We got invited to a Jazz game in Scott’s company suite which was fun and classy, plus I got my name announced and on the big screen!  It’s all in who you know……

It was replaced today by a flashy new one that is 1/2 the size, 1/3 more powerful, and cost 1/5 what we paid for the original. But can it go the distance? If it does, there will only be one more microwave in our future. Wow!

Goodbye old friend!

But in between all the stress, we’ve enjoyed some holiday fun.  We went to Celebration of Christmas by the BYU combined choirs & Philharmonic Orchestra at the beginning of December.  It’s always wonderful and is a great start to the season.  They had some really beautiful arrangements that just made me sigh.

I sang in the Alpine community Christmas concert last Sunday night, conducted by Marvin Payne, and got to sing with a bunch of my friends.  We had some lovely music choices and it really made me feel in the spirit of the season.

Tonight I’m sitting in the LDS Conference Center waiting for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir concert to start because we were lucky enough to get tickets. We walked around looking at lights on Temple Square after eating at Crown Burger, so it’s already been a fun evening.

Tomorrow we are at the Alpine Christmas show to see Todd McCabe & April Moriarty & friends, so that will be fun, too.

Monday is the Christmas book club lunch when I get to see my pals.  Can’t wait!

So it’s been fun with more to come.  Mark came home from BYU on Wednesday, Brian comes home on Tuesday, and let the party begin!

Scott played the piano and sang amusing versions of familiar songs that had the crowd at his BYU ward talent show cheering!

Next we noticed that the hardwood floor in front of the refrigerator felt uneven under our stocking feet.  Upon further investigation, we found that the boards were warped, the water line between the frig and sink had a leak and we were looking at Scott’s favorite home repair: plumbing.  I’m being facetious, of course, because he’s a handy dude around the house but he really hates plumbing stuff.  Then I pulled our clothes out of the dryer to find they were still wet.  This was after 3 cycles.  Yeah, no heat in there whatsoever.  He looked at it and pronounced it DOA.  We’d had a couple days to absorb the mailbox, this other happened within a few minutes of each other.  We checked the basement office under the kitchen and no water down there.  Phew!

After several moments of despair, we rolled up our sleeves and got to work.  We hung the wet clothes around the house to dry, went shopping for a mailbox, plumbing parts, and a new dryer and started fixing.  Scott got the leak under the sink fixed, we went to my in-laws to dry enough clothes to last us until the dryer could be delivered a week later, and put a continuous fan on the kitchen floor.  So far, so good.

Then a couple days ago we noticed a bad smell in the basement office and found we had wet carpet and a large wet area down the wall destroying the paint, and started fans on that.  They weren’t cutting it, so yesterday Scott rented a super blower to get it all dried.  I haven’t been down there this morning to check on the progress because it makes me want to cry every time I walk in there.  The only good thing I see is that we are both committed to tackling the long-standing problem of cleaning out the office this winter.  If only because we don’t want to move so much stuff out of there next time there’s a leak.  Oh, and the dryer was delivered late yesterday afternoon, so today I can do laundry and maybe get the clothes dry.

The icemaker is still not hooked up because Scott is nervous to upset the status quo, no decision has been made on what to do about the warped kitchen floor, I can’t even think about the mess in the office, and Blue Stakes has come to mark our parking strip so Scott plans to dig and install our new mailbox this weekend.  Just in time for Halloween pumpkin smashing.  And did I mention that we desperately need a new water heater?

This was my view as I lounged by the pool, swam, and read an entire book while Scott was in workshops in Atlanta.

Life is rough!

Yesterday for lunch we did BBQ in Lockhart while we were visiting in the country. These are famous joints in the bbq world so we took pictures. (I think Outdoor Cooking Magic will have a future post-;) )  We had fun but even with just a little taste at each place, it was a lot of carnivorous eating! We went to Black’s, Smitty’s, & Chisholm Trail.

We visited friends of Mark’s, saw cool buildings downtown, did laundry, and ate at Duke’s, where the missionaries used to eat after district meetings.

We ate in Round Rock at Rudy’s, the Worst BBQ in Texas. It’s a local landmark chain that couldn’t be missed & was wonderful.  And yes, I’m eating my dinner on a piece of butcher paper.