Adams County Fair

While Brian was putting test colors on the exterior of our house (before the big painting job starts), Sam and I headed to the Adams County Fair.

This was the only animal that he actually touched. Right after I took this picture, a bunch of animals converged on our location and Sam didn't take it very well.

Strawberry Limeade. Yummy!

My big, tall boy.

A monster truck that's a fire engine.
Sam was in heaven.

Very Creative Realtor

Our realtor has a very creative mind and come up with a ton of interesting ideas. If Brian wouldn't veto me, I'd definitely do this one.

Bowling Balls and Lawn Art

If you don't have a green thumb and want to worry about the 18" between the border of your lawn and the fence (and don't want to see weeds), this might be a solution for you.

If I Didn't Already Have One . . .

If I didn't already have an iPad case, I would definitely get the iGuy. It looks so fun and steady for young hands.

Why didn't I see this one first, before I bought mine???

Selling a Fridge Shouldn't Involve the Fire Department

Lowe's called me on Wednesday to let me know that our new fridge was in stock and wanted to set up at time to deliver it. Because Brian and I both work full-time, that dropped the availability for delivery to the weekend. I scheduled it for between 8-10am on Saturday morning.


We had debated about keeping the old fridge in our garage, but finally realized that it would be an energy suck and since there are only 3 of us in the house, would be completely useless.


Brian wanted Lowe's to haul the old one away, but I thought that we could make a few bucks by selling it on Craigslist. Of course, I won that discussion. Brian's only concern was that he didn't want the thing taking up room in our garage for weeks while I find someone to purchase it.


I knew that it wouldn't take long to find a buyer, but I was even surprised when only 5 minutes after it posted, I received a call from Debbi about buying it and having it hauled away around 9am. I was thrilled. In the mean time, I moved some items in our garage so that the old fridge had a spot.


I received a call from Lowe's at 8:15 saying that they were on their way. Yea!!! A new fridge and $75 for the old fridge. I was thrilled.


The removal of the old fridge went like clockwork. Installation of the new fridge, on the other hand, included removing our front door and some of the hardware from the fridge. No biggie. It looked perfect in our kitchen.


Lowe's had me sign the delivery information, and shortly afterwards, I received a call from Debbie saying that the people that would be helping them move the fridge would be at my house in an hour. Great.


When the 2 men arrived, in a rented Home Depot truck, Debbi came to the door and let me know that they were ready to haul it away. About 10 minutes later I hear "Oh Shit!!" and a big thud. Sam was asleep on the couch, so I couldn't run out, but I did open the door slightly to see one of the men holding his knee and the fridge on it's side in the driveway.


My guess was that the fridge fell on the guy (that was confirmed later). I was worried to run out there and offer any type of assistance, because this happened on my property and I was worried about any legal ramifications of assistance.


Brian cam home shortly after, looked at the scene and came to the same conclusion. The rental truck was there about 25 minutes before I heard a fire engine's siren around the corner with an ambulance right behind it.

I bet our neighbors are thinking that we are trouble makers. Within the first month of buying our house, we already have a fire truck and an ambulance out front. At least we got to meet one of our neighbors that was coming home, and whose path was blocked by Thornton's finest. Her name is Grace and she lives diagonal from us.

It seems that these 2 guys were trying to lift the fridge vertically (without any help) instead of putting it on it's side. Brian helped the guy push it into the truck on it's side when he got home.

After Sam woke up, the activity was still going on, so I took him over to the fire engine and he read each letter that I pointed to. Good boy! He loves letters and numbers.


He was so excited to see these vehicles up close, but didn't like how loud they were driving in.

The guy's knee was wrapped up, splinted and he was put into the back of the ambulance and taken away. I bet there were a bunch of neighbors looking out their windows, but didn't come out to see what was going on up close. I hope that we don't hear any more about it. I'd hate to have to talk to our insurance agent about a claim on our property.

Welcome to the Neighborhood!

Teacher Appreciation Week- May 7-11, 2012

Next week is Teacher Appreciation Week, and I wanted to come up with something that would be useful and appreciated for Sam to give to his daycare teachers. Of course, I found it on Pinterest.

Here is my inspiration (Source).

And here is the execution.

I'm going to print a page for Samuel to color saying "Thank You" but, for all intents and purposes, the gifts are complete.

I didn't notice at Super Target that one of the cups was smaller than the other. I guess I will leave it up to his 3 teachers to fight for the bigger cups.  :)

If you'd like to see what other ideas I have found to do a lot of different things, please check me out on Pinterest HERE.

Have a great weekend.

Donations for 2011 Taxes

Since I have been donating a lot of items for my Operation Minimize Project (HERE is where I got the idea) and participating in raising money for charity, I have amassed a lot of receipts for donation items.  I have collected them all and put everything together so that on April 14th we aren't going crazy adding up everything.

Monetary Donations- $490.20
American Cancer Society- $160.20
Team in Training (LLS)- $180
Denver Museum of Nature and Science Membership- $60
Denver Zoo Membership- $90



Goodwill Donations
869 Individual Items- $1,796
ARC Donations
307 Individual Items- $1,103

Book Outlet
53 Individual Items- $71


2011 Total Donations (so far)- $3,460.20Just to let you know, I low balled all of the estimates for the donations. I still have another 200+ items to donate or throw away in the next 4 weeks.

Random Items I Found on Brian's iPhone

These are in no particular order.

Day at the Museum

The first Saturday of every month, the Denver Art Museum has free entry for CO residents. We didn't have anything else planned, so Sam and I took the light rail downtown, met Brian (he was working in the morning) and headed over there.

Sam's New Hat and Mitten Set.

The China portion of the Denver Art Museum was definitely our favorite. Sam had fun building Build the Great Wall of China with large-scale fabric blocks and coloring a dragon hand puppet with Daddy.

Unfortunately, two little girls were hogging all of the other blocks, so Sam only had 6-7 to play with, but he didn't seem to mind.

There was also a section of the museum where you could make a Chinese dragon mask to take home and wear. Unfortunately, Daddy was more interested in that, while Sam climbed on a turtle in the same area and wanted me to climb on it, too.

The only bad thing about The Denver Art Museum is that it doesn't open until 10am on Saturdays. With Sam's lunchtime around 11:30 (and a nap afterwards), that doesn't leave much time to play before he gets hungry and cranky.

Sam should stop taking naps when he hits 3, so when we go after that, we can always come back after lunch and play some more.

Living Room Help Needed

Please!!! Someone purchase our queen size bedroom set, mattress and box spring. I want my Living Room back.

Make me an offer. Anything!!!!

http://denver.craigslist.org/fuo/2665942810.html

New Toilet Seat

I found this toilet seat cover on Amazon about a month ago and finally installed it last night. A full size toilet seat with an attached potty seat for Sam. 

Genius!!

Stinky Mommy

Unbelieveable

I couldn't believe my eyes. I was driving my son to daycare and I looked down a residential street.

I saw Christmas lights displayed-- ALREADY!!

I was horrified. It's not even Halloween.

It drives me nuts when retailers start playing Christmas music and put out their displays in late October, but (I believe that) people should wait until mid-November or just after Thanksgiving to display their exterior lights.

I guess that's just me.

Operation Minimize- Week 38 (1,674- 1,677)- Selling Gold

While we were cleaning out our basement, we came across a large amount of real and costume gold and decided that there really wasn't anything that we were going to do with it, so we decided to sell it. We weren't positive what was what, so we just brought it all.

Everyone has driven down the street and seen individuals standing on the corner, flipping around signs advertising "Cash For Gold." A few weeks ago, I drove around on a Sunday trying to find somewhere open, but their hours were only Monday-Saturday.

We used 2 hours today to go around and price some of these places. I can't believe the difference in pricing that we were told and the differing items that places were interested in purchasing.

Place #1- Offered us $220 for 6 items. That sounded okay, but we were definitely not taking the first offer.

Place #2- Wanted 4 items and offered $600. Sweet!

•  Brian was very surprised that they wanted a certain pinky ring. He thinks that he got it for $20, 20 years ago.

Place #3- Only wanted 2 items and offered us $35. Pitiful.

We probably could have driving around for another hour pricing the items, but we were happy with $600 and took it. Of the items that the 2nd place didn't take, I'm going to take the rest (including some diamond earrings that I forgot that I owned), and take them around. maybe we will get as lucky as we did before. I'm going to continue to go through our basement boxes and see if there is anything else that we can sell.

Have a great Saturday. Go Bucks!!

Ladybug

It has been a while since I have seen a ladybug. I was cleaning out our computer desk and one was crawling on my husband's organizer that he hasn't touched in a few years.

 

I'm sorry I couldn't get it in focus.