Swiss Family Harrison

Monday, June 29, 2009

Money Pit

Our missing sidewalk

The crappy bricks in the porch...that basically crumbled in the contractor's hands.

Before.

There generally is at least one point during each year, that owning a house seems like such a burden…and last week was definitely that point! It all started early this year when we decided that rather than go anywhere cool on vacation this year, we would get our front porch fixed, a new front sidewalk poured and a sprinkler system installed. Woo Hoo! Wild and crazy stuff! So we talked about this, got bids from various contractors, weighed the merit of the bids, etc…and finally decided to go w. good ol’ Handy Randy. (the same man who rebuilt our chimneys the week after Joshua was born…excellent timingI tell ya!). In early May we call Randy, he tells us he’ll stop out to review the bid… he doesn’t stop by. Matt calls again, leaves a message, weeks pass. I contemplate not planting annuals in the front yard (around Mother’s Day), because at any moment he could start tearing up our front porch (and I know for a fact that the man has no respect for flowers…witnessed it first hand last year). I planted my flowers though, because I know that the contractor speak of “I’ll start in a week/week and a half” really means I’ll probably show up sometime w/in the next month or so… and that is exactly what happened. About a week and a half ago (yep, we’re almost to July), we come home to our sidewalk torn out and a message from HR that there was a problem. Great. So we get home and start surveying our mess…giant chunks of our front porch are gone… and when HR shows up, he gives us a demonstration of how weak our porch is, by dismantling it by hand, and running broken down mortar through his hands like sand. Ok…so the porch is toast. We sort of already knew this. What we didn’t know is that our 80-something year old house has it’s foyer and front porch held up by a single column of cinder blocks, and a piece of wood. Awesome… HR tells us we’re lucky that the entire front porch/foyer hasn’t ripped off the house. So he turns to us w. dollar signs in his eyes, and tells us that this is a problem and the price just went up… of course. We are entirely used to projects exploding however, so we weren’t truly discouraged until the following day, when after pulling apart the rest of our porch and dismantling the pillars, HR announces that the pillars are toast. Shit. Where do you go to buy pillars? Turns out Anderson’s sells them, but they are special order only, and take two weeks to come in. So now, I’m upset because Joshua’s first birthday party is coming up quickly, and I know that I won’t have new pillars in at that time… As I’m trying to come to terms w. the huge increase in price of this project, I walk into our house (this is last Wed). It’s hot, I’m cranky… and the house is hot…and smells like poop! Jack evidently had something wrong w. him, and not only puked twice (on the carpet of course), but also took a giant poo. Great. I clean up the messes and try to turn on the AC. The AC kicks on but the fan in the condenser isn’t spinning and the house is not getting any cooler. I turn the AC off. I ask Matt to look at it. He does…and announces that it’s broken. So we all spent last Wed night sweating our butts off, because yes, we are weak and spoiled. Thursday morning I am evil and tired, Joshua is evil and tired, and we all trudge off to respective work/baby sitter’s homes in search of cool temps. I had scheduled to have a repair guy out to look at the AC. He calls me at 10:00… I drive home. He takes the condenser cover off, dismantles the capacitor, shows me that it’s broken (see this bubble in the top? Not supposed to have that!). Replaces it w. a new capacitor ($25 online), charges me $125. Plus the $75 service call fee. He also gives me a paper explaining why the service call costs so much… I tell you, I read it and I feel not one ounce better knowing that my $200 helped pay for the company’s phone service and state of the art trucks! ;P But the AC works again, so $200 well spent. Now we’re just hoping that we can wind up the porch project sooner rather than later, so that when the sprinkler guys show up next week, we’ve got a clean slate for them to make their mess upon. ;)

Love my house, love my house, love my house…at least the staircase hasn’t’ fallen in, and we don’t have any resident rodents (that I know about at least!).

Monday, June 22, 2009

11 months and 10 days old!

What’s new with Joshua?

He took his first steps on June 6th (just shy of 11 months old!). He continues to take more little steps independent of furniture each day.
He can walk with a toy in his hand. If he’s not thinking about walking, he can do it just fine…then you can watch him realize that he’s not holding on to something, and he immediately wobbles and falls. Crawling is still his most efficient mode of transportation
He started saying Dadadadada on Father’s Day. Matt couldn’t ask for a more perfectly timed gift!
He laughs at his own babbled jokes…and he appears to think he’s pretty funny!
Joshua loves blueberries. So much in fact, that our sitter has asked us to lay off the blueberries for a little while. Smurfy blue poos are not cute!
He also has taken to eating strawberries, watermelon and pineapple. He loves fruit!
He loves to open and close doors. The bathroom door, his bedroom, the vanity doors in the bathroom, the kitchen cupboards. Here come the safety locks!
He’s definitely a Harrison … he sweats like crazy! The moment the temps go over 80 degrees, he’s drenched.
He has a “cat voice”…a special higher pitched babble that he reserves for talking to our cats. Too funny!

So this is what 31 feels like…

31...arrgghh!

A family pic

More grandpa! More! This is good stuff!

My two men.

31…Hmmm…I guess it’s not horrible. I’m getting old…gotta face it. Matt commented yesterday on how white my hair is I told him that these were age highlights. Damn real highlights for not disguising enough of my white hair! My birthday was very nice though. Spent the morning going to breakfast and a couple of garage sales, then went to the mall by myself and did some shopping. At 6:00, the family met up at La Scola for dinner. We had an awesome dinner, and Joshua was good throughout the entire meal, all 2 hours of it! Thank goodness he likes to eat! He got to order his very own manicotti, and proceeded to eat as if he was starving! He then continued to eat bread until dessert came, and then we discovered that yes, he does like lemon sorbet. Figures… He sat with Grandpa and opened his mouth baby bird style as Grandpa got to shovel his dessert into Joshua’s hollow leg!

Joshua loving his new bike seat and helmet. As soon as we started riding, the crying stopped.

Don't these two look thrilled. The new jogging stroller.

A little nudie swimming...

For Father’s Day, Joshua and I purchased Matt a baby bike seat, that he then got to install. Joshua got his new helmet out and we went for a family bike ride. Joshua seemed to really like it…and then conked out on the way back home. He looked pretty uncomfortable bent over the way he was. Thank goodness he appears to be made of rubber. Later in the day Matt took Joshua running in the new jogging stroller, and finally they came home and went swimming in his whale pool. Overall a very active Father’s Day! Just like Matt.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

I can't decide what is better...

the sound he's making or his face while he's trying to continue to make me laugh... :)

Dance Monkey...Dance

I love this video clip... Matt's "do it" is perfect...and then Joshua performs his latest trick...begrudgingly. :)

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Memorial Day Weekend

Dad staring at the truck stuck up to the front axel in mud. I pulled it onto the former "back" parking area... not knowing that it is now our very own patch of quicksand... The truck sank right away, and there was no budging it.