The new hot water system works and it is so nice to have hot showers again. Even nicer knowing that it is free hot, not free hot water because we still pay for the water but the heating is from the sun so it's free hot. We haven't had to turn the electric backup on at all and it's been 3.5 days of washing and showers without running out of hot water. It's even been raining and the water still heats up!
The removal of the old system has left us with a laundry to renovate though. The plumbers made a big hole in the wall and the floor tiles only went to the edge of the old tank.
This is the state the floor was left in
and here's the mess that was the wall.
We're going to replace the old tiles with these rubber tiles. Sort of an industrial look. The floor will be this creamy colour and the walls will be silvery. Graham suggested I paint one wall with a scene like I did in Alex's room, with a tree, but I think a beach scene would be more appropriate and the colours would work. Not sure yet, we'll see what I come up with. Graham removed most of the tiles yesterday using a new rotary hammer drill we bought to do the job, it was cheaper than hiring one. Once he has the last of the tiles out we will have to get the concrete nice and smooth before we can lay the rubber tiles. The wall will need fixing first and new skirting boards.
Here's the new hot water heater on the roof. We thought it should have been more central but the plumber said it wouldn't fit. As a result it's at the opposite end to the kitchen and it takes a while for the hot water to reach any taps.
Alex stayed at his grandparents on the weekend. He went home with my Mom after Gymbaroo on Friday which got him out of the way while the plumbers installed the water heater. This meant we could run around Saturday and shop for things like floor tiles and we finished our Christmas shopping. At least we had finished until we remembered someone else :) So one more person to shop for and 8 more things I'm waiting to be delivered. Most of which are for Graham. If they don't get here soon he wont have much for Christmas.
We wrapped all the Christmas pressies we do have and took them to Mom and Dads last night and I put up the Christmas tree. The Christmas tree is my job each year and it's something I look forward to.
I've been buying Alex a decoration of his own each year so by the time he leaves home he should have a nice set of decorations to start him off. I love all our old family decorations and the odds and ends that have been added to them each year from various people.
Here's Alex's Christmas ball for this year. He noticed it straight away and went up to it and read 'A' and then read 'Alex'. He also found and read the one from last year. Looks like he has learned to read his name :)
Alex made all our wrapping paper this year using his crayons on a roll of paper. I've made gift tags with photos so Alex will be able to see who to hand them out to. Last year he enjoyed handing out the pressies but we had to read the tags for him.
Looks like most of these are for Alex.
I've made all our Christmas cards and written our yearly Christmas letter. Now I'm just waiting for Graham to sit down with me so we can double check all our addresses and get them in the post tomorrow. I also had some big photos printed as wall calendars for some of the family. All different photos but this one here is my favourite. I wish I'd done one for myself. This isn't up properly, just wedged behind some frames so I could take a photo. You can see how big it is.
It was raining most of yesterday and was still raining when we drove home last night. A couple of times we saw a frog hop across the road in front of us, lit up by the headlights. We realised we have never seen a frog at our place and we've been here 6 years.
When we got home I went to open the car door and looked out the window and there was a little frog on the rear view mirror. He must have had an interesting ride.
Luckily I had the camera in the front with me so I could open the window and shoot him. He jumped away into the dark when Graham tried to move him to the plants so we don't know where he ended up. I'd like to think that we now have a frog out there somewhere.
I wanted a nice photo for our Christmas cards but it's so hard to get everyone looking at the camera with a self timer. Here's the best of the bunch.
This was another card idea
but this was the one we settled on, with some text added.
To finish here's a shot from our infrared security camera.
This is Alex lying in bed with his eyes open. It's dark in there but the infrared means we can see him. We've found, since watching him with the camera, that he will lie there with his eyes open like this for hours at night before he finally turns over and pulls the pillow over his head and goes to sleep. He also cuddles his teddy a lot and is very fussy about placing his teddy in the top right corner before he goes to sleep.
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