City Garden

I hear it's snowing in Utah.
We enjoyed the 76 degree weather here by taking a little trip to City Garden. It's a privately funded public sculpture garden, where you're encouraged to climb on and into everything. They have several different water features that have just been turned on for the season. The weather was absolutely perfect, even if the water was a little cool for my taste.

Henry chose to crawl and his hands and feet, keeping his knees off the stone walkways. He also did everything he could at first to prevent Nick from lowering his feet into the water. Eventually he remembered he loves water and dipped his feet into the pool. We even ran into some friends there. We're trying to get the most out of the time we have in St. Louis.

Dumpster and Mattress Update

Still there, just a little more broken.

Sob Story

How could you?
How could you make me eat Cheerios?

So cruel.

Henry's First Birthday: Chicago Edition

I was a little sad to be on the go for Henry's first birthday. It meant I would give up the little party I had been planning in my head, and driving around Chicago instead.

Fortunately, Henry doesn't know what he's missing, and it turned out better than I thought. A highlight of this trip was staying with Sarah Page's parents. We met them several times in St. Louis, but got to know them much more over Thanksgiving, which we all spent in San Diego together. The Morrisons also served as our consultants on a house we were interested in. They came and toured it with us, and Steve (as a professional building inspector) brought to light a LOT of stuff I wouldn't have noticed on my own. We realized the house needed far more work than we're able to do.

We all went out to dinner Saturday night. Nick can now rest assured that Chicago has good Italian food. That's a real consideration for him when considering the lifestyle in a given city. It was very nice of the Morrison's to let us stay with them and let us glean from the Chicago wisdom, but the sweetest thing they did for us was the cupcakes.

Sunday morning we came upstairs to find Sally had prepared for Henry's birthday. She had the cupcakes and candles ready to go to celebrate his monumental first year. I was really surprised what a big deal is was to me to have our little group sing "Happy Birthday" to him with a single lit candle.

This was Henry at a McDonald's feeding himself some sundae. Yes, that's chocolate up his nose. Happy Birthday Henry!

Housing Expedition

We took an impromptu trip to Chicago this weekend to explore our housing options. We spent a lot of time looking at neighborhoods, trying potential commuter routes, and seeing the hospital where Nick will work. We even toured several houses. This picture is of the oil-burning boiler in one of the houses we looked at. The house seemed perfectly maintained, but nothing had been updated since it was built in the twenties. The bedrooms were so tiny, that if you put a queen-sized mattress in there, I don't think you could open or close the door. Call me picky, but I think that's too small for me.

I feel like this trip parallels an episode of "Lost"- for every question it answered, it gave me ten more questions. I still have no idea where we'll live, what kind of housing situation we'll be in, or when we'll move. Nick has found out that he starts work June 14, which is earlier than expected, so we better hurry and make some decisions.

The Docs of Hazard

It's time for an update of our beloved 1992 Honda Accord. I think the last time I posted pictures of this car, it was a year ago and it was missing a window and a radio. It's still missing a radio. I'm shocked the St. Louis police haven't solved that one yet. (You really should read that blog post.)
I figure the cost of ownership for this car is somewhere in the neighborhood of $0.12 a mile, which is pretty amazing. However, between age and living in St. Louis, it's not exactly the car it used to be.

In December, as I was leaving for the airport to go to Utah, I discovered that more local criminals had attempted to break into the car or perhaps steal the car. The was nothing in the car to steal as the radio had been taken the previous March, so perhaps they were after the vehicle itself. Good for me they're incompetent and the car was still there. What they did succeed in doing was breaking the lock on the passenger side. They hit the lock with something like chisel, and also tried to pry the handle away from the door. All they succeeded in doing was making the lock and handle inoperable. It was a two door car (already inconvenient), now it's a one door car. Because I was literally on my way to the airport, I didn't have time to report it to the police, not to mention I don't think I can take that much harassment again without doing something they'll arrest me for.

So we've meant to get it fixed, but really no one ever uses the passenger side so it doesn't come up too often to remind us.

A couple of weeks ago, the Honda quit while Nick was driving it as he was entering the intersection in front of Cardinal Glennon Hospital. He was the first car in the left turn lane, turning on Grand from Park, but the car just wouldn't go. Eventually he got the car restarted and was able to get it home. It seemed to be an electrical problem, but it wasn't exactly clear what the problem was.

So the next weekend he threw some parts and maintenance at the car, things we knew it needed but not necessarily things that would fix the problem. You'll notice our lovely new battery in the photo above. Things seemed fine for a few days, but the trouble with intermittent problems is you're just waiting for them to come back. Nick and Brigham went to the automotive store together in the Honda. Knowing the passenger door doesn't open, I was really curious where Brigham was sitting. I really expected him to be sandwiched into the back seat (which would be fairly comical as the seat is small and Brigham is really tall.) I watched as they pulled up to the house and saw Brigham seated in the passenger seat. I waited. I watched as Brigham rolled down the window (manually of course) and climbed out "Dukes of Hazard" style. Nick just had to roll up the window after him. It seemed all our car was missing was a confederate flag painted on top.

The electrical problem came back on Friday as Nick was headed to school. In fact, in came back as he drove on that same spot on Grand and Park. The problem was, this time he couldn't get it restarted, and had to back it down the hill, but there cars behind him. Poor Nick, he never made it to class. But I was really glad it wasn't me. The upside to this failure was it was big enough the problem was identified. We bought the replacement ignition switch at NAPA, and in a couple hours Nick had taken apart the steering wheel (including removing the air bag), put in the new part, and was ready to go again. He's pretty handy to keep around. With this maintenance and repair episode, we spent about $240, so that cost of ownership is creeping up.

A Real Man