...And, we're back!

If only that hiatus had been brought to you by my sponsors, eh?

On Thursday, we got back from a week in upstate New York. Pictures will be posted soon, but it was GLORIOUS. It was a fabulous getaway and really helped put some things in perspective, especially when it came to my job.

The Adirondack region is just gorgeous--everywhere I looked I was blown away by the beauty of the mountains and trees. We went to Fort Ticondergoa, Mt. Defiance, Lake Champlain, Lake Placid, and Cooperstown--home of baseball!

While we were gone, Chicago got nearly 8 inches of rain. Our basement took on about 3 inches, maybe a little more. The water got high enough to put out the pilot light on the boiler and damage the thermal couple. When we got home we had to relight the pilot light, and the damn thing just wouldn't stay lit. So I called in a small favor from a friend of the family and he had some of his crew members come out to fix it. Ideally, that small repair is all that's needed, but there's a chance the whole heater is busted. If that happens, we'll know--we'll have no hot water again. Hopefully we can avoid that repair, though. I don't know if our hearts can take it!

Tonight we're also getting a new mattress! We ordered it about a month ago and it came in while we were gone. I'm so excited. We've been using Graham's mattress since our wedding, and that thing is older than dirt. It's creaky and uncomfortable. When we painted the bedroom and moved the mattress to the dining room, we both had springs in our back and we tossed and turned all night. Our little egg crate foam pad just isn't doing it anymore, so we broke down and got a new one. I'm so excited---for the first time in our marriage I'll be sleeping on a firm surface! Wahoo!

And tomorrow...oh boy....new windows! One of the first structural improvements we wanted to make on the house was to replace the old windows. During the winter we could feel the cold air blowing in and we covered the windows with plastic sheeting kits. One of the upstairs windows had a crack in it and we could hear and see the plastic sheeting blowing in and out with the wind. The other upstairs window was frozen and busted open--in the spring we had to hammer it shut!

New windows became an extreme priority once we found out I was pregnant. The upstairs is where the baby's room will be, and it's just too cold during the winter to put a child in there. Now the summer has been hot as hades, but hopefully with new windows we won't be losing the air conditioning up there.

This whole week and the weekend leading up to it has been a whirlwind, but it's a good whirlwind. We're finally getting some much-needed improvements taken care of, and by the end of the day tomorrow we'll have added some value to the house! Sure painting and minor fixes help, but if we were in a bind and needed to sell ASAP we'd at least get a little more than what we paid for the house now. And best of all? We'll be able to open the windows in the front room! Our current windows have storms in place of the screens, and during the spring we couldn't find the screens for the storm windows out front. Needless to say, some days it's been HOT in here.

Overall, these are good changes coming our way. I'm excited about what the coming months will bring us!