Smith Adventures

Monday, August 3, 2009

UPDATES

Here are a few updates going on in our lives.
1. It's a girl! Andrew and I found out that we are going to be having a little baby girl. We are still thinking of a name, even though we have had lots of help thinking of one. One of the girls I work with who is disabled thinks Octavia Universe Smith sounds adorable...I have to think about that one a little more ha ha! Then my sister Sam thought Catherine Abagail Jessica would be a good name. So until we get that figured out she will still be Pinto for now.
2. Eviction! On Friday our Tantrum Crooks (name given by Sam) were officially evicted. I felt pretty powerful with two Sherrif Deputies with me while I was changing the locks...once they left I felt like a little school girl dodging the bullies on the playground. They didn't pack up one thing except for their TV. So this week Andrew and I get to go through all of their crap and inventory it and keep it for 30 days by law. If they want to get anything out they have to pay a reasonable storage fee (we are saying $15 a day) and then they can get some stuff. After 30 days anything they left becomes ours...or mostly it will be in the possesion of the dump. But we are so glad to have them gone! Now we won't have the cops at our place once a week (which I was told by the deputy that 5 times in one month isn't bad for them, SERIOUSLY?!) Now we are trying to get the missionaries to be our tenants, that way cops will never be there, they won't be home all day and will go to bed early, cigarette smoke wont be wafting into our house. We are really hoping it will work out.
3. Utah. We went to Utah this past weekend for a baby blessing, birthday party, and to see the Backman fam. We had alot of fun, especially hanging out with Sammy. On Sunday she was hilarious! After eating dinner she cleared everyones plates and my grandpa said to save your forks for dessert. Sam wouldn't have anything to do with that, they were dirty and we needed fresh forks! She yelled at my grandpa "Seriously though!" Never heard that one before. Then she dropped something and made this face and said "My Bad!" I didn't know if I would ever breathe again I was laughing so hard. I love that girl and miss all the funny things she does.

So now we are back in Winnemucca until September when we are going up to WA for labor day, so anyone is invited to stop by anytime they want : )

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

WORST DAY EVER

This morning I woke up around 6, ate breakfast, then went outside to pull weeds for about 30 minutes until the sun started making me hot. So I came back into the house and cleaned up a little bit, vacummed, put stuff away, the usual. Then I got ready to go to work. Went out to my car and found that an un-opened pop can had burst and blew pop all over my car, I hate the desert! I didn't have time to clean it up and my car is a mess anyway from our recent roadtrip to Minnesota. I arrived at work and it seemed like everyone I was working with was in a bad mood because they had all just gotten back from their trip to Lagoon and nobody wanted to be at work. All of them were agitated and everywhere and got into everything. Then one of the clients pooped his pants so his staff brought him home to change and I had all three crazy boys. Then she got back and we noticed that one of the clients didn't have the right meds for noon, so she left again leaving me with all 4 boys (it was lunch time so they were mostly occupied with lunch...until they finished). So after lunch everyone went back to work and one of the clients was sitting in a corner doing his own thing, until I realized he had taken out his meds from his backpack and was overdosing...so he went to the hospital while I went with someone else to his Dr appointment. The client I took to the Dr appointment was way aggitated and didn't want to be there AT ALL. He doesn't talk much, but I know his mannerisms enough to know he was pretty ticked off at me and wanted to leave. So after finally being done at the Dr's I brought him back and now I just realized that I forgot to pick up the eviction papers that were served to our tenants who are currently in jail, so I am off to the sherrifs office. AWESOME DAY!

Monday, June 15, 2009

NASTY

A while back we had a plumber come out to do some other work and he noticed that the main water line coming into our house should be replaced. So Andrew dug most of the trench, then some friends of ours came over to help the rest of the way. What do you think, did it need to be replaced? I don't think so, it looks fine to me! NASTY!

FINALLY!

After more than a month of washing dishes in my bathtub I finally have a kitchen sink, dishwasher, stove, counterspace, and everything else that comes with a kitchen. It is so awesome! I just want to sit in there all day. This has definitly made me grateful for things that I usually don't even think twice about. I have never been so grateful to be able to sit in my kitchen this morning and be able to grab a bowl out of a cupboard, not in the spare bedroom or on the drying rack in the bathroom, get my cereal in another cupboard in the same room, pour milk, get a spoon, and eat all in the same room. Oh and then I could simply place my bowl and spoon into our dishwasher...I know you are all thinking GET OUT! ALL OF THAT IN THE SAME ROOM! Yes siree! When you go into your kitchen just think how blessed you are to be able to do your dishes in the kitchen and not where you wash your butt.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

DEMOLITION

It’s begun…our house has turned into project headquarters. We are starting with the kitchen. Turns out the heating duct didn’t work in the kitchen (inspector didn’t catch that) so Andrew cut a hole in our floor and went down to take a look. Found the problem…a dead cat was under the house. We think a cat was under there and knocked all the ducts loose (because the morons who built the house didn’t tape them together). So he fixed that and insulated the walls. Andrew spent a lot of time down there and said it was really bad because he had to exhale to move. While down there he found some buried treasure, a really old Pepsi can in almost perfect condition. Another hidden treasure we found was that underneath the laminate floors is a real hard wood floor! We were pretty excited about that one, the house finally gave us a good surprise : ) We hope to have our kitchen finished by the end of the month, keeping our fingers crossed.

Ripping out the cabinets to make room for our Ikea ones

Andrew underneath the house in the "crawl space"

The cool Pepsi can Andrew found

Putting insulation down the hole for Andrew

Uncovering the hard wood floors

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

WHY I LOVE MY HUSBAND

In our kitchen the faucet had a leak. At first it was just a little drip, so I thought no big deal. But when Andrew went to class Monday night at 6pm the water drip turned into a steady stream. I took it upon myself to try and fix it, all of Andrew’s tools were out from working on other things in the house. So I started messing with it and I was able to tighten something down and it brought the stream back to a drip. Mission accomplished I thought…no. After I put the handles back on the stream came back. So I thought to myself, it worked last time, maybe it just needs to be a little tighter. Unfortunately the shut off valves to the sink our really old and won’t turn, so at this point the water is still on. When I started to tighten the handle again something popped off and all of a sudden scalding hot water was shooting out of where the handle is supposed to be. Lucky for me we had the plumber out who showed me where the emergency shut off valve to our house is. I ran to it and turned the water off (even thought it takes forever for that knob to turn all the way off). When I got back into the kitchen everything was soaked! I thought to myself, its only 7 I can have this fixed before Andrew gets home. Oh how wrong I was. I went to Wal-Mart (the only place open that had a kitchen faucet) and bought a new faucet. I came home and started to take off the old and broken faucet. Since it is so old I couldn’t unscrew anything. I used half a bottle of lime away trying to unclog everything, but it didn’t work. I waited until Andrew got home at 10pm. I was worried he was going to be angry since he has to get up at 4:30 every morning and now I was making him stay up even later. He just laughed a little and took his angle grinder to the screws and tore the old faucet apart. He got it off and hooked up our new one. Now there is no drip : )

ONE DOWN AND MANY MORE TO GO

We made it to the first year mark as of Sunday April 26th. A lot has happened in those 365 days. First we were married in Utah and after spending a few weeks with family we went back to school. Summer semester we moved into a town home, camped for 7 weeks and then were separated for 7 weeks. During fall semester we moved to Heartland apartments third floor, for some reason I remember the move very well but Andrew can’t seem to remember it…oh yeah that’s because he was in NV and I moved our stuff up 3 flights with the help of Brent and Jess. When apple season came around we learned how to make applesauce and Andrew made a lot of it and I burned a lot of it. We finished up school and we both graduated with our bachelors degree in geology and Andrew got a job with Marigold Mine. After graduation we went and spent Christmas with the Backmans and were able to go to Hawaii for the first time. After Hawaii we moved to Winnemucca, NV. I found a job in town working with the disabled people in Winnemucca and I love it. While in Nevada we lived in the Marigold company trailer, Val-U Motel, the Felshaw’s guest room above their garage, and finally our HOUSE! Our house is so much fun even though we have already had a plumber come out twice and bought a new water heater (the first time the plumber came out he turned our water on while it was raining…when it stopped raining our water heater which is under the house kept making puddles, hence the need for the plumber the second time). So in 12 months we have moved 9 times, graduated college, got jobs, bought a house, and a lot more. Our first year has been a busy one and I am sure our next one will be just as busy and fun!