agua

my poor ross was very sick this week, i finally drug him to an urgent care clinic down the road for some medicine which ironically made him sicker, at least initially. he was finally feeling mostly better by saturday and was eager to get some projects done around the house. the first thing he knocked out was the leaky cold water faucet connection to our washing machine. this was high on my list because i've been having to turn the water on or off whenever i'm doing laundry. laundry is not something that needs a little extra task included with it. he took care of this with relative ease that surprised even him, haha

disclaimer: this story is told from my point of view as i understood the situation and probably contains some incorrect facts and certainly some less than technical explanations. but whatever.

bolstered with this confidence, he thought he would take care of a faucet out front that leaked from the stem when the water is on. while replacing the faucet handle with a new fancier one from lowes, the pipe cracked. pvc cement was not helping, there was still a small leak, only now all the time instead of just when the water is on.

now, if you've come to visit us (and if you haven't, what the heck is your problem!??!?!) you probably noticed crazy u of pipe in our den. we had come to believe this was related to our automatic water sprinklers. we had decided not to use these sprinklers for the time being so ross decided to bypass this other part of the pipe and just cut the t connecting the 2 pipes outside and cap it off with an elbow and just a place for the faucet. on monday he was going to go to our fave plumbing shop (yes. we have a fave plumbing shop. crumps. its by taco c.) and take them a picture and they will give him all the parts to reconnect the sprinklers because they are way cool like that (unlike the plumbing guy at lowes who told ross he couldn't help us because he was busy concentrating).

no prob. i tagged along to lowes and we got the elbow. come to find out when we got home that we got a defective elbow with stripped threading. no worries. we went back to lowes, switched out the parts, and naturally at this point we needed to stop at sonic. finally everything went well, we got everything put together (by we i mean he) and no leaks! ross cleaned up his tools and i went inside to get ready to catch the 7.30 movie. only there was no water. i was so confused, i tried the water in the bathroom then the water in the kitchen. no water.

yes, the pipe that was bypassed was not for the sprinklers at all. it was for the house. time for ross' 4th trip to lowes (my 3rd...perhaps tying a personal record). it was rather stressful at the time, but turned out good. ross bought a t and fixed the pipes all up, and actually removed the piping that went into the garage so now we don't have that awfully weird looking pipe in our den. and no leaks, and this time, we had water! and all in time for a 10 oclock movie...just like we planned :)

my 24th birthday

on friday morning ross and i packed up our stuff. after work, we drove right on down to san antonio to enjoy a weekend away in celebration of my birthday. i had gone on hotwire to get a hotel and got over 50% off the price to a holiday inn downtown. turns out it was NOT the holiday inn on the riverwalk, but one about 1mile away. i was initially disappointed, but we ended up walking everywhere all weekend anyway, which was refreshing.

some of our friends that we used to work with met us at our hotel and we all walked over to the riverwalk for a late dinner. i spied a place that advertised having live jazz nightly. we went in and had a great meal listening to some good music. turns out, they also advertise live belly dancing, which we also saw. actually, i originally forgot the name of the restaurant but i googled live jazz belly dancing riverwalk and the website popped right up, haha. after dinner we wandered around the riverwalk catching up on old times until we called it a night.

saturday morning ross and i walked over to the riverwalk and ate an early lunch at a mexican restaurant. Then we walked over to the rivercenter mall and walked around. then we walked over to check out san antonio's central library's book sale. then we went back to the hotel to rest a bit (it was super hot to be doing all that walking..like 4miles!!) and get ready for the evening. we walked BACK to the riverwalk to a dueling piano bar called howl at the moon. this was super fun! they had 6 or 7 pianists who played songs by request all night long. all pianists could also play drums, bass, and guitar so on some songs it got pretty lively. they do mostly songs everyone knows and do lots of audience contests and interactions. we stayed for over 5hrs just having a blast! when we were ready to head back to the hotel, i did demand a taxi b/c i was wearing nice shoes and my feet hurt!

sunday morning we met up with BH and her little sister at the s.a. zoo. it was super awesome! we loved going around looking at the animals. my favorite was the african animals section. we stayed for a long time...the zoo is really big! again, it was way too hot to be doing that, but we survived. then we drove home. it was a wonderful weekend that we won't soon forget!

keeping cool in the pool

here are promised pics of the pool we have set up in the backyard this summer. we have enjoyed it a lot on the evenings and weekends and have been able to have several friends come over and join in the fun as well. peyton joins in the fun sometimes, as you can see, but we just came in from swimming and she didn't even ask to get in the pool, so perhaps she has had her fill.

no more teacher's dirty looks.....

school is out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i don't think any of my students were quite as excited as i was for the year to end. i bought a yearbook and passed it around for any students who cared to sign in and told them i would not be returning next year. a lot of them signed it and wished me good luck. i found it humorous that so many students were saying 'wow mrs. h you are super popular, i've never seen so many signatures on a yearbook, people must really like you.' i didn't take the time to explain to them that they too could have so many signatures if they didn't restrict who could sign theirs...

last weekend was ross' birthday. we hosted his parents for brunch on saturday morning and saturday evening i had arranged for some of his guy friends to come over for a video game and poker nite party. we both worked hard all day before the party...we bought 3 new ceiling fans for the house and ross hung one of them up in the den and fixed up stuff around the house. i cooked a bunch of homemade food for those guys...pepperoni rolls, veggies & dip, hotwings with 4 different sauces, queso & chips. and i picked up an ice cream cake from baskin robbins because this is ross' absolute fave. then i left them. with instructions to take pictures. and i went to dinner and the mall with BH. i returned to see they had taken 4 pictures. better than 0 for a bunch of guys i guess. they had 2 gaming consoles set up on our 2 tvs and i had to check out the wii. it was super fun!

armed with birthday money and giftcards, ross was certain we needed a playstation3. and so now we do. and we have enjoyed it a lot this week, from playing basketball against each other to playing against mike online, to watching blu-ray movies. very cool stuff. and a bonus! with the sixaxis controller, a lot of the games allow you to control the players by tilting the controller, similar to the wii. so now i can play a complex, nice graphics, tennis game without pushing any buttons. also in basketball you shoot free throws by moving the controller. i'm sold!

we did a bit of rearranging and enhancing in the den and are very pleased with the results. we have also been enjoying the pool...pics coming soon...i'm too lazy to go to my desktop and get them as i'm currently posting from the laptop. ross and i start in a tennis league next week so we have been trying to get some practice in this week. currently i'm enjoying my long weekend before i start my new job on monday. and mostly trying to realize that school is out and i won't be driving 40miles to get to work on monday!