Jon and Amber

So, quite some time ago, I thought of a very silly little joke:What did the magic 8-ball say about Microsoft Office?”Outlook not so good” Now granted, I don’t claim to be the first to have ever thought of this, though I have never heard of it anywhere else and I have yet to see it anywhere else.

Locking comments on this post, as it seems to be a spam magnet. -Amber

Jon’s mom and grandma came over while we were at work on Friday and painted the baby’s room! (It’s ok, we knew they were going to do this – we even gave them a key to the house!) We had picked out a very light sky blue color and bought two gallons of the paint, which turned out to be enough for the whole room with a bit left over. It is beautiful!

They even brought the crib, dresser, rocking chair, and changing table up from the basement and got everything arranged nicely. PLUS, they dove into the mountain of clothes and gifts that was hiding our dining room table since the baby shower, and put everything away in the newly painted room!

I don’t know what Jon’s reaction was when he got home – he was here before me – but when I got home and saw the beautiful new room, I felt like I was on one of those TV shows where they kick you out of the house for the day and redecorate a room for you! I have been SO happy with how it turned out (a fresh coat of paint really can make a world of difference in a room), and I love going in there and just admiring it.

We still have to put blinds on the window and pick out some nice curtains or a valance, and the walls are still bare so we will need to decide whether we want to jump into painting a mural (we were thinking some big flowers and trees), or just stick with various wall hangings and decals for now. Either way is fine with me – I’m just so happy that the biggest part of getting the room ready is finally done.

Pictures when we get those last finishing touches up

Error: Success! Seriously though, it was a success. My very first engine swap is now done and it is running great. No leaks, no problems. It would have been done on Friday, except the connector for the gas line lost it’s O rings and so when I hooked it back up, gas went all over. I took care of that today and got it started on the first try. After a little fussing around filling fluids, it was ready to go. I drove it around a bit, down on the freeway and it is top notch. Well, for a 11 year old car anyway. I must say that I feel really great to have actually have done this entire thing myself (with the help of a book that didn’t give me all the instructions). When I got that done, I then moved on to the Scion and put the trailer hitch on it. Don’t worry, it is only for VERY light duty towing. When that was finished, I started in on finishing up the closet. What a day!

Almost done. I have almost everything in place. I did manage to loose a socket somewhere and that is really annoying because I need it and I can’t see it and it dropped to a place that is not reachable by anything. Oh well. I resolved a problem where there was a sensor that had a connector that didn’t match up with anything. It turns out it was the same sensor as on the original motor, just with a different connector. So I swapped them. Now I no longer have wires going nowhere. I have only a few minor things left and then the big test. Will it work or not.

So today Amber’s new engine showed up at my work.  I got it home and and just ripped into it.  It is already installed now and I only have a few more things to hook up.  Mostly the starter, alternator and wiring on the underside of the car.  I am still a little worried about the drive axles and the seals on them.  I did pick up new seals so it shouldn’t be a giant deal to replace them.  Just a matter of time.  It is going back together 5x faster than I was able to take it apart.  And on top of that, everything is fitting together.  If this all actually works, this will be a MAJOR ego boost and will really make me feel OK delving into my R32 swap.  I am hoping to get this done before Friday night because otherwise it will bother me all weekend to finish it up.  WOOHOO!

So about two or three weeks ago, Amber’s Saturn bit the dust so to speak. The best guess is a rod is bent. It sort of runs but mostly doesn’t. That is, it ran enough to get it to the local shop and then back to the house. I decided I would give a shot at replacing the engine myself. The local shop was going to charge about $1600 more than what I would have to pay with all things considered (time, parts, core charge….). I mean, what is the worst that I could do right?So I went off and bought the Chilton manual for the car. It seemed to have pretty good instructions on engine removal. Heck, it was an entire chapter, just on how to remove the engine without removing the transmission. Perfect! Except they left out a little detail like you have to remove one of the drive shafts as it is bolted to the engine block. They also neglect to mention that you really SHOULD remove one of the pulleys, but I wrangled it out just the same. In the pictures, it does show it without the pulley coming out, but not once do they say anything about it. Anyway, the real gripe here is that when I was pulling it out not knowing about the axle, it pulled a seal and leaked tranny fluid all over my floor. Huge pain! And now I have a seal to repair. Which it says isn’t so hard, but hey, what are they leaving out? But alas, it is finally out. The engine is free. The new one is on the way (well used one). and providing I can remember how to hook up all the wires and stuff, I should be set. Right? Pics:

As of today our new WordPress site is live.  Content has been imported from our blogger account and just a few other tweaks remain.  Thanks to Nate for steering me down the WordPress path.   It is so nice and easy to use.  WooHoo!

Spring officially begins this Thursday, and we’ve decided to use this as a time to make some changes on our little home-on-the-web, too. (Not to mention all the changes happening in our real home – the closer our due date gets, the more baby stuff seems to accumulate!)

Our current website was hand-built, and is rather difficult and time-consuming to maintain. This is why you don’t see things change nearly as often as they should. Our blog itself (this page), is hosted at Blogger.com, which makes it a little easier to update, but it’s messy and sometimes annoying to have things in separate places like that.

Jon has fixed up the server to run WordPress (yay!), and we’re currently in the process of migrating this entire site over to run exclusively on WordPress. Once the migration happens, you will know it! The look of the site will change pretty dramatically, but no content will be lost – in fact, it will be even better, and updated much more often! Our blog will become our new main homepage, but all our static pages will still exist in one form or another.

No ETA yet on the new improved JonAndAmber.com yet, but it should be up very soon – we’re hoping just a couple weeks from now!

After half a morning, I finally got wordpress up and running.  Woohoo.    Now to move all the content over

Hi, this is Amber. I am 34 weeks pregnant (85% done) and ABSOLUTELY SICK of being pregnant right now! (I can’t speak for Jon, but I think he’s not quite as tired of it as me.)

The fatigue is ridiculous, but the time of day I end up dreading most is bedtime! I can’t get into the bed easily, I can’t find a comfortable position to lie in, I can barely breathe no matter how propped up I am, and even if I can find a semi-decent position in which to fall asleep, it doesn’t last long because I wake up every two hours with a sore back and ribs and an urgent need to go to the bathroom!

So the fatigue continues.

Also, my skin is toooooo tight! I feel like my tummy is going to just rip open or pop like a balloon one of these days – and I still have a month and a half to grow! Still no stretch marks, and I can’t understand why – I’ve been stretched to the absolute limit and it is actually painful sometimes! It doesn’t help that Baby B likes to poke his little butt out at the world through my drum-tight skin, or sometimes a foot or knee or elbow (heck, I can’t tell what they are, but they are little and they slide around a lot and they are STRONG!)

Sometimes Jon will put his hands on my belly because the warmth is soothing, and occasionally it will even help Baby B to calm down and relax, but two nights ago it just got him more riled up. Even though it was kind of painful for me, we laughed because we could see Jon’s hands undulating and bouncing every time Baby slid under them and kicked at them! I think we should try to get some video of that action one of these days – it’s pretty wild stuff.

In other news, totally unrelated to pregnancy, my Saturn broke down recently and the repair bill would have been much too high to pay for an 11-year-old car. But since we got the Scion xB which I am using now, Jon has decided to see if he can find a good deal on a rebuilt engine for my Saturn. He’s already taken a lot of the car apart, and I think will be pulling the engine out pretty soon. I think he said he had a connection with a guy in his Volkswagen club who might be able to help him get his hands on an engine for pretty cheap. But I don’t know the details on all that. He said he’d write up a little post about it here though, so keep an eye out for that if you’re interested.

Meanwhile, the xB is still growing on me, much to my surprise. Yes, they are ugly and silly and even have a smaller engine than my Saturn, but what a very spacious and efficient vehicle it is! Not bad at all…