We watched Harrison for a little bit while his Mom and Dad went to dinner last night.  I thought I would snap a few photos of two of my favorite guys while Harrison was sitting still for two seconds!  It was his bedtime and he just finished his bottle so he was sleepy.  We love it when he comes to visit us.

Last week we went from this:

To this:

Yay for tile! When we bought our place almost 2 years ago it had an ugly and annoying little rip in the floor in the kitchen that we were told was unrepairable. Last week we had all of the vinyl flooring in our house covered with tile! We did some shopping around at a few places and ended up buying the tile through the same place we bought our carpet. We went with 18″ tiles downstairs and 12″ tiles in the two bathrooms upstairs.

We picked a darker grout than what they put in, but by the time we realized it we decided it wasn’t worth having them take it out and redo it, we didn’t want to deal with that mess! We like the grout they used, just wanted the darker one so it wouldn’t show dirt as much. It still turned out very nice!

We considered doing the install ourselves (well, it was mostly just me that considered it), but Jodi wanted it to get done quickly and right the first time. The guys that put it in did an excellent job and completed the job in 3 days, several weeks faster than it probably would have taken me!

It has been a few days but we had our first snow last week! It snowed for most of the day. It had a hard time accumulating on the pavement, but around the middle of the day I went out and cleaned off my car and there was probably 6-8 inches of snow on it! The pictures below were taken in the morning, so we had a few more inches throughout the day. The snow was mostly all gone the next day but we should be getting some more this week.

We finally finished replacing all of the appliances in the kitchen! At first we replaced the stove, it was so gross we tried cleaning it but decided it wasn’t even worth it. Next was the dishwasher, it was noisy, didn’t clean very well and was also dirty. Soon after the dishwasher we found a sweet deal on a fridge and replaced the old white midget fridge with something that actually keeps food fresh without adding mysterious odors.

The last thing to replace was the microwave above the stove. The one we had worked alright but was dirty and it didn’t match since it was white and everything else was stainless steel. The bottom of the microwave was completed gunked up with grease and we’ve tried to clean it several times but never made much progress. While we were removing it our hands got disgusting! We replaced it with a Frigidaire PLMVZ169GC that we purchased from Best Buy. Now all the appliances are newer, nicer and contain only our dirt! The original ones were all so gross!

The sales person at Best Buy tried to get us to purchase the install service along with it for about $100 but Jodi and I decided we would be adventurous and do it ourselves. He tried to warn me that he installed one once and it took all weekend and 4 people. It ended up being pretty easy for us, the only reason we didn’t get it installed the same day we bought it was because we painted the wall after we took the old one down since the new one didn’t quite go down as low so we had to let that dry overnight.

Old microwave uninstalled	New microwave in packing material still	Microwave hole
Fresh paint, thanks Jodi!	Everything put back together

Jodi’s cousin, Lindsey, got married last week and we were lucky enough to be able to go. She and Aaron were married in the St. George temple. We had a great couple of days in St. George spending time with family and meeting Aaron’s family. We wish the two of them a happy eternity together!

Jodi and I celebrated our two year anniversary yesterday. Who would have thought that she would be able to stand me this long! I have loved being married to Jodi the past two years and look forward to an eternity together. She is the best!

We went to dinner at Ruth’s Chris last night to celebrate which is probably one of the best steak houses on the planet. After dinner we went and saw our friends Aimee and Marc and their new baby, Jackson, at Primary Children’s Hospital. Jackson was born a week ago and has a heart problem so they have had him in intensive care since his birth. We were glad to be able to see them and see that things are progressing well.

This is my new favorite album, I have always liked Coldplay but I really like this one. I have listened to it over and over the past few days. My favorite song is #6 “Yes”. I even purchased it legally, first album I have paid full price for in a long time. I kept thinking I should start getting legit with my music purchases but it was just so cheap to buy stuff from a Russian site that I have used for awhile. Recently they lost their deals or something with credit card companies so adding funds to my account was trickier so I decided to find a new source for tunes. I bought this album through Amazon.com and their system is easy to use, cheaper than a lot of other options, and sells plain old DRM-free MP3s. They also let you buy music with Pepsi Points and we all know I can rack up a few of those!

Jodi and I think this commercial from Hillshire Farm is hilarious!

Jodi and I helped to contribute to the $66.4M record setting amount that The Dark Knight took in on its first day. I really liked the movie and I thought that the acting was very good, especially Heath Ledger’s role of The Joker. This movie is by far the darkest Batman movie ever made; the Joker is no joke in this movie, just downright evil, corrupt, and insane. The special effects were top notch and batman, once again, had some incredible moves and awesome gadgets. They said a lot of the movie was shot in Chicago so there was a lot of hype and excitement here because of that.

Jodi and I arrived in Chicago today. She has to be here for the CHA convention for work and I just came to tag along. We both work a lot when we travel for her conventions but we do get to do some sight-seeing also and this is my first time in Chicago so it will be a new experience for me.

We flew in to O’Hare this morning on American Airlines. The last 20 minutes of our flight was bumpy and the landing was pretty hard but other than that it was a smooth flight. After a meeting that Jodi had to go to we went downtown with Brent and Jen and their 15 month old, Isaac.

We drove to Michigan Avenue and found a place to park the car and walked to the John Hancock Center where we went up to the observatory and looked out over Lake Michigan and the city. They had headsets that we each listened to that described the sights and history of downtown Chicago, narrated by David Schwimmer. We happened to drive by the Weber Grill Restaurant and stopped there for dinner. Jodi and I had seen something about that place on the Food Network so we were excited when we saw it and the wait wasn’t too long. It was good; all of their cooking is done over charcoal. I wouldn’t say that the food was amazing, but it is unique how they cook it so the flavor is a little different than most restaurants. I had a steak and they did a good job of cooking it the way I wanted.

Downtown Chicago traffic was pretty crazy. The roads are narrow and cars just park and drive all over the place. The buses are the worst; they just change lanes and drive between lanes whenever they want. Drivers are also quick to honk their horns if the vehicle in front of them isn’t moving even if that car would have to hit the car in front of them or drive over pedestrians to be able to go forward. Jen made the comment a couple of times that she was glad I drove so she and her husband didn’t have to deal with the traffic. I made the mistake once of trying to change lanes behind a parked bus so I could turn at an intersection and didn’t realize the bus wasn’t going anywhere until it was too late and I was still blocking the lane of traffic I had been in, I got a lot of honks! Whoops!