The Never Ending Headache

For the last MONTH (yes, month) Taylor and I have been dealing with a very large headache in our house, and it looks like this...

A couple weeks ago we noticed our fridge not getting very cold. We thought the door had just been coming open so we focused on making sure it was shut and then we left for vacation. Well, we soon found out that was not the issue! When we got back from vacation we noticed a lot of our food (which should have been fine) had gone bad. And I mean really bad.

Needless to say, we decided it was time to call and have the fridge serviced. The headache started by trying to have someone come out and service the fridge. We have a company in town who "guarantees" same day service if you can before noon and prides themselves on excellent customer service. Taylor placed our request at 9:30 and by 11 we had still not heard back. Then he called at 1, and 2, and 4, and 5 and we were told every time that some would be there between 3 and 6. Well, no one came. We had to call the emergency number and were going to be charged extra (those of you who know me can just imagine how upset I was at this point) until the technician showed up and said that he found out our request which had been "lost" and he would only charge us the normal rate. That was nice to hear, but I had a hard time believing the request was lost when Taylor had called 5 times that day!! We found out what was wrong on Friday night (oh yeah, we had to sit around our house on Friday until about 9pm before they showed up!) and were told they couldn't give us an estimation until Monday. Lucky for us, our landlord had left a small fridge in the garage when she left so we have been using that. It just doesn't fit anything so grocery shopping is very tricky.

Then, another headache occurred. Once the technician left we noticed that the linoleum in our kitchen floor had been ripped when he moved the fridge back into place! Ugh. So we called him back and he gave us the e-mail address to send in the complaint. Luckily I called the next morning about my e-mail and our floor was fixed in the next two days.

Then more headache: the part we needed was on back order by Samsung for 2-4 weeks!! Seriously, isn't that ridiculous? Maybe they should make better lasting products. Our landlord is going to pay for the fix and seems to feel really bad about the situation, which is nice, but using the tiny fridge has been a real hassle the last couple weeks. So last Friday, we got a call that the part had come in early (yay, we thought!) and they would be out that afternoon to fix it. The technician came, stayed about 2 minutes changing the part, charged a crazy stupid fee for being there 2 minutes, and then left. We thought that would be end of the headache but it wasn't! We went and played golf that evening and in the 5 hours we were out, the fridge has only cooled 2 degrees. We called the next morning and told them about the issue. The company said a technician would not come out until we manually defrosted the fridge which meant we lost all our freezer food (which actually works!) and left it unplugged for 24 hours. Can you guess what happened after 24 hours? We plugged it back in and nothing was different. O-M-G. I was so mad.

Finally the technician came back out last week and told us that it could be the fan (seriously, could?) so he ordered that part. Taylor was pretty upset and went to the store to talk with a manager to make sure they understood how terrible the situation was. Once the fan came in the technician came back out and replaced the part. Well, guess what? He ordered the wrong part, the one ordered did not fixed the problem, and we are now waiting on a new part. The technician came back out today and put in the new fan, but told us that he thinks the control board he installed previously may be bad. (OMG!) Right when he left I called the service department and left a message for a supervisor to call me. They called me back this morning and Taylor is currently meeting with a supervisor at our house to determine if anything is wrong. As of today, it was been over 4 weeks since our first service. I am trying very hard to not freak out, but I'm not doing the best job. So that is our never ending headache during the last month. The only good thing I can say about this situation is that we are thankful we are only renting and our landlord is being very understanding about the situation and is taking caring of paying for the problem.

Happy Anniversary!

Happy Anniversary to my parents! They are celebrating 30 years of marriage today :) What a great example of how special marriage can be!

Love you both!

John Deere Classic

Last weekend was a weekend of golf in our house! We started out by playing a round Friday afternoon and Taylor was very happy as you can tell :) We got a deal at the course that included a cart so it was nice to not walk in the heat.

I also need to make it known that I almost beat Taylor on the back 9! He shot a 38 and I shot a 39! Now I won't tell you what I shot on the front and I'm sure this will not happen again, so I plan on enjoying my almost victory for a very long time. Ha!

On Saturday our golf weekend continued when we headed over to Silvis, IL to watch the John Deere Classic. It's just about 2.5 hours west of us so it was a great day trip. We had planned on buying student tickets once we got there, but as were riding the shuttle over to the course a woman on the bus said she had extra tickets if anyone wanted them. We ended up paying only $5 for our tickets and as a bonus, these tickets were extra sponsor tickets so we had access to the sponsor tent all day! How cool? They had free snacks and pop/water/Gatorade we could take. It was really great.

Taylor enjoying the free stuff and talking with our fridge technician (post coming soon!)

We got there around 9:30am and followed Camillo Villegas and Nick Watney for a few holes before Steve Stricker teed off around noon. Stricker graduated from UIUC and has a huge following in this area so it was fun to follow him all day. Plus, Saturday was the day he made his big charge on the back 9 which was so exciting to watch. Since this tournament didn't have a lot of the "big players" you could get right next to the pros as they were teeing off or if they hit a bad shot in the rough (which Stricker did a couple times and we got to stand right next to him). After the round we were sweaty and tired so we just stopped by a Subway to grab dinner on the drive home. It was a such a fun day and we plan on attending again in the years to come!

Sunday we went to church and came home to watch the final day of the tournament and do laundry. Sadly, Stricker didn't win but it was fun to watch the playoff and just do nothing at home after a couple hot and tiring days. Hope y'all are having a great week!

It's that time of year again...

Big Brother starts tonight! I can't tell you how excited I am for the premiere. I know I should not be this excited about a television show, but my family has always watched BB and it just makes me feel like it's summer. Ha! I haven't read much about the new house guests and I don't ever read spoilers so I have no idea who the surprise returning guests are, but I'm excited. Plus, I'm only working a half day on Friday and I don't have much going on tomorrow morning, so I'm basically in weekend mode! Happy Thursday :)

Blisters, Golf, and Fireworks

Our 4th of July celebrations can be summed up in the title of this post: blisters, golf, and fireworks. Tuesday night Taylor was running to catch a bus and decided to take his flip-flops off and run on the hot (it was over 100 that day) concrete. Well, about 1 minute later he notice his feet were REALLY hot and sore. Once we got home, this is what we found.

He had big blisters and his feet were sooooo red! I felt really bad for him. I would have never thought he could get blisters that quickly. We had plans to play golf on the 4th and that night we weren't sure if we would be able to. Taylor ended up soaking his feet, draining the blisters (sorry, that's probably TMI), and standing on ice all evening. When we woke up on Wednesday he said that his feet were ok and he wanted to go try and play (nothing keeps this guy from golf)! We ended up walking the course and looking back that was kind of silly of us. Taylor said his feet were feeling ok and since the course was packed we were able to rest between every hole. That may have been the longest round I've played. We started around 8:40 and finished at 2:00, and it was over 100 degrees! I told Taylor that I love playing golf but I was very happy when that round was over :)

After golf we went and got slushes at Sonic and went to Sams/Walmart to pick up some stuff for dinner that night. We had Andrew, Can, and Can's girlfriend over for burgers, apple pie, and lots of watermelon.

It was fun and we ended up playing horseshoes before going to watch the CU fireworks show. Most of the towns around us had cancelled their shows because of the dryness and heat, so everyone came out to watch the CU show. It was packed all throughout town! After the show we headed back home and fell right to sleep. I kept thinking it was Saturday all day, which was not fun when my alarm went off Thursday morning. I don't think I like having holidays in the middle of the week! Hope you had a great 4th of July :)

Our Trip South

Two weeks ago we packed our bags and headed back south (I apologize in advance for the lack of photos). Taylor and I both always hate just being able to go back to AR or OK for a short weekend and visit with family, so we decided to take a week off and spend some time down south. It was so much fun to just relax, play golf, visit with family, eat delicious food cooked by our parents (we love you!), and not have to worry about driving back the day after arriving. We left Friday after I got off work which put us in OK about 3am. We will not be doing that again. Ha!

Pretty sunset on our way through St. Louis

Saturday we slept in and I did some errands with my mom and sister while Taylor and my dad watched golf (aka napped). Sunday was Father's day so we went and visited my MeMe and PaPa, which was really nice. I don't get to see them very often and since I grew seeing them about once a month, I was happy to spend some time at their house. That night we came home and watched the Thunder game and relaxed. I think you find that during this week we did a lot of relaxing. Monday we got up and went to visit my Grandma and check out my parents "little piece of Heaven" (aka cute little trailer) at the lake. :) Again, it was so nice to see my Grandma and spend time with family. Tuesday we decided to go play golf! We haven't played with my parents in awhile so that was a lot of fun. After golf, we went home and got cleaned up and headed to Minuteman. Some of my aunts, uncles, cousins, and family friends met us for pizza and to say hello. We went after dinner to watch the Thunder game again, which at that point we still had hope!

Fear the Beard! Our Harden beards at Minuteman.

Wednesday morning we woke up, stopped by the bank to handle some stuff with my credit card, went to the jewelry store to pick up my ring that I left to be polished, and then headed to AR to visits Taylor's family. Once we got to AR we headed to the golf course. This was our second round of four we ended up playing during the week. Taylor would argue that was not enough! Ha. I have learned in the last 2 years that I married a very simple man: just let him play golf and he will be as happy as can be :) After dinner that night we just relaxed and watched We Bought a Zoo.

Speaking of zoo, look at these deer that showed up in my parents yard!

If you haven't seen it, do it right now. It's so cute and will just make you happy! The next day we woke up and it was raining so we postponed playing golf until the afternoon. We went over to Taylor's brother and SILs house for dinner that night to celebrate his brother's birthday and watch the Thunder game, which was just depressing as we all know. They moved their TV outside to watch the game and it was just perfect weather. Friday we got up and played an early round of golf before Taylor's SILs family showed up that afternoon/evening. We all ate dinner together that night and then got up early Saturday morning and headed to Kansas City! We all went to the Royals vs. Cardinals and it was so fun! We got great seats in the shade and the Cardinals won. After the game the whole gang went to Macaroni Grill for dinner and then out for ice cream (at a Ben & Jerry's shop which I did not know existed!) and then to play putt putt. Obviously we couldn't just go play putt putt, it had to a competition! We spit into two teams of 4 and it was so fun! We played combined score and the other team ended up winning by 1 stroke, but more importantly I got 5 hole-in-ones and Taylor only got 1 and we both scored a 37. Ha! I rarely get to brag about beating (or tying him!) so I will be taking this opportunity to do so :) 

Taylor putting at a sports store while we killed some time on Sunday. I told him if he started using this putter I'm not sure I can play golf with him anymore!

Sunday morning we woke up and went to get breakfast before everyone headed back home. It was sad to leave on Wednesday and Sunday, but we both enjoyed spending the extended time with our families so much. We already know that for as long as we are in IL we need to make time and do that each year! Taylor and I also stopped by to see my good friend Brittni and her husband Jarrod before heading back to IL. We drive right by their house on the way home so it was perfect! Have a great weekend!

Best Smoothie Ever (according to Taylor)

A couple months ago Meijer (a big supercenter like Walmart we have up here) had pounds of strawberries on sale for $1! Since they all looked pretty good, we decided to buy a bunch of them to freeze for smoothies and since then I have been trying out different smoothie combinations. Well, a few weeks ago (according to Taylor at least) I finally hit that perfect combination :) Ha! I have no clue if y'all will love it as much as we do, but I figured I would share the recipe.

2 4oz Activia peach yogurts*
1 4 oz Activia strawberry yogurt*
2-3 tbsp orange juice (depending on what consistency you want)
6-8 frozen strawberries
1 frozen banana, peeled and sliced

*You may be able to use other brands but Activia yogurt has a smooth consistency that I think makes the smoothie better and that's what we buy at Sams Club!

Add the yogurt and banana to the blender first then put the strawberries on top of that and pour OJ over everything. For some reason I've found our blender works best when I put the ingredients in this order. Blend and enjoy! Makes 2 large, full glass servings.