The Joys of Owning a Home and Other Random Stuff

I never really realized how nice it was to call someone else whenever we had home problems. Our house really isn't that old (about 13 years old) but it seems like it has just been one thing after another the last few days. First of all we came home from our vacation and found that we had a leak in our pool cleaner pump thing, so two trips to the pool store and 3 hours later we replaced the part, but we still need to reseal it (hopefully this will get done this weekend.) Then, I got home from having lunch with some girls in my ward on Thursday and found that our a/c unit upstairs stopped working. Luckily for us, our home warranty is still in effect, so we called them up, and someone just came and fixed it the next day for $50 instead of $350. Which brings me to the topic of home warranties. Has anyone had any good or bad experiences with them? I keep going back and forth between thinking I need one, and thinking that it is a huge waste of money.

Now, on to some other random stuff. Last week our friends Kristen and Eric came down so that Eric could interview with a law firm in Phoenix. We had a blast! Other than constantly reminding them that they should move back to Arizona when Eric finishes law school, we really enjoyed visiting with them. Kristen introduced me to my new hobby, or I guess a new version of an existing hobby. We made these cute flower bow things. Speaking of hobbies, we just got a new craft store called Hobby Lobby down the street and it is GREAT! Here is a picture of some from our first attempt at flower bows:

Of course, I couldn't stop there, so I made some more that are a little smaller and are Sadie sized. Here are some of them:

And I'm going to post a few more pictures of our trip for my mom.

Sadie's first trip to the beach! Lani's family invited us to the beach for a party the night before the wedding at Manhattan Beach.

I just thought this was too adorable for words. I'm not sure if she is folding her arms because she is cold, or if she is just mimicking Heather (you can see that Heather's arms are folded in the previous picture.)