How Redneck Are We?

So funny story. And it started much too early this morning. My son decided for some unknown reason that 6:15 was a reasonable time to get up. Usually when he gets up earlier than I'm ready, we go downstairs, turn on the Disney Channel and he plays while I veg and try to wake up. So that was the plan. Until I turned on the TV. It came on, made a loud pop and went out.

Our television is finally dead. I guess I can't really complain though. It has to be at least 15 years old. Travis bought it after he was done with college and brought it to our marriage with him. We've actually been talking about getting a newer TV for years, but as long as this one still worked, it wasn't high on the priority list. It broke the first or second year of our marriage and cost us $350 to fix, so we made the decision back then that if it ever broke again we'd not fix it, but rather invest in a new television.

So today I went TV shopping. Needless to say that after visiting six stores, spending hours online and getting contradicting information from every available source, I'm feeling only slightly overwhelmed. Still I think I found the one that we're going to go with and the place where we'll make the purchase. I've discussed it all with Travis and he seems to be on board with the decisions I've made. (Of course, if he were here it could be different, but since he's not, he doesn't have much choice really.)

At any rate it's going to be at least two to three weeks before we get the cash together to pay for it. (And yes, I'm insisting that we do this on cash not credit. And naturally this happened when we just returned from vacation, so we don't have a lot in the way of extra funds lying around.) So in the meantime I went out to Travis's travel trailer (which is sitting in our driveway making us look quite redneck) and stole his little TV.

And this picture is what our living room looks like now:

I know pretty bad, right. It doesn't really help that Travis has this very expensive surround sound system, but he's never bothered to get wall mounts for the speakers, so they all just perch on top of the TV. I think when the guys come to install the new TV I'm going to inquire about the wall mounts and see how much more they would charge to hang the speakers. But hey, at least the little TV works for now and if all goes according to plan, we'll have a nice new one in a few weeks.

On a happier note, our family photos finally got here and the frame shop is done with them. I know you can't see them very well, but they turned out fabulous. My father-in-law came over tonight to help me hang them. So that's at least something that looks nice.

Hope you're all having a great day!