions to him. :)

Here's Jeff with the old, gross, weak-sauce disposal and old food all over the floor
where I had been sitting. :)

We had the water heater replaced by our home warranty last week and Jeff used his new ladder (an essential of home ownership, he says) to repair some ducts in the attic. We also put a toilet paper holder in our bathroom...because there wasn't one in there when we moved in... Oh and Jeff fixed Ellen's bath so it dispenses something besides the hottest water, which is where it was stuck before.

I think that's most of our projects so far. There are lots of other things we would like to do, but I'm going to try and get all the boxes emptied before we embark on any non-essential projects.

Moral of the story: When you buy a house, make sure you have some money left over. There will be immediate unexpected expenses.
(A wise friend of mine told me that about a year ago, and boy, she was right.)

Home Repair, Part 1

We didn't have to wait long after moving in before we got to discover the joys of being homeowners. We moved in Saturday afternoon and then on Sunday afternoon, we noticed that the carpet by the toilet and just outside the bathroom downstairs was soaking wet. :( We figured the toilet was leaking. We had a plumber come that evening. After a little investigation, he informed us the toilet was fine, but we had a slab leak. He explained that this was really a worst case scenario.

Basically, we have pipes running through our cement slab foundation and one of them was leaking. It is an expensive fix because he would have to locate exactly which pipe had a leak, seal it off, and re-route that pipe line up through our walls and ceiling. He suggested seeing if the HOA or our warranty would fix it.

We spent Monday researching our options, contacting the seller to see if they had any knowledge of it, etc. After asking a lot of questions and seeking every possible other option, it seems it was just an unfortunate coincidence that it happened right after we moved in and that we would need to pay for the repair. The plumber spent 6 hours here Tuesday doing the repair. At the end of it, we had 6 holes in our walls and ceiling and lots of wet carpet and wet carpet pad. I thought I took a picture of it all, but I guess I just took some close ups.

We let everything dry for a few days (meaning we couldn't use the eating area at all) before we put down new carpet pad and stretched the carpet back into place. It looks pretty good considering how experienced we are. We are planning to eventually take out all that carpet anyway. As soon as we get our $8000 tax credit, we're going to put down a hard surface through the kitchen, eating area, and bathroom, so we considered this kind of a temporary fix.

Thankfully, we have a friend from Tustin who is a general contractor. He was so nice and came out to fix our holes with new drywall and texturing. Now all we have to do is paint them this weekend and we should be good to go. Whew!

Moving Truck

I've been meaning to post more about moving in and things, but we've had a lot going on. Here's a picture of our moving truck all loaded. It took some mad organizational skills to fit everything in. It was packed solid from front to back, top to bottom. We really should have gotten a bigger truck. I guess we've accumulated more stuff than we thought we had... :)

We had lots of guys from our ward (local church congregation) come to help us load the truck. We spent a few hours getting out the odds and ends and cleaning our aparment before driving to our new home to unload. There was a great turnout from our new ward as well to help us unload the truck. Everything was out in about 35 minutes!

Things have only gotten more exciting from there....
More pictures to come....