Plumbing And Dylan

 So, we're in a "club" with our local plumbing business, Ackerman plumbing. They come inspect our water lines every year and we get some perks like not having to pay extra for after hours calls and a small discount on repairs.  Anyways it was time for the inspection so I had to move all the stuff from in front of the water heater closet area. 

That's all my Christmas stuff and a bunch of quilts.

Well at least we didn't have any leaks and the anode rod was still good. And we had him fix the drain in the bath tub. It was broken and wouldn't plug. 

Our plumbers from Ackerman's are really good. He's also going to fix the water spigot out front too-it's leaking when it's turned on. 

This guy is busy as always-he wanted his bike out doors and so he carried it down the steps!

This is good progress-he wanted to ride it down the steps last week!

It's been crazy hot-so playing on the porch is about as good as it gets-he loves spray bottles. 

I suppose it's like having a squirt gun-he was fully dressed when we went outside....really!

He knew it was too hot for shorts and T shirt!

And I might have made a poor toy choice at Aldi the other day.....

There are 100 pieces.....deep sigh!

And when it's time to rest, well you rest where you want to I guess!

House Stuff

 SO, I had Ackerman's Plumbing come over and put in the new faucet in the other bathroom-so all the bathroom faucets match! And we joined their "club" that comes and does an inspection every so often.

They came and put in a new anode rod in the water heater. I had to move A LOT of Christmas boxes for them to get in there!

Doesn't the new faucet look nice!?

 posted about this nice umbrella, I love it! But it arrived with a broken crank handle. I contacted the company via Amazon and you won't believe this.....

They sent me a whole new umbrella FREE! SO now I have two umbrellas worth of shade on my nice cement patio! Such a deal!!Amazon FRUITEAM Umbrella Here's the link to the umbrella, all I can say it, Great Customer Service!

We were at the mall and bought Dilly his birthday bear at build a bear-they have a deal you get your bear for the price of your birthday.

This isn't his bear, but his bear needed a t shirt-they were out of birthday shirts-, so I used my bear to figure out the correct size.

Looks good-I just used some old t shirts and cut them up! 

And the little guy  got some shoes for the first time! Here he is trying on sandals-he curls up his toes-we ended up getting shoes at Target and a 2nd pair at Dillards. Baby's first shoes indeed!

Shop Hopping and Water Heater Maintenance

So the All Iowa Shop Hop is going on for the months of June and July. Here are a few of the fabrics that I have acquired after visiting all the shops in my region. The idea is you stop at each participating shop and get your passport stamped, and they also give you a cute little printed quilt block. Then when you are done collecting all the stamps from around the state-or as many as you can-you mail in your passport and hopefully win great prizes.

Hubs  rode along with me yesterday to get the last four shops-Cascade, Clinton, Dewitt & LeClaire. It took us about 6 hours round trip and shopping included. I'm pretty quick at most shops. 

See! All done with this region! This year there are something like 86 shops participating-I don't think I'd ever get the whole state-you'd need a lot of driving time available in your life to do it! But a lot of folks do the whole thing!

And we had our Plumber friends from Ackerman Plumbing out to do maintenance on the water heater. 

I had to move A LOT of bins of Christmas stuff to get this path cleared out for him.

We had this water heater installed 5 years ago and Hubs thought it was probably time for them to check the anode rod. Yeah, that's the rod inside the water heater that attracts metals and crud in your water. 

Here's what ours looked like when he took it out. He said he's seen MUCH worse.

Here's the new one along side our old one.

And here's one he took out from a water heater in Tiffin-right up the road. He said the water is so hard and bad in Tiffin, folks need to get their anode rods changed EVERY YEAR! The crud just eats away the rod material, I don't get how it doesn't eat the whole water heater, but what ever. Anyway, $220 and we're good for another five years or so.  So good to move on to the next projects.