Our Little Plumber

Ben has lived a sheltered life, having never had to perform any home repairs of any significance. However, in the past week, he has become quite the little plumber. When we moved to our new home, we hooked up the hoses for our washing machine to the faucets. Imagine our surprise when we turned on the water and were greeted with water spraying out the top of each faucet handle (go ahead, imagine our surprise)! So, last Tuesday evening, Ben replaced the following corroded faucets with these shiny new faucets. The blue ribbon tied to the new faucet is to remind us which one is the cold water - since we were surprised to find out that the blue-handled old faucet was actually the hot water.



We also noticed that the faucet in one of our bathrooms had a slow drip that just wouldn't quit. Ben saved that challenge for today. Luckily our home inspector gave us a free DVD of minor repairs we could do in the home, and how to do them. The faucet replacement video goes like this:



Needless to say, they made it look like a much cleaner process than Ben ended up making it. But, in the end, he successfully installed our new faucet and replaced the drain stopper - he's so amazing! He even used the flexible water supply tubes, as recommended at 1:32 mark in the video.



This is what the old faucet looked like versus what the new one looks like in its place:



In addition to the feeling of accomplishment, Ben is mostly happy to have procured more tools out of this deal: two new pipe wrenches! Life is good!

Stuffed

Analeigh has taken quite a liking to stuffed animals lately. Her bedtime routine involves cuddling with a large Elmo, a teddy bear Liz made, a baby doll, and the following sheep:



Analeigh insisted on taking her little lamb with her on the car ride to church today. Since we're now 45 minutes away from church, it seemed like a reasonable request - at least she was happy!

Helping the Widows and Fatherless

We went to help our friends, the Cheney's pack up their moving truck so they could abandon us to move to Washington (again). As you may notice, we've moved them into a new category of blogs on our sidebar, "Blogs from Washington."

The title of this entry may be a tad misleading. Actually, there is a husband/father-figure in the family - he just happens to have gone to Washington ahead of time to start his new job - so it is as if his wife and children are all alone.

We could post pictures of helping them pack, but they did a good enough job of that all on their own (besides, we didn't bring our camera). However, the kids did pick some of the neighbor's wildflowers, so at least we have that:

Star Wars in Concert

Ben and Liz went to Star Wars in Concert, in Wichita, with a couple (the Bates) from our old ward in Great Bend. Since we were treating them to a free concert, they treated us to a free dinner. The whole night was great, so thank you to the Bates! We also got awesome babysitting from Alicia Carlton. Thanks to Alicia too (the kids loved spending time with you)!

When we arrived we got to view a number of props and costumes from the movies, as part of the traveling exhibit.





Then, when we tried to go up to our seats on the second level of the Intrust Bank Arena, we were instructed by security to exchange our tickets for ones on the main level (apparently there aren't enough nerds in the Wichita area to sell out the show). So, we got bumped up to better seats.



Then we got to enjoy the show. It was, in Ben's opinion, "Awesome!" The others enjoyed it too. Ben wanted to record a selection, so you could experience a fraction of what we did, but Liz would not let him (she's so good about keeping him on the righteous path of non-piracy).

So instead, Ben will now share the opening and closing parts of the show, as recorded by someone with less scruples, attending the concert when it was at the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia, PA.



And the finale (minus the encore we were treated to):



If you'd like to see everything in between (minus the on-stage narration by Anthony Daniels in between songs) go to 1yestor's channel on YouTube and scroll down until you get to the Star Wars in Concert videos.

Curious George

As we mentioned in December, David loves the movie Curious George: A Very Monkey Christmas. This morning, David pretended to be on the phone and re-enacted a scene from the movie. In his excitement (because he really loves this scene - for reasons unknown to us), David tends to mash his words together, so only his mother can understand him. But, if you watch the original clip first, you'll be better able to understand him in the second video.



And now, presenting David in the roles of Professor Wiseman and The Man with the Yellow Hat.

Water Supply

LDS Church leaders have long counseled us to do our best to have one year of food storage on hand. We've found that the best way to store water is in old pop bottles. Since they're rather heavy to move, we had to dump the water out of them when we moved and refill them once we arrived in our new home. This probably won't keep us a year, but it still looks fairly impressive.

We Have a Lawn Mower!

Having lived in rental housing units all our married life, we've never had to own a lawn mower. So it was quite exciting that, with our new house, we would need to make the push into adulthood by purchasing our own lawn mower. In the end, we decided to opt for the Scotts 2000-20 20-Inch Classic Push Reel Lawn Mower.

You may be familiar with the concept of reel mowers (the old-timer style lawn mowers without a motor that you had to strain to push). After reading the reviews for it on Amazon.com, we decided it would be good exercise for us and would also save us money on gas. Sure, it would also be good for the environment, but that was actually the last thing on our minds at the time of purchase. We were mostly concerned about saving money on gas and repairs (as all we'll probably need to do on the reel mower is sharpen the blades after a few years).

We got it in the mail on Tuesday and could not mow on Wednesday due to the 1.25" of rain we received all day long. Tonight the grass was still a little wet, but we decided to give it a whirl anyway. We'll have to finish mowing tomorrow since it started to get too dark to see where Liz was mowing.

Happy Mother's Day

As part of Ben's Christmas present to Liz, back in December 2006 while working on his master's degree, he gave her a homemade coupon redeemable for a house, within 5 years. Today, though it was a few days late for Mother's Day, Ben is fulfilling that Christmas present, because we officially signed a bunch of papers this morning giving us possession of our new house! Granted, 3 1/2 years ago we didn't imagine it would be in Ellsworth, Kansas, but we're still happy with it!

If Liz had been a little more sentimental, she might still have the homemade gift card so we could show you a picture of it. Alas, she threw it out, so we'll just show you a picture of the house instead.

David's Four-Year Photos

We went to Veterans Memorial Park this afternoon to take David's four-year-old photos. As discussed previously, we had already used up our coupon for a free professional photo session on Analeigh's two-year photos.

David was a tad difficult to coerce into smiling - let alone smiling while also looking at the camera. But we still managed to get a few nice shots in, as shared below.





Analeigh also wanted in on the action, so we took a couple more of her too. As Liz describes her, Analeigh is a bit of a "ham" - always up for giving a big, cheesy smile upon request (especially in the second picture).

Goodbye Zoo

One of the things we've loved best about Great Bend has been the free zoo. David and Analeigh have had many wonderful adventures there. And so, we bid a fond farewell to the Great Bend Zoo by featuring a photo of our children controlling the world.

Daddy's Little Rancher

We've been doing a lot of packing (or rather, Liz has been doing a lot of packing) in anticipation of moving next week. This resulted in us going out to get something to eat, in order to get away from all the boxes. Our going out to eat leads us to the title of this entry.

Ben loves ranch dressing. Apparently, at least for now, it appears to be genetic, as Analeigh would only eat chicken nuggets this evening if they were dipped in ranch dressing (hence the title, "Daddy's Little Rancher"). When she finished her nuggets, she started licking out the dipping sauce containers. However, french fries could only be eaten with ketchup for dipping sauce - which resulted in the white and red mess around her cute little face.