I LOVE LOWE'S

So, as I mentioned in my blog yesterday, we bought a fan for our living room. Yesterday evening Daniel worked on getting it installed. Because this fan has a remote control and therefore there are extra things you have to install to get it to work, the installation was a bit time consuming for Daniel. Once he got it install we turned it on and the fan worked great, BUT. . . the light did not work. We looked up online how to open the light portion of the fan. Try as we might, though, we could not get open the area where the light went. Daniel even went through the trouble of taking the fan back down (AHHHHHHH!) so that we could try to get the light open while it was on the ground. We still could not get it open.

At this point we are very frustrated, so I decide to call Lowe's and ask for help. Vince was the WONDERFUL Lowe's employee who answered my call. I told him the model number and he said he would look it up and call me right back. In less than 10 minutes Vince had called me back and explained how we should open the light. We had been doing it wrong, but when we tried doing what Vince said, we still could not get it open. I told Vince we still could not get it open. He then asked where we lived. Apparently we live in the same subdivision his sister lives in. Vince said that he would drop by today (Sunday) and see if he could open the light.

At this point I am a little bummed. I still really like the fan, but it would have been nice if the light worked. It is not the end of the world though, because we do have a lamp in the living room. Since Daniel and I really did try to open the light, exactly like Vince told us to, I am very doubtful that Vince is going to be able to do it either.

Sunday at lunch Vince shows up at our door. On the first try, he gets the light open. To our surprise, there is not even a bulb in it. He says he as one in his car and he rushes out to get it. He kindly installs the light for us and puts it back together. We thank him and ask how much we owe him. He said nothing. We asked him a few times, was he sure, we didn't mind paying him for the light and his time, but he insisted that we not pay him.















After Vince left Daniel installed the fan again and everything works and it looks great. If I was to buy a fan brand new from Lowe's, this would have been the fan I would have bought, if money had not been an issue. So, we got it for half of what we would have paid for it new and it works great.

It is so rare to find someone who is so willing to go out of their way to help perfect strangers. I hope Lowe's knows what a valuable employee they have.

Thank you God for making everything work out perfectly, when it so easily could have turned out badly.

A Great Morning!

This morning was wonderful. Early this morning the whole family headed over to a new playground near our house. When we got there, we had the whole place to ourselves. Did I mention that we went early in the morning. :)

Addison had never been to a playground before and this one had lots of activities for just her age. She was able to swing and go down a small slide (with daddy's help of course) and they had these drum like toys that she played with. Click here to see pictures.

On our way home from the playground a guy who was selling a ceiling fan on Craig's list called us back. I have been looking on Craig's list everyday for over a week hoping that someone would sell a ceiling fan that we would like. This one was perfect. It was black and very modern looking, which is what we need for our living room. The guy was asking $75 for it, which was a good price considering the fan, brand new, cost $128. We offered him $60, just to see what he would say, and he agreed to sell it to us for $60, YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!! At 10:30 we meet him at Lowe's to get the fan.

We got home a little after 11:00. We gave Addison a bath, which she loved. We feed her lunch and then put her down for a nap.

And that was our morning!

"The Last Lecture"

Randy Pausch died last Friday, July 25th, 2008. ABC News with Diane Sawyer did a tribute to Randy Pausch Tuesday night. While watching the tribute, I got extremely upset emotionally. The next day, I still felt very emotional. During my lifetime there have been many people who's life stories or accomplishments have been in the media, who I have considered great people, whom I have highly respected, who have died and it had not affected me this way. Why was Randy Pausch's death different? Why was I so emotional over his death and not the others? After considering it for a while, I realized it was not his death that upset me so much.

The difference between the other great people and Randy Pausch is that we got to know Randy's family and we witnessed his love and passion for his wife and children in a very intimate way. I realized I was not sad that Randy had passed, because all of us die at some point, I was sad because the Pausch family will no longer get to experience first hand their wonderful husband and father. Even more than that, I am sad that his children were as young as they were when he died and that at this age they can not quite grasp what an incredible man he was.

I do think that his children are truly blessed with what they do have though. How many kids who have lost a parent can say that they have recordings of what that parent would have wanted them to know about their life. How many kids who have lost a parent have such intimate videos of how much their father loved their mother and how much he loved playing and spending time with them. How many children who have lost a parent can say that I know stories about my father's life because he recorded them for me before he died and therefore I know my father through his own words.

So in a way I feel his children are greatly blessed, but they have also had a great lose that no amount of recordings can replace.

In the course of a few days I have been able to work through my emotions and come to peace with Randy's death. And I did not even know him. I know from my own experience the hard days, months, years that are ahead of the Pausch family. I also know that the emotions they are feeling now, though they will lessen in intensity with time, they will never completely go away.

I pray that God will surround the Pausch family with comfort and peace.

STAIRS!!!!

Addison has discovered the stairs. This weekend Daniel found Addison climbing the stairs. So now we have to put something blocking them, so she doesn't climb them when we are not looking. We do let her climb them a few times a day, while we are right behind her. After just a few days of climbing the stairs, she has gotten very fast. We are still trying to teach her how to come down the stairs, but as of yet, she is only interested in going up them, not coming down them.



I still can't believe she will be a year old in less then a month!

ATTENTION MOMS - Babies R Us - exchanging bottles!!

If you have baby bottles that have BPA in them (and most bottles do, even the expensive ones) you can take them to Babies R Us and they will exchange them for BPA free bottles, dollar for dollar, no questions asked. We took in all of our Avent bottles and were able to get $72.50 worth of brand new, BPA free bottles. They didn't ask where we purchased them or how old they were or anything. Now, the catch is you can only exchange them for bottles, nipples or bottle accessories, but it is still a great deal!!! They are not advertising this, so I think it is just spreading word of mouth and I don't know how much longer they are going to offer this deal. You can call the Babies R Us store near you to get more details.

YEAH FOR BABIES R US!!!!!!!

Getting my attention

Addison has learned how to get my attention. I put her down for her afternoon nap today and as usual she started to cry. I was downstairs listening to her on the monitor and she was just crying and whaling. Then she suddenly stopped crying, a few seconds later she made this terrible screeching scream and then continued to scream in this horrible high pitch. It sounded like she was in terrible pain. I ran up the stairs as fast as I could, of course trying to think of what could have happened and trying to anticipate what I was going to find when I got to her. My imagination runs wild sometimes, so I had these horrible pictures in my head of her bleeding or having a twisted or broken bone, etc. I burst into her room and as soon as I did, she stopped screaming, smiled and reached out her arms for me to pick her up. THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH HER. I checked her over just to make sure, but as soon as I picked her up she was all smiles. Cleaver girl! So of course I held her for a few minutes and then I put her right back down for a nap. She again proceeded to cry, but after a while she finally went to sleep. I just hope this doesn't turn into the story of the "Boy who cried wolf".

Pampers - No free diapers

When you buy Pampers products there is a code on the inside of the packaging. You can register on the Pampers website and enter these codes in. For every code you enter you earn points. You earn a different number of points depending on what product you get the code from. With these points you can purchase items from their website. Most of the items are cheap kids toys or books. But what we really wanted to save our points for was a free large box of Pampers diapers. It takes 150 points to get the diapers. It has taken us 3 months to save 52 points. So it is going to take a while to get to 150 points.

BUT. . .

Today I logged onto the Pampers' website and I noticed that they do not offer the free box of diapers anymore. I am so upset!! There is really nothing else on their website that we really want. We REALLY wanted the free box of diapers. I know that this sounds very petty, but if you have children you know how many diapers you go through and Pampers diapers are expensive. A free box of diapers would have been REALLY NICE!

But what can you do? :-P