It's a Christmas Miracle

I don't know what happened, but our hot water is back! Hooray!!!

Now, about those other things...

What Next?

My toilet tank has a hairline crack and it is dripping.

My water heater isn't heating the water.

My vacuum has no suction.

The string on a set of blinds broke and now they won't go up and down.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Don't mind the cheesy title. I couldn't think of anything else. Christmas Decorations? Outdoor Decor? Anyway, I finally got all of our outdoor decorations up, bought extra extension cords, and got almost all of the kinks worked out. Man, Christmas lights can be a pain! They work when you test them inside and then you take them out and put them up and they don't work anymore! (Can you see where I still have a problem?) I am so excited to buy more decorations at the after-Christmas clearance sales this year. I was pretty much maxed out at our old house but now I have so many more places to decorate! I'm still working on the inside. More pictures to come later.


Ignore the fact that I still have no window covering of any kind on my living room windows.

By day...
and by night. Next year I will have lights on the bushes in the front. I just didn't feel like dealing with even more lights, extension cords, and timers this year.
I cut up a bouquet of fake poinsettias and stuck them under those potted trees, where I just pulled out some annuals a few weeks ago. It's probably a little trailer park to use fake flowers outside but I think it looks pretty!

Today is Dec. 1

...and this is what Audrey's advent calendar looks like.

Tidbits

• Carolyn's soccer team won their championship game last week, 4-1. Carolyn scored the first goal of the game!

• Greg and I had our 10-year anniversary on Friday. I can't believe it has been that long. We went out to dinner at Bonefish Grill, where I had the best meal of my life (crabcake appetizer, longfin imperial, and macadamia nut brownie). Greg still wants to go on an exotic vacation, just the two of us, but we'll see. That kind of thing is hard to pull of when you have a bunch of little kids.

• I was diagnosed with meduallary sponge kidney. Basically I have a bunch of stones in my kidneys and I have a high chance of getting "kidney stones," where they come out of the kidneys and become horribly painful and make you terribly sick. For most people it's not too big of a deal. Lots of doctors appointments, x-rays, ultrasounds. Kidney failure is rare. I've only had one stone come out so far. Hopefully it won't be too bad.

• I was asked to speak in sacrament meeting this Sunday. I can't believe it. I just spoke at stake conference last month. After I was asked I thought, "I should have said no. I just gave a talk. He knows that." But when the bishopric asks me to do something I don't even think about yes or no. I just say yes and then figure out later how I'm going to make it work. Should I have said no? Could I have said no? I just think that there are people that haven't given a talk in years and now this will be my third one this year.

• Today is my birthday!

Halloween

Carolyn was Hermione. Audrey wanted to be a wizard so we found her a wizard-like witch costume. Molly was a fairy and Emma was the same witch that Audrey was two years ago. Halloween is very different in our new neighborhood. I used to sit outside and hand out candy to the constant stream of kids, usually around 100 in all. This year our doorbell rang twice.

Overheard Conversation

Emma: Moo moo! Moo moo!

Molly: Emma, actually my real name is Molly.

Emma: Oooooooohhhh.

Molly: But that's okay, you can call me Moo moo.