A Special Visit (with an unplanned dilemma)!

Bean had some special visitors come during Memorial Weekend -- Mommom & Poppop! She got some extra attention and got to bond deeper with her grandparents.  She's ready for them to come back after baby sister comes!

While Steve's parents were here, we packed a lot in -- 2 trips to our favorite ice cream spot (which makes the preggo happy!), lawn work, grilled out each day, a trip to a new nature park, Trisha headed up all meal preps giving me a break, and even Scott and Ashley came up to spend some time with us! 

(I think someone has her Poppop wrapped around her little finger.  Who can resist Bean's sweet little, "play with me??" request?!)

(Even though Mommom was the official story/bedtime manager, Bean was able to get Poppop to read her one story before nap.)

(No trip would be complete without some art time with Mommom!)

(I have no idea where this game came from, but Bean found my sewing measuring tape.  She would have 2 people hold it across the room.  We were then told to make the tape bounce while she jumped next to it saying, "Jump on the ceiling, doo doo doo!"  She was entertained this way for HOURS. Seriously HOURS. She still sings her little chant and jumps around the house, but the tape measure is no longer needed.)

(Sporting her glasses and of course a stick on our little nature walk at the new park!)

We had a great weekend and are thankful that Steve's parents are willing and able to make the trek out our way to spend time with us.  We also appreciated their flexibility when our fridge went totally caput! We've had lots of issues with it, but usually a simple defrost and resetting the fridge fixes it.  Not this time.  We could get the freezer compartment back up and running, but the fridge portion temp would never fall below "danger zone".  So while they were here, they watched Bean and let us run to a store and fridge shop.  The new fridge is ordered, but won't get here until AFTER sprout arrives - yikes! In a cool twist of fate, friends of my parents were visiting them in IN and were able/willing to detour on their trip back home to drop off my college fridge! So now we are using a tiny fridge, but making it work!

(Never a good sign. I am super thankful that we have a big freezer in our basement! It became a lifesaver!)

(The fridge was definitely the most stressful part of the weekend for me.  After working in a dining court in college, I have food safety drilled into me.  Seeing the thermometer in the danger zone everytime I opened the fridge sent me into a panic.  We did purge a bunch of food and have had to limit what's in our small fridge now.)

(My college fridge, haha.  It definitely makes me feel like we live in Europe -- tiny fridge to only store essentials and multiple trips to the store for the week.  It sounds worse than it is.  It's kind of nice to have a reason to get out of the house a few times a week and is helping to pass time before Sprout comes.  But boy will I be happy when that new fridge comes!)

Refrigerator Repairman

I have now added a new skill onto my resume -- refrigerator repairman.

We've been noticing some temperature issues in our fridge over the past week.  At first I was just noticing that items in the drawers were freezing -- like the carrots and lunch meat.  So at first we thought the fridge temperature control was up to high, so we turned it down.  Stuff in the drawer was still frozen while items on the shelves were warmer than they should be.  So we turned the temperature back up and discovered there's a control knob for just the drawers.  We put it on the warmer setting, but didn't notice any change.

We didn't think much of it until a few days later when I went to get chocolate chips out of the freezer door.  Everything in the door had thawed!!  I immediately checked the meat on the shelves, but they were still frozen.  Weird.  I decided there was just an issue in the door and though I'd deal with it later.  That night, I went to get ice cream from out of the freezer, and the ice cream was all soft!  Ahhhhh!

So obviously, there were major issues going on.  I called up my parents -- I remember them having issues with their fridge before.  My dad gave me some advice and said I'd need to take the back panel off the inside of the freezer and see what was going on with the coils & fan.

I put all my freezer items into cooler bags, turned the freezer on the warmest setting, and started to dissassemble the freezer.  There was a layer of frost on the panel that I had to get rid of first.  Then once the panel was off, i discovered that the entire coil system was frozen over -- yikes!

(The entire coil system frozen over -- not a good sign!)

With hair dryer in hand, I began to melt all the ice.  I'd take breaks and just let the ice melt on its own.  After a couple of hours, all the ice was melted and I got the freezer all dried up.  My next task was to locate the fan and make sure it was working.  My dad said that generally, just taking off the one panel would reveal the coils and fan; however, that's not how our model worked.  After looking up the model number online (thanks dad!), I found a diagram and figured out I had to take out the ice bucket motor and another panel.  Eventually we found the fan (Steve jumped in and helped), and discovered it was working fan.  It's possible that it was frozen up too, but I don't know.  It was fine when we got to it.  

With the freezer all defrosted and dried, I began to put it back together.  I got all the screws and bolts in the right place and was almost done when I realized I had a random plastic piece left over.  I remember taking it out of the freezer, because it was just taped in, but I couldn't remember where it went.  So we made up a spot for it (the diagram I found online didn't explain its location well).  I put the ice maker back in and turned it on, then all this water started pouring through the system and got the freezer all wet.  Ugh.  This happened a few times until I gave up and turned the ice maker off. I cleaned up all the water, again.  

I got the freezer all assembled and turned back on.  Within an hour, it was back in business and cold again.  I restocked the freezer and made sure to not block the fan vent (highly likely that this was the issue).  I put a towel in the ice maker and turned it on.  If it overfilled with water as I thought it was doing, I would notice it frozen on the towel in the morning.  When I got up the next day, the towel was just cold and there was ice int he machine.  I'm guessing the system was too warm when I first turned it on.  Whew!

Now we just have to monitor the temperature and make sure it doesn't happen again!  It should also be noticed the the temperature in the fridge seems to be correct -- the stuff in the drawers are no longer frozen! Oh, and I left this out.  When we first moved in, we could get water out of the door, but recently it hasn't been working.  We've also had issues with the ice options not working in the door, but that fixed itself a few months back.  Well now, the water flows through the door again!  We have a fully functioning freezer and fridge -- yay!!  Thanks again dad for talking me through the problem!