New Washer!!!!!!!!!!!

Well Sears came through for us. The repair man came last thursday and fixed one problem on the washer and then the pump died right there in front of him. That put us over the limit for repairs in one year and qualified us for a new washer. Now I thought they might end up giving us some credit towards a new washer or something like that but they really stood up to thier word. We went to Sears yesterday and the manager called in for the authorization number he needed for our account. As he was doing this Brett and I looked around at all the washers and tried to guess which one they were going to say was comparible to the one we have. I found two I thought were good choices. Then the manager came and showed us the one he found that matches all the features ours has except it has a bigger capacity. It was $1100 and they gave it to us for free! We didn't have to pay a penny or even sign anything. And they would have delivered it for free as well but we didn't want to wait for that. We had them load it up into the back of Brett's truck and off we went with a brand spanking new state-of-the-art washing machine. I don't know how we ended up with such a great deal but i've got to give props to Sears for truly standing up to what they say. I would highly recommend the Sears maintainance plan to everyone. We had a five year plan and our washer was four and a half years old. Now we have a brand new fancy dancy washer and still have six months of our service plan left that they transfer to the new washer. It's so cool. It has what they call "canyon" capacity and it is super quiet. I think the coolest thing of all is that the lid is see through so you can watch it. That and it has a self-cleaning feature. So as much of a pain it was not having a reliable washer for the past two months, it all paid off in the end. I've been washing clothes all day (trying to catch up) and you just wouldn't believe how much stuff fits in there. Sears says it holds 23 towels. I'm not sure about that, maybe we have big towels, but it definitely holds a lot of stuff!

Christmas Cousins

Washer and Christmas Pics

Our washer broke again yesterday. That would make four times in about one month. Lucky for us we bought a service plan when we bought our washer. I'm pretty much on a first name basis with the repair guy now. I don't even have to escort him to the washer when he gets here. He knows right where to go. Between coming to check it out and having to order a part and coming back to install the part he has been here five times in the past month and has to come again this week. The good news with that is that as long as the repair man finds something wrong with it on thursday it will be considered a lemon and Sears is going to buy us a new washer. Well I can tell you there is definitely something wrong with it. I washed a load of clothes and they came out dry! It looks like I will be heading to the laundromat (did i spell that right?) once again. And it looks like we will be getting a new washer for Christmas, or shortly thereafter. What a pain in the behind though. Do you have any idea how much laundry accumulates around here in a week? Not to mention a month!?!? I went last weekend and did twelve loads. Seems everyone else likes to do laundry on sunday afternoon too so I was there for four hours. What fun.

I had this great idea that I was going to get out of planning a trip for Christmas pictures of the boys. Usually it requires a trip to Gainesville and very careful planning of time so that they are both in a cooperative mood ... not hungry, not tired, clean diaper, clean clothes, haven't been sleeping recently so their hair is a mess, etc. And after being strapped into the car for about 40 minutes Houston has to let off some energy before there will be any "sitting pretty" going on. After the last pictures where the photographer about lost her cool I thought I would try to do them myself this time. BAD IDEA!!! I tried today, after putting it off for a few weeks, and was not very successful. I couldn't find Houston a Christmas shirt or outfit or pj's or anything so I decided to do jeans and santa hats. Easy enough, or so I thought. I even got some big candy canes to use as props and put a bench in front of the Christmas tree so it could be our background. What a mess it turned out to be. My lighting was all wrong and I couldn't get them both looking at the camera and smiling at the same time. About five minutes into it all Houston decided he was done. Then I couldn't get Brody to look at me because he was too interested in Houston running through the house with this big candy cane. And since Brody has started crawling he longer wants to sit still. I did manage to get a couple of decent shots but nothing with both of them in it that's worth printing out an 8x10 of. I'll post some here for your enjoyment.

UPDATE ON THE BOYS

Brody had his six month check-up yesterday. He weighs 18 pounds 4 ounces and is 27-3/4 inches long. His doctor was very surprised at how well he is sitting up and moving around already. He is so close to crawling. I wouldn't be surprised if he was crawling by the end of the week. He already scoots around to get where he wants to go but he keeps trying to get all the way up on his knees.

Houston is being a total two-year-old lately requiring a lot of patience from myself. I've been doing some Christmas shopping and leaving him with Brett which has been a much needed break for me. He is starting to pronounce his words a little better, which is nice. He is really in to Go, Diego Go and anything to do with animals.