A NEW "Kitchen" and appliance!

August 18 turned out to be a good and bad day for us!  The "good" part was attending our great-nephew Ethan's 4th birthday party, and thanks to the generosity of our niece and nephew, Amy & Chris Silvertooth, we brought home a new KITCHEN....

....Needless to say, our grandchildren LOVE it!  They already had "playfood" here and a decorated cardboard box for an oven (that Cailyn used for pretend baking)...but now, they are really "in business" with this cute kitchen, complete with pretend phone, blender, refrigerator, cd player, stove and oven!  THANKS, Chris & Amy!

The "bad" part of that Saturday was when we discovered that our 14-year old refrigerator was no longer working...(see story next paragraph!) I secretly hated this particular appliance because of its design.  I'm not a fan of "side-by-side" refrigerators, but we live and learn, and 14 years ago, it was the "latest and greatest"!  Vince blames me for the breakdown (not really!) as I had been profusely grumbling at the fridge just one day earlier, as I was trying to find things in the freezer and make room for new frozen food items!  This is never easy in a side-by-side, and he thinks the fridge "heard me and called it quits!"

After a pizza dinner with our children Saturday evening, I got out the ice cream for dessert...OR shall I say, we ate "ice cream soup" for dessert!!  The realization hit quickly, and Vince ran to the store for dry ice and blocks of ice.  This is where I then became grateful for the FOUR ice chests that my husband cannot part with...because we did have room for most of our food, and were able to salvage almost everything.  I sent home some fresh and frozen foods with our children...and Jen stopped on Sunday night to buy MORE dry ice to get us through Monday with ice chests in the kitchen.

We shopped for a new refrigerator on Sunday after church. We went to three different stores...and Spencer's delivered this new Whirlpool model on Monday afternoon! 

We couldn't wait to "move in" on Monday evening...and I LOVE IT!!  Even though the cubic feet measurement of the two appliances is the same, we now seem to have more storage...with the freezer drawer on the bottom and the "frenchdoor" refrigerator on top, (minus the water/ice dispenser in the door!)  Our very first refrigerator in our old house on Kiva in Mesa was 20 years old and still running when we sold the house and moved in 1998 to Gilbert. Sadly, the salesman says the average life of today's refrigerators is 7 or 8 years....that's all!  "They just don't make things like they used to!"  which is so true!