This and That....

John put up Sam's doorway jumper. It's a hit.
I can't get enough of his chubby thighs hanging out...

And it actually snowed here in Washington! We were all thrilled. We let them play outside and we listened to Christmas music...

Unfortuntately its all gone now :( And its like almost 50 degree's outside. So depressing.

Our new bathtub is in!! This bath tub has caused me a great deal of stress. As I mentioned before there were two showers in this house. One full length big one upstairs- and a smaller one downstairs. So we chose to have one put in upstairs. The orginal price tag was around $4500 for a stinkin bathtub. We considered re-doing the kitchen first, or atleast the downstairs... However, we both felt like we should just get the bathtub remodel over with. Boy, am I glad we did. Our contractor ripped the walls off- tile everything, and discovered a very nasty surprse. The previous owner had re-done the tub himself, (oh and this guy did not have a clue what he was doing, we've decided he just made it up as he went along....). We'll he didn't seal the shower- or a lay a pan down. So all of the wood underneath was completely soaked and alot of it was beginning to rot. Our Contractor said we were just a few short months away from having a complete disaster on our hands. He said if it had gone on much longer we could have been in the shower one day and it could have fallen through to the downstairs. That's a lovely thought. So of course we had to pay for new wood and framing. We thought the worst was over. Then he began to do the plumbing for the shower/bathtub, and discovered that Mr. Previous homeowner had vented the toilet into the shower. Meaning he didn't even plumb the toilet properly. He just took piping and extended the toilet's plumbing over to the shower so it could use those pipes. Naturally he forgot to mention any of these details when we bought the house. One morning I was just feeding my kids in the kitchen when I heard our contractor gagging. I wasn't really sure what to do so I decided to just ignore it.... Then he ran out onto the porch and started heaving. I felt a little awkward but I went out there and asked if I could offer him a glass of water or something. Let's just say he discovered a nasty surprise when he went to re-do the plumbing. Gross and rather embarrassing.... So we had to get the local overpriced plumber to come in and completely re-run all the plumbing for the toilet and cut a massive hole in the ceiling downstairs so he could have full access to everything. So in all, we are glad this experience is over and we are thankful that poo never flowed up into our shower. The dang tub has costed us a whole lot more than we expected- but I'm happy we caught the rotting wood when we did! We are now onto the basement. New carpet, a few new walls, baseboards and some other minor improvements- and we will be taking a long break from house hold repairs as we have completely exhausted our home makeover budget and then some... (okay alot).

Sam enjoys the new tub. The sink was getting tight ;)