the essence

Visitors

It's been fun watching my blog stats lately. I don't remember the last time I had so many blog visitors over the weekend!

We've actually had a very nice weekend at home. We ran some errands together yesterday morning before Ray was supposed to start work. He tried to log in for his four-hour shift at noon but the entire system was down. When he called tech support they said that as long as he tried to log in every 20 minutes he'd still get paid - the system didn't get back up until 5 minutes before his shift was over!

I spent the afternoon making a list, grocery shopping & cooking up several meals. I figure either the baby will come & we'll have some meals already on hand OR the baby will wait & I'll have to work my piano & night shifts this week & we'll already have dinner cooked. Either way, it's nice to have a fridge full of prepared food!



Yesterday afternoon Ray set up his tent in the backyard so he could clean it. The girls LOVE playing outside (what kid doesn't?) so Ray took them out with him - the little sandbox & a rubbermaid bin ended up being their "pools." They loved it! (& it was so much easier for me to work in the kitchen without them running around!)

Redneck pools"





Even with all of that cooking, for dinner we went out for my birthday to Tijuana Flats - I had a Buy One, Get One coupon to use this month! Ray ordered the nachos & I had a burrito - we ordered our olives on the side so the girls each got a nice cup of their own to eat! I'm not big on spicy food but I figured it couldn't hurt & even ate a jalapeno! (as you can tell it didn't work)

The bad news was that right before we left Ray checked our thermostat - it felt unusually warm in our house but part of me thought it was due to me being pregnant and in the hot kitchen all day. Actually, our thermostat was set at 79 but it was 86 in our house. This made me incredibly grumpy - all I kept thinking was how awful it would be to go into labor without a/c.

Thankfully, Ray called his dad who gave us a bit of advice & an hour later the a/c was working again. It most likely needs some more coolant. But, part of the problem was that when I replaced the filter last month I put it in backward! It was being sucked into the intake & was incredibly filthy - thus stopping the airflow to the a/c & freezing it up!

It's so nice to have a cool house again.