The Lieslands

On Sunday we got a bunch of people together to help us move the play set that we bought a couple weeks back. We found a used play set on craigslist and decided that it was meant to be in our back yard. The only problem was that it was still set up in someone else’s.

We started the day at 11, at our house, with a light breakfast. We headed to Florence, KY and started working around noon. It was raining lightly on us as we finished taking the play set apart and loaded it into the vehicles. Luckily we were able to fit a major part of the ‘clubhouse’ in the back of Will’s pick-up truck.

The drive back to Cincinnati proved to be a little more challenging that expected because Will’s truck was having a hard time making it up the Montana hill, so we had to turn around and go to the next exit on the highway.

Eventually we got all the pieces back to our house and started putting it back together around 3. We were just about finished as darkness set in, and we could have finished, but we came up three nuts short, so we decided to clean up and call it a night.

I was at Home Depot at 7am this morning, home by 7:30, and by 8 the kids were swinging. They have been having a great time on it already – last night while we were putting it together and today when it was finished.

It turned out to be a fairly large project, which I suspected it might. Luckily we had a lot of help, which made it a lot easier.

I added some pictures from the play set raising to the 2008 photo gallery.

On Saturday morning I thought I smelled something burning in the basement, but I didn’t see anything on fire. I smelled the same smell again on Sunday morning and thought I had better do a little investigating. I noticed that the smell was coming from the hot water heater so I looked at both of the elements and sure enough, one of them was overheating and melting the element and the attached wire. I turned it off and turned off the water.

Luckily I have been through this before, so on Sunday night I was able to drain the thing and put in a new element. I am glad the house did not burn down.

Last Saturday we participated in the first ever Cinciditarod. Tammy asked us on Monday if we wanted to do it, and we spent the next week preparing. The highlight of the race (for me at least) was the one-minute lip-sync and dance routine that we had to do. We had a great time and we actually gave our best performance during the race, which was nice. By the end of the day, we were pretty tired.

During the race we were already thinking of some ideas for next year. . .

Elliot was crazy Saturday night. On Sunday we saw a ton of goop in his ear and figured that his ear-drum ruptured. We called the Dr, who confirmed that was probably the case, so it is another 10 days of antibiotics.

I finally got around to posting some photos from 2008.

2008 Photos

Elliot turned 1 today. Pretty amazing. He still seems like such a baby to me. Maybe that is because he sleeps like one, or at least like all of ours have slept.

We had a nice little party, which he fussed his way through. I will try to get some pics and maybe a video up soon.

What did we do on Valentine’s Day, you ask?

Well, this year, we broke with tradition (Panera), and went to my parent’s. It was a nice dinner, followed by a nice evening of putting the kids to bed and sitting on the couch.

Since we didn’t make it to Panera last night, we decided to go tonight. Last year things were a little crazy. Andrew was 3 and Mari was 1 1/2 last year. Things got a little chaotic, especially with Mari. This year was very peaceful. We even sat around for about 5 minutes after we were finished (Andrew was not actually finished, as he eats on his own schedule). It was a nice time.

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We thought he was passed it. We thought he had moved on. But, alas, Andrew has an ear infection. The cool thing is that he is old enough to tell us. Our Dr looked in her records, and he had not had an ear infection (that we knew of) for almost two years. He has been sick since Tues, with a fever, and cold symptoms.

Elliot is crazy. He really likes Susan (can you blame him?), and is not sleeping very well. Susan has had a hard time getting him to sleep during the day, so most weekdays he only has one nap, which probably contributes to his craziness. He loves to go outside and to look out the window.

Mari is Mari. She is doing well. As usual, it is a lot of highs and lows with Mari, where she is either laughing our crying – there is no in-between.

Susan is managing to stay sane through all this, somehow. She gives and gives-up a lot, so I hope that over the next few months, or year, Elliot will start to give her a break.

Later.