We made it to the gym again finally. It has been several weeks since we have been there, but it was good to go again. We had just been so busy with moving and school and everything else going on that we haven’t been able to make it there for awhile. We both did the elliptical for a half hour. We’re planning to make it 3-4 times/week till our triathlon in June so hopefully we don’t die that day.

Before our trip to the gym I replaced the light switch in the master bathroom. It has always been a little touchy and has turned off a couple times while I’ve been in the shower, which is not too fun. That was pretty easy to replace and should solve the problems that we’ve been having with it.

We also used our new grill for the first time today! We made amazing-burgers, hamburgers basted with amazing sauce. They were good, we like the new grill so far!

Josh and Sabrina also stopped by and picked up our old stove, now we can get things more organized in our garage and get everything put away.

I finally finished my 4 week project of getting the garage door opener installed. We purchased the garage door opener before we closed on the house with the intent to get it installed before we started painting. I thought installing the opener would be a fairly simple project, it turned out to be a nightmare. I first installed it too far back while trying to keep it away from having the door hit the rail as it opened. Then I reinstalled it against the wall but then the door would not open because of the rail. After that I got tired of messing with it so I tried to call Sears to have them come and finish the job. The lady I talked to there told me they wouldn’t work on it since I had already opened it, it was too much of a liability for whatever reason. So I decided just to finish it and bought a couple of quick-turn brackets to install at the top of the door to help it open lower. Everything went well with those and after I got them installed I mounted the garage door opener on the ceiling and hooked it up to the door. Everything actually went fairly smoothly with it for once! After I finished that I got the garage all cleaned out and we put Jodi’s car in it.

Yesterday we also bought a new grill. We had a 10% off coupon for Home Depot and thought we would use it for that. We went to Home Depot and looked at what they had, and they didn’t have very many grills put together and on display so it was difficult to see what they had available. We decided to leave Home Depot and went to Costco to see what they had, they only had two grills and they were both more money than we wanted to spend. After that we went over to Lowe’s and checked out their selection. We liked what they had and decided to buy one there, it is a BBQ Grillware brand, 3 burners, electric igniter, and a side burner. They also had a deal going where they provided free assembly, which meant we ended up getting of one the grills outside on display, and a free exchange for a full bottle of propane, which meant we had to buy a new empty bottle to exchange for a used, full bottle. It was a pretty good deal, saved us time from putting the grill together and about $20 on the propane costs.

Jodi and I are going to Amsterdam in less then a month, we fly out of here on May 25. We are getting pretty excited about it! We are going there because she has to go for work for an event the first couple days in June so we decided to go out a week early and spend some time there. One of her friends and co-workers is also going and bringing her husband. Neither one of us has ever been to Europe, so this will be a new experience for us.

We booked our flights a few weeks ago and we are flying through JFK airport in New York on the way there and the way back. It will be a long couple of flights. Last night we booked an apartment in Amsterdam for our stay, we are staying at a place called Anjeliersstraat Apartment. I have no idea how to pronounce that. We found that with the time we are planning to go there that things are a little pricey. We are going right in the middle of the Holland Festival so most of the hotels and properties in Amsterdam were booked or expensive.

We are planning to go to some museums while we are there, there are lots! We also want to do a canal tour. Did you know that Amsterdam has 165 canals, 1281 bridges, 70 cruise boats, 8 wooden drawbridges, 2500 houseboats and 120 water bikes? There is a lot of water over there!

This is something that I have been meaning to blog about for awhile. About a month ago, on March 20th, I had my eyes lasered at Hoopes Vision. I had heard that they are one of the more reputable and well-known laser eye surgery centers in the area and in the country, and since it was my eyes I was having done I wanted only the best to do them. I have been impressed and happy with the staff there every time I have been in. It took a couple of appointments before I actually had my surgery. I also went for about 4 weeks without wearing my contacts, that was not a fun time.

My surgery was the afternoon of March 20th, Jodi drove me to the surgery center since I wouldn’t be able to drive after I was done. The whole process took about 3 hours, but a lot of that was waiting around because they were kind of busy. There was this crazy lady going around trying to find the person she was there to pick up, she got annoying pretty quick. I opted for the Valium to help make sure I was calm during the procedure. They also put numerous drops in my eyes to help clean them out and numb them.

The video of my surgery is above, it doesn’t have any sound or anything so it is kind of difficult to know what is going on. It is only about half of the surgery, so only one of my eyes. The actual surgery only took about 10 minutes. I walked in and laid down on a bed with the laser up by my head. There were two nurses and the doctor, Dr. Hoopes, Jr. in the room that worked on my eyes. The video is taken from the top, the first eye that they did was my right eye. First they put some plastic sticky thing on my eye lids and then used some metal thing to hold them open. Then they used a couple tools to help remove the top few cells of my cornea to get to the meat of the cornea. Throughout this whole process they rinsed and dried my eye several times. None of this ever hurt, but I did feel a bit of pressure from the pushing. After they had this done they turned off the lights and set everything in the laser and lasered my eyes. The nurse on my right entered the numbers in the laser computer while the doctor verified they were accurate. The actual lasering lasted only seconds. There was a little green light on the laser machine that I had to focus on while the surgery was going on, the machine had sensors to know if my eye was moving around though so even if I moved my eye around it shouldn’t have caused a problem. I could smell a little bit of a burning smell while they were lasering my eye, that was kind of weird. After they had done all of this to my right eye they put a contact lens for protection in my eye and then they did the same thing to my left eye. The process was painless and actually rather easy. When I stood up after the surgery I could already see much better.

I hurt a fair amount for the next few days, from what they told me I had a worse reaction than most people do. Part of my problem too was that I had PRK instead of LASIK. PRK is a slightly different procedure, they don’t cut a flap in my cornea, instead they just take a little bit off and do the lasering at the top of the cornea. PRK is suppose to be a safer procedure and more accurate, the problem is that it takes longer to heal from it. Even now I am not seeing as well as I will in the next couple of months. They told me I would see good after a week, great after a month and my best after 2 or 3 months. I have noticed continued improvement since my surgery. Last week I was seeing a blurry 20/30, today when I went in for another follow-up appointment I am seeing a blurry 20/20, so it is getting better.

I am definitely glad that I had the procedure done, I kind of wish it was a little quicker to get through, but it will be worth it. I am so grateful to Jodi for all the she did for me while I was going through everything. She drove me around a lot to the vision center and bought me lots of eye drops. She was so patient too while I complained and couldn’t do very much for a couple of days after. She is a great wife!

Today I replaced the thermostat in the kitchen. The old one we had was pretty basic and we wanted one that we could program. We put in a new Honeywell Vision 8500 with a touchscreen. We also got our new stove, it is very nice! We already used the warming drawer to raise some rolls and used the oven to make some dinner. We really like the touch controls to run it all and the smooth top is going to be really nice. We played with it a little but it does a lot of stuff so it will take some time to get use to it all.

We finished painting the kitchen last night. When we got home from work we taped it back up to prepare for the second coat. My friend Justin stopped by for a few minutes as well so we took a little break while he was here. After he left we decided to just paint and get it done with. It was about 1am when we finished, only took us a little less than 2 hours to get it all painted.

Since Jodi and I are getting a new stove delivered and installed tomorrow we decided to paint the kitchen while we had things out and away from the wall. When we got home from work we taped it all up and painted our fooling heads off all evening. We finished about 10:30pm, used about half a gallon of paint but we got it done. Now tonight we just need to do a second coat.

After the kitchen is done we just are planning to do the bathrooms at some point, we are not in a rush to get them done though. Doing the kitchen was nicer than what we did the last couple of weeks. It was nice not to have to drive home after painting and also nice that we weren’t really on a time crunch, just mostly needed to finish one wall.

Now we are in the house and mostly settled. The past few days have been busy still, but we are getting some things done. We decided to buy a new stove since the one we have is pretty cheap and rather dirty. Monday evening we went to Sears and Lowes and looked around. We also did some looking around on Consumer Reports. We decided to get a Kenmore Elite stove, but didn’t want to purchase it on the spot since it is kind of a big purchase. Last night we went back and bought it, it will be delivered on Saturday. It is an all electric convection range with a smooth-top and all buttons covered in glass on the panel. It will be much easier to clean. When we got home we pulled the old stove out and cleaned behind it, we are planning to paint back there before the new one goes in. We also pulled the fridge out and cleaned behind it so that we can paint back there as well.

I also pulled out the dryer and cleaned under and behind it, it was really really dirty in that room. I decided to change out the dryer hose as well, but I hate the metal ring things that hold the hose on, so I am going to try and find something else that will hopefully work better. Maybe I just don’t know the secret with them, but I did try! I also cleaned out some of the faucet things so that the water comes out more smoothly.

Friday Jodi and I cleaned up all the clutter in the house to prepare for moving in on Saturday. We also brought some of our dishes and some other fragile things to the new house so they wouldn’t risk getting broken during the full move. We also packed up a few more things at the apartment. Saturday morning we packed up a few last things in the apartment. A few minutes before 9 I went and picked up the U-Haul truck out by our new house. I got back to the apartment about 10am, there was some event going on at Gateway so I had to just park it in the street so that cars were barely able to make it around, we always use to get so annoyed by people that did that, but we didn’t have much choice.

The actual move went pretty quick, we were done about 1pm. We had a few people come and help, Jason, Brant, Jerusha, Jake (Jodi’s brother) and Jodi’s dad. They were all awesome and helped us out a ton! Brant is like a superhero because he was carrying like 3 huge tubs or boxes all the time, maybe he was just trying to show off. We managed to get everything moved and I don’t think anything got damaged or destroyed except for a few glasses.

Jodi and I went back to the apartment Saturday afternoon and got it all cleaned up and turned in our keys. We are glad to have that done and taken care of! After that we went to eat dinner with Justin and his girlfriend at Applebee’s. We actually parked in Gateway parking, haven’t done that for a year!

Saturday evening and Sunday were spent trying to get our house all set back up so that we could live in it, I think now we are mostly there. We just have a couple issues with things still, our oven seems uncleanable, it smells like fish and our dishwasher makes a terrible amount of noise. We are planning to claim the dishwasher on our home warrenty so that should hopefully get fixed, but we’re planning to buy a new stove this week. Any suggestions out there for a brand?

Yesterday we got new carpet! We also put the blinds back up, we didn’t get a chance to clean them yet so we didn’t put the covers back over the tops since we’ll be taking them down again to clean them soon. We also put all the outlet and switch covers back on so now our house looks less like a construction zone. We put the banisters back on and vacuumed like crazy. Today we are planning to take some dishes and stuff to the house and clean up for the move tomorrow.

The carpet looks really nice, the guy did a really good job. There was one guy that did all of it, he was dead tired when it was done. I was told someone was suppose to be there between 9 and 10am but I got a call from our carpet salesman at 7:45am and he said the installer was already there, I guess the installer was told to be there at 7am, so he had been there for about an hour by the time I made it there. He didn’t finish until nearly 8pm.