Fiona's Favorite Seat in the New House

When Fiona wants a drink, she does what pretty much any person would do. She hangs on the the handles of the refrigerator and screams. When I open the fridge for her, she grabs her milk (which I keep on the bottom shelf) and then has a seat right there in the fridge. Maybe the A/C isn't working to her liking?

First Sunday

On Sunday we went to church to check out our new ward. We were thankful that Gwen had a wonderful time and immediately made friends with a sweet girl named Erin. Why do kids make friends so easily?

We met a lot of nice people too, and had high hopes that it would be a great ward.

When we got home, I took Fiona over to the urgent care- again. She had a rash all over her body. The doctor suspected that it was a reaction to the ammoxicillan she was on. The good news was that her ears already looked perfect, so the doctor suggested just stopping all treatment and letting her body heal on it's own.

Still no pictures. Why? Our house was chaos and we were getting ready for guests. Who, you might ask? My parents! They were coming the next day and we couldn't wait!

More Proof

Moving is complicated. Living in a house that somebody used to own is complicated. Learning the ins and outs of a new neigborhood is complicated. When we first moved in, we felt like we didn't know where anything was, nor did we seem to know how anything worked. We felt lucky to just get the lights on and off.


On our fourth day there, we finally decided to get the mail. We went on a little family walk and stopped at the mailbox. We tried our key and it didn't seem to be working. Rick tried it, I tried it, Gwen tried it. We would have had Fiona try it if we thought it would be useful. We stayed out there for 15 minutes trying to get the lock to budge. People were out on walks, mowing their lawns, and played with their kids. I'm sure all the neighbors thought we were idiots who couldn't do something as simple as open a mailbox.


Defeated, we went home and I asked our neighbor if they ever have trouble with their mail key. He walked with me over to the mailboxes to see if he could get our key to work. As he approached the mailboxes, he walked around to the back of the mailboxes. We had been trying to open the lock that the mailman uses when he puts the mail in all of the individual boxes. Nice.

We walked back to the house (me, with a slightly lower self-esteem.) I sat on the lawn to go through the mail. It was a beautiful evening and Gwen was enjoying playing with the oodles of neighborkids on the street. As I sat on the lawn, I laughed at our mistake with the mail and thought about all the things we still needed to figure out. What day does the garbage pick up? Where do we go to get new drivers licenses? How do we work the automatic sprinklers?


Ten minutes later I learned when the automatic sprinklers turn on. They turn on a 8:00 PM when I'm sitting in the middle of the lawn, going through the mail. This is also the time when all the neighbors are on their front porch with a clear view of me getting soaked.


Score
New House: 3
Beans: 0

Proof We Are Idiots

I woke up on the morning of our third day in the house to Rick's frantic voice.

"Anna Marie! There's a leak in the ceiling!"

I stumbled out of bed and ran into the bathroom. Rick turned on the shower and water immediately started dripping from the ceiling. When he turned it off, the dripping slowed to a stop.

Panicked, I called our insurance company to file a claim and find out what we should do. It was still early, so our local agency wasn't open yet. We talked to somebody at the 24 hour claim center who told us to shut off the water. They also told us that a claims person would call us later in the morning.

Rick and I had no idea how to shut off the water line to the shower without shutting off the water to the whole house. Rick didn't think the water was leaking when it wasn't turned on, so we just left it on.

Rick was running late for work at this point, so he quickly finished packing up and headed out. In the meantime, I was feeling a little bit teary-eyed. Fiona was sick, 99% of our stuff was still packed, there were boxes everywhere, and our ceiling was leaking.

Less than 10 minutes later, Rick was back. He's a good husband.

Rick went up in the attic to try and find the source of the leak. When he positioned himself above where the water was dripping, he was perplexed when there were no pipes or even any evidence of water anywhere. We knew that pipes aren't commonly found in attics, but we thought maybe our house was weird. What else would explain the water?

While Rick was in the attic, I turned the shower on and off a few times. Water would immediately drip from the ceiling when it was on, but it would stop when turned off. Rick couldn't see anything from his vantage point when I turned the water on and off.

When he came back down from the attic, we discovered that the light above the shower stopped working as well. We figured that all the the water caused it to short.

At some point during the day, we learned that our insurance company only fixed the damage that the water caused to the house. Stopping the leak and fixing whatever was wrong with our pipes was up to us. Maybe most people realize this, but this was our first home owner's insurance claim and we had no idea what to do.

We finally got a plumber (I think his name was Jeff) over to our house. We brought him upstairs and turned on the shower. Sure enough, the water started streaming from the ceiling. The plumber reached up to the shower head, made a few adjustments, and the water stopped dripping.

It immediately hit me. There was a stream of water shooting crooked from the shower head. It was hitting the ceiling and then dripping back down.

Boy were we idiots. Relieved idiots. We couldn't stop laughing. Rick made Plumber Jeff promise not to tell anybody what happened. As soon as Jeff opened the door he yelled out into to street, "Hey everybody, check this out!" He thought he was pretty funny. I'm sure he laughed all the way home. Rick and I laughed for the rest of the night.