Just call me Handyman Dave

I did it!! I actually did it! Everyone needs to mark 9/10 down in their calendar. Not because it was the day that America 'thought' it was safe, but because that is the day that I installed our new dishwaher. BY MYSELF (just picture me doing the happy dance right now)!!!

It took me about 3 hours. And let's just say that half of that time was me trying to get the thing centered and leveled. But at about 11:58 pm on 9/10, I felt confident that it was done.

Enter Kelly, the real judge of the work, at around 12:01 am.

With her approval of the way it all looked, we turned it on, and it ran!! And it drained!! And there were no leaks anywhere (that we know of)!!!! But seeing as how it is now 12:10 in the morning, there is no way a tired mother of 3 is going to load the thing up. And no way am I gonna do it - I was exhausted from all the grueling work of actually installing it (install men everywhere are cracking up because its prob actually an easy install) - SO the real test had yet to be run.

The real test was later that morning. Kelly loaded the dishwasher with reckless abandon. She started it and let it run a whole cycle. To our astonishment, still no leaks, and it actually cleaned all the dishes!!! This is a concept we have been deprived of for at least 2 years, so we were pretty stoked.

Good news - we have a dishwasher that works - and appears to work well
Bad news - By being successful in this task, I might have involuntarily signed myself up for more to-do's

Life's a .... lake?

... it is on Labor Day weekend! For the past few years, we go to the lakehouse every Labor Day weekend. The last two years have been exceptionally fun because Poppie has a new pontoon boat. And nothin' beats going out to Pine Island, throwing out the anchor and just swimming around with everyone. The kids love it and the best thing to beat the heat in Texas is to get wet. So we had the traditional fish fry to go along with it, of course. Except we are starting to get a bit more sophisticated and there is more grilled fish on the table nowadays.

Speaking of grilled fish .... so I have, for the last 9 weeks, been on a weight loss program. As of today I have lost 40 pounds!!!! In 10 weeks or so, I will be done with this weight loss program and I am going to post a before and after picture, so keep on the look out for that. :)

But I digress. Everyone was wiped when we got home from the lakehouse, so when we got home on Monday night, we just crashed and that was just fine by me.


this picture has nothing to do with this post .. just love cute pics of the kids :)