This House is for the Birds

Life at the house has been one big pain in the you know where.  Several months ago we began noticing the hardwood floor in our kitchen was warping.  We were unable to find the source of the water causing the damage.  Had the hardwood floor guy, a plumber, and a restoration guy take a look to no avail.
That was until a couple of weeks ago after taking off the cabinet doors under the sink and the toe kick to the dishwasher.  The sink had clogged (you gotta love home ownership) and Drano didn’t cut the mustard.  With the sink backed up what do you do in a busy house – you have to keep washing dishes.  So with a clogged drain the dishwasher can’t empty.
The dishwasher has this sensor, I have learned by reading the owner’s manual, that tells the dishwasher to stop putting water in the dishwasher when the water level gets too high.  Problem with our dishwasher is when it gets to that point it begins leaking water from the location of the sensor (not supposed to be an added feature of this sensor).  So very hot water is dripping onto the hardwood floors and providing the floor with lots of water to soak up in our dry climate.  Can’t wait to deal with the home owner’s insurance to try and get this taken care of!
Then about a week ago our wonderful refrigerator stopped making ice.  This may have been going on for months, but when it has been as wet and mild for so long you aren’t reaching for ice often.  Well we have lots of experience with this kind of thing.  In the six years of living in this house three major repairs have had to be made to the fridge that came with the house – fan was replaced, condenser was replaced, and thermostat was replaced.
A very helpful technicians from Famous Appliance Service spent several hours trying to find the cause of our latest predicament.  Turns out the fridge wasn’t rejecting any of its transplants (fan, condenser, thermostat) but rather bleeding internally (i.e. leaking refrigerant in the back wall).  It was time to, literally, pull the plug on this patient.
So off it went to be replaced by a new fridge.  Sorry Mark, GE’s employee discount couldn’t compete with a 4th of July sale at RC Willey.
The flip side of having lived here six years is our trees are now big enough for birds to consider taking up residence.  A robin made a nest in our front yard this spring.  We discovered this several weeks ago after hearing all the noise being made.  Looking at the nest now I am glad I don’t always bag my grass.  It made the work of building this nest easier because there was a lot of building materials close by.  Watching mother bird making innumerable trips back and forth to feed her three chicks has been a family hobby for the past couple of weeks.

Along with the robins are the visiting ducks.  Yes it has been that wet here in Utah!  Ilene and Hallie have named them Sparky and Violet.

Yesterday the robins left the nest.  One was in the flower bed around 8 am.  We were afraid this one had been pushed out so I put on a glove and tried to put it back into the nest.  Well I didn’t get a hold of it because it squawked and hopped away.  Mother robin was soon screaming at me.
The last of the chicks wasn’t ready to leave the nest and sat on the nest all day.  Here it is reluctantly considering whether to leave the nest (it is clearly too big). 

So while the kitchen is still a problem life is pretty good.