Weekend with Cousins and Solar!

On Sunday, we went over to Marie and Michael's house so Lauren could play with Michaela while Mariah was over at a friend's house for a play date. Lauren spent the time with Michaela working on their "perla" bead projects, building a Christmas tree from gingerbread cookies and playing games on Marie's new Kindle Fire. After Mariah got back from her play date, she joined in with Michaela and Lauren.

We also went out to dinner at the local Chinese restaurant in the strip mall out by the freeway near Marie and Michael's house. It was a bit of a surprise, as a lot of stores have either closed or changed hands in that strip mall, a sure sign of the poor economy over the last few years. The Chinese restaurant itself has changed hands, changing from a restaurant called "Chili Pepper" to one now called "Delight Garden". While we didn't think the new restaurant was as good as the previous one, the food was okay, and they went to the extra trouble to make Lauren's favorite dish, even though it wasn't on the menu, a dish that is a combination of tofu and shredded pork. They didn't have the right "firm tofu", so instead used deep fried tofu for the dish. Lauren didn't mind, and ate it just the same.

After dinner we went back to Marie and Michael's house and ate the gingerbread Christmas tree for dessert, which was actually pretty good. I helped Michael get his home theater system working again (it seems to have lost its marbles in some previous power outage and needed a reprogramming of channels). Meanwhile Lauren got dressed in borrowed PJ's and brushed her teeth. Afterwards we did the drive home, where Lauren fell asleep immediately.

I let Lauren stay up late an Aunt Marie's house since Monday was a holiday for her and for Lauris, MLK day. They stayed home, while I went into the office. On Tuesday, I stayed home as the solar installers were back at our house to put the panels in. The solar installation had actually started two weeks ago, but they had to stop after realizing we hadn't been approved for the solar rebate with the utility company, and we hadn't had our energy audit (which I didn't know we needed). Our rebate is now approved and we've had an energy audit, which showed we're actually about right for energy usage given the number of appliances/computers we have running in the house.

They weren't able to finish getting all the panels up on Tuesday, so the work continues today Wednesday, and then tomorrow Thursday and the day after Friday, the electrician will be over to hook up the entire system. We were told to expect a power outage on Friday as everything is cut over. After that we have to get an inspection with the city, and assuming that passes, the utility has to come and replace the electric meter with one that is "two-way" and allows us to send electricity back to the utility from the solar system. All this is expected to be completed in about a month from now, and then we'll be live with our solar system.