A Week of Mishaps (Sorry, No Pictures - Read Why Below)

We've had a week of one mishap after another around here.

The Computer
Scott's computer is in need of repair. The screen is completely black so he looked online to try to figure out what part needed to be replaced. He found the suspected culprit and ordered a replacement for $10.00. After he had the computer completely taken apart and with much tedious work he then proceeded to remove and re-install the old part. Nice. We laughed pretty hard and I told him that's something I would do. Don't you worry, when he went back and installed the new part it didn't fix the problem. So he was back on the internet researching what else could be causing the problem. He found something else that might work for $17.00 - a new fluorescent light tube to illuminate the darkened LCD screen. The part arrived and he had his computer even more completely torn apart and was ready to install the new light tube when 'SNAP,' it broke about ten seconds after unwrapping it. Apparently those things are pretty fragile. So he went back on the internet to order a new one which he plans to be much more careful with.

Meanwhile I was in the middle of a huge mess making cookies for our Saturday dance practice. I don't mean to brag, okay maybe I do, but I make really good cookies. But for some reason this batch came out like salty biscuits. They were disgusting! I haven't made cookies that bad since I was 10 years old. So I had to throw them all out and hurry and make a couple of batches of blonde brownies. While they were cooking I was feeling a little stressed with the time crunch and mess and was trying to get cleaned up. I took the big mixing bowl full of water and went to pour it out and I totally dropped it spilling water everywhere, including all over Scott's computer parts that were in a million pieces on the island counter top. Some water got under the plastic cover that protects the screen's circuitry which happens to have a bright red sticker explaining: "Do Not Touch - Sensitive Area." Needless to say, when the part comes and Scott puts his computer back together, if it actually works it will be nothing short of an Easter miracle.

The Plumbing
With Scott's computer out of commission he couldn't do much for his work so he decided to take care of some stuff around the house and yard. He remembered seeing an old bucket down in the crawl space that he wanted to use for something and went down to get it. While he was down there he noticed that one of the floorboards underneath the house was all wet. Upon closer examination he found that the main water valve had become so corroded that it had started to leak and was spraying a fine stream of water up onto the floorboard. On the one hand we thought how annoying this was going to be to fix, but on the other hand we were incredibly relieved that we found this leak before water started seeping up through the floor and our crawl space was full of three feet of water. After taking some pictures and talking to the plumbing guys at Lowe's, Scott decided to replace the valve himself. He spent all day Tuesday down in the crawl space and replaced the valve twice but ended up creating other leaks both times. We were without water most of the day and ended up using almost all of our water storage between doing dishes and refilling the toilet tanks. That night we had dance practice and a kid from the ward mentioned that a guy in our ward is a plumber. We gave him a call and he came over on Wednesday. He actually said Scott had done a pretty good job for not having any experience. He put his twenty-plus years of experience to work for us and got us back in business all for the cost of a handshake. What a nice guy!

The Cars
Another mishap took place a few days earlier when I had left in one of our cars to run an errand when a red flashing light came on telling me "Check Trans." I pulled back in the driveway and took the other car. Scott and my brother looked at it and couldn't quite figure out what was wrong but did discover that the engine was almost completely out of oil. Fortunately when Scott added some oil to the engine all of the warning lights went off. We took it for an oil change and they said that we do have an oil leak but that everything else looked OK. Not so for the other car. Scott took it in for an oil change and they came back with a laundry list of repairs that "need" to be done. Transmission flush, power steering flush, coolant flush, rear strut replacement, oil leak, transmission leak, etc. Lucky for us, my brother Alex was able to give us some second opinions and we may be able to take care of some of those things on our own with his help rather than paying $$$ to the shop.

The Centerpiece
Another mishap was when I decided that my new kitchen table needed a cute centerpiece decoration. I hardly ever buy stuff like this because it is not a high priority and we try to spend our money as wisely as possible. I found a cute glass vase and filled it with lemons and it looked very cute on our table. However with the crazy baby climber I have I knew I couldn't have that on the kitchen table while Corbin was awake. So I put it on the inaccessible (to Corbin) counter until nap time and bed time. I had the vase in front of the kitchen cabinets and I was making dinner and I instinctively opened the cabinet to get out plates and I didn't realize that it was right in front of the cabinets and it came falling down to its death and shattered into a million pieces on the floor. It didn't even last 24 hours. Needless to say I was very sad about this but obviously something you have to move 5 times a day isn't very practical in the first place. Sad times. Luckily it was on sale and it wasn't too expensive so it's not a huge loss but it was very sad.

The Dance Festival
The dance festival is less than two weeks away and we had two people bail out yesterday. We have found some last minute replacements and get to teach them the dance ASAP. This has been fun but its getting to crunch time and it's a little more stressful to try to have extra practices and make sure the youth show up and all of that good stuff.

For Easter I was pretty lame and didn't really do anything. I bought some candy just because I wanted it and that's about it. Luckily Grandma Cannon sent up some Easter presents and Corbin got an adorable baby duck that's about the same size as him and he LOVES it. Of course there are no pictures or videos because we can only download those things on Scott's computer which may or may not be dead to us forever. One last mishap was that for some reason Corbin woke up crying 6 times last night. He hasn't done that since he was about 1 month old. We couldn't figure out what was wrong but it was a real treat. Really things are good but we can't help but laugh at our small little mishaps over the last week.