Our new TV

Saturday morning I went downstairs to turn cartoons on for the kiddies. As soon as the TV clicked on, it made a horrible, high-pitched sound, but had no picture. Not even snow. As I kept saying to Daddy, I hate the fact that we have to say we NEED a new TV. But since I homeschool using a DVD program, we need 2 TVs--one upstairs for school and the one downstairs to watch. We could have moved the upstairs TV to the downstairs, but then C would have to do school downstairs. We have tried that before and it is NOT fun. We could have gone out and bought a small TV/DVD combo, but they usually are not really worth it. These are all the ideas that we discussed Saturday morning while trying to figure out what to do. Buying a new TV is fun, but NOT when you have to buy one. We had planned on buying a new one next year with tax return money, but that got moved up a year.

We got started shopping kinda late cuz Daddy researched TVs and stands online. We finally headed out and had to stop at Wal Mart first. Finally we got to Best Buy and picked out what we wanted. After paying (gasp!) we loaded (stuffed) everything into the van and headed home. I was picturing the back hatch popping open on the way home and that very expensive TV falling out on the road. But we made it home.

Now the trick was unloading the old TV cabinet and finding a place for it in the garage. And finding a place for everything that was on it as well as the old (huge) TV. Oh, in the midst of all this, we had a guy from church come to look at our outlets in the kitchen. Three outlets don't work-at all. Frustrating. When I make coffee, I have to move my coffee pot to an outlet that works. He was here for about an hour and couldn't figure it out. He'll have to come back later this week.

After he left, Daddy and I started working on the new TV stand. We put a movie on for the kids upstairs, to keep them happy and out of our way. K ended up falling asleep because she missed her nap. Well that just made her grumpier once she woke up. We took a break from building and gave the kids baths and put them to bed. Daddy and I worked on that darn stand til probably 11. Then we had to hook up the TV to all the components and try to straighten up some of the cords (I still have more of that to do). We finally finished around 1 am and spent about 30 minutes enjoying it.

Daddy also bought some kind of a HD antenna (I don't want to pay for the HD package of Dish just yet). We have spent the entire weekend trying to get that thing to work. I think we will be taking that back and just waiting for HD through Dish. But let me tell you, when it is working and you get a picture in HD, it is BEAUTIFUL!

Now that it is all set up, it is nice. I just need to finish hiding cords and get a nice lamp for behind the couch. I really like how it all looks. It's so streamlined and not cluttered. We will have much fun, I am sure.

Here is a picture of the old cabinet that Daddy and I moved (anybody want to buy a TV cabinet?) and then there is a picture of the after--the new look in our living room.