Monday April 18, 2011

When the DirecTV supervisor came out he said that where we wanted to move our dish to was a great location. He rescheduled for a tech to come back out, and Wednesday it happened. The reception is so much better now. All the channels are coming in and there are no more frame slips.
Our front door had started to occasionally get stuck. The problem was that the door knob wasn't always working right. JB bought a set of 2 door knobs and deadbolts that use the same key. I already replaced the the ones on the main front door. I need to replace the set on the other front door that goes into the room I turned into my pantry. JB said that later he will get another set for the back door, one that we can key to match the front doors. I want to do the same when we replace the sliding glass door with french doors too. This is all important to me because when we purchased the house we only received keys to the front door. When we moved in, I drove up from San Marcos with the kids while JB wrapped up everything. Finish loading the u-haul, cleaning, and turning everything back over to the landlord. He didn't have to do all the work himself, because he could only help me so much we did hire a cleaning company and they had movers we hired too. It was a really good service for us. Anyways, we got here really early in the morning. I went to unlock the front door so we could go in and the deadbolt wouldn't turn and my key broke in the lock. My only key to the house was broken in a lock that wasn't working. I had to call a locksmith to get me in, he was able to make me a new key too. That morning I learned that if you don't use a lock it will freeze up, but WD-40 will fix it. I also learned it is way better to have a key to more than one door. I think it would be a good idea to have a spare hidden somewhere outside too, no where obvious though.
On April 7th or 8th my oven's baking element broke while we were cooking dinner. Atleast the roast was done when it happened. Had to rethink our meals, we use our oven a lot. Plus I try to bake our bread instead of buying it, plus muffins, cookies, brownies and such. We couldn't find a replacement part locally or a free to cheap working stove on craigslist. I broke down last Sunday and ordered the part. It wasn't supposed to come in until today, but we got it last Friday. It was so exciting to get my oven back this weekend. We had company and had already planned meals for the grill so didn't actually use it until last night.
Our friend and her kids came out and visited over the weekend. We all had a great time. Elijah was a lot more social than he has ever been with her kids. Between the 4 kids, they kept the dog too busy to get into trouble too, lol. My friend helped me out in the garden area for a while too. It was great to catch up and hang out. I also think it was funny that her kids wanted to stay. She's in the reserves and last year her kids lived with us for few months while she was away at a training school, she was able to come visit on weekends. The kids want to them all to come back to live here. :) It warms my heart to know that they did enjoy their time here with us. We have come to love them very much. It's hard for us to go visit them because of daily pet care needs and not having someone who can do it for us. We really look forward to their visits.
Over the weekend I walked down to see how the wild blackberries were coming along. I'm really glad I did, I didn't expect them to be so close to ready to pick. I think they should start ripening by the end of this week. I am really hoping to get a lot more this year. Last year when I found them they were in full swing, maybe towards the end. I only got to pick them for a week or 2 and it was so dry that towards the end I just stopped. I could tell that the dry weather was affecting the berries and they weren't as juicy as they should be. Still, it wasn't bad. It was my first experience with blackberries, and we got a good amount. We used them fresh in muffins and pancakes as well as just snacking on them and I made jam. We love the jam and have been looking forward to making more.