It's Been Fun Chester Churchill

Remember the post on Marlene's names for Spencer? Well, using that as our inspiration we named our car Chester Churchill. It's been a while since our car was named as a male so we've enjoyed the change. Chester was a very inexpensive car and we knew we were driving a narrow line in purchasing him. Chester is a 1990 Nissan Pintara and has a few quirks that we quickly discovered.

Firstly, Chester is losing energy...quickly. When we bought him we knew from the mechanic who did the inspection that his battery wasn't great. Knowing this we bought a new battery and just kept it in his boot until we needed it. This ended up being fairly soon as Spencer was switching in the new battery after a week or so. Sometimes after we would run his pathetic battery dead we wouldn't be able to get him started again. On one occasion we called our home teacher over to come give us a boost, and after a few minutes our car started. We left him running for 20 minutes and figured that would probably do us. Spencer drove into our garage and turned it off, but out of curiosity decided to try starting him again right away and nothing. Not even a sputter.

Following Dad's advice we got our car down to a shop that's just at the end of the block to test our alternator "ya, it's fine" but we never found out what fine meant and we're thinking that maybe fine meant, it's 20 years old...what do you expect? We have finally found our method for Chester's madness. We bought a battery charger and always have a spare battery in the boot (he's Australian) we frequently have to swap out our battery with the charged one before we can go on our way making sure to charge up the old one before our next trip.

Chester screams sometimes. Even though he's 100% Aussie, he hates roundabouts and tells us in a few ways. If we're steering a little sharp around a roundabout he screams in agony. Tires screeching with all roundabout turns and certain other curves in the road. He definitely gets us noticed. The other way he lets us know he hates roundabouts is by throwing a tantrum. Because of his lack of power, he can't handle any form of AC unless he's at full throttle. Therefore, if the AC is running and we slow down for a round about he decides to hold his breath. The other day we were on our way to a convert baptism and he decided to hold his breath right in the middle of the roundabout and then nothing. Car stalled, won't start, middle of the road. I hop out in my skirt and start pushing our car over to the side of the road but people aren't stopping so we can get over to the shoulder--THANKS!! Finally a nice guy in a big van blocks all the traffic so we can get across and by that time a nice man and his son had pulled over and helped us get the car over to the side pronto. We got Chester to the side, offered a few words of apology and he started right up. The guy gave us an extremely confused look before going on his way. My apologies to everyone who saw up my skirt.

As Chester's getting up there in years, not all of his connections are great. There's this mysterious wire leading from the battery that sometimes decides it doesn't want to be connected anymore. You turn the key and nothing...now some would think the battery is dead, but no no that is not the case with Chester. He's just teasing you. The best way we've found to flush out the problem is to flick on the lights and then start wiggling the wires and as soon as the lights come on, the car has power and you can now start trying to start the car. I had a 'proud mechanics daughter' moment when we were at the Williams house and I couldn't get Chester going. after fiddling wires and getting nothing I swapped out the battery and tried again, with nothing. Natalie came and sat in the drivers seat to try while I fiddled and I never got it to work. I decided to call for someone to give Ros and I a ride home so I slammed the hood and voila, that's all he needed. Thanks Nat for the inspiration to try again. Small victory for me though --I successfully swapped batteries!

Chester's last quirky secret is that he has a tattoo...a tramp stamp actually. A surprising number of people here buy chair covers for their cars, and Chester's last owner didn't recognize his gender and bought him chair covers with a big tramp stamp on them. Don't mock Chester, this is something he had no control over. But with all our fun times, it's come to the end and we need to sell Chester. If anyone's interested, he's only $650, and you get a car full of personality.  Love to all.

Crazy Neighbours

Last night Spencer and I were laying in bed watching Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (the marathon has started) and I hear our downstairs neighbour lady come home from a date. Spencer is mostly asleep at this point but mutters answers if I ask him something. She walks into her apartment and I hear her SLAM the door. They also have tile in their main area and I hear her stamping her foot, not walking heavily, standing in one spot and repeatedly stamping her high heel on the tile. And then she starts in with the screaming! Not just fighting, screeching at the top of her high pitched lungs. She's dropping f-bombs left and right and yelling, and stomping. After about 5 minutes of this I stop the movie and walk over to our bedroom window to try and have a listen (we're right above them so they couldn't see). I hear our other neighbours start closing their windows and I start feeling legitimately afraid for her roommate (male) whom I think she's yelling at. After debating calling the police because I feared for his safety and that of the entire apartment building she slowed down to a normal fighting voice. Spencer and I leaned on the windowsill and listened for a few minutes as she complained again and again that he was a ____ loser and they didn't have money for _____ food and how she couldn't eat that _____ food because all the _____ toxins and _____ would kill her. After about a half hour beginning to end I couldn't hear what she was saying anymore and went back to the movie.

This morning I saw her leave for work and ran to the balcony to see if he was there (they're both pharmacists at the hospital) but she was walking alone and looked kind of sad. We checked to make sure there were no blood splatters on the windows and then decided that everything must be ok. We'll keep an eye out for him though, because that was the worst blow up I've ever heard.

Little Lizard

Out on the balcony I have a little potted garden consisting of cilantro, basil, and some snapdragons (purple). Sometimes when I go out to water them I see a little lizard climb out of the pot and scurry away.  I never thought anything of it until this past week I saw him in my living room. I had Spencer usher him outside and then I made sure to close our screen. Two days later he's back again climbing around our living room. I had Spencer catch him again and out he goes. The next day I seem him climb under our screen door and right under our carpet. After pulling up some of our carpet we couldn't find him and I just hoped that he wasn't squished under there and that our carpet would stink even more from rotting lizard. Yesterday while Spencer was on the phone I saw him in my living room again and after wrangling him around the whole living room I managed to get him out without even touching him. We decided that the next time we saw him we would remove him farther than the balcony so that maybe he'd take up residence somewhere else. This morning I follow Rosy out to the kitchen to get her some milk and I see him four inches up the wall trying to climb over our shoes. (all PETA people avert your eyes) Spencer caught him and walked outside and tossed him off of our balcony. We looked down and he wasn't moving, but then Rosalin's toy goes sailing over as that's what she thinks we're doing today. I slip on my shoes to go down and pick up her toy and I walk over to the lizard who scurries away. Hopefully to our neighbours garden. Here's a picture of a similar looking guy but I think ours was  2-3 cm longer.

Rosy Playing

Here is Rosy hiding on the back side of her porta cot.

Fall Photoshoot

Mom has a bunch of great pumpkins every year, and we had just gotten a bag of adorable clothes from Erin (thanks!) so of course the stars were aligned for another photo shoot, and then another and another. I think we got some really good ones of everyone involved! They got all mixed up, so don't expect any order. Also, I apparently have no filter so there are a lot!

Love to all.

Thanksgiving Monday

After the funeral there was even more family time to be had. And more pictures of course. 

We started with a sing along.

Which led to dancing.

And general tom-foolery. Why be normal?

Arm wrestling tournament then ensued...I don't know who won in the end, but I think everyone had fun.

What does a kitchen look like when there are that many families in a house? Well, first we line up the babies and just pour food across their trays. I think at one point there were four of these highchairs in the kitchen. The noise level can get pretty intense sometimes.

Love to all.