Since my last post we've had a period of "nothing is happening, therefore there is nothing to blog about" and a period of "I'm too busy to even think about writing on the blog." Both were good, but I'm glad life has calmed down since the holidays and we can breathe again.
We did our own Thanksgiving this year! Normally we get together with my parents and whichever of my siblings are in the area that year, but my parents decided to go up to Boston and spend the holiday with my brother there this year. So we decided to be brave and make our very own feast for our little family. We considered doing a turkey breast, since it was just the three of us, but I was feeling adventurous, plus a whole turkey was such a good deal that we decided to just go for it. We had so much left over, it was great!
We made turkey, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, green beans, rolls, stuffing, homemade gravy, and a caramel apple pie. It all turned out great. Andrew actually napped through our big Thanksgiving meal, so Aaron and I even got to eat it without having to worry about cutting his food (and all the rest of the fun that comes with feeding a toddler).
Right after Thanksgiving we switched into birthday and Christmas mode. We got Andrew a play kitchen for his birthday (which is awesome!) but we didn't really have a place to put it yet. We knew where we wanted it to go, but for that to work we had to relocate the big metal shelving unit we had in our kitchen, which meant finding a place for all the stuff that was there too. So getting ready for Andrew's birthday meant some massive reorganizing in the kitchen, which meant a few late nights since we didn't want to be doing all of that while Andrew was up. This was something we wanted to do anyway, so it was kind of nice to have a deadline. And now we have some nice new shelves up on the kitchen wall too. I'm really happy with how everything turned out!
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| Before- Kitchen Storage |
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| After- Andrew's Kitchen! |
Christmas is only 10 days after Andrew's birthday, so we had to switch gears again to make sure to get all of our Christmas gifts purchased, wrapped, and mailed on time. It was a little bit crazy sometimes, but we got it all done. We headed to my parents' house on the evening of December 23 and spent the next 4 days hanging out with them and my sister's family. Andrew and his cousin, Graham, were so cute together! They followed each other around, giggled together, snuck upstairs when the adults weren't looking, and generally just had fun (as long as they didn't both want the same toy! Silly toddlers...).
A couple of days after we got home from Christmas, Aaron woke me up before he left for work and told me that our heat pump was making a weird sound and asked me to look into what was covered by our home warranty and what it would cost etc. By the end of the day, the heater had stopped working completely and we had submitted a work order to the home warranty company. The heating people came out to look at it the next day (Tuesday) and told us that they don't even make the part that's broken, plus we had a freon leak, so the whole unit would have to be replaced. Oh and the outside unit is leaking freon and has issues too, so that would need to go too. We sure are glad we renewed our home warranty! We still had some out-of-pocket expenses that weren't covered by the warranty, but the unit and installation were all covered 100%, saving us thousands of dollars! Whoo hoo! We had to bundle up and borrow space heaters for a few days while all the parts were ordered but we got our new units installed on Friday before Andrew's bedtime. So now we're all toasty warm with a brand new heating system.
So that's how we finished up our 2014! It was a great year, and we're looking forward to 2015!
