Country Boys, Our Anniversary, and a New Water Heater

We've been on the move!  Seriously, I've barely had a chance to catch my breath in the last few weeks. 

It all started with...well...with Cid {our second baby boy}.  I mean, a week after his birth we had a home appraisal.  We'd also been planning to send Ronin, our TB horse {read more about Ronin HERE} up to my family's property in Northern California.  What's that you say?  No, the Bay Area is NOT Northern California, although it technically eeks in there.  There's quite a bit more North to this beautiful state.  But I digress.

We decided that it would be the best thing for everyone if Ronin went to live with my mom for an indefinite amount of time after we had two kids.  At first, this wasn't an easy decision because our riding instructor was turning Ronin into a real champion,

 Ronin at his last show, the same day he left

...but it became more and more apparent as Cid's birth approached that it really was our only option.  It was getting really hard for us to properly care for Ronin.  He wasn't getting the attention he needed or deserved.  Luckily for us, my mom was more than willing to give him a home while we figure out this whole parenting thing.  Otherwise, well, I don't even want to think about otherwise.   Planning Ronin's departure had me really stressed, but in the end it worked out well.  I'll try to write more on that later. 

The last day we saw him at the Ranch, was both relieving and sad.  It finally hit me that he wouldn't be here anymore. 

We had planned to follow him up to my parents' place, but as things worked out, he was hauled away much earlier than anticipated, so we waited an extra week to make the trip. 

What an adventure! A 7 hour car ride, winding along the N. California coast with a 5 week old baby, a 17 month old kid, a dog, and a bird is no small feat.  The kids did great.  The dog threw up.




Awaiting us at Grandma and Grandpa's house, were bunnies, horses, kitties, a tractor {okay, a riding lawn mower}, oh, and Grandma and Grandpa of course.  Plus, Uncle Jim and Serenity.  So much fun for us city kids with country hearts.







Rowan's mind must have been an exploding.  He got to help Grandma feed the animals every morning.  He approached it as he does everything; taking serious mental notes so that he can remember each step required.  On the day that Grandma was gone, Rowan showed me how to do the feeding, leading me to each type of food and then pointing me in the direction of who it was supposed to go to. 

Grandma had also put out a little inflatable pool for Rowan,

 
and Grandpa busted out the old "tractor" for some driving fun.

And Rowan got to chase bubbles too!

Rowan wasn't up for riding my mom's miniature pony, Thor, but he did brave the biggest horse with Dad.

Cid got a lot of cuddle time....and that's about it...sorry Cid, next time you can drive the tractor! 

Oh! And we watched the eclipse!  Glasses?  What glasses?  We used welding masks 'cos we're cool like that.

It was a great week, full of lots of things.

With all of this going on, we barely remembered our anniversary!  We celebrated our 3rd year of marriage driving back home!  Prolly could've planned that better, ya think?  My bad. 

But anyway,

HAPPY {belated} ANNIVERSARY 

 

to the most patient, caring, handsome, amazing man I know!  Life with you {and now our kiddos, too} is the best!

Now, back to the grind...

SO, three days back home, just getting our bearings and wouldn't ya know it, we wake up to a big puddle in the garage streaming from our water heater.  Love and old house!  The joints at the top of the heater had totally corroded.  I looked up the model and serial number and found out that our water heater was manufactured in 1993!  It's almost 20 years old!!  And it's warranty was only 6 years.  By the way, it was super easy to find this out by the serial number.  Rheemglas SN0293xxxx R-6.3.  The "0293" means February 1993 and the "R-6" means 6 year warranty.  Anyway, lucky for us, it's Memorial Day Weekend and OSH was having their "We pay the sales tax" sale.  We basically got a like for like replacement so that it was easy to {self} install, although our new one is a Kenmore.  It came out to about $400.00. Roger took the old one out and put the new one in with the help of a friendly neighbor while I played single mom.....whew, I think I know who had the harder job!  Five hours later, we have hot water again! 

Thank goodness it's a three day weekend.