Seems like we've been busier than ever now that Justin is out of school for a couple weeks before summer school starts. We made some new UTPA friends, surprisingly our neighbors that live just a few houses down from us are also a UTPA family and moved here last summer just like us, they have two small children & we've enjoyed hanging out with them a couple times. So good to find some English speaking folks that don't live very far from us! They've introduced us to some other families who are new to the Valley also, it's nice to see that everyone else feels the same way we do about living in the Valley! We've been doing a lot of work in the yard and around the house. Justin trimmed our palm trees (all 6 of the small ones) & used the chain saw to cut one out that didn't make it because of the freeze this winter. He also cut down some of the trees in the back drainage ditch that are trying to move into our backyard. I held a garage sale on Saturday & sold most of the baby clothes and stuff I had been hoarding. It was a challenge bartering with all the hispanic folks since I don't speak a bit of Spanish! Just as things were really starting to shape up around here our dishwasher, which is only 8 month old, pooped out on us. Unfortunately the Sears repairman can't come out to check it out for a couple weeks so I've been spending A LOT of time hand washing dishes (which I really hate!). On Sunday, as we were enjoying a leisurely Sunday afternoon at the house, we heard a "drip, drip, drip" coming from the kitchen....unfortunately a pipe in the kitchen ceiling was leaking! We called our home warranty company & immediately shut off the water. We were without water Sunday and almost all of Monday until the plumber came out and repaired the pipe. Now we have a damaged section of ceiling in the kitchen that will need to be fixed, thank goodness Justin is handy & thinks he can fix it. I never knew how important running water really is until I had to go without it for over 24 hours! What a mess! Work has also been keeping me very busy with new jobs and new challenges every day...and I did find some time today to make some cute new shirts for Annabelle, she wanted an Olivia shirt and a Max & Ruby shirt so I made both, they were easy to make and turned out really nice! Annabelle is REALLY enjoying spending time with her Daddy now that he is home more often. Hopefully this summer we will have some time to take some short mini-vacations in between the summer session and fall semester starting up again!
