New Laptop/Motivation

Wow, it has been a while...
I have considered not blogging anymore, because I just don't have the motivation to do it regularly. I know if I stop I will look back on what I have blogged and regret that I didn't keep it up. This blog has turned out to be a great record of our little family.  When I really think about it, I think I want my life to be blogged about but I don't want to do it.
Recently our laptop broke down. The soldering in the motherboard has just slowly disintegrated until it no long holds together and makes the necessary connections needed to work. Motherboards are not cheap, so we had a local computer guy solder it to see if that would work. It did for about 30 hours.
So Matt and I went shopping and found ourselves a little Dell for as cheap as we could find ($280), which turns out to be only $30 more than the new motherboard.
The local computer guy will now transfer our data from the old computer to the new for free.
This brings me to my point. Last time our computer broke down I was so worried about the stuff on it, like pictures and recipes. But I knew in my heart that the best pictures were safe on the blog, so if we lost the ones on the computer we didn't have to be too sad. But this time, it has been so long since I have blogged I would have been sad to have lost so many pictures and, lets face it, memories. I have several pictures of our baby Andy that of course I have not and will not share on the blog but they could have been lost forever. That would have been so sad, but thankfully I have blogged about feelings and events from around the time we lost him. I should really get and external hard drive to back everything up, as well as print the blog into books, which I have really thought a lot about, but just never done.
So, I am making myself blog, finding the motivation to do it in the fact that it's the only history I've been keeping of what our life is like.

Thanksgiving

 This last Thanksgiving was full of fun and excitement, and when I say fun and excitement I mean, food, family and puke.
All of Matt's family got together for the occasion. And some great family pictures were taken.

Scott Hancock Photography

Scott Hancock Photography

 Matt's brother, Paul and family came in from San Diego and they brought their dog, Lyla. Lola loved the dog of course. And the dog was very patient with Lola.

Lola and Lyla, Best Friends Forever.

She looks so comfortable in there I'm considering getting her a cage of her own.

On the Monday before Thanksgiving we had a Family Home Evening about Gratitude. We invited our neighbors, Sandy and Bree over for the evening.

 We read some scriptures about gratitude and thankfulness and then cut out some leaves and wrote what we were grateful for on the leaves.

 Then we taped the leaves to the wall around the picture I like to call , "The Thankful Man."

On Wednesday night, the night before Thanksgiving, Lola threw up and go sicker and sicker as the days went on. What we originally thought was a bit of stomach flu turned out to be a urinary track infection. The poor girl was ripped from her sick bed and dressed up like a doll to get the family pictures taken. We joked about getting a picture of just our family so we would have a nice family photo to display at her funeral. I'm so glad we did because thanks to their airbrushing and photoshopping it is my best photo ever. I am of course also so glad she lived through the illness.

FIX THE DRYER

So, a month or so ago our dryer started making a loud scraping, clunk as it got started and then again when it stopped. We just went along with it for a while, because we are cheap and poor, but then I started thinking about how much we need the dryer and how much we can't afford a new one and what if continuing to use it while it's scraping and clunking is causing worse damage than if I just got it fixed after the first time, etc. Then it was making a louder noise consistently. 

We use our dryer a lot. I have two laundry days. Tuesday and Friday. On Tuesday I do about 6 loads of laundry and on Friday I do about 5 loads. So that's at least 11 loads per week, if we don't have any random extra loads on days in between. Sometimes it happens that I wash and dry all the rugs or throw some blankets in, or someone needs to wear something that isn't clean. And then there is Matt, who uses the dryer every single morning to "iron" his clothes. 

I don't iron, people.

So I finally got up the... I don't know what it was, courage? Lack of laziness? Something like those two put together? What ever it was I got it up and called the repair man, who knew exactly what was wrong just from my description over the phone. 

He came, he fixed.

He disassembled.

He replaced a part.

He vacuumed out all the lint.

He reassembled.

He left me a gift...

Or two....

Less than $150 later, my dryer is working like new. What a relief.

Creative with a K.

 My friend Shauna bestowed upon me a
Kreativ Blogger Award. I suspect she did this because I was trying to blog everyday this month and then after the 9th, I missed three days in a row. We had a really busy weekend, and then Matt had Monday off for Veterans Day, so that threw me off some more (see #11 below).Thanks for the motivation Shauna. Sorry if I disappointed you.
Here are 10 Random things about me:
1. In 1998 I went to a taping of  The Price is Right. No, I did not get called down, but I did sit on the right end isle seat of the second row so you can see me pretty much the whole time and I even high fived a guy who was just called down and running to his little podium for the show case. I have the episode on tape, but no longer own a VCR... I wonder if I could some how get it put on DVD, because I know my posterity will be wanting to see it. Matt was there too, with his girlfriend, who was not me at the time... whatever.
2. When I was in high school, I went with my mom and siblings to a casting call, in San Francisco,  for the movie What Dreams May Come. There was a call for redheaded extras and from what I understood at the time it was for a scene of heaven and everyone there would be a redhead. We filled out a questionnaire that had some pretty strange questions on it, like: Would you be willing to work in water and be wet for most of the day.  Even though we didn't get to be in the movie or even called back, I still believe that only red heads are getting into heaven. On a side note, when I did watch the movie, What Dreams May Come, I was completely confused.
3. I hate George Costanza. The end.
4. I have been watching NCIS and Castle season by season. It started with NCIS, which I now love. I borrowed season 1 from my dad to watch on my laundry days while I fold clothes. I'm now ready to start season 7, which we bought him for his birthday. He only had the first 6 seasons so in the mean time I switched to Castle. He has the first 3 seasons of Castle,which I also now love. Both shows make folding 900 pounds of laundry per week so much more enjoyable. What am I going to do when I'm all caught up on both shows?
5. I am completely over Ranch Dressing. I don't like it, on anything, anymore.
6. I dream about my whole family having bikes (with a trailer for Lola) so we can ride around town; which, is sad because we sold Matt's bike to buy Sam's trumpet.
7. I love to sing. It's the main reason I am forcing Sam to learn to play the piano; so that he can play while I sing, for hours and hours, all kinds of songs, anytime I want.
8. I am one of the last people in America, and probably the world, who doesn't have a normal cell phone. I have a prepaid Virgin Moble phone that I bought back in 2003. It looks like it came out of a gumball machine and I only use it for emergencies. I hardly ever use it, and it is rarely charged up. And forget about texting, I really don't know how. This is not to say I don't want a normal cell phone, I would love a smart phone with a camera and texts and Angry Roosters and Words with something Drawn. I want it all. It's just not meant to be. I can't afford it and I honestly don't know how anyone else does either.
9. Every road trip we take, we have to listen to Kenny Rogers, The Gambler. It's a must.
10. I believe in aliens and they freakin' scare me.
11. It cramps my style when Matt stays home from work. It throws me off and I get nothing done. I also loose track of what day of the week it is, and then I'm off for the whole rest of the week. I like it when he's here, it just really messes me up.

Thanks again for the award, Shauna. 

Now to pass it on. I'm going to bestow it upon:

Farmer Freitas' Wife

because she is Kreativ and her blog has been really making me giggle all month long. 

Congratulations Becky, you know what to do next!

Noooooo!!!!

It's just too early for snow!

FISHING

Early one Saturday morning in September we got a phone call from Grandma and Grandpa Alger. They were out at Strawberry and wondering if we wanted to come out and ride on a boat with them. They said it was  a small boat and that we wouldn't be able to all go on at once but could take turns. I had one thing I had to do that day and so I called and someone else took care of it and we hopped into the car, bought Matt and fishing license and headed out to Strawberry. When we got there, they told us they were renting a bigger boat so we could all go out together.  We were so excited.  

At first we thought Lola needed to be restrained.

That lasted about two minutes.

Sam was super excited and asked several times for grandpa to "go full throttle"

Getting ready to fish.

And then came the rain. That's Lola on Grandma's lap, hiding from the rain.

Then the rain stopped but by that time Lola had passed out.

Yes, she is sleeping under those shades.

Sam was sad that he didn't catch the first fish.

Eventually the sun did make an appearance.

Sam reeling in his catch!

It was a big one.

Sam caught two and Matt caught two. We let them all go.

Sam and Lola liked to watch them swim away.

After about 6 hours on the boat we went back to the trailer where Grandma and Grandpa were camping and had a delicious steak dinner.

The moon looked amazing and these pictures don't show what we truly  saw.

It was such a fun day. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa Alger!