Quick Birthday Update!

Friday was Grace's 5th Birthday. My parents came into town and we had a late dinner. After dinner she got to open one gift from Dad. It was a big hit and we decided to play one round. Little did we know that one round took a lot longer than we thought it would. LOL

Thank God, we decided to have the cake before the game started. We had strawberry shortcake, cause that's what the Birthday Girl requested. Yummy!

Birthday Update...

I finally had some time to download these photos so I can publish this post I've had saved for over a week, and then my computer crashed. Wouldn't you know it...so here we try for the third time.

Just wanted to post some photos and give a big shout out to my darling In-laws who sent me the most beautiful bouquet of flowers. It was delivered by a sweet elderly couple who pulled into our driveway the night before my birthday and were arguing about whether or not they were in the right place. It was really cute. The flowers are soooo pretty, with a little sprinkle of glitter on them and a sweet butterfly tucked into the center. I am sure the pictures don't do it justice.

Lisa at work was soooo sweet to get me some Halloween decorations. Must've been all the whining I did about not knowing where my stuff was still siting in boxes somewhere. Thanks Lisa. When I came home after work my hubby had gotten me more flowers and put them in various places around the house. Beautiful pink roses and gorgeous gladiolas, even a little vase for Grace. Then he had arranged this whole little display of cards, flowers, gifts and food. What more could a girl want?

The sushi was divine and he won't tell me where he got it. It was waaay cheap, so if you know of any good, inexpensive places in town please fill me in. I could eat sushi every day the rest of my life.

What else could possibly happen???

Ok so it was sooo not a good day today. It was the day from H*ll.

First and foremost you must know that about three weeks ago I was rudely awakened in the middle of the night by an insistent, annoying beeping that wouldn't stop. So I dragged my sorry, tired butt out of our warm and cozy bed to hunt down the culprit. I found the problem in the kitchen. Our brand new state-of-the-art microwave that we purchased just before moving into our new home was displaying a blinking error code and noisily informing me that F3 was the problem. Now what the heck does that mean? I had no idea and proceeded to push buttons hoping to still the cacophony. No such luck. Then I thought I would outsmart my appliance by getting out the manual and punching in a sequence of buttons that muted the sounds of the microwave. Well, it didn't like that and continued the barrage of beepage. I got so frustrated and after waking Martin up to get no coherent input on how to solve this dilemma, decided to switch the breaker off. That seemed to still the monster. In the morning I called the 1-800 number that was supposed to help me diagnose the issue and send a repairman, all under the GE warranty. The first available appointment that would work around my schedule, (as the voice on the phone informed me "a person over the age of 18 must be present!) was two weeks out. So desparately I scheduled the first available slot and waited. The appliance guy showed up, made some calls and promptly announced that a part needed ordering. That should take about two weeks. So when the part arrives I would be able to have him return to replace it. WOW, how nice, not only was the microwave unusable, it would take another two, possibly three weeks to repair it. What a crock!

Well, today was that day. The part arrived last week and Mr. Repair Man was scheduled in the AM between 8 and Noon. He showed up at around 9:30 and eventually fixed my microwave. I never thought it would be so painful, but I ended up having to hold the stupid thing for him as we could not disconnect it from the wall outlet and I cut my finger to boot. After all the pain I do now have a microwave that works.

The second person hanging out at our house was the kitchen guy who, after a rather long hiatus (our kitchen was supposed to be completed in July!), returned to work. We were hoping to finally have our long awaited drawer knobs and cabinet handles installed, but he forgot the tool to do that. So he fiddled around finishing off some fronts to various drawers and will be back tomorrow. Oh, he did some work on our master bath, which with the grace of God, will be completed sometime before 2009.

The biggest disaster today was definitely the water leak in our master bedroom. Last night when I went to bed I noticed a strange noise when I walked across the carpet. I had noticed another noise the day prior but thought it was just trucks passing by on the highway down the road. Well, I should've listed to my instinct that something wasn't quite right...the squishy carpet was a dead giveaway. I asked my husband to confirm what I suspected and his reaction pretty much said it all. We had a water leak and it was a bad one. So the third guy in my house this morning was Ryan the plumber who proceeded to cut a hole into my wall behind the bed. Then he cut a hold into the outside of the house, pulled out the soaking wet insulation and went hunting for he leak. We had shut off the water the night before so there was no showering, no flushing the toilet, no brushing your teeth, doing dishes or laundry (I can live with that!) and I was lucky to have bottled water for my coffee maker. We did find a leak and hopefully (insert my crossed fingers and toes here) it is contained. Now we need to dry out the carpet. Any suggestions?

On a positive note, we did decide against taking out the boat into the snow this weekend. I took the weekend off to spend it with Martin as it was his birthday on Monday. So since it was his friend Troy's birthday also, we booked the four of us onto a plane to Las Vegas. We are soooo out of here...coming back Monday night. Can't wait.

First Flight Behind Me...

On Friday I completed what's known in the industry as my "OE" or On-board Experience. There were seven of us on board, including the senior flight attendant, and two already OE'd gal's from our class. So the 5 of us who were "new" got to rotate through most of the stations to get some hands-on experience. It wasn't as smooth as everyone would have liked, but we got it done. On the way out, from Bellingham to Orange County Airport in California, we had 51 passengers on our airplane, which holds a full capacity of 150. For the return trip we only transported 23 people north, but we made them all feel pampered and taken care of. Some of the small issues we had to battle were frozen water trucks, (hence no potable H2O on the first leg of our flight!), a broken wing light (which caused us to have to delay take-off till first light!), so we were running a wee bit late. LOL All the meals, breakfasts on the outbound and lunch on the return flight, were catered by Haggen, a great grocery chain here in the area. All comments from the passengers regarding the meals were positive and everyone seemed to enjoy the flights.
I am on call tomorrow and will fly to Phoenix on Thursday afternoon.

Over the weekend Martin & I flew San Juan Airlines to Orcas Island for a Birthday Getaway weekend with some friends. We stayed at Rosario Resort on the island, a wonderful historic mansion, where we had a wonderful dinner and cocktails followed by a lively game of poker. The weather co-operated with us on Saturday and we had a wonderful view on the flight out, whereas coming home we experienced a bit of turbulence. We plan on doing this kind of thing more often, as we enjoyed our time away from cell phones and responsibilities. Grace stayed home with her Auntie Chelle, but we missed each other during the time we spent apart.