Analyze This

A few weeks ago Jarom and Lix were hanging out with the original Richmond Winns and Nate showed them a little thing called Google Analytics, which tracks the people that visit your website. Since February 20th I have had 221 unique visitors from 8 countries (USA, Germany, Russia, Colombia, Hong Kong, Brazil, Turkey, and the British Virgin Islands) and 31 States. It is a very cool little toy that I recommend trying if you have a blog. It will provide hours of wonderment as you try to figure out whom you know in Oregon (or Turkey?!) Speaking of which, please feel free to identify yourself via the comments section if you are a regular reader from an obscure location.

Jenna helps with the organizing in the living room

The lixi-izing of our new home is continuing in the living room. The painting is done, the furniture is all back in its place and now stuff is going up on the walls. Most of it is the same stuff they have had on walls in Utah and Tennessee, but she did add a little color splash by picking out some new art to hang above the mantle. The other big improvement made this week is in the kitchen. The laundry area is just off the kitchen and seems to have been built for a dryer with slightly different dimensions from the one that we have. So the sliding doors where not able to be closed. Alixa nagged Jarom about this non-stop for weeks until he finally got around to taking the doors down and reinstalling them in a way that would allow them to close. It wasn’t really that big of a deal, but it makes the kitchen feel much larger and much cleaner now that you don’t have to look at the laundry room.

Above: Our new art Below: It may look like nothing more than closed doors to you, but to Alixa it is the most beautiful sight in the world.

This week spring arrived in Southern Virginia, with daytime temperatures in the 70’s. This meant that Lix and Jenna spent a lot of time outside at the nearby park, where Jenna learned how to swing and got to meet some of the local wildlife. Her favorite things are dogs (of which there is no shortage at the park), which she greets by growling every time she sees one (this includes her stuffed animal dogs.) One of our new neighbors has a golden retriever named Sadie who Jenna loves to visit, although she is still a little reluctant to pet her. The nice weather also prompted Jarom and Lix to drop Jenna off on her Aunt and Uncle’s doorstep to go play a round of golf on Saturday. They will be hosting Lix’s parents next week, and whenever her dad is around there is golf to be played, so they figured they had better get the rust out of their swings. I don’t know if they succeeded in derusting anything, but they enjoyed themselves.

I'm not sure if this was an attempted hug, pacifier theft, or head butt, but it looks hilarious

Lix also started a new job recently. She has decided to put her mothering skills on the market as a nanny. Kenna’s regular nanny had to miss a day, so Lix stepped in. It was an interesting experience for both little ones, as they had to share a mother for the day. Lix is hoping that she did a good enough job to get a callback, because she thinks it will be good for Jenna to have to deal with other kids a little bit more. Right now she is becoming a little bit needy and doesn’t like having other rats in her personal space, which sometimes leads to crying. And nobody likes a crybaby.

Spring forward

The hectic, jam-packed, not-quite-comfortable lifestyle around this place has continued for the last few weeks. In my last post, I mentioned some of the little quirks around the house that we had discovered, such as the schizophrenic electrical system. Well, about 30 seconds after a visit to ServiceMagic.com Alixa had contracted an electrician to come by and fix the problem. She was so thrilled with the results that she used the site again, this time to find a plumber who would come and install our brand-new kitchen sink, which was the only item in the kitchen that hadn’t been updated. Jarom and Lix had been spending a fair amount of time furniture shopping, and were happy to find a cute kitchen table with four stools that would fit nicely in the kitchen eating area. While they were at the store, Jarom found a bedroom set that he thought was great, but Lix wasn’t sold on the color (she thought the stain was too light.) However, two days later when they went to the warehouse to pick up their new table, they again saw the bedroom set and decided to purchase it. Lix was still a little tentative about the color, but it was delivered today and she hasn’t stopped talking about how much she loves it. She is very excited to become a “real person.”



So things were starting to settle down a little bit as we all got moved in and started to really live in this new house of ours. What is the next step? Why it is making a big mess of everything and painting some rooms, of course! So last week Lix started getting paint samples for the living room. She began painting last week and finished up today, and has done a pretty great job considering it is her first project. Now she just has to put stuff up on the walls and then add crown molding and then put in new drapes and then add the accent wall in the dining room and the new vanities in the upstairs bathrooms and the paint in Jenna’s room and the………………… Jarom has tried his hardest to simultaneously encourage Lix’s creativity and emphasize that she can do all of these projects, just not all of these projects this week. But he sure is glad that she is so excited to do all of these things. In an effort to fund all of these projects, we did our taxes. Between making basically no money and having a kid and being a full-time student and buying a house for the first time, Uncle Sam will be treating us okay this year. Hopefully the tax refund arrives in time to pay off the credit card bill for all these upgrades on the house.



The other new development in Alixa’s life is her membership at the YMCA near our house. She has been a very dedicated gym rat the last few weeks, dropping Jenna off at the childcare and sweatin’ to the oldies with the middle-aged women of Richmond in the assorted classes offered at the Y. She has renewed her post-baby weight loss, which had stalled for a few months while we were nomadic and she wasn’t able to be in any sort of workout routine.



And since the Winns hadn’t been on a vacation since January, they decided to make the four-hour drive up to Delaware for the weekend. The weather was awful, with temperatures in the 40’s and monsoon-like rain all weekend. So of course Jarom took the opportunity to go play some golf with JD and Bruce. They were the only car in the parking lot when they arrived, and the only car there when they left. The guy at the pro shop told them to feel free to play as much golf as they wanted for the nine-hole price, but by the time they hit the turn there were some numb fingers and toes so they decided to call it a day. They all played pretty well, considering. But as JD wisely pointed out, the important thing is that “this is what memories are made of.” The rest of the weekend was spent hanging out with cousins and grandparents, all of whom were thrilled to see Jenna. Jenna has learned some new tricks that she was all too happy to show off. She is now a proficient waver goodbye, and gives wonderful open mouthed kisses. She will also spit her pacifier out, with rather impressive distance. These are all on unique verbal commands. We are at the stage of her life where Jarom feels oddly like a dog trainer, but can’t help smiling proudly as his daughter masters each new feat. Her most impressive trick of the weekend was that she sprouted a few bottom teeth, which understandably made her a little bit of a grump. She is also beginning to show signs that she may soon crawl. She will lunge forward at items that she wants to get too, and will also pull herself up to a standing position if there is an object nearby. She is still way behind her cousins, who are both motoring around like pros, but have you ever heard the story of the tortoise and the hare?

As for Jarom, he is still enjoying his job, which is a good sign. He recently went with Alixa to give his wardrobe a little makeover. It turns out that while five dress shirts might be enough when you only wear them once a week, it is not sufficient when you have to wear them every day. So he got some new work shirts at Kohls, an experience that couldn’t be over fast enough for him. But he must admit that the shirts do look good and it is nice to not wear the same thing each Tuesday. He also got a calling in the ward – Assistant to the Den Mother. At first Alixa thought he was kidding when he told her, but now she believes him and just thinks less of him for having what she thinks is “an embarrassing calling.” Well, like an old bishop of ours always said, “There are no small callings in the church, only small people.” And at his current weight, Jarom certainly can’t be accused of being the latter.

I will leave you with a funny graph that I found regarding water usage (read: toilet flushes) as it compares with the USA-Canada gold medal hockey game during the Olympics a few weeks ago. Those canucks are crazy! Good luck to all of you in your March Madness brackets!

House Tour

Here is a video tour of our new home. Hopefully watching it doesn't make you dizzy or sick.

No place like home

Jenna modeling her new, sparkly, ruby slippers, courtesy of Gramma

So it turns out that moving into a house is kind of a big deal. The last few weeks have been exhausting, not for me personally, but I am very sensitive to the moods of those around me. Jarom was fortunate enough to be given temporary corporate housing when we moved here to Richmond, so we were able to stay in the apartment where we had been living while we moved everything in over at the new house. This was a very convenient situation, or at least Jarom thought it would be. On a Saturday morning Jarom went with Nate and Tyler over to the storage shed to get all of the furniture and stuff and move it into our new home. As he was leaving, he mentioned to Alixa that she should pack up the few things that they were going to put in the truck. They had previously discussed this, and the list of things included a changing table, a dresser, and a couple of larger boxes that would not easily fit into a four-door sedan. Jarom didn’t think about it again until he was swinging back by the apartment after retrieving all of his worldly possessions. He came back into the apartment to get a few big-ticket items and noticed that there were plastic grocery bags filled with stuff and suitcases littering the floor. Apparently what Alixa heard as he walked out that morning was “Hon, please pack up everything we own as if we were leaving the apartment today.” So the convenience of having two places to live was eliminated.



On the flip side, it probably acted as a motivator to get things organized over here at the new place as quickly as possible. And in that arena, Lix has been nothing short of miraculous. What was once a pile of boxes has become a livable situation, and while there is still some work to do, it very much looks and feels like a home. As is always the case with a move, or at least should be, many things have been thrown away. Gone is the Discman that Jarom has been inexplicably holding onto for the past who-knows-how-many years. Also gone are several boxes of Alixa and Jarom’s old clothes to the goodwill. And some of the cheap furniture that they inherited over the years from friends and neighbors has vanished. If Alixa has her way, and she usually does, the rest of the “apartment furniture” will be gone soon, to be replaced by things like bedroom sets that match and aren’t made of balsa wood.

Excitedly playing with toys

For now Lix spends her days at Lowes while Jarom goes to work. Jenna loves to ride in the cart, and their trips usually involve between 1 and 5 people stopping to meet her and tell Alixa what a cute baby she has. So far the purchases have mostly been little things like doorknobs, towel racks, and hooks, but there will soon be a new sink and faucet, and soon after that the painting will start. Jarom’s life has become a real life version of an episode of any show on HGTV. It’s okay though, because Alixa loves it and is quite good at it. Jarom just has to bite his tongue and accept that we are going to be hemorrhaging money for a month or two until things are the way that we (and by that I mean she) wants them.

In the mornings, Jarom will give Jenna some toys to play with in bed as he leaves for work so that Lix can sleep in for another hour or so while Jenna keeps herself occupied. Apparently Jenna didn't quite get enough sleep one night, because when Mommy came in this is what she found.

The biggest surprise since moving in has to be the puzzle that is known as the electrical system. The first night that Jarom and Lix slept over at the house the lights in the bathrooms were not working. Jarom’s initial fear was that they had purchased a lemon and would now have to pay to redo the entire electrical system. Breaker switches were checked, GFI’s were pushed, but nothing seemed to turn the power on to those rooms. The next evening, they worked. They both thought that maybe they were just crazy and moved on. Until the power went out again. It took a few days, but they finally realized that the bathrooms would only work when the upstairs hall light was on. Weird, but at least they didn’t have to shower in the dark anymore. After a few more days another discovery was made. It seems that there are two hall light switches, and only one of them controls the upstairs electricity. So they have to leave that switch on all the time and use the other to turn the hall light on and off. These are the sorts of fun adventures that have been going on around here lately.




Alixa also wanted to make sure that the new house had TV upon moving in, and Dish was chosen because it was by far the cheapest option. For the first time the Winns have a DVR, which has revolutionized the way they watch television. Commercials are becoming a thing of the past, and Lix will never miss another episode of The Price is Right, no matter what happens. Alixa’s other new habit is craigslisting, which she has taken up in an effort to earn some money for things like new bathroom vanities while simultaneously clearing out some of the clutter from things that we barely even knew that we had until we unpacked them. So far she has been quite successful, with several hundred dollars in sales. For the next post I’ll get her to make a video of the house so you can all see what it’s like.