New House Pics

We got a key today for the new house. I went over and took one load of junk and raked the leaves up in the front. Unfortunately this was as far as I got. It is supposed to snow tomorrow so I was hoping to get more done. I guess I will wait until it warms up to do the rest.

Siena in her new room with her light

Walkin closet in Siena's room

This is the entry way looking from the living room. The french doors directly behind go to the guest room. The front door is to the left and Siena's room is to the right as well as a bathroom.
The opening on the left in the this side of the front door is to the kitchen. The doors on the right are to closet space.

This is taken from the dining room. It shows the master room on the right, the living room with gas fireplace.

Obviously, the fireplace. I plan to do some sort of stone work with a nice wood mantle. I will have to decide. I just think that the fireplace could be much more of a center piece then it is now

This is the fromal dining room view from the fireplace. It has an opening through a slider to the outside deck.

This is not a very good picture. It is to show the view from the dining room to the kitchen with the living room to the right side.

This is a view of the kitchen from the garage entry to the kitchen. The door that is open on the left side is to the laundry area.

This is the other side of the kitchen. You can see the door to the outside deck here. There is also a door to the garage closer toward the camera on the right side.
This is a view of the master bedroom with a slider to the end that goes out to the back yard.

This is taken from the slider in the master room. The door in the rear is a walk in closet. To the right is the master bath and the left is the entry door that goes back to the living area.


This picture shows the vanity that is behind the wall in the picture above. This is taken from the closet. The shower, tub, toilet are to the left of this picture.
It seems like there is lots of wasted space with these two vanities.


This is the view of the shower, tub, toilet. The shower is behind the door. The tub is on the right and the toilet on the left.

That is all for now.

Thanksgiving

We had a nice trip to OR and enjoyed day after day of downpour. We had a great time all being together and even a night out for the middleaged without kids. We made it back over the mountains without having to put on the chains. I think next year I will try to get some winter tires though. It is supposed to snow here tonight. We went over to the new house to rake up some leaves and it was cold and spitting slush. We got the front done but there are a few bags of leaves to take care of next time. It should be fun moving in the snow.

New Birthday clothes from Alaska

Thanksgiving

Headed home

10 hours in the cow chair

Hail to the Losers!

So as predicted right here.....Michigan didn't quite win against Ohio State but they only lost be three and if you figure in the home field advantage which is typically good for three points they were right there. I am not sure what happened to the defense except to say that that ran into Ohio States offense. It was a good game and they are both very good teams. I imagine if Uof M plays our little team (Boise State) in a bowl they will be slaughtered.
With the two kids I did not venture out to watch the game at a local pizza joint but hooked up the laptop to a pair of powered speakers and worked on raking leaves outside listening over the intenet so I could hear the bias of the Michigan announcers. The only bad part was when the game got down to the wire and Michigan scored and were planning a 2 point conversion to pull within 3 with mins left my 2 yr old did his favorite trick of hitting the shutdown button on the laptop. I did manage to get it back up before the game was over but did miss part of it. He got a little alone time in his room as I had just said, "Don't touch that............." as the computer faded off along with Michigans hope for a national title. maybe next year as they always say.

The Big Game

After 6 years in Michigan we can appreciate the strong rivalry of tomorrows game. I can't even guess what tickets were selling for this week. hang on let me check ebay.
OK I am back. It seems some goofball has 2 tickets with good view for $100,000 dollars. Obviously this is a little ridiculous. Most tickets are in the $1,800 to $5,000 range. I think this is the first time they have met as a #1 and #2. It has been a while since a #1 has met a #2. So it has been quite a buildup I am sure in SE Michigan and Northern Ohio. I must admit I have only listened to one Michigan game this year as I have been taken up with our own BSU #12 and it is not easy to find them broadcast on the internet. I will have to see if I can take in this game though especially since if BSU can't beat Utah State they don't deserve to be watched.

So if there wasn't even drama. The old crotchety coach of the Wolverines that made the rivalry what it is when he left OSU to coach for Michigan died during a pregame interview. He has had a long hisotry of cardiac issues since a heart attack the night before the 1970 Rose Bowl. Earlier this week I listened to him being interviewed on a Michigan radio station over the internet. The TV people have to love what this ads to the hype. They have Bo and Woody (ledgendary OSU coach and mentor of BO) coaching from on high. It is a little goofy to me but it should be a great game. As a Michigan fan I don't think I would go if you gave me the $100,000 dollars because when Uof M beats OSU in Columbus it is the last place I would want to be. So all I have to say is GO BLUE.

Home Alone.

I had a busy day today. I think it all worked out ok but the start of the day seemed like a bad dream. Because "The Wife" (my mothers favorite moniker) was away in Nashville at a conference it was my pleasure to wake the kids up, get them dressed, hair styled and out the door by 7am so I wouldn't be late for work. We were almost out the door on time when I realized that my keys were not where I always put them.

This is an aside so I am am typing

it here. I am one of those

people that has a place for things

I make sure that I put things in

their place and I am not forever

looking for things like so one else in

my marriage. Anyway, the good

thing is that my stuff is where

it is supposed to be 99.8% of the

time. The problem is that the .2% of

the time it is not there I know I

am in trouble. So back to our

scheduled story.

So, I start to panic. I only have one set of keys. My wife is 1928.65 miles away with the second set.

Sorry another aside

I won't go into what happened to

the backup set of keys. I will just

say refer to the aside and you can

probably guess which member of

the household put them in a special

place where they haven't been seen

for the last 3 months.

I start looking around just in case I had put them elsewhere which was not likely. As I am looking i have a fuzzy memory from the night before. i had been on the phone with our realtor and we were trying to work out some house issues. i remember a couple of little munchins getting into my bag. They had my phone, wallet, and oh no I think maybe ......................the keys. I then take all the kids out to the car just in case they might be there. No such luck. We all go back in to search. 4 yr old daughter not being too helpful. "Dad I don't know where we put them." I check my pants pocket no such luck. I try to look around all the rooms encouraging the kids to find them. 2 yr old son is walking around saying "Daddy keys Daddy keys" over and over again. He is also not being to helpful as he is rummaging in some toys and then I look over at him and he is clutching a little handful of "Daddy keys". I had no hope that he would have it in his little brain to remember where he had put them and that he wouldn't be tempted by various toys when it came to the job of finding the keys. Life was good again and off we rushed to daycare and work where we made it on time.

I couldn't resist

The New House

So after 6 months of looking at houses this is what we have decided the bank should buy for us. It is not perfect but no house is. We like the location and think we can stay here for quite a spell. There is quite a bit of updating to be done. I am thinking about having one of those fundraisers where the donors get their name on a plaque to be displayed in the house (at least we will hang it up when we know you are coming over for a visist). The bigger the donation the bigger the plaque. We have grand plans but these plans I am sure will easily outspend the budget. The good thing is that because it needed updating we could afford the house. Now we just need to save and do projects one by one. It should be fun and give one a sense of accomplishment. So if any of you have any specialities in the construction business and have some spare time to visist your old friends just bring your checkbook, credit card, and experience and we will provide the free lodging, food , and entertainment. We look forward to your visits.

Backyard if not obvious
Living Room

Dining Room - we are thinking of staying with the same motif

Pool

Yes it has a pool. Just not on the property but down the road in the sub. There are also tennis courts and some other stuff we will pay for and likely not use enough to justify our HOA fees.

Happy Birthday to Two!

We had the big party on Sunday. It involved a fair amount of kids and adults. There was lots of food and it was lots of fun. It was pretty low stress actually. The other stressful part that was moving in the shadows of the whole weekend was bidding on a house. We invited our realtor to the party and she brought another counter for us to sign. Hopefully it all goes through. I will post more later. This post is about Birthdays not new houses.

The present opening was pure bedlam. There were a dozen kids running around. There were multiple kids opening presents and none of them were the birthday kids and no one knew what presents were for who and from who but no one got upset and everyone had a good time.

Tarzan or Flashdance?

I am not sure why this has been the popular look for the last 3 days but here it is. A nice touch with the bowl tucked under the arm like a sailor's cap.

Now this looks like a good deal

As a european car enthsiast I subscribe to European Car. I don't recall how much I paid for they inital subscription but I was pretty happy to get this renewal notice in the mail. It seems like a good deal to me so I wrote up a check and sent it out. I suppose there is a good chance that for 0$ for 2 years I am likely to get 0 magazines but since the postage was paid I don't care.

Some of the things we do when mommy is not around

Here we have a time honored tradition of riding the vacuum cleaner when Daddy is home and cleaning the floors. We have an idea that we might be in trouble if some one else in the household finds out. They look like best of friends here but just 30 seconds earlier we were talking about how to succeed in conflict resolution as my daughter wanted to ride on the front of the vacuum and not the back. With a seasoned mediator they resolved there conflict and look to be happy as two clams riding a vacuum cleaner.

Just a few kid funnies that I haven't gotten on tape but have enjoyed none the less.

Daughter: "Mom can we go to Chukar Cheese for my birthday."I suppose there are chukars in Idaho but I don't think my daughter has any idea what a chukar is.

Also we have been studying questions for gospel meeting which is always fun with an almost 4 yr old.

Some of the questions and the responses (thankfully only in practice so far):

1. Who is the mother of Jesus? The answer of course is Mary.

To help her remember we suggested that she remember the name of her good friend in Michigan (Mary)
Unfortunately she remembered her friend Kaitlin instead.

2. Who is the father of Jesus? The answer of course is Joseph.

My daughters answer is close but not quite - "Jerry"

3. Where was Jesus born? Bethlehem

No problems there.

4. Where did Jesus grow up? Nazareth

This was a little tricky to explain that he was born in Bethlehem and moved to Nazareth the best way to explain seemed to be to make the comparison between our move from Michigan to Idaho.
So the answer for "Where did Jesus grow up?" Yes indeed, Boise, Idaho.

I will try to get some recordings of the kids butchering the english language.

Halloween

This year we decorated pumpkins and here is how they turned out. We went over to some friends for pizza and candy and trick or treating. Here are the kids.