Things we're looking forward to

Just so you don't think we're leaving Rhode Island sobbing about where our life is heading, we should counter those posts last week about what we'll miss with a post about what we're looking forward to.

1. Shorter Winters.  Including but not limited to: not snowblowing, and being warmer than 50 degrees in June
2. Being near my family.  I'm looking forward to Bella getting to know and learn from her Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle Joseph, Pawpaw, Nanny, Papa, and all of our NC relatives
3. Living on the water in a bigger house!  This view says it all:

4. A chance to make new friends

5. Vinny having shorter work hours

6. The opportunity to experience being a military family and the pride that comes from knowing we're helping our country

We're so excited to begin this new chapter of our lives!

Wired: Rewiring an Outlet In the Dark

The move is less than a week away and we're in a frenzy of last minute things to get done around the house.  Fixing a fan pull, replacing a toilet handle, lots of little things that we've put off but need to be done before we leave it in the hands of tenants.  One of those things is rewiring the outlets in the laundry room.

We've rewired the outlets in most of the house over the past few years, mainly because they looked old and we replaced them with nice new shiny ones.

I primed the laundry room a while back and I removed the outlet covers. (I eventually decided since we were close to selling it to just leave it primed instead of choosing a color so the new owners had it ready for whatever color they wanted) I tossed out the covers because I knew that I wanted to replace the dark brown outlets with nice new white ones.  So for the past few months (it might be closer to a year), the hideous brown outlets have been staring me down from the white walls.

Exhibit A:

For most of the outlet rewiring, it gets put off because we have to kill the power and we usually don't get around to it til night time and then there is no natural light to rewire with.  In the laundry room, which is in the basement...this is a constant excuse and one that isn't going away.

So step one was to kill the power.  Luckily a while back my mom helped me label some of the circuit breakers, but the wiring in this house is still wonky.  For instance, the kitchen is on 3 different breakers.  One breaker does the outlets on one wall of the kitchen, plus the overhead lights in the garage.  Another does the overhead lights, plus the outlets in the dining room and 1 outlet in the bathroom.  Weird.  You get the picture. So I clicked off the breaker labeled 'laundry room,' went back to the laundry room and sure enough the lights were out.  I pulled out my flashlight and started unscrewing the outlet and thought, "You know...maybe I should check this specific outlet."  So I plugged in the iron and it lit up like always.  ARG.  So back to the circuit box.  Clicked another one that was a likely candidate...no luck.  This went on and on til I got fed up and just killed power to the whole house.  Finally...the outlet was off.

So I unscrewed the screws holding it in place at either end, took a look at which wire was where on the old outlet.  You don't have to be an electrical genius to just replicate what is already there.  So take note of which wire goes where...exactly, and replicate it with the new outlet. 


Here is that step:

OK, that's me being funny...it was dark after all.  Truthfully, I was too busy holding the flashlight and the outlet and the screwdriver to take pictures in the dark.  But I put all the wires back where they belonged on the new outlet, screwed the new outlet into the wall with the screws at either end, and then put the nice shiny new white cover over it.

The finished product:

And of course then I had to go around the house resetting all the clocks.  Too bad I still have 2 more to do.  I did that one during nap time and with all the circuit breaker nonsense I only had time for 1.  The procedure for changing a light switch is pretty much identical.

So do you do wiring projects around your house or do you leave that stuff up to the professionals?

Overheard.Big Words - X

January 8th, 2011

X is for Xenophobic

Things we'll miss about living in RI - Part 2, Friends and Family

We've made so many wonderful friends in our 4 years here in Rhode Island.  And being near Vinny's family has been great.  I don't want to wax philosophic too much, but I do want to pay a bit of homage to these people who have been such a huge part of our lives for the past 4 years.

We're a little over an hour from Vinny's family here, but being able to attend family functions, and being surrounded by their support has been very nice.  I've learned how to host a function properly, I've learned to relax and parent without hovering, and I know Bella is growing up knowing how many people love her.
So to the Champions, and the Varallos, and the Ippolitos, and the Biziers, and the Bolgers, and the Dudleys, and the Valentes, and the many family friends....thank you.  We will miss you and we hope you come to visit (just maybe not all at the same time).

We also have great friends, some whom we've known since day one, and some who we met just recently: The Gradys, the Clarks, the Glovers, the Adams, the Monaghans, the Alschulers, Dr. Everage, Mr. Ndumele, Mr. Koestler, Ms. Viscidi....you will all be missed.

I'd say that, by far, our best friends in Rhode Island have been the Howells.  Perhaps an unlikely friendship, or rather a friendship that occurred in an unlikely place.  We met them in a class at the hospital about how to take care of your infant when we were both pregnant with our first children.  Then they turned up again in the class about breastfeeding and it seemed like maybe we should at least exchange contact info.  Three years later, Bella and their son Xander are still best buddies.  We have been on trips together, shared many meals, uncountable laughs, and the ups and downs of parenting.  We will miss you guys more than you could imagine.  And, as we have said before, you are required to keep in touch because it's obvious that Xander and Bella are destined to get married one day :)

Bella and Xander at 3 months

Bella and Xander at 3 years

They already look like an old married couple don't they?

Object Boxes

Thanks to some very creative and generous friends and a very productive trip to a Michaels in a different place, we have updated our object boxes (one box for each letter), which we use in the Montessori curriculum to teach the sounds of letters in a concrete way, eventually learning to spell the words.

Check out the updated contents here!

With our new pile of objects, getting ready to put them in their boxes

Yankee Crawfish Boil

This past Memorial Day we went to the 6th annual Yankee Crawfish boil just north of Boston.  Hosted by some folks I know from my days in New Orleans, it's a nice reminder of our Nawlins days.  The timing couldn't have been more perfect.

My stepfather and 2 guys from his business (Dixon Pool and Spa in Burlington NC) came up to get our hot tub and bring it back to NC to sell.  They also took some of our heavier things to try to lighten the moving load so we are less likely to go over our weight limit (see more about that here).  It also happened that Vinny's mother was finishing up moving from her house as well since she closes this week, so they were able to help us with that as well.  BIG THANKS to them for all their help.

So we went to the crawfish boil as a way to allow them to have some fun and see Boston.  As usual, the boil was wonderful.  Bella loved checking out the live crawfish, she wasn't afraid of them at all and had no problem handling them.  Actually, I couldn't drag her away from the bucket she liked them so much.

There were some older teenagers who let her play table hockey with them, which I appreciated so much.  Her team was even winning!  Big compliments to their parents for raising them to be so accommodating with young children.

There was a man who played the accordion, and he was also great to the kids.

Bella decided to be a little star and perform for the ~100 guests:

I have the unfortunate dilemma that I am currently allergic to the sun due to the long winter we had here in New England, so I spent the crawfish boil in a hat hiding from the sun.  Bella now insists on taking her hat with her as well.  I'm hoping this means she'll start letting me put her in all the cute sundresses she has, even if we do have to stay out of the sun temporarily:

How was your Memorial Day Weekend?  Do anything fun?

Things we'll miss about living in RI - Part 1, the Mural

There are lots of things we'll miss about Rhode Island.  I wanted to do a few posts to touch on those things and give them a proper goodbye.

We love our current home in Rhode Island.  Which is rather lucky considering that we didn't actually see the house before we bought it.  Yep, that's right.  I'm going to have to go on a tangent to tell this story quickly.

When we started looking for houses in RI, I narrowed down the search to 13 houses, and came up and saw them all in 1 day.  Our real estate agent has the patience of a saint!  After making offers and having deals fall through 3 times, Vinny came to me with the listing for this house, which had just been reduced and was subsequently in our price range.  Since our agent had spent an entire day and countless emails listening to me harp about what I did and didn't like, I trusted her opinion when she went and checked out the house and said she thought we would like it.  Then she took a gazillion pictures, and I had her measure every room and describe the layout of the house.  I made a digital representation of the house and basically was able to walk through it in my head between the layout and the photos.  She was very nervous when we decided to buy it without actually seeing it.  I think we actually owned it for about 2 weeks before I saw it for the first time.  And it's been great.  OK, back to the real point of this post.

This was the home where we brought our daughter when she was born and raised her for the first 3.5 years of her life.  It will always hold a place in our hearts.  The thing I will miss most about it is the mural I painted in her bedroom of sea turtles. I'm so proud of it, and I know someone else will paint over it without thinking twice.  Maybe it's enough to know that it'll be there under the paint still.

Sea turtles...we will miss you.