What a Weekend

Phew.

Deep Breath...

Well, it has been a great and busy weekend. Friday I got my wife to start looking at pictures of fridges and ranges on the internet. I got her interested enough that I called my dad and asked, "What time are we leaving?". He laughed and said, "So we're going today then?" What great parents I have. They dropped what they were doing to to help us out. We knew that we were going to be buying a new dinning room set from Sam's Club (I know, who would think they would have good quality furniture at Sam's Club- but this set is absolutely beautiful and durable!- See picture below). We arrived in town and the shopping began.

We went to Home Depot first as they were having a sale on all major appliances. We did see some styles we liked, but they didn't have any of those is stock and since we had my dad come with the truck AND we weren't about to come back later AND because shipping is outrageous, we decided to head to another store. We left a little disappointed. Oh, I guess now would be a good time to interject that on the way TO Grand Junction, our car started pulling really hard to the left and the steering felt a bit loose. So anyways, we left Home Depot and headed to Sears. I have never really been a big fan of Sears, but we did buy our deep freezer there a few weeks ago and it has worked okay. Well, weren't we just lucky enough to have the SAME salesman. He is quite the guy- not really in a great way. Pushy and nagging kind. I got pretty grouchy (imagine me being grouchy?-lol) and he backed off a little. We spent a great deal of time thinking and discussing our VERY LIMITED options. They only had ONE fridge in stock that my wife even wanted to look at (and it was a floor model) and two ranges, one of which was really out of the question as it didn't have a 12 inch burner for canning on it. We initially said no to the fridge as it was quite a bit more than we had planned to spend. It had french fridge doors with a bottom drawer freezer. My wife convinced me that it would fit in the cutout space (it was the exact dimensions of the cutout. S-C-A-R-Y!!! We agreed to purchase it as it was 5 cubic feet bigger than what we currently had and it was what my wife had in mind. Both very good reasons to just go with it. As you can see from the picture, it is a beautiful addition to the kitchen. Did it fit? Well, you can see it did. How did we get it in there? Well, that is a whole other story! It took three of us (Thanks Greg for coming over at 11pm to help) and a broken door frame to get it in the house. Once it was in the kitchen, we had to take the moulding off the floor and cupboards and then shove to get it to fit. It could not have been any closer. I was anxious about that (shocking I know) all the way home (when ever I wasn't being anxious over the fact that the car was harder to drive than on the way over thanks to the steering problems). I was glad when it found its home in our kitchen.

We left our old fridge plugged in over night to let the new fridge cool down and then moved everything over to the new one and hauled the old one out in the driveway and taped a $25 sign on it (more on this is a bit).

Before we did the fridge, we (my father and I) had pulled the old stove out and removed the power cord. I hauled that outside as well and taped a $10 sign on it (again, more on this soon). We got the power cord on the new range and got it leveled and put in place. The one hesitation my wife had about this particular range is that it had LOTS of extras that she didn't think she would ever use (like convection cooking, fast boil burners, Air Guard, plus more) but I told her that we were getting it anyways (okay, not really, but there wasn't anything else close to what she wanted, so she agreed to splurge on this as well and purchase it). Now that it is in, she loves it. It has the flat top cooking- LOVE LOVE LOVE THAT! With a dual burner and a hidden baking element in the bottom. No more fighting the burner to clean up the bottom. Yea!

The fridge and stove were all done when we returned on Friday night. We moved the old fridge and our old glass table and 6 matching chairs out Saturday afternoon. (we had spent a good deal of the morning clean our friends small motel here in town. They were out of town and needed help! Other than the fact that it was TOASTY, it was nice to be out and working.) I had marked the Table set $40 and the fridge $25. (Remember this for in a minute). Anyways, I got started on the table set we had purchased at Sam's. We had saw this table when we went to watch Eclipse with some friends last week. We talked about it all week, and agreed that the glass table we had just wasn't safe with the little children we have that like to climb on the table. This set is counter height (which was a must for our new set) and came with 8, yes 8 chairs! Perfect for our family. Now my littlest one can move from the high chair to the table. It looks great with the new paint job. Very classy if I do say so myself.

So, back to the furniture that we moved out front with signs on it. As I was putting together the table set (yes, I had to add the legs to the table and then construct each of the eight chairs. It wasn't hard, just time consuming -about 4.5 hours working mostly alone) there was a knock at the door. I hoped that it was someone coming to buy ALL the items (kitchen set= $40, old fridge= $25, and the old range, which needs some electrical work= $10). It was a man that was interested in the fridge. He looked it over, asked some questions and then asked about the table and chairs. When he found out all the chairs came with it he was very interested. He ended up taking the table, chairs and fridge for $40 total. Works for me. I don't have to deal with anymore and he gets some decent "stuff". I helped him load everything into his truck and away he went.

I returned to putting chairs together until dinner.

We had a wonderful dinner. Chicken-fried rice. Tasty! It was cooked with ingredients from our new fridge on the new stove and we ate at the new table. I LOVE our new table. It is nice to sit down and not have my feet touch the floor. I don't get to experience that very often. After dinner we headed to the city park for the bountiful baskets meeting. We had a pretty good turnout. I think there were 13 people there. Yea! Everyone seemed very interested and excited about the idea of getting inexpensive fresh fruit and vegetables. I really think that this will work out here. If you want more information about the site here in Green River, call my wife and talk to her. We hope to have the site started by the beginning of August.

After the meeting, we came home and got the kids showered and finished cleaning up after the "installation projects" of all the new furniture. We ended up getting to bed a little later than I thought because of that. I was also a very long HOT night. The temperature never dropped below 77 degrees. Man I dislike those nights ALOT! We couldn't open windows because of the heat. I was glad for morning and the chance to get up and get moving. I had early meetings at church this morning and so I was out the door by 6:50am.

This afternoon we had my parents over for lunch. I enjoy having them come and eat with us. I really love that my children are really getting to know my parents. What a special opportunity for them to see their grandparents so often. I remember growing up having my grandparents come and visit once in a while, or going to visit them (this was less often it seems). I have lots of great memories with both sets of grandparents. I hope my kids will too.

The rest of today (Sunday) will be a LAZY day. I am so tired I can hardly keep my eyes open (excuse for bad typing- lol). Oh, I did want to mention that my sister has started a AWESOME NEW BLOG! If you live in Utah you will REALLY want to check it out, and even if you don't check the site often for deals that are valid outside of Utah as well. She has stated sharing great coupon deals that she finds- and let me tell you, she is an amazing DEAL FINDER! So, click HERE or click on the picture in the side bar. Sign up for an e-mail OR click on Follow This Blog so she can share her amazing-ness with you!

Have a great day!

Later...