A Thousand Words are Worth a Picture

This is a long one. Mostly it is for me to read later on when I am sad and lonely for my husband, but please feel free to read or skim or skip it altogether. Like I said, mostly for me :)

I had the most fabulous weekend... and I didn't take any pictures. So I'll just have to recreate the scene with words. I'll definitely use more that 1000... but I would have taken more than one picture if I had had my camera with me :) I normally have my camera everywhere I go, but I didn't this weekend. And to tell you the truth there was nothing that was particularly picture worthy. It was a perfectly ordinary weekend that felt extraordinary and fabulous because it has been so long sing I had an ordinary weekend.

Friday night we went on a fabulous double date. We dropped Austin off at a babysitter's house (THANK YOU KAREN!) and met another couple at their house for a date. They fed us a wonderful stew and then we all went downtown to view some art galleries and eat some frozen custard. It was delightful. Apparently on the first Friday of every month they open up a bunch of little art galleries on Trade Street for you to just walk through and enjoy. Mark and I love art so it was fabulous for us to get to see some. We haven't been to an art gallery since we left BYU.

Saturday was the best day ever. It just was. We got so much done that needed to be done and spent the entire day together as a family. It really was nothing extraordinary that made it special. What made it special was that we were together in our own home and community simply enjoying a beautiful fall day as a family.

We voted. We had to do it early because Mark forgot to register before the deadline so we had to early vote so he could register/vote all in one go. (Do your civic duty and go vote on Tuesday!!) It felt amazing. I had researched all the candidates for all the offices on the ballot and made my selections before voting. It took me a few hours but it was totally worth it.

After we voted we went and washed the car for the first time in over a year. Don't judge. Mark washed it in the car wash while I sat in the backseat and fed Austin some squash. It was fun.

Mark then dropped me off at Wal-Mart to start the grocery shopping while he and Austin went to Lowe's to get plastic to cover our terribly drafty windows. Mark later said it felt awesome to go into Lowe's with just Austin because it reminded him of all the Saturdays he would go with his dad to the home improvement store. To him this was the first of many Saturdays to come when he will get to bond with our son in that way. They finished first and met me at Wal-Mart where we finished shopping together. Austin was such a champ and just kept smiling and smiling at Mark. Mark usually doesn't like grocery shopping with me but Austin was such a charmer that he actually really enjoyed it. It was just delightful.

We are working on cleaning out old clothes and junk from our house right now. We had a couple of bags of stuff to take to the Salvation Army. So after Wal-Mart we dropped by the Salvo to drop off our stuff. We drove around back, dropped it off, and were just going to go home because Austin had fallen asleep. However. Back story really fast:

When I was about 13 my dad got an inheritance from his great-uncle who died. It was something like $2000. He spent most of it on an HDTV. Now remember that was well over 10 years ago. It has a flat screen and it is HD, but it is not a flat screen if you know what I mean. It is basically a first generation HDTV so it is a tube TV. It is massive. This TV weighs probably close to 150 lbs. It is a monster. It has a great picture and it has great sound, but it just big.

After my dad died my mom didn't want it anymore. It reminded her too much of him. So she gave it to Mark and me, but she didn't give us the beautiful wooden TV stand they had purchased to hold it. She still liked that piece of furniture and had other uses for it in mind. It is a really nice TV so despite its size we hauled it all the way across the country when we moved. 

 We never did buy a TV stand for it. We just sort of balanced it on an end table with very spindly legs that we also inherited from my parents. It wasn't really stable, but we didn't have kids, and people with kids didn't come to our house very often. As long as you didn't really touch it or wobble the table or TV it was good. Whenever we did have kids over we made sure to tell them and their parents not to touch it so it wouldn't fall on them. Seriously. It is so big that if it did fall on a child it would kill them or injure them really, really badly. 

Well. Now we have a baby. And guess what? Baby is mobile. He isn't crawling yet but he can roll and wiggle from one end of the room to the other to get what he wants. And he loves to grab and pull and yank on just about everything within reach. Those spindly legs are perfect for little hands to grab. I have seriously had nightmares about Austin grabbing the TV or the table the TV sat on and it falling on him and crushing him. It is that pointy and heavy. It doesn't even bear thinking about really. 

So I have been looking on craigslist for over a year for a legit stand for our TV so that Austin can't pull it onto himself and die. Nothing has come up. I found one or two that seemed promising but they were either too small, too expensive, too far away, or came with a junk TV that I didn't want to haul around. 

Okay, back story complete. We were driving past the front of the Salvation Army when I said "I would love to just pop in there and see if they have a TV but Austin is asleep." Normally we would have just driven on but being his awesome husband self Mark offered to run in really fast and see if there just happened to be anything. I told him to call me if there was anything, but if not, just to come right back out. I went to turn the car around thinking that Mark would probably be back out in just a minute but he wasn't. He stayed inside... so I called him. I asked him if there was anything and he said "Well, there is something actually." So I parked the car and carried the baby in. And guess what was sitting in the furniture section for $13? The exact same size and version of our TV (only a few years older) and the stand that Sony built to go with it. We couldn't believe it. We asked if we could just take the stand. They said if you give us $9.99 you can take it today. $10. TEN DOLLARS!!!!!!

So we bought it and took it home and set up our TV on it. It doesn't wiggle at all. It is in excellent condition with all the original parts and shelves. No dents. No scratches. A perfect fit. And because it is the same shape as the bottom of our TV it doesn't cover up the vent our TV sits next to. It is beautiful and it actually really adds to the beauty of our living room I think. We were also able to set up part of Mark's sound system for the first time since we moved here because of the extra storage in our new stand.

$10. Seriously? That thing originally retailed for over $200.

So beyond having a perfect day it ended with an incredibly fortunate purchase that not only looks beautiful but is now safe for my sweet baby.

After we set up the new TV stand (and I hopped over to the airport to pick up a friend and her kiddos) we put up new curtains in our dining room and rearranged the furniture a bit in our living room and dining room.

The day ended with eating an ice cream cone on the couch as we admired our somewhat new surroundings. It was a perfect day in every single way. I couldn't have asked for better.