Hayley Asks for a Sister

I admit that I spoil Hayley pretty bad. She's got to the point where she won't even ask mom for toys and treats, she just waits for me to get home. The other day I about fell out of my chair when Hayley asked for a baby sister. Then I caught myself actually thinking about it... and if we could guarantee a girl I would probably consider it. Well then I snapped back to reality and realized that Hayley almost got me thinking we should have more kids. Man, I just can't imagine what would happen, I'm sure we'd get triplets or something. Whew, I think I needed that wake up call. I think I need to schedule an appointment when the doctor before anymore crazy baby thoughts come to mind.

Living Repainted

Last week I mentioned to Jen that we should paint our living room. Well she didn't hesitate to call in the cavalry. Jen's brother Matt, his girl friend Jen, Jen's mom, sister, Jean, some of Jean's friends, and Jody stopped by to help out. We painted the ceiling, hallway, moulding, and walls. We started out around noon and finished at about 10pm. Matt wired in new outlets for the cable and electricity.

It's going to be so nice since the twins loved pulling on the TV cords.

Anyway here are some before and after. The camera must have had some humidity built up on the before pictures. But you get the just of it. Nice deep dark red.

No more cords. This is going to be so nice!! Thanks Matt.

F-150 Tidbit

During this cold winter the heater on our F-150 hasn't been working the best. We thought it was kind of strange since it worked awesome in years past, I thought about changing out the thermostat a few times but I just figured it was the super cold weather causing it. (the temp gauge seemed to indicate the temp was OK) Well on our way home two weekends ago the check engine light kicked on. I waited until the next weekend to finally bring the truck to O'Reilly's auto parts store to use their computer and check the fault. They let you use their diagnostic computer for free which saved me about $50. The error code came back with something "not enough antifreeze for closed loop operation". I was taken aback by that since I had enough antifreeze in the truck. I took it in and asked the guy about it and he said it's probably a stuck open thermostat. He said the truck is basically running in warm up mode all the time and that I was probably getting bad gas mileage. Man did he hit that on the head, the truck has been getting terrible gas mileage. For the most part I never monitored it until gas started hitting $4 a gallon. We drove up to Little Falls and I put in a new thermostat. On the way home the heater worked great and the trucked seemed to get about double the gas mileage. I'm anxious to fill up the truck again to see what mileage we'll actually get.

So I'd just like to give a thanks to O'Reilly's for offering the free use of their computer. It was pretty handy to find the problem and just buy the parts all in one shot. I recommend it to you do it yourselfers if you ever want to run diagnostics on your car.

Snow Fort Revisited

I wasn't to happy with Hayley's snow fort and she kind of rushed me a bit when she got bored the first time so on Saturday we spent some time trying to make it a little bigger. Most of the yard had been snowed in again so I had plenty of snow but it was not sticky at all so it wasn't going to work well building up the snow fort. I built it up a little and made the opening wider but Hayley still wasn't that interested in it. Oh well, I'll have to wait until the twins get older, maybe they will appreciate a good snow fort. Anyway here are some pics of the modified snow fort.

I finally gave up and let her climb on the dumb fort. I thought it was going to cave in but it held up rather well.

The opening is a little larger and she can almost stand, in this pic she's ducking down for the camera.

On Sunday we had some visitors. My brother and his wife stopped over for a visit before they headed out to Florida. (I'm so jealous) I was amazed that the twins took so well to them. Lately the twins are so weary of anyone but mom and dad. Kathy also was able to tell them apart pretty well from the time she saw them. I was impressed.