Our Big Amazing Renovation

This last weekend, we took a quick trip to our house in Arizona to do some work. The house was in decent condition--but needed a lot of cleaning and cosmetic work. We left Thursday afternoon, and worked 20 hour days to get our house cleaned up.

Our first incident as home owners came when we turned on the water to the house the night we got there. We woke up to this...




Clearly we should have turned off the pipes to the sprinkler system--which is broken. Obviously.

We made an early trip to Home Depot and painted

and painted


and taped


and painted


and pulled up the base boards with a hammer


and an awesome yellow crow-bar.


Alli broke up all the tile


and we pulled up all the vinyl floor.

We occasionally stopped to eat

We worked really long days, but we got so much accomplished--everything we had hoped to do. It's going to be so nice when we go down to move and everything is painted and our new carpet has been installed. Alli, Matt's sister, came with us and boy was she a lifesaver. She worked her tail off and was the best help we could have asked for. So thank you Alli--you are amazing. When we got back we were (and still are) exhausted. After 2 days of painting and moving furniture, we were pooped. It didn't help that it was 106 outside. We're very grateful to Jennifer and Logan and for the furniture and tile they gave us. The tile was super heavy, but it's going to look great once it's in.

We're excited about our cute house--feel free to come and visit us whenever you're in town!

No Whammy, No Whammy, No Whammy....STOP!

As some of you may or may not know, Lehi is a very large high school this year. We have about 1200 Sophomores. That's unreal for a school with so little square feet. Alpine School District has built a new school in Saratoga Springs, Westlake High School.

Next year will be its first year open, and since the faculty at Lehi had to be split, I was on the list of teachers going to Westlake. I could have been a Westlake Thunder if we weren't moving. Their mascot is Thor; don't ask me why. Having a new school and all new materials would have been great--especially since I now am teaching in a portable with 50 year old desks.

Well, I have been looking for a job down in Arizona, and with little success. I would watch on the Phoenix news that school districts were laying off teachers by the hundreds. I had all my applications done for many of the school district, and even got my Arizona teaching licence back in March. A week ago, I noticed that Dysart School District had posted listings for "English Teachers" at various schools in the district. I submitted my application and got an email from a principal the next day. Tuesday I had a phone interview. The principal wants his school to be one of the leading technology schools in the district, and he asked me a lot of questions about how I use technology in my classroom. I told him about a game I made that used a lot of technology, and he loved it. The game was "Press Your Luck"--a game show from the 70's and 80's. The principal watched the show and I had him laughing pretty good when I was talking about whammys.

Yesterday, I got a call and he wants me to teach at his school, Shadow Ridge High School.

This school is also brand-new. So although I didn't get to go to the new school here in Utah, I get to go to the new school in Waddell, Arizona. It's basically out in the middle of nowhere.

I'd like to publicly thank the Whammy--I believe it was the Whammy that got me this job. Thanks Whammy.

this is how we occupy our time

For the past few months, we've been telling ourselves that we need a good show to get into. Matt kept mentioning Lost, and how everyone says it's a great show. We could put it off no longer, and we have started watching all the episodes online, and we are addicted. We've been staying up late almost every night trying to get in as many episodes as we can.

I also have one claim to fame with Lost, I've seen this guy in real life--

Last summer, when we went to Disneyland, we were in line for Space Mountain, and all the people in line were pointing and freaking out. If you've been on Space Mountain, you know that the end of the line wraps around the room where you get on the ride, so everyone in line could see Hurley getting into one of the roller-coaster cars. I didn't really know who he was as the time, but my cousin Kenzie was quite thrilled and took pictures of him.

The Appraisal

This last week and a half we have been waiting at the mercy of Fannie Mae. We had the inspection done on our house, which turned out very well, and we also had the appraisal ordered. When we got the appraisal back, it came in a little bit lower than we offered to pay for the house. This should sound good, right? Well, not quite. Once we found out about the new value of the house, we had to wait to see what Fannie Mae wanted to do with the new price. It was likely that they would agree to the new price and not pay closing costs, or they could challenge the appraisal and start the process over again. In the meantime, we found out that our offer was accepted on another house, contender #1 from an earlier post. To be smart, our realtor had us open escrow for that house. For a few days we had paperwork going through saying we were buying both houses. Stressful. We eventually cancelled contender #1 and decided to stick with our favorite house no matter what the bank said. Turns out, Fannie Mae decided to sell us the house for the new price and pay closing costs. Go us! and Hooray Fannie Mae!

What have we been doing?

A lot and a little. That's what. After becoming quite excited about our house, we have started taking regular trips to Home Depot looking at all the things we will need to get for our house. One Saturday afternoon we spent quite a while looking a sink faucets and carpet. It might not sound exciting, but it was for us. I also have chosen a paint color for our new house--Sandstone Cove by Behr. (Just in case you have a Behr color wheel at your house : ) ) I think there should really only be two or three colors of paint. At least 2 or 3 shades of beige. Choosing paint made me into somewhat of a crazy person.

We have also discovered a new store:

Where we got a crazy deal on this dented beauty: (Don't worry, the dent is small and is in the back. You will never see it.)

Which made this room seem even smaller than it was.

We tried pushing the fridge into our extra bedroom, but it is wider than the door, so now it lives in the kitchen. Matt wanted it in our bedroom to make midnight snacking rather easy.

As for our apartment, we have now officially exceeded the limit of how much stuff we could possibly fit in it. After Matt's birthday and a new fridge, we have too many things to store. We have 2 fridges in our kitchen, a wall of boxes and a rather large miter saw in the extra bedroom. One more thing and we'll burst at the seams.

Our House, In the Middle of the Street

I've posted a few pictures of our house already, but here are a few more. I also took some video while we were there. The video starts with me in the 3rd bedroom. The movie is kind of in turbo speed, but if you watch closely, you can tell where I am, even though I tend to change directions suddenly. We hope you like our house--we're really excited.

Standing in the front door, in the smaller living room, looking into the great room.


Coming from the living room into the great room.


The kitchen. I'm facing the ugly teal living room now.

The great room. The bedrooms are in the hall through that archway. The bright bedroom you see on the left is the room I started filming in.

Twilight Zone?

Yesterday we had an experience that will go down in history in the Serafine family, and it didn't just involve us. This one is so ridiculous, it seems like one of those things that you only hear of. This one is a little long, but it's worth the read, at least I think so.

Our car, the dear Ford, is great. It needed new tires. It needed an oil change. It needed to be aligned. We took our car to Big-O to get the tires. We had a coupon, and got a decent deal. We dropped our car off, went running on the trail behind Freedom Boulevard, and went back to Big-O. We got there right as our car was being finished. We paid the bill, and got in the car. As we got in the car we were talking about how well our car had been running as of late, and how it had been a while since we had to do anything by way of repair. Matt puts the keys in the ignition, turns it, and nothing. The car won't start. We look at each other like, "Great. What did they do?" I'm thinking maybe they bumped something that is preventing the car from starting and it needs a quick fix. Matt goes into the store, a few people come and look at it and say it could be a number of things. It's not the battery, though. They workers go next door and get a mechanic. He says it could be the belt, bent hoses, blah, blah, blah. By now we are furious. What in the crap has happened?

The mechanic says that he can look at it in the morning if we want, but I'm thinking the whole time that this is some conspiracy to get our money. Our car ran fine before.

We didn't really know what to do, we were just mad. We finally just left our key with the mechanic so he can look at it in the morning. Whatever.

We called Matt's sister Kelli to come give us a ride home. Kelli works in Orem, so she was in town anyway. Kelli pulls up to Big-O. She rolls down her window and asks me what is going on. I give her a short version of the story while Matt is taking the key in. Matt comes out of the store, and we get in Kelli's car. Our poor broken car had to stay behind.

As we get into Kelli's car, she says, "What? My car just did something funny and all these lights turned on!" We look at the dash and all the check engine lights are on, the warning-something light is on, and a light that says EPS. Oh dear. Kelli's car is running, so she puts it into drive and steps on the gas. We just coast. She floors it and we coast. Luckily she has breaks and we can stop. We are now 100 feet away from Big-O, and Kelli's car is broken.

None of us know what to do. We just laughed. It was frustrating, but oddly funny. Kelli can't take her car home--she'd have to drive on the freeway. So, after sitting in the car for a few minutes sorting our thoughts, we coast Kelli's car to the front of the mechanic who was supposedly going to look at our car. The mechanic has an after hours drop box, so Kelli leaves a note.

In the meantime, Matt calls Russell. Russell comes to pick all three of us up, but only after we warned him that he should not pull into the parking lot at Big-O. It's the black hole of car destruction.

As of this morning, we are taking our car to a different mechanic to have him fix it.

Twilight Zone? Yes, friend, Twilight Zone.

The Vacation of all Vacations

Below are posts for all 10 days of our great vacation. We started our vacation in Arizona, and ended up in California. Enjoy!