hello

Sorry for the time away...we've been extremely busy. Not that being busy is some kind of great excuse, but anyway, I digress...

Things are going well here. We've been getting ready for Halloween; Grace is going to be a cowgirl this year. I will post pictures after the fact but it's a really cute costume.

I'm already on the prowl looking out for the mischievous pumpkin smashers that appear each year and smash everyone's pumpkins here in our subdivision. Last year I was very close to catching them. If they come around this year, I won't be close, I'll catch them. I'm tired of wasting my money each year on our pumpkins only to have them be destroyed by some kids in the neighborhood with nothing better to do. Not only is it the money we lose but it's devastating to Grace because we work hard going to the pumpkin farm and pick out just the right pumpkins. Then she colors them and we put them out on the porch as our Halloween decorations. When she has seen that her pumpkins have been missing in the previous years she has been very disappointed. I'm tired of seeing her little disappointed face.

Enough of Halloween...this also means we're approaching the end of the year. Can you believe it? It's hard to believe there is only about 66 days left in the year? WOW! Which means it's only around 90 days until our new baby will be here. WOW! Guess we should start getting ready for that huh?

We did do some house planning today by finally coming up with a plan for our kitchen. If you'll recall we closed in the wall between the kitchen and the family room downstairs so that we could put cabinets on that wall in the kitchen. We went to my favorite store and saw a kitchen planner and between her ideas and our ideas we hammered out a plan that I think will fix most of our problems. As we had originally envisioned we'll put a pantry on our new wall. That wall will also get lower cabinets with a counter on top of them and upper cabinets above that. The wall with the stove and refrigerator remains unchanged and the other wall will change by moving the sink under the window (thank you!) and moving the dishwasher over at the same time between the sink and the sliding door. This opens up the area to the left of the sink for more counter space.

So with all of these changes we'll gain more counter space and a lot more cabinet space. And our kitchen should actually hold our food and cooking utensils and devices. Plus I was impressed with the total price for all the cabinets in the kitchen; much less than I expected, not that we have that much money...

As far as the playset and landscaping are concerned, my "expert" analysis was correct as the landscaping company came the next day and took away six inches of soil so that we could put in the playset and mulch. It took 2 1/2 days to put the playset up and then it took another day to put the mulch in. It will probably end up taking more time and effort to remove the old playset. Not because it was well constructed or well put-together. But the years it had been there made it more difficult to take apart plus there was the cement on the bottom that had to be broken up. I've done all of that and moved the cement pieces behind the shed to hide them. Now comes the problem of disposing of the pressure-treated lumber that made up the old playset.

I made it a point to call our disposal company and specifically ask how they would like me to handle getting rid of this wood. They asked how much I had and I tried to describe as best I could over the phone. After this they stated to just put it out with my regular pickup and the driver should take it. They didn't so I called back. They said they'd have the driver return on Friday (Wednesday is our normal pickup day) and pick it up. The next day she calls back and said the driver stated it was not a small playset, but a LARGE playset and that it couldn't possibly be picked up with our normal garbage pickup. Are you kidding me? A LARGE playset? It's not even an entire playset! It's just the tower portion of a small playset to begin with. I didn't even put the whole thing out because I couldn't have anything longer than 5 feet and I didn't have the time to cut those pieces down.

Anyway, it all boils down to the fact that they want $15 to pick it up our old playset. Expensive - not at all. A relative bargain when you consider my other options: 1-800-got-junk would probably charge over $200 to do this, although they would also remove the cement that the garbage company won't take, and if I take it to the dump myself they have a minimum charge no matter how much you bring there and while I don't remember what that charge is, I know it's significantly higher than $15. If you think about the garbage company not taking cement, it really doesn't make sense, they won't take cement and they specifically told me to take it to the dump myself. However, where does our garbage go? The dump maybe???? Anyway, maybe it's just a weight issue with carrying cement along with all the other garbage.

So I've played along, but I'm going to document photographically everything that I'm putting out this week for my $15. Which I will be putting everything out for that extra charge. And I will share my documentation with the office staff so that they know exactly how much the driver is considering "excessive" for a regular pickup. My contention here is that the driver didn't want to pick it up and just said it was too much for a regular pickup and/or they just want more money from me. Whether I get my $15 back...who knows, but it's worth a shot. Why waste $15 just because I might have a lazy garbage driver.

Grace's birthday turned out great. We decided to have a horse-themed party here at the house instead of the actual horse farm in exchange for inviting more people to her party. So we invited 15 kids to the party. It turned out really well; almost everyone came and I think they all had a great time. I know Grace had a great time! Which reminds me...we have to get those thank-you's out.