The Vallecillo’s

You read correctly, it snowed in Dallas today. Although a rare event, it does happen occasionally. Since we are so well prepared for snow here in the southwest, and since all drivers are so experienced driving under those conditions, I decided to stay home and “work” from here. Not so much because of the snow, but because it was well below freezing, and you can imagine how well them Texans and icy roads mix. This gave me a chance help a little with the trimming of our Christmas tree, even though that simply consisted of me bringing down all the boxes. Mandi and Larsen were really the ones that made it all come together.

This lack of involvement on my part did have an adverse effect on the distribution of the ornaments this year though, resulting in zero Star Trek ornaments on the tree this year. I ask you, what is a Christmas tree without a Klingon Bird of Prey, a Romular Warbird, the NCC-1701 Start Trek Enterprise, or even the Galileo Shuttlecraft with Mr. Spock’s voice saying that warm and wonderful holiday message: “Shuttlecraft to Enterprise, shuttlecraft to Enterprise…Spock here. Happy holidays. Live long and prosper.”?!

On a brighter note Larsen thought the snow was great and had a great time trying to catch a few flakes with his mouth. He really wanted to build a snowman, but I had to do my best and explain to him that building a snow man with a 1/4″ of snow would be a daunting task. Instead I grabbed my camera and snapped a few photos to have a proof that snow does fall down in Texas…sometimes.

Every year (or is it almost every year) I carve pumpkins for halloween, and every year I strive to find the least intricate design I can. You see, you quickly learn how hard it really is to do all that fancy carving after you unsuccessfully try to carve that 20-legged spider design your son chose, or the multi-window and bat infested haunted house complete with gargoyles and what-nots. And don’t think that because you bought that fancy pumpkin carving kit is going to be your saving grace. Even with the right tools you are just setting yourself for failure, so heed my warning and stick with faces. I mean, after all that’s what they are supposed to be! The people from Ireland and Scotland did not carve scarecrows, bats or skeletons on their turnips to frighten Stingy Jack away, they carved scary faces! So there, carving anything else than a scary face is anti-halloween and diminishes the true meaning of this beautiful holiday. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

But lets just say, for the sake of argument, you do end up successfully doing all that tricky intricate work. We live in Texas where the air is fairly dry, which means the thinner the pieces of pumpkin you carve the faster those pieces will dry and shrink into oblivion. So now you are forced to cover every exposed surface with petroleum jelly in order to minimize the drying, and that is just too much gosh-darn work for a silly pumpkin.

So now, based on that, guess which one of our pumpkins lasted the longest?

We finally got rid of all our carpet! OK, almost all of it since we still have some upstairs, but that isn’t the point! We finally had enough of the nastiness carpet is (think of all the dirt, dog hair, dog accidents, spills, dead skin, and God know what else that is trapped in there!) and went with stained concrete. We had all our bedrooms done at once, and event thought we had to sleep at at friend’s house for one night, it was all well worth it. We love the way they look, and we love how easy they are to clean. I’m telling you, stained concrete is the way to go!

By the looks of it either aliens came to visit while we were sleeping, or there used to be a large round pool in our backyard at some point in time. Hmmmmm…can you say “hydromulch“?

I love it when a plan comes together! OK so maybe it wasn’t a “plan” per-se, but I knew that monstrosity did not belong in our backyard.

First thing this morning, as I was letting the dogs out, I noticed that some chairs, pots, rocks, shoes, and dirt in places they weren’t just the night before. It was just as if a tidal…hey, wait a second! Where did the pool go?!

Remember when I said something about “leveled surface” on my first pool post? Well, although the pool’s final destination was as flat as our backyard gets, it still wasn’t perfectly leveled. Seems like the force of the water constantly being pushed to one side finally made a tear in it and all 2,500 gallons of water came rushing out all at once. I’m just sorry I wasn’t there to see it, film it and enjoy the show.

So there I was, on my way home from the office, completely unaware that in just a few minutes things were about to take a turn for the worse. I get home, get out of the car, and as I am approaching our back door I get a glimpse of a foreign large blue object in our back yard. As I walk by a very large empty box I realize I better turn around and take a closer look at the large object in the backyard. And there it was, just sitting there, droopy, sloshing about and looking rather odd. I paused for a second, sighed, and went on to ask my wife: “what in the world is THAT doing in our backyard?” (some of the words have been edited to protect the easily offended).

If you are still wondering what monstrosity was waiting for me upon my arrival that night, here she stands:

That’s right, what we have in here is your typical Walmart-special-above-ground-pool. Nice, ain’t it? Not only is this something I was never expecting to find in my backyard, but something my wife purchased without my approval, carried all by herself (big very heavy box), and unsuccessfully attempted to setup up before I got home. Good try Mandi!

When I first got sight of the beast it was about half-way full of water, but obviously lob-sided and slightly oval in shape. Looks like the “select a level site where you want to place your pool” part of the instructions weren’t clear enough. So I had to drain it, move it to a more leveled part of the yard, and start the whole process again. I know what you are thinking, I should’ve seized the opportunity to pack it all up and take it back to where it came from…but sometimes the best way to make a point is to not do anything at all and just let it all unfold on its own.

Last night I noticed a few small ants crawling about my desk, which I found rather odd since the “bug guy” was just here on October 25. After a few “choice words” something else caught my eye…a flying ant! I found about 5 of these winged-critters, which really troubled me since back on April 14 of this year we had our house treated for termites. I’m glad to say that even though these bugs were coming out of the same small-hole the termites left on our study’s window-sill, they are not termites but ants…swarming ants! FYI, if they have uneven-legth wings AND bent antennas they are NOT termites. Whew!