12/19/06 Everything and the kitchen sink

We had a plumber here this morning -- morning?! All day! He arrived at 9am and left at 2pm. Nearly $600 later, we have a new kitchen faucet and shutoff valves that work and will last.

He also took out an instant hot-water heater that we never used and a broken soap dispenser, extended some lines, and did a whole bunch of infrastructure things that you can't see. The actual faucet took him maybe 20 minutes.

Now more than ever, I want to scrape our hideous kitchen off the face of the earth. I haven't wanted to put one cent into it, but now that we had to, it's whetted my appetite to do what it really needs: vanquish it to a bad memory. Our new faucet works so, so much better than the old one that it makes me want to get rid of every nasty fixture and appliance we have!

Waiting for the plumber dominated our day. Julian and Katrina and I didn't go anywhere this morning, not even to pick up Gabriel. Instead, Dave came home for lunch to talk to the plumber, and picked Gabriel up on the way.

But we had to get out. After the plumber finally finished, I packed up all three kids and took them to Target. Yeah, great. Target. Our big outing of the day. Wow. Gabriel has a gift exchange at school (optional) and he has to pick out a gift.

I had to give up on Julian's nap, but that meant EARLY dinner for the boys. And indeed, I managed to get them fed and even cleaned up dinner by 6pm! Now that's more like it! No fusses, no blowouts, no arguments, no threats, no yelling. Everything went very smoothly.

In the old days, starting dinner at 6:30pm was early. But now, if I haven't thought about it by 5pm, I'm behind. Getting it all done by 6pm meant starting to think about it at 4pm, but that was perfect. The only flip side is that Dave had late leftovers, but that is well worth it (at least to me!).

One welcome benefit of shifting everything earlier was having some nice time with the boys after dinner. I helped Gabriel wrap the present for his pre-K holiday party, and I do mean that I helped him. I guided him, but he did most of it. The gift exchange is a random one, so we don't know who will get his gift, but he kept saying he wanted to give it to a girl in his class, Donya.

Katrina joined us for some photos in the living room, then took a nap while the boys decorated the tree.


The lights have been up on our tree for a week, but we haven't found a good time to hang ornaments!

It's about time! That was fun; I put on some nice music and the boys had a great time.










My little darlings. Aww.

12/19/06