McPeak's

The latest

2009-12-04T11:13:00.000-08:00

This has been a busy year!!! February we bought a house(Yikes)! At the time, we were so excited that we could afford a house, and excited that we wouldn't have to move again, and we could paint the rooms any color we want, you know, the important stuff.

Who knew we would have bought the money pit of a house! Let me just tell you all of the things we have run into:

Remove all flooring(Carpet, no problem: Tile in the living room, PROBLEM). It took about a day and a half to remove all the tile!!! I don't reccomend doing this on your own if you can afford it!
The sub-floor was mostly good. Our bedroom sub-floor was damaged and had to be replaced.
Put in laminate flooring throughout the house besides the kitchen and bathrooms.
Master Bathroom was un-usable. Mixture of being gross and the plumbing was bad.
Back wall of house (Ben's Room and our bedroom) was completely ruined by moisture. The dry-wall literally caved in when we put the smallest amount of pressure on it.
We started to smell something "funny" outside, and it seemed to come from under the house(Crawl Space). Sure enough we had a pipe that got a hole and proceeded to leak. Luckily it wasn't from the toilets, just the dishwasher/sink/washer. I had to crawl under the house with a shop vac and extension hose to suck out all the water. Not to mention the million or so mosquito larva that came along with it. Pretty disgusting.
When the summer hit, we realized that the air was on, but it wasn't cold. So, come to find out, the inspector failed to notice that compressor was completely missing, and the whole air conditioner was not working properly. So, new air conditioner.
Now that the air was working, I was walking down the hall and heard a, "drip, drip, drip." I love hearing that noise where I'm not supposed to, I opened the furnace door, and found the air conditioner condenser was not hooked to a pipe, but just dripping into the back of the furnace closet. That was pretty exciting. So, the water went into the flooring and buckled the sub-floor and ruined our new flooring we put in!
We found a live 220 wire in our backyard sticking out of one of the basement vents that was previously used for a hot-tub. They didn't bother to disconnect the wiring, they left it for someone else to discover. This caused our dryer to not work properly, and we had to have the whole thing rewired from the electrical panel to the dryer itself. Pretty exciting.
Our back fence was about to fall down, I took off a couple of the fence boards and the posts just fell over. We found trampoline springs, a Christmas tree holder, security bars and many many more interesting things behind this falling fence. It was like a dumping ground for our neighbors and the previous residents of our house. Doesn't that sound nice?
The most recent of our transgressions was our garage door opener. We got home from Thanksgiving, pushed the button to close the garage door, got to the living room and heard the beautiful sound of something crashing to the ground. That's right, the garage door opener fell to the ground. The previous owner, when attaching the opener, decided not to attach it to studs, just the drywall. They had about 15 screws in the ceiling, but not attached to anything significant. Go them!

There might be more, but honestly isn't that enough to understand how much "crap" has happen to us because of this house.

Besides the house, Ben just turned 2, whoa, and Jess is loving her job and is up for a raise. Life is moving along, and we have been dealing less and less with problems with our house, and more and more of things we really want to do with the house.

We are excited about our future, and loving life as parents!

Visit my facebook page to check out any of the latest pictures and thanks for dropping by!

Today...

2008-10-10T12:54:00.000-07:00

So, we are sort of still looking for a house. I posted a blog a while ago with a picture of a house that we thought we were going to get. Turns out we didn't.

So here is an updated picture to reflect that!

When we make another offer on a house, then I'll put up another picture. Hopefully I won't have to cross it out.

I don't really want to write any more.

Life as a parent

2008-10-08T12:09:00.001-07:00

So, it's been 10 months with a child, sometimes it's overwhelming. Most of the time it's wonderful. All of the time it's busy.

The biggest news of our family's life is our recent weight loss. Jess and I are on the unofficial Weight Watchers plan. It's unofficial because we don't go to any of the meetings, we just keep each other accountable. So far, both of us have lost 15lbs each! It's working out.

We recently got some family pictures taken, and they turned out very nice. Ben has a nice mark on his forehead from bonking into a chair. He wasn't very happy about it, but quickly turned into the ham he is for the pictures.

Here is the entire immediate family. My brother Steve and sister in Law Amy, my niece and nephew Macie and Mark, Mom and Dad, then us on the right. That picture is taken in my parents backyard, pretty nice looking huh! It's fun to go over there and just sit on their dock, look at the ducks and watch my dad not catch fish. Good times.

Over all I would say my son is great! Jess and I are having a great time loving him and it seems he is having a great time with it too!

The latest

2008-08-28T10:59:00.000-07:00

Well, the last time I "blogged", I said that we bought a house. Well, it looks like I jumped the gun a bit. The house we were looking at turned out to not be exactly what we wanted. The bank made a counter offer that just wasn't to our liking, and on top of that, someone decided to live in the house from the time we saw it for the first time, and when we went back to look at it. They did a little damage and the bank wouldn't fix it. So, all that being said, we withdrew our offer.

So, we have made a new offer on a new house. It's a better house, about the same size, a little more to offer, and a little lower in price. So, we're waiting for a response for that one.

Things with the fam are still great, Ben is beginning to speak to us in a not so clear language, but he is definitely certain of what he is saying. It's very cute, and loud. He has said momma, and dadadada. That's pretty exciting.

2008-07-30T16:42:00.000-07:00

So, apparently there are those who blog, and those who don't. I have been informed that I am the latter of the two. With that motivation I now enter into the loving world of "those who blog".

Alright, Benjamin is growing up pretty fast! He's just about 8 months old, and is still very happy, very smiley, is starting to really talk. Mostly he says "blah, blah, blah, blah" Not kidding, those are his actual words. I think he is mocking Jess and I and thinks we have nothing real to say.
It's pretty funny!

Other news...
yup, we bought a house. It's not big (1100 sq. feet), it's not wonderful (banked owned and needs a little work), but it's livable, and more importantly, it will be ours. We're getting all of the paperwork done over the next several weeks (so excited about the paperwork), and our goal is the 27th to move in! We have already started making plans for upgrades, and for paint, but we'll have to see how far the little money we have will go. It's pretty exciting though, and we are definitely buying at the right time. It's hard to get any lower than $124,900 for a 3 bed 2 bath house in California.

So, Ben's still growing up, and we're buying a house. That's all my news for now.

till next time...

New House

2008-03-01T14:58:00.000-08:00

So Jess and I have been married now for almost 3 years now. We have moved 6 times. That is ridiculous. We are once again moving, and saying that we will have moved 7 times in 3 years time sounds pretty bad, I can honestly say that we are going to be in the place a while (hopefully). It's an actual house (not an apartment), and we are getting the deal of the century! We have never lived in a house, and now that we have a little guy, it just makes sense for us to move that direction. Since we are broke, we haven't been able to think about buying, but this is the next best thing.

We'll have our own garage, a back yard, a drive way, it's sounds silly, but we aren't used to all of that luxury. It's pretty amazing.

I had to throw Ben's picture in there, I would have put a picture of the house in there, but alas I do not have one.

...

Cute

2008-02-16T17:21:00.000-08:00

Well, I know I am a bit biased (sp?), but he's probably the cutest baby ever! I mean, geez, he smiles all the time, sometimes when he wakes up from his nap, he just hangs out in his bed and is content. He's fat like his daddy, it's great! I am excited for him to talk! There is a lot he wants to say I can tell. Soon enough I guess.

Plus, he helped us get a decent tax return! Yahooooo!

bye...

His first phone conversation

2008-01-26T17:21:00.000-08:00

So, I haven't seen my wife or son in about 2 days and 8 hours (approximately). So, I have been spending my time working and watching T.V. the way I want to. It has some perks, but I just want them to be here.

Anyway, I called Jess (who is visiting family in Washington by the way), and I could hear Ben in the background crying and really missing me. I told Jess to put the phone by his ear and I would have a word with him. So when he had the phone to his ear, I gently but firmly spoke to him about the times he should cry and the times he shouldn't cry. Well, I am pretty sure that it didn't matter what I said, however, he got real quiet when I started talking. Jess said that he looked around for a second because he could hear my voice but couldn't see me. Then he started crying again. It was pretty neat.

So, that was Ben's first phone conversation.

talk to you all later.

We're happy, but tired.

2007-12-18T20:47:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it's nice to have him be a little noisy at night. It's nice to know that he's alive. I get a little paranoid thinking that he stopped breathing just because I haven't heard anything in a while. But, then my thought of enjoying his noises at night has a fine line. Once he makes enough noises that it keeps me awake for half of the night, then it isn't as cute, and I think I get too much reassurance that he is still breathing. Typically he is pretty good about sleeping, right now getting about 3-4.5 hours of sleep during the night, but last night he had some stomach issues and couldn't really get settled. So, as you probably know, it was really fun!

Anyway, he's still amazing. At the end of the day we have an adorable, amazing baby boy. He is holding his head up already. I have no idea at what age they are supposed to be doing stuff, but I feel at two weeks if he is holding his head up and looking at my face, that's pretty amazing!

So, there are other things going on in our lives, for instance, we are still broke, living on love isn't as fun as it sounded in the beginning. I am currently working two jobs, one as a fitness trainer (don't worry about the two chins in the picture above) and one for the church Jess and I go to. I enjoy both equally, and hope to continue both for a while.

That's all for now. I hope you are all doing well.
Chris Jess and Ben

Ok, so he's cute...

2007-12-08T10:24:00.000-08:00

But seriously, does he have to stay up until 3 am.

He is definitely the most amazing kid ever born. Trust me on this one, it's fact, I googled it. It's not just me being partial as his dad, it's a fact (Soon to be well known).

This morning we all woke up at around 9:30, he was a little fussy. Which reminds me, why is that when you have a child, you start using words like, oochoo boo, and, "He's a little tooty.", and fussy? I think it's funny that our words have changed, and he still can't talk, much less understand what we are saying. I don't mind all of it, but I just thought it was interesting...

my first blob...i mean blog

2007-12-06T23:11:00.000-08:00

Hi there friends.

Well, it's December 6th, and my new baby boy is 3 days old. He's grown up so much in the 3 days we've known him. It's an interesting thing having a baby. Everybody says it, but it's really true, having a baby changes your life! So far, all he does is cry, sleep, eat, pee and poop. However, he has smiled a couple of times, so that's nice. Sometimes I feel a little helpless as a dad at this stage of things. I can't really feed him, I barely know how to change his diaper, and my facial hair bothers him just a bit.

All in all, he is wonderful. Jess and I couldn't have asked for a better pregnancy, the birth was a little long, but in the end we had a good experience. We feel very blessed to have a beautiful boy who doesn't seem to get bothered by much. He's pretty laid back (when he gets what he wants)!

So, for those who don't know, my wife Jessica and I were married in May of 2005, and have loved every minute of it. We are living in Elk Grove, California (it's near Sacramento). I work as a fitness trainer, and I work part time for our church. It's a pretty good gig. Jess works for a company called Cardinal health, and is a operations coordinator. Although she calls herself the assistant regional manager. She's kind of a big deal. We love our life, and we consider ourselves blessed continually.

More to follow...