Catching up

Hello again, bloggy friends! It's been awhile! Now that it's Thursday, I'm finally getting around to telling you a little about our weekend. The biggest highlight was a visit from our friend, Dave, who is on a TDY (Temporary Duty) for training about 3 hours from here. Yes, this is the same friend who, just a few short months ago, left this area for a new assignment in Alaska! It has been a little hard seeing him again without his family (sniff, sniff), but we are oh, so thankful that he's here with us nonetheless. He will probably be coming to stay with us for many of the weekends over the next month. Yay!!

The other important advancement this weekend was the purchase of a new dryer. Last Thursday night, Adam and I decided we would try to fix our old dryer! Ha! We are so funny. We took the thing almost completely apart, and were so pleased with ourselves several hours later when we finally got it put back together. We found that the heating element thingy in the back of the dryer was missing a screw and had slipped out of place, so we were hoping that by putting it back where it should be, our problems might be at least partially solved. (You would not believe the amount of lint that can collect in every crevice of a 7-year-old dryer. Let's just say that we have not been dog owners for over 5 years, and we found a bunch of dog hair!)

So anyway, after it's all cleaned out and put back together, we finally got it all hooked back up, turned it on, and it started up! We were thrilled...success at last! (And we didn't even want to do bodily harm to each other by the end of the project. For us, that can be an accomplishment in itself!) So anyway, we stopped it and thought about trying it out with a load of clothes in it to see if they would get nice and warm and dry...however, when we tried to turn it back on, nothing happened! We had this very same problem a year or two back (dryer not starting) and it cost us $80 to fix it, which we were not about to sink into a cheap, ancient dryer again.

Soooo, Saturday afternoon, Adam embarked on a quest to find a new dryer. To make a long story short, he found the perfect dryer for me at a deeply discounted price at the BX. It had been separated from its box somewhere along the line, and had some "imperfections" on the outside. So my wheelin'-and-dealin' hubby talked the manager into giving us $50 off initially, and then 25% off that! (I would SO not have done that...but this is why my husband talks to car salesmen instead of me.) So it was a great deal, and it's a really nice dryer. It even has a low heat cycle, something our old one was lacking. Very, very thankful!

The handyman hard at work

Look what my knight in shining armor brought home!

And what woman in her right mind posts TWO pictures of a new dryer on her blog? One who is deeply in love.

Dave brought with him some hat pins for Drake's collection. (Alaska and Green Bay.) Drake was completely stoked!! Dave even brought Levi his very first hat pin, too! So we really need to find a hat for Levi to start putting his pins on. (Our favorite Alaskans are huge Packers fans, and actually made a pilgrimage to Green Bay, WI on their way up to Alaska. We love you guys!)

Are clothes really necessary?

We've started wearing less clothes. To be more precise, we're going through less clothes each day.

See, what happened is...a few days ago, our dryer decided it was done heating the clothes as it dries them. And it also decided it's not going to time the dry cycles, either - the clothes just tumble for all eternity, or until someone decides to get them out. Cold and, usually, still wet.

So until we decide whether to try and fix the dryer (again) or get a new one, I've been hanging all our laundry outside until it's pretty dry, and then bringing it in to tumble in the (cold) dryer for 20 or 30 minutes. All this makes the laundry seem like, well, much more of a big deal. No longer is matching socks the most annoying part of doing the laundry. Oh, no. Hanging each sock with a clothespin and then taking each one back down is more time consuming by far. Then I get to match them. Hence the tightening of the rules on clothes-wearing. If it doesn't stink or look too dirty, it's not dirty enough to wash!

But I will admit I am getting a certain bizarre satisfaction out of hanging clothes. As far as backyards go, there is nothing homier than a clothesline full of laundry blowing in the breeze. So while I definitely feel the additional time being used on this task, I am - for now - enjoying the quaintness. Which is probably not a real word, but you get my drift. But, I'm sure my days of happy clothespinning are numbered. In another day or two, I'll probably be completely sick of it and begging for a new dryer!

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Here's my diaper load (minus the covers and pocket diapers*, which I always hang inside, anyway, so I didn't bother bringing them out). Even after tumbling in the dryer for half an hour or so at the end, these diapers were still pretty stiff, so that's a bummer. One of my favorite things about cotton diapers is how soft they are - and line drying seems to take away that element. Oh well, it works for now. (Don't look too closely or you will notice the older son trying to clothespin the baby's ear...)

I had to leave a "hole" near the bottom of the slide!

Drake loves to help hang laundry and take it down again. (Again, I'm sure this is because it's a novelty...if it were a daily chore he'd probably avoid it like the plague!)

Monkey see, monkey do!

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* Pocket diapers - cloth diapers with a waterproof fabric on the outside and usually a polyester "stay-dry" fabric inside, designed with an opening in the back to "stuff" the diaper with desired absorbancy. These are often used at night, when a LOT of absorbancy is required. For more cloth diaper info, see my Diaper Pin link on the sidebar or click here for their diaper dictionary.

*****

P.S. - Sorry most of these pics aren't "clickable" - I didn't do it right when loading them, but it can't be corrected without starting over...and that's NOT gonna happen!