Still Stupid Fridge

On Sunday our fridge started making the stupid noise again. Our fridge is a Samsung fridge and for some reason the ice builds up in the back of the fridge and it makes this noise as the fan hits the ice, until eventually the ice builds over the fan and stops it from moving cold air into the fridge, and then the fridge stops being cold. It's annoying. We got our fridge in 2015 on the day Abi was baptized, and it first started happening within the 90 day service guarantee something and the guy came out and fixed it but then it's still been happening since and I blogged about it in March 2017 and Aug 2018. So it's still a frequent occurrence, although sometimes it goes several months without an issue. But Monday morning I turned off the fridge from the breaker box and spent the day emptying all the contents and moving them into the garage fridges and freezer. I did this like a month ago too! I did try to tell myself today that maybe it's good to be forced to deep clean your fridge every 30 days or so. 

What else is breaking/broken in the house... I'll list some of my complaints... We got a new dishwasher in Dec 2018, and the top rack wheels have come off the track, so when you pull it out, the metal track things stretch out without the wheels holding them together, and then the rack falls off. So I got some zip ties and and holding the rack to the tracks, but that means it doesn't roll out all the way, it only comes about half way. So we just have to bend over and reach back to put all the dishes in. I can deal with that though, it's better than it coming off the track everytime. So we're dealing with that and are used to it and hardly notice it. 

The kitchen sink handle, which I super glued in place, has become loose again cause the kids push it so hard everytime they turn on or off the water. I remind them to be gentle, but yeah that's loose and is now hitting the window board/shelf thing behind it and scratching off the paint. I might try to pull it off so I can super glue it again. 

Also I thought I'd try to find help for our front porch again. It is falling apart. It was barely hanging on 2 years ago, 2nd to last pic, and now the posts are falling out and so it's missing like 5 in different areas. I have tried to find help on my own via google to get our fixed. I even talked to the guy who BUILT this house and he came over and looked at it, but he's not doing construction any more and/or doesn't have any contacts of people who do log posts, so it was a "yeah, I can't help" but they did want to come see the house cause it was their dream house 20 years ago. So, today I put a request out via facebook to see if anyone knows any contractor or person who might be able to help and I've contacted two people from that, hoping maybe we can get it fixed this summer? Fingers crossed. 

There are lots of dings in the walls from life - Once Wes was taking a small filing cabinet downstairs and I told him "be careful to not hit the walls" and then he hit the wall and got a good corner dent in it. Wes was also riding his skateboard in the house and accidentally slid it toward the wall and there's a big front end of a skateboard sized hole in the sheet rock in the side room. The kids slam the back door super hard and the glass is coming out of it's frame from that. There are lots of little things. Oh and outside too - the pine needles are constantly falling. I haven't been raking them up this pregnancy and yeah, they're covering the whole backyard. I think they're killing the grass, and I hate how the grass grows where the dirt is and doesn't grow where the grass should be! The little kids sometimes use the grass as their sand box and dig it up, and I'm like "noo!" But where I used to try to have a garden is all nice and grassy. 

One last thing - during the winter some time, a big rock, like 3 feet by 5 feet, which Corey calculated to estimate it as 2 tons, fell off the side of the front yard landscaping and is on the grass there now. 

It's on the far side of the house so we didn't see it as we'd come and go from the driveway, but we noticed it once when we were snowblowing. Now with the snow gone, it has become a bit of a problem ,since there are a lot of 5 and 6 year old boys in the neighborhood who like Minecraft and think they've found a great place to mine for diamonds. They've been digging behind it a bit, but we told them not to do that anymore. 

Corey's been on that task trying to find someone who can come with some kinda machine and put it back in place. I don't know... we just need to redo the whole house and yard. It's all got issues. I'm grateful for being able to rent here and live here, but maybe we need to move. Or just make a million dollars real quick and buy it and remodel and redo everything, landscaping and all. Oh and our driveway is chipping up, and the northeast corner of the house is falling apart...

The drain from the gutters there went under the cement and the cement is sinking and thus the sandstone rocks on the corner of the house there are all falling off and getting lose. The gray slab on top also fell down prob three years ago but I puzzled it back together. We also have to protect that area from the Minecraft enthusiasts in the neighborhood! Ok, that's all the complaining I'll do for now.

Good news - Corey had a check up yesterday and his blood numbers are no longer pre-diabetic. Good job sweetie. He's been doing great at exercising almost daily, either biking up the canyon trail or swimming at the gym. And we're still eating mostly vegan. So yeah, we'll try to keep at that, cause we maybe be 45+ but we still have lots of little kids and one on the way and we don't want to have health problems or die early. We've want a lot of years ahead with these kids! A few pictures at violin yesterday of the kids eagerly reading books: Sophi, Peter and Daniel while Natalie had her lesson -

More reading by Natalie, Daniel, and Peter while Sophi had her turn. 

Those pictures reminded me of a talk by President Hinckely titled "Four Simple Things to Help Our Families and Our Nations". He listed four things: 

"Let parents and children 

1) teach and learn goodness together, 

2) work together, 

3) read good books together, and 

4) pray together."

We could do better at working together, but we're doing well at the other three things he suggests!

This Past Week

Just a few pictures from this past week - Wesley made some lego swords on Wednesday. Pretty cool, if only they wouldn't break apart when they started their battles.

I woke up Thursday morning to find some kinda mess in the kitchen - little splatters of something sprayed on the floor, walls, ceiling... I wasn't sure what it was, but it was oily/greasy. I then found this pan by the kitchen sink -

"...we didn't feel like cleaning it..." nice. What the heck happened last night? We went to bed, we thought the kids went to bed, but we wake up and there's a mess in the kitchen and this note. Annoying. Also obviously from the boys (That's Ethan's handwriting). Also true to form. Sigh. When they finally woke up I asked them what happened. Apparently they stayed up and were being weird and wanted to destroy a liquid paperweight thing that Wesley bought at SeaWorld during his band tour last month. It was not Wesley's idea to break it, but what does a young boy do when his older sibling is pressuring him? He usually gives in to avoid getting picked on. I made them wipe off the walls, I did the floor, and Corey had them wash off the lighting fixture.

Here's Daniel and Owen taking a nap Thursday afternoon. Zonked out.

As for today, it was our turn to participate cleaning the chapel this morning. Corey got up at  7:55, we hurried and woke up the kids, and they left. I stayed home with Daniel. To reward them for their hard work (they didn't really have much to do or have to work that hard, oh well) Corey brought them back home to do jobs for me with a promise to reward their hard labor by taking them out to eat. Hyrum wanted to go to Ihop/Ihob cause they had a few vegan-ish options he could eat, but Corey and people voted for the Black Bear Diner. I think Corey voted for it cause it was closer and would be faster and then he could get back on the clock and catch up on hours. I told Hyrum it was okay, we'd make it up to him tonight for his birthday date with us. Since we got all caught up on the June birthdays, we were on top of it for Hyrum, so lucky you, you get to go the day before your birthday! Go team. We went to California Pizza Kitchen -

Hyrum tried the delicious Shanghai Bowl that I enjoyed when we went with Lily. I wished I'd gotten it again, but he let me have a few bites. I tried the Santa Fe Bowl this time, which was still good and filling, but couldn't compete with the Shanghai bowl. That thing is so good. I was glad that we were able to go out with Hyrum, cause I needed a re-do of our Friday night date. We tried out a new restaurant (always risky) and I think I'm too ignorant to appreciate how "amazing" and refined it was I guess, cause I was left disappointed and not impressed. Why does fine dining have to mean pathetic portions? Not that I'm a fan of things like the Grizz that Ethan ordered this morning, I'm not. I will not go there, I think that's obscene, but this "fine dining" takes it to the other extreme and it was pretty lame. I thought I was ordering a green salad, but I guess I wasn't paying attention cause it had gross cheese which I couldn't stand to eat. I tried a little bit but had to borrow a disposable napkin to hide the rest in my purse (I didn't want to have to explain to our server or the chef, who both kept walking by, how disappointed I was with the dish by having the main portion of it still on the plate). Our waiter was a little too attentive, which made me laugh a little as I thought of the Dude Perfect stereotypes video and the "ambitious refiller" lol. So, again, about the overpriced "salad" I got... I wasn't paying attention, but I guess I assumed it would have lots of vegetables and greens like salads usually do. But I got the special - all I heard was peaches, so a salad with peaches sounded interesting. But I now know... it was a caprese salad, which doesn't have lots of vegetables or greens but did have several huge slabs of bocconcini mozzarella, which I did not want to eat. It had the peaches instead of the tomatoes, and mint leaves instead of basil. And I usually just order a salad for dinner, so this was basically my meal, my "salad"....

A sliced up peach, a few mint leaves, and big slices of gross cheese. Is that an accurate pic, Corey, to get the idea across? Yeah, I was disappointed. Totally lame. "Um, I'm still hungry, can I have a free second, hold the cheese, add some butter lettuce? Or do you have pictures on your menu so I know what I'm ordering?" But instead of making my ignorance known, we ordered dessert, which was a one generously portioned slice of German chocolate cake, couldn't/didn't want to finish the frosting. After we ordered dessert, Corey whispered "Their plan worked!" Don't give them enough food for their entrees and they'll have to order dessert! haha! If we were paying per calorie, the cake was the best deal and my 6 mint leaf salad was a major rip off (maybe it was 8 leaves). I don't think we'll be going back. On the way home I was trying to decide if I should try and eat the purple lei flower - Corey said it could be poisonous. I googled a bit... looks like they're edible - edible Karma Orchids! Yay, I get a little more nourishment for that overpriced meal. We won't be going back though. That place was way too expensive to experiment there with taking another risk ordering something that will be disappointing. Good learning experience though? :)