It's been a while, but I've been busy...
Busy moving, among other things. So, here's a quick recap of my life of late, since it HAS been a month and a half after all.
After my last update, the management did manage to fix the AC enough for it to stay fixed, which was nice. Too bad it took 'em 4 tries. We also made an epic run to Costco to get family reunion supplies, which then filled our trunk for a week.
The family reunion was quite fun. We brought Rock Band (2, Beatles, and Lego), and it was rather entertaining to teach my nieces and nephews how to play. Surprisingly, the microphones were the most sought after, so we played a lot of Beatles because that lets 3 people sing. And now we have several videos of them singing "Eight Days a Week" and "Yellow Submarine" off-key. We tried "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" but the kids were not fans of the particular style of that song, so for everyone's sanity we didn't try it more than once...
When we weren't playing that, my dad was usually taking the kids down to the little creek not too far from the cabin we were staying at to play in the water and find different ways to make a bridge across it without slowing down the water and making it spread wider. We also had a bonfire and had some professional family pictures taken, which was nice since the last ones we had taken of my whole family were at our wedding. It was so good to see everyone again, especially T&G since I haven't seen them in 2 years and I was a little distracted by the whole getting married thing at that.
The day we got home from the reunion my niece got baptized, which was pretty cool too. I got to play the piano for it and most of my family was able to stay for it as well.
Then it was home again to unpack from our trip and... start packing to move! We began taking loads over July 4 and just took a car or truckload (depending on whether our friend with a truck happened to be over when we were ready to take one over) almost every evening. Since we didn't have a ton of boxes/totes, I would pack up 5-10 of them, pack them all in the car, drive them to the new place, then unpack them all where I wanted the stuff to go (more or less). Repeat for 2 weeks. By July 16 we were all moved over and our old apartment thoroughly scoured clean, with lots of help from said friend with a truck and some from Nathan's parents/brother as well. And yesterday I finished the last of the unpacking/putting things where they go/making a pile of stuff that I should have gotten rid of a long time ago! Hooray!
We are enjoying being all settled in to our new apartment. Since it's in the basement, it is always cool, even with no AC, and it is much bigger and nicer than our old one. We scored a free washer and dryer from someone in our previous ward, and the units are still in great condition and don't seem that old. I love, love, love being able to do laundry in our apartment! We also have a dishwasher now: also heavenly. So far both have been miraculous at helping keep the apartment clean. rhb is enjoying his new writing room quite a bit, and the management here is way better. ;)
We also made liberal use of the steam cleaner before it was returned, and our couches are much, much cleaner and don't smell like dust anymore! They are also significantly lighter shade of gray!
Our car, of course, was jealous of all the attention the new apartment was getting, so it decided to break the weekend we finished moving, so now we have a new radiator that didn't fix the problem, and a new coolant tank cap that did fix the problem. And now our car does not go through a whole tank of coolant in a month! Or a day!
In the midst of all this, I also reached my 1 year mark at work. Nothing too noteworthy, but after another year my health insurance rates get super cheap, which I am very excited for. But really, for right now things are much like how they have been... aside from the fact that it is time for the yearly turnover for my team, so we've already had two people leave and two more are leaving next month. I'm hoping to move on to a different department myself sometime soon, but we'll see what happens. There has to be a job opening first before that can happen.
We are enjoying our new ward; it is a very different demographic than we are used to (suddenly there are hardly any students but lots of professors), but I think it will be an excellent experience for us nonetheless. We were able to get to know some of them a bit better on Friday at a game night hosted by my brother, which was very fun. I don't get to play with such a rowdy group usually, so it was interesting to try to adapt my strategies for playing to the new dynamics of the group.
So that's what's been going on lately. Pictures forthcoming on the new apartment hopefully.
After my last update, the management did manage to fix the AC enough for it to stay fixed, which was nice. Too bad it took 'em 4 tries. We also made an epic run to Costco to get family reunion supplies, which then filled our trunk for a week.
The family reunion was quite fun. We brought Rock Band (2, Beatles, and Lego), and it was rather entertaining to teach my nieces and nephews how to play. Surprisingly, the microphones were the most sought after, so we played a lot of Beatles because that lets 3 people sing. And now we have several videos of them singing "Eight Days a Week" and "Yellow Submarine" off-key. We tried "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" but the kids were not fans of the particular style of that song, so for everyone's sanity we didn't try it more than once...
When we weren't playing that, my dad was usually taking the kids down to the little creek not too far from the cabin we were staying at to play in the water and find different ways to make a bridge across it without slowing down the water and making it spread wider. We also had a bonfire and had some professional family pictures taken, which was nice since the last ones we had taken of my whole family were at our wedding. It was so good to see everyone again, especially T&G since I haven't seen them in 2 years and I was a little distracted by the whole getting married thing at that.
The day we got home from the reunion my niece got baptized, which was pretty cool too. I got to play the piano for it and most of my family was able to stay for it as well.
Then it was home again to unpack from our trip and... start packing to move! We began taking loads over July 4 and just took a car or truckload (depending on whether our friend with a truck happened to be over when we were ready to take one over) almost every evening. Since we didn't have a ton of boxes/totes, I would pack up 5-10 of them, pack them all in the car, drive them to the new place, then unpack them all where I wanted the stuff to go (more or less). Repeat for 2 weeks. By July 16 we were all moved over and our old apartment thoroughly scoured clean, with lots of help from said friend with a truck and some from Nathan's parents/brother as well. And yesterday I finished the last of the unpacking/putting things where they go/making a pile of stuff that I should have gotten rid of a long time ago! Hooray!
We are enjoying being all settled in to our new apartment. Since it's in the basement, it is always cool, even with no AC, and it is much bigger and nicer than our old one. We scored a free washer and dryer from someone in our previous ward, and the units are still in great condition and don't seem that old. I love, love, love being able to do laundry in our apartment! We also have a dishwasher now: also heavenly. So far both have been miraculous at helping keep the apartment clean. rhb is enjoying his new writing room quite a bit, and the management here is way better. ;)
We also made liberal use of the steam cleaner before it was returned, and our couches are much, much cleaner and don't smell like dust anymore! They are also significantly lighter shade of gray!
Our car, of course, was jealous of all the attention the new apartment was getting, so it decided to break the weekend we finished moving, so now we have a new radiator that didn't fix the problem, and a new coolant tank cap that did fix the problem. And now our car does not go through a whole tank of coolant in a month! Or a day!
In the midst of all this, I also reached my 1 year mark at work. Nothing too noteworthy, but after another year my health insurance rates get super cheap, which I am very excited for. But really, for right now things are much like how they have been... aside from the fact that it is time for the yearly turnover for my team, so we've already had two people leave and two more are leaving next month. I'm hoping to move on to a different department myself sometime soon, but we'll see what happens. There has to be a job opening first before that can happen.
We are enjoying our new ward; it is a very different demographic than we are used to (suddenly there are hardly any students but lots of professors), but I think it will be an excellent experience for us nonetheless. We were able to get to know some of them a bit better on Friday at a game night hosted by my brother, which was very fun. I don't get to play with such a rowdy group usually, so it was interesting to try to adapt my strategies for playing to the new dynamics of the group.
So that's what's been going on lately. Pictures forthcoming on the new apartment hopefully.