Easter 2008

Overall a very busy weekend for bunny day. Saturday was cleaning day. Jen had to work so she dropped off the boys to grandma and grandpas for the day so I could clean uninterrupted. She left at 9:30 and I immediately got busy. I pulled all of the furniture out of the front room to clean the carpet. Our new carpet cleaner does a fantastic job .... almost too good of a job. While it steam cleans and scrubs the carpet it ends up pulling out clumps of fuzz and cat hair. So after sweeping the room, I steam clean, let that dry and then re sweep the room to get all of the fuzz turds. But another good point with the steam cleaner working so well the carpet's don't stay wet very long. So while waiting for the front room to dry and resweep I moved to the front room I had just spent the week mudding, sanding, and painting. It needs another coat of paint, but I ran out of time and it is good enough for Sunday. So I cleaned that carpet, and moved on to the next thing. Trying to plan out the best way to kill time to let the carpet dry to resweep it. I pretty much did that for 6 hours. I was going to throw in a cd to listen to, but MEE had a 80's weekend going on so I found that good enough. Between cleaning carpets, cleaning bathrooms, hand washing the wood floors, and numerous little things like cleaning the vents, my body was aching around 4:00.
The in-laws brought the kids home around 5:00 and we grabbed a pizza to eat. Jen didn't get back home until almost 7:30, and then had to do a couple things after bath time like coloring the easter eggs and a few other projects for the next day.
Sunday Jen gets up and goes to 6:30 service at her church. She comes home and gets myself and the boys and head out to my church for the 8:30 service. It was busy but not too nuts. We get home and start throwing some last minute stuff together and do last minute cleaning. Around 11:30 my mom and brother show up. I notice that there is a spot on the sidewalk that is still icy from the snowfall the last time and start looking around for something to put on the ice so it won't cause anyone to fall. Jen suggests kitty litter. It was a great idea, but I later regretted it since when the ice did melt it mixed with the kitty litter and just made mud that was tracked into the house. Overall it was a very good time with just over 30 people showing up. We had to hunt for eggs inside since the outdoors was just a little too soggy. After dinner I noticed the older boys getting bored sitting in the front room so I plugged in the Wii and let them play. They all did very good and took turns. IT was hard to tear them away from it when the finally had to leave. Some things of note that happened on the day. Aunt Carol had a problem with the potatoes and accidentally got pieces of plastic in them which Jen's Uncle Dan bit into. Then she thought she left something in the stove at home and tried for quite a while to get a hold of her husband to make sure it was off.
The boys had alot of fun and too much candy. Good to know that Andrew is a jelly bean fiend. Man he wouldn't leave that bowl alone. Now the attempt to keep the house relatively clean so it's good to go for this weekend and Christopher's baptism since we are having people over after that as well. You are invited if you would like to come. I guess I never really got into religious affiliations of our friends or if they are practicing. Probably should find out sometime.

Here comes the bunny

I am not sure if Easter just got more crazy or easier. We have a busy but set routine for Easter. Jen usually goes to the 6:00am service. She comes home and we pack the kids up and go to the 8:00 mass at my church. Then over to my mom's house for a brunch and general bunny stuff. Then we head over to Aunt Carols house for lunch, easter egg hung, and more general bunny stuff. And then usually home by 5 or 6. This year, one of Aunt Carol's daughters is moving back home and she didn't thing she could handle a move-in and Easter on the same week, which I don't blame her. So they asked us to host Easter at our house this year. I am thinking, cool, now we don't have to run all over the place with the kids this year, and I like to entertain anyway. But then a bit of panic set in. There was alot to do and get ready, working out the logistics of trying to get the house cleaned with the kids around and doing it at the last possible moment so it will stay clean.

Then we decided to use the front room to give the kids a place to play, which means I have to try and finish the room. We had pulled the wallpaper and the plan was to fix the holes in the wall and then repaint the room. That plan just got moved up to a priority. So far I have mudded and sanded the walls fixing all the holes and dings. I was up to till midnight last night putting primer on the walls to get ready for paint. Now the next big question is paint. We had bought two gallons of a paint color that we THOUGHT we liked, but when we put it on a small section of wall it was pretty bad. Crap. So a trip to home depot and another leap of faith on another color. We called around to see if we can get a 'tester' sample of paint, but either they don't do it or they want $4 for a small sample. no thanks, we will just take another chance.

Plans ewr made last week to drop the kids off to the grandparents saturday to give me a day to steam clean carpet and more general cleaning. Hopefully it will last from Saturday night until Sunday morning. Lucky for me my father-in-law is getting a head count so we know how many tables we need and we can plan where to put people. I think at last count is was around 25 or so. I don't know how Jen's aunt does it every year in a house that is alot smaller than ours, but she does it very well so I have confidence that things will work out for us too. The crappy part is that we have a fantastic yard for easter egg hunting, but the weather is probably going to keep us inside.

St. Patrick's Day

Had the Dan and Rhonda over for Reubens and beer.

I can see clearly now....

The digital revolution is comming more and more every day. When I first heard reports of the analog signals going away being replaced with digital I was a little uneasy. Yeah we only have the over the air signal, but we really don't need cable or the dish. There is enough programing on the 4 stations we get to keep us properly entertained, and if not we have quite a good DVD collection. Even if we could afford cable or the dish, I am not sure we would bother with it. Anyway, I heard about these converter boxes a few years ago that would be necessary. I stopped by best buy back then to price one of these things out and it was around $100. I am glad I waited around for a while. The government's plan was to give a rebate of $40 per TV to those poor schlubs like me who only use over the air signals. I call it my government cheese box. I figured even with the rebate it would be costly, but I found one at Walmart for $49. Friday the little rebate credit cards appeared in the mail. I was able to sneak away for some errands on Saturday morning and stopped by to pick up two of these little boxes for our TVs. After looking around a while I finally had to ask where they were, and of course they were right in front of me. I get the boxes home and have to wait for a while until the kids were properly bored with TV to hook them up. I worked on the big screen in the front room with multiple configurations trying to get it to go through the VCR, but couldn't get it to work. Finally I just hooked it up directly and turned it on. It is sooo cool. No more fiddling with the antenna to try and get a good signal for the different stations. All stations come in crystal clear. And I get even more channels than before, including two weather radars and a button that allows me to see the upcoming programing. It's great that I have gotten the boxes early to make sure I got them, but I can see them coming up with something a bit cheaper or with a few more options, but for now I am pretty happy with it. But there are two drawbacks to the cheese boxes. One is that the Fox station doesn't appear, according to their website their digital stuff isn't to full power yet. My question, Why Not? The are promoting the crap out of the digital stuff but don't want to do full power yet. The other and bigger problem is that one of the PBS substations is PBS kids 24 hours a day... crap. We used to be able to tear them away from the TV because the programming stopped, but now we are going to have to keep an eye on how much they watch. The other cool part is that I think I can get away without using an external antenna on the house, but I am curious how many more station I could get with an external antenna.

Happy St. Patrick's Day !!!

Happy St. Patrick's Day !!

Wishing you always...
Walls for the wind
A roof for the rain
and tea besides the fire
Laughter to cheer you
Those you love near you
And all that your heart my desire

Not much planned for tonight. Just having Dan and Rhonda over for Reubens and a few beers. Maybe throw in the "Quiet Man" with John Wayne, or it might be the Wii.

Snow fun

I finally had the chance to take the boys outside for a little fun in the snow. Unfortunately there was a little crust of ice on top of the snow which made making a snowman very difficult, but the snowballs were able to be made very easily. We don't go outside enough, especially in the winter and now the snow will be gone soon so another winter wasted, but at least we had fun in the time we were outside the other day.

Car Shopping

Saturday Jen and I pawned off the kids to grandma and grandpa and went car shopping. Like I have said before the 3 kids fit in the back seat of the jeep but it is real tight. The jeep itself has some mechanical issues too, so we decided it is about time to unload it before it requires major repair. We weren't ready to buy yet,but we wanted to get an idea of where to go and what was out there. Now I look for the cars on the net to avoid the sales weasels, but we decided to go out and look in case there was something Jen wanted to drive. With age I am not as intimidated in talking to the sales guys and can easily walk away from one in mid conversation if needed so that makes car looking a little easier. Of course you HAVE to talk to the sales weasels since just about every car lot in town is too chickensh*t to put the price in the window. A couple of the websites that I look at won't put a price on their either. They just lost a potential customer. So we are out and about and start hitting lots in the automall. We did see a REAL cheap mini van (under $5000) that said "as is" so you know it has issues, but you weigh the price of repair with a cheap car payment, but we decided against it. The first 3 lots we didn't see anything we liked or could afford. We got out again at the fourth lot to look at some Hondas and Toyotas. We were basicly looking at Chrysler's, but Jen had heard good things about Honda's. So we get out and start looking, and immediately get a sales weasel to come out of his hole. I am talking to him and he asks how much we are looking at spending. I tell him and he starts laughing at me. At the time I just blew it off, but when I recalled it later I was outraged. How dare this little a$$hole laugh at me! So yet another loss of a potential customer to this lot. I should have known not to go to this lot since that is where I bought my black 454 SS pickup truck that was a p.o.s. and paid WAY too much for. For anyone else looking, take some advice, and don't go to Bob Rohrman's in the automall. Next were the two lots I had the most hope for. O'Daniels where the sales guys are nice and the selection is great, and Barts where the selection is pretty good and the prices are reasonable. Nothing available at O'Daniels, but Barts had one that was almost what we wanted.
By this time were were getting pretty tired and hungry so we decided to head to the North side of town. We cruised past a couple of lots, but weren't inclined enough to actually stop. We lunched at Penera's. This place is good for a selection of bagels, but I have never been real impressed with anything else there, but it sounded good to Jen. So $17 later we had two sandwiches that were alright, but not $17 alright. Back to the in-laws and we ended up spending the rest of the day there playing with the kids. But at least we know now what's out there and where we want to go.