I guess I didn’t mention in the last post that Ellie’s middle name (Noel) was because she was a Christmas present to the kids (yes, I know it was July, but we explained to them that she was part of their Christmas present). I still find myself tearing up from time to time. I think the worst part for me is that I wasn’t here. I was in DC at SANSFIRE, which was a lot of fun, but that meant I wasn’t here and didn’t really have a chance to say goodbye. Well, I guess it must be real because I just brought her ashes home.
On a brighter note, we have a functioning pool again. The pump broke the night before I left. Fortunately, the water has been just about perfect this year, so we just shocked the pool a couple of extra times while we waited for the new pump to arrive. It got here on Monday, I got home on Tuesday, but didn’t feel like doing anything about the pool, I was still trying to deal with Ellie not being in the house. Yesterday, was pretty warm, but they were calling for rain, so I figured it was a better idea to try to mow the lawn after work. This morning (I took part of the day off, since I was in class Saturday and Sunday last weekend at SANSFIRE), Shane and I finally got under the deck and disconnected hoses (trying not to lose too much water), pulled the old pump out, put the new one in and reconnected hoses. The water is flowing again and should clear out the cloudiness (which really wasn’t too bad and there was no live algae that needs to be dealt with) in about 3-4 hours.