My friend Jodi tagged me because she knows how much I love to be tagged. But this one is a little more interesting then most. At least I think so, so I can see what others are reading.

Directions:

1. Get the nearest book to you, or one you’re reading that contains over 123 pages.
2. Go to the 123 page
3. Find the 5th sentence
4. Post the 5th sentence
5. Tag five people

Book: Lance Armstrong, It’s Not About the Bike

5th sentence: “As the days went on, all we heard from Nike, Giro, Oakley, and Milton-Bradley were words of support”

I tag Bernd, Josh, Sabrina, Margaret, Marisa

If you like to read and haven’t heard of Goodreads you should check it out, and add me as a friend!

Jodi also requested more pictures of Harrison. So I guess you can thank Jodi for inspiring this post.

Last weekend Josh and Sabrina ran a race as a team and asked me to come watch Harrison. I never turn down a chance to watch him. I guess it’s a first and only nephew thing, I can’t get enough of that kid. So these are a couple of pictures I took last week at the race.

Harrison loves to put things in his mouth and suck on them right now. The orange object in his hand is a fish finger puppet. Just the right size to fit in his mouth!

The proud parents after their race.

Beautiful, white fridge especially well suited for smaller areas, about 15 sq ft! This fridge has cooled our food and beverages for over a year and has worked well for several years before that! Why buy a brand new fridge when you could continue using ours that has a great history of working?! Oh, but wait, it isn’t just a fridge, there is also a freezer on top. Want some ice? Just fill some ice trays with water and you’ll have ice in no time without all the hassle of an ice maker. No need to worry about all the space those huge things take up or trying to figure out how to hook it up and make sure it doesn’t leak. This fridge may not be Energy Star compliant, but it doesn’t waste energy with an unneeded light bulb in the freezer like some of the others on the market. How useful are those anyway? Once you fill it up you can’t even tell that a freezer has a light in it behind all the frozen food and ice cream. With this freezer you don’t need to feel guilty that the light is on back behind your frozen peas and hamburgers. This fridge also encourages buying fresh produce on a regular basis because it only stays good for a few days at a time. Who wants to eat fruit that was purchased over a week ago anyway? With this fridge the fruit will be so rotten after a week that you won’t even be tempted to eat it! This fridge also has some wonderful character, stains and smells that are very unique and can remind you time and time again of its wonderful years of use. Prefer not to relive those moments? I’ll throw in a box of baking soda to help capture some of those smells for free!

All of these wonderful qualities about this fridge may make you wonder why we are willing to part with it. Well, it was a very tough decision, but it is being replaced by a new, larger fridge. I know, I know, how do we know this new fridge even works as well as our old one? Well, we decided to take our chances. The new fridge matches the other appliances we have been buying lately, stainless steel. Plus when you come across a new fridge that is being offered for 50% of its retail value it is hard to pass up! How did we get such an incredible deal? Well, I wish I could say I was just that good at working the salesman, but actually he gave us that price right away! It just happens that the specific fridge was a floor model and had recently been discontinued; they were almost giving it away!

If you’re interested in the gently used and loved, white fridge, let me know! It is currently scheduled to be picked up by Rocky Mountain Power on June 2nd and they are paying us $30 for it! What a deal! Want it more than they do? Sweeten the deal and this wonderful piece of modern engineering can be yours! Take a look at the old and new fridges side by side below.

Our kitchen sink has been a problem since we first moved in to our house a year ago. It was not sealed anymore so it was able to move around a little and if we splashed or spilled water on the counter it would leak under the sink. We finally got around to taking care of this over the weekend. The easiest and cheapest option would have been to just take the sink out, clean the counter of the dried silicone and then re-seat the sink and hook it all back up, but of course we didn’t choose this option.

We have never really liked the sink or the faucet; they were both dirty, stained and scratched. The faucet use to leak but we seem to have fixed that, at least for the time being. We also have been replacing our old, rundown appliances with stainless steel ones so we thought it would be good to get a stainless sink as well. We decided to get a single basin sink and install it ourselves. I have a book that described the process pretty well and decided to go ahead and give it a shot.

The old sink came out pretty easily, first I shut off the hot and cold water valves under the sink and detached all the drain pipes, then I took off the water supply pipes going to the faucet. When I pulled out the last drain pipe that went in to the wall I could not believe how bad it smelled! We have had a rank smell in our kitchen some mornings and I usually will take out the trash and spray some 409 down the drains to get rid of it, never really sure what it is, but I think I discovered it! I wiped out the pipe in the wall and hopefully that will keep it from getting that smell again. I was surprised at how easy it is to remove a garbage disposal, just need to take a screwdriver and slide it in a hole where the top of the disposal meets the mount under the sink and push it counter-clockwise and then it just drops right out! I just assumed it would be held in by more than that. After I unhooked everything under the sink I was able to pull the sink out (with Jodi’s help, it is a heavy sink). It came out easily because it was no longer attached to the counter.

I felt pretty good about things at this point, everything had gone smoothly and without incident, but that sure changed. Before we started pulling everything out we had already purchased a new sink and faucet from Lowe’s. We decided to wait till we were working on the project to deal with getting the pipes so that we could drop the new sink in the hole and determine what we actually needed; we wanted to replace all of the pipes, especially after we saw how dirty and smelly the old ones were. We also decided to replace the disposal after pulling it out, plus that way we wouldn’t have to worry about a new mount not working with our old disposal.

The first problem I ran in to was the hole for the sink was a little too small for our new sink to fit. This was better than having the hole be too big for the sink but it still presented a challenge. The sink directions suggested getting a keyhole saw to make the hole larger and I figured I might as well do that instead of getting a power tool since I probably wouldn’t have much need of a jigsaw anytime soon again. I used the $6 keyhole saw I bought for about 5 minutes before I realized I would most likely be working on making that hole larger for the rest of my life so I went to Home Depot and found a great deal on a cheap jigsaw, $10! I bought this and finished the job in much less than a lifetime and got to fill the kitchen was sawdust while at it.

The next problem I had was I used a different brand of silicone caulk than I had before and didn’t open the container properly and ended up squirting caulk all over the back of my caulk gun, since the caulk wasn’t able to come out the front it came out the back! This wasn’t a big deal and was solved with me running to Home Depot again to buy another tube of caulk and opening in properly.

The next problem happened after I dropped the sink in with the silicone caulk around the rim and discovered that I could not get the fasteners on the underside of the sink to fit in 2 of the sides. I put the ones in that I could and figured out a way to kind of get the others to work, so hopefully the sink doesn’t come out one day because it isn’t as securely fasted as it should be from under neath. The problem was there was not quite enough extra counter space in the front and one of the sides had a wood divider so there wasn’t quite enough space for the fasteners to sink their teeth in to. In the future this will be something good to keep in mind if I ever try to replace a sink again.

After finally getting the sink in the hole and fastened in it was probably around 9:30pm, the project had started around 2:30pm. I started putting the drain and disposal mount together and discovered that plumbers putty is very similar to playdoh, its interesting stuff. That all came together pretty well, but I wasn’t really sure how good I did it so I was a little nervous it might leak, luckily it hasn’t!

The next problems were my own fault and were easily solved. I realized that the disposal doesn’t come with a power cord, just wires to hook up to, this was easy to fix by going to Lowe’s again and buying a power cord kit. The problem was that I didn’t discover this until the store was closed so it got put off till Monday. The next problem was I put the p trap pipe in backwards which meant the drain from the disposal didn’t quite reach, so I decided I needed another short pipe, another thing that I could resolve on Monday when the store opened again. The last problem was I missed the step on the disposal where I needed to punch out the dishwasher drain plug so that the dishwasher was able to drain, this was easily solved by looking at the instructions again, finding out I needed to do that and then dropping the disposal back out, punching out the plug and putting it back up.

After I finally got it all put together I had a small leak where I had attached my new extension pipe to the p trap pipe. I took it apart and figured out if I turned the p trap pipe around I didn’t need the extension pipe and everything fit together much nicer, without leaks! Finally, the project was complete only about 48 hours after it started!

We kind of figured it was good that we weren’t able to use the sink on Sunday and Monday morning because that way it made sure and gave everything time to dry so we weren’t tempted to run the water and possibly ruin the silicone seal. Now that I have completed the project I think I could do it again without nearly as much trouble, although I don’t have it on my list of things I would like to do again!

Last night we saw the new Indiana Jones movie, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, at the Megaplex 20 at The District. This was another movie that we heard some mixed reviews of and a lot of talk about it not living up to the hype, kind of like the new Star Wars movies, but I thought it was good. A lot of stuff that happens in the movie is unrealistic, but that is how all of the Indiana Jones movies are. Harrison Ford did good as an older Indiana Jones and Shia LaBeouf also did a good job.

There was a little bit of drama at the theater last night. We pulled up at the theater and saw lots of people exiting the building but just assumed a big movie must have just ended but as we got closer to the front door we realized there was a lot of people just standing around not going inside and not leaving. It turned out that there was a small fire at the Mayan Express in the lobby and the fire alarm went off so they had to evacuate the building. This meant that our movie got pushed back 40 minutes, but that is better than having it interrupted or canceled because of the fire. The Mayan Express is actually where we ate last week when we saw Prince Caspian. I’m not sure why we went there, I’ve been to the Mayan restaurant before and the food isn’t that good, the place is cool and they have divers, but at the Mayan Express you don’t get the atmosphere or the divers, just the food with a higher price tag. It still wasn’t good and maybe it’s a good thing they had a fire, keeps other people from eating their overpriced food! It didn’t look like there was much damage so I’m sure they’ll be open very soon again.

So Bernd and I decided on Sunday if we really want to get serious about moving we need to get our house ready to put on the market. There are a few things that we need and want to do to finish the look and feel of the house that we started a year ago. So we decided to go shopping…

This is the new fan we bought to replace the ugly gold and white fan in our bedroom. Once this one is installed we will only have one light left to replace.

This is our new kitchen sink. The white sink that came with the house is stained and scratched. Plus it doesn’t match our stainless steel dishwasher and stove.

This is our new kitchen faucet. The old white faucet leaks and I’ve never been able to get it totally clean from the renters that lived here before us.

Which leads me to our final purchase of the week, our new fridge! We have wanted a new fridge since the day we got the keys to our townhouse. After we moved in we realized that the fridge had a leak. We ended up getting that fixed instead of getting a new fridge, mostly because it was cheaper to pay the $50 home warranty fee then pay to replace it. We also realized after we moved in that we had a “midget” fridge. It’s seriously tiny, just look at all of the room between the top of the fridge and the cabinet. Also when we moved in the fridge smelled terrible and there was food spills and stains all over. I scrubbed and scrubbed but I just never really felt like I got it totally clean, sick. (In case you haven’t heard about the renters that lived here before us they were disgusting)

So this is our new fridge! It doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles that we really want in a fridge but we got a killer deal on it. Before we went shopping we decided that we didn’t want to spend a ton of money on a really expensive fridge and then move and leave it behind. So we went to Sears looking for a decent fridge that would match our stove and dishwasher. We got a great deal and we are both so excited. (Not that the fridge is totally awesome but that we got such a great deal on it)

So needless to say Bernd has some honey do projects this weekend! We really want to get everything done quickly so that when we find a great place to move we can put our house on the market right away. After these purchases are taken care of we will have a microwave to buy, a light for the stairs, new door handles, and tile to put in the kitchen and bathrooms. So we are getting closer! I’ll take some pictures and post them after Bernd gets everything installed!

Jodi and I saw The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian at the Megaplex 20 at The District last night. I heard some reviews that the fighting in the movie went on non-stop but I didn’t think it was overwhelming at all. I haven’t read the book before so I’m not sure how true the movie stays to the book but I thought it was well done and the special effects were excellent. This is definitely a movie that we plan to buy when it is available. It looks like they are already working on the next one, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader!

We use to see quite a few movies on the big screen but lately it seems like we only make it to the big blockbusters. As much as I like watching movies on the big screen with the state-of-the-art sound system I don’t like having to deal with all of the people at the theatre sometimes. It seems like we always end up sitting around people that are talking or giggling, or there will be a crying kid somewhere or else someone near us will reek of body odor. I swear someone near us last night at the movie hadn’t bathed for days! We also don’t make it to the theatre as much because of the cost, the prices seem to go up every time we see a movie, and if ticket prices don’t go up the food prices do. We also have a nice TV, it’s no huge theatre screen and we don’t have the movie theatre sound system, but I’d choose it over going to the theatre most of the time.

We did already get tickets to see the new Indiana Jones movie on Thursday, but we did get a later show so that hopefully we can avoid some of the reasons we stay away from the movie theatre.

So this is a little late for Mother’s Day and a little early for my Mom’s Birthday, but oh well! For those of you that don’t know, my brothers and I call my Mom Moim. I’m not really sure how that started but she loves it! I’ve been thinking a lot about my Moim lately with Mother’s Day last Sunday and her Birthday on Thursday.

I have an amazing Moim. I’m not a very sappy person as most of you know, but I read a bunch of blogs about Mom’s today and it made me a little sentimental. So here are a few things I love about my Moim.

My Mom has always been there for me. She has been a big part of every major event in my life as well as all the small ones. I don’t think she ever missed a soccer game, swim meet or water polo game. I know she wasn’t extremely proud of me beating up girls but she came and cheered me on anyway!

She always made sure that I had a hair bow to match each of my uniforms.

She made me wear a necktie to my first day of school. I think she wanted to make sure that I was strong enough to overcome embarrassment.

My Mom made me learn how to swallow pills. I know this probably sounds strange to most of you but I had the hardest time taking medicine. I would try and swallow pills and I would just gag and gag until I gave up or threw up. So every time I went to the doctors and he would want to prescribe something I would ask if it was available in liquid. That or else I would chew about 10 children’s Tylenol. Finally my Mom had enough. I was at the doctors for something (not sure what but it was probably an ear infection). The doctor was getting ready to write a prescription so I asked, do they have that in liquid, and my Mom said no she’ll take the pills. When we got home with the medicine my Mom stood in the kitchen with me until I got that tiny little pill down and I’m not talking a short amount of time. I wouldn’t say she was extremely encouraging about it. I remember her saying things like, come on Jod just swallow it, take a drink and swallow it’s not that hard. She sat and listened to me cry and gag but she was determined. She knew that it was something I had to learn to do. Turned out to be a very valuable skill I developed!

She made me take piano lessons forever. I’m not really sure what she was trying to teach me with that. But for what it’s worth I still know how to read music and if it was a desperate situation I could probably play a hymn or two.

My Mom always made me apologize to my brothers even when I didn’t want to.

My Mom knows that I hate meatloaf so she makes sure to only make it when she knows I’ll be out of town.

My Mom is amazingly talented. Any hobby that she has ever decided to take up she has mastered.

My Mom is a great cook.

My Mom is very strong and brave. I have watched her deal with some difficult things and she always gets through it and becomes stronger because of it.

My Mom is really funny! She can always make us laugh.

My Mom is an amazing Mom, wife, and now Grandma!

There is no way that I could ever repay my Mom for all that she has done for me, she’s amazing. I think she and I were meant to be together as mother and daughter. She always told me when I was mad at her that I choose her, but I think we choose each other. I love you Mom. Happy Birthday!