Weekend Disaster!

For those of you who don’t know, Jeff is in Norway right now interviewing for a fellowship. He left early Sunday morning and will return late Wednesday night. If he gets the fellowship we will have to decide if it’s worth it for us to move to Norway for a few years so that he can get his PHD. I’ll update on what’s going on with that as soon as I know what’s going on with that.
The real story I wanted to share is what happened yesterday after he left. Whenever Jeffery is out of the house on a weekend I see it as a great opportunity for myself to get some real house cleaning done. Not just the usual tidy up and try to make it look presentable but the get down and dirty cleaning. So my plan yesterday was to clean my main floor for however long it took to get it really really clean. About halfway through my project I opened up the door to my downstairs bathroom to mop the floor (the bathroom that’s been in the process of getting remodeled for almost a year) and noticed a drip of water hitting my toilet. I looked up and the entire ceiling was bowing down. I rushed to get a bucket, cut a whole in the sheet rock and a solid stream of water gushed out. This is when I panicked. Jeff is gone, water cascading through the ceiling, what do you do?! I called my Dad. He walked me through where to look for the main water shut off valve, which took me like five minutes to find and then told me to call a plumber. Just what everyone wants, to have to make an emergency call to a plumber! They charge ridiculous rates when it’s not a Sunday night. After three calls to three different plumbing places and a little more panicking, I finally found one that had an emergency plumber on duty. About an hour after I called a really nice older man who owns the plumbing company I called showed up. He had to rip the ceiling out of the bathroom and by rip I mean cut and saw through the sheetrock and lathe and plaster that was above the sheetrock. Luckily he had a tarp down to catch all of the gunk that poured out of the ceiling. Come to find out, our upstairs sink has had a slow leak and the drain pipe (which was 100 year old lead) had rusted through. I’m guessing the slow leak had been pooling up above my ceiling for a couple of days before it finally busted through. Fun stuff I tell you. So $450 later I have a fixed drain, or at least he’s at the house right now fixing it. Plus, my bathroom project has been set back probably another year! I guess in a way it’s great that we’ve been so slow to get that project done since we hadn’t put up the crown molding yet. I think I’d have cried if we would have had to take that down too.
When Jeff gets back I plan on letting him know that’s he’s never allowed to travel again! Geez like I ever thought I needed to know the shut of valve to our water line’s location. Am I the stereotypical woman or what?! Although I am proud of myself that I watched my Dad deal with leaks enough to know that I needed to cut a hole in the ceiling sheet rock to let the water through, so I get points for that right. Also when Jeff gets back I’m having him walk me through our home to locate any other “locations” to important devices. I’ll try to get a picture up of the damage. Hope everyone else had disaster free weekends!

She's growing up!

I thought Avery looked very grown up in this picture, not as much a baby but a little girl. She's growing so fast it's crazy. Her latest words are pizza and make up. Really she's repeating everything we say, which means we have to be really careful when choosing our words. Last weekend I went with my Mom to Spokane to see Phantom of the Opera, which was fabulous as always, and to do a little shopping. It was a blast, we left Friday and ate at PF Changs before the play (best mongolian beef ever) then we hit World Market before checking into the hotel and taking off for the show. On Sat we shopped some more hitting Cabella's and the outlets and See's Candy and of course Toys R Us. Then we stopped in MIssoula to eat at El Cazador on the way home. I forgot how much I love El Cazador. It was a quick trip but I just didn't think I could spend a second night away from Avery yet. One night was nice but I still missed Avery a ton by Sat. She was pretty excited to see us when we pulled up and kept pointing and yelling "nanna" as we unloaded the car. I bought Avery a pair of snow boots at Toys R Us and she loves them. She had to put them on and ask to go "side". It's funny when she asks to go outside she turns her head sideways and says, "side". Then gets really pissed off if we don't take her out. I'm kind of hoping this new fascination with outside goes away before the real cold weather hits but I'm not keeping my fingers crossed. I have a feeling we'll be "side" a lot this winter.

October Update

Sorry I’ve been kind of a pill about posting lately. I have a ton of pictures on my camcorder that I need to download but Jeff’s been hogging the lap top lately for school work so I haven’t gotten a chance to download. School’s been a little crazy for Jeff this semester, lots of homework. As soon as I get the pics I’ll do a post about my cousin Mandy’s baby shower and our weekend in Great Falls (the weekend of the 4^th).

This last weekend was great, very relaxing. My parents drove over on Sat to watch Avery while Jeff and I went and chopped wood. It was a little chilly but really nice to get out of the house and into the woods just the two of us. We chopped down one huge tree so that will get us by for awhile. It would be nice to have a wood stove to burn it in but thus far we haven’t gotten any insight on when our stove will come in.

Here's a picture of Daddy starting a fire with the little dragon looking on. This is Avery's Halloween costume and she likes to wear it around the house.

The last couple of weeks, Avery has really gotten into her baby doll. She has a bed and a stroller for it. The other day I found this in the stroller. Apparently she needed to strap her frog in. That gave me a kick.

Yesterday she was trying to put diapers on her baby doll, however, her diapers are a little big. She was getting a little frustrated that they wouldn't fit. Luckily I still had some newborn diapers from when Avery was first born and those fit the doll perfectly. Last night we put the baby to bed in her miniature pack and play and Avery got her all covered up with a blanket. It’s so funny how girls just have a natural instinct to take care of a baby.

This Friday I get to go to Spokane with my Mom to see Phantom of the Opera. It’s my all time favorite play and I’ve seen it either five or six times. If I don’t see it for a couple of years I get withdrawals. The last time I went I took Jeff and he even liked it. That must have been three or four years ago. The plan is for Mom and I to drive over to Spokane Fri, get a bite to eat, possibly at PF Changs, do a little shopping and the play is that night. Then on Sat we’ll shop and eat a little more and drive back to Butte. I’m pretty excited. I haven’t had a girl’s weekend since Avery was born and I think it’ll be a nice break.

The Big Read

"The Big Read is a National Endowment for the Arts program designed to encourage community reading initiatives and of their top 100 books, they estimate the average adult has read only six."

Here’s what you are supposed to do:
*Look at the list and bold those we have read.
*Italicize those we intend to read.
*Star the books we LOVE.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (Probably the only incidence where I liked the movies better than the book)
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling – some day

5. To Kill a Mockingbird- Harper Lee
6. The Bible- (I’ve attempted it a couple of times but just can’t get through he old testament)
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (I’ve got this one at home right now waiting to be read)
19. The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell ( I love the movie so the book should be even better)
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (where’s East of Eden on the list?)
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33. Chronicles of Narnia *- CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe **- CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code** - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (not for want of trying...)
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World** - Aldous Huxley (I’ve actually read this one a few times)
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville I really didn’t like this book

71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden* - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch

89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (I’ve got this one at home too)
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole (BLECK... I'll never finish this)
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory** - Roald Dahl I love anything written by Roald Dahl!
100. Les Miserables** - Victor Hugo This is a fantastic book and an even better play!

I’ve read 29 of these puppies and really hope to read more. There were a lot of books that I thought should have made the list and a lot on this list that I’d never heard of? Have to wonder how they came up with the list.

Handbag Planet

A new site Handbag Planet is launching Oct. 15th and giving away a handbag every hour. Go to this site to enter the contest for your chance to win a cute bag.

Click here to enter.

Good luck!