Monday

Hi family and friends,

No pictures today, the digital camera needs its batteries charged, and they are still in the charger. I'll take some pictures for you tomorrow. We just had the floor in our dining room refinished, so maybe I"ll take a picture of that.

Yesterday was a long day. We had to vacate the house because the floor guys were here with their floor varnish and a huge sander, so first thing in the morning Annie and I headed out to the mall to return some stuff and kill an hour or two with Julia. Halfway to the mall, we noticed a funny smell coming from the car. When we were almost at the mall, the hood started smoking, so I pulled over and looked under it. The only thing I knew is that cars get hot and steamy when the radiator fluid is gone. However, even I could tell the steam wasn't coming from the radiator. Turns out the gaskets in the engine were old and oil was leaking all over onto everything, including the exhaust system (hence the smell.) Luckily (or not) there was a Firestone place right there, and they were able to fix it for us to the tune of just under $300 (that's after I got them down from almost $400!!!) The burning oil in the exhaust system is a fire hazard, and I'm not interested in being a moving car bomb.

Anyways, they car guys couldn't finish the car until 5 and we brought it in around 10am, so Annie and I were stuck in the mall for a number of hours. It was too cold and windy to go anywhere else with the baby. I never realized this, but the mall is basically just chain retailers selling either fast food or clothes. There isn't much else. Clothing is expensive when you buy it at the mall, and one can only stand so much fast food in one day. We started to go nuts after three hours, and by 2:30 we were debating asking random people for a ride home. Thank God Mike got home early from the pharmacy and was able to come and pick us up at 3:30. Ugh.

I am not a mall rat. Julia isn't either....however she really enjoyed the rides there. It cost 1.00 to turn them on, but she was just as happy to be placed into a big red car or on a merry go round horse that wasn't moving. We spent a good hour playing on the toys. Another big attraction: Old Navy flip flops. They had an entire wall devoted to them...it looked like thirty yards of flip flops in a huge ROY G. BIV arrangement. Julia danced around them (they were pretty cool-looking, each color had about 50 pairs of shoes), and then took a few off the pegs and chucked them across the floor. At least we provided some decent entertainment for the poor employees that had nothing else to do.....