Thursday, February 22, 2007

Kitchen Remodel

Dave, Em's dad, came out for the last week and a half to help us work on the house. The primary project was redoing the kitchen. Wow is construction a lot of hard work and wow am I out of shape! Here is what we started with, the original 1950's kitchen!


Next step is demo:


Some electrical (ugh, I hate attics!) and Plumbing (Dave ripped out nearly every pipe in our house and put in nice copper supply pipes with filtration system and new PVC sewage pipes!).


Then some sheet rock. Oh ya, and a new door :)


And finally to the almost finished room.


Take a good look at this floor. It is beautiful. Em found some travertine at a blow out price (Same price as normal ceramic tile!) so Dave laid that for us. It really really looks nice!


Dave put in a tone of work and as you can see it came out really nice. Em was the master cabinet builder and overall designer. I just took a few pictures, tried to keep my screws going into the wall straight and played grunt. It was a lot of fun, though exceptionally tiring!

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Baby update

In spite of all the moving craziness we haven't forgotten about the baby ;) Em had an appointment last Friday where we got to see another ultrasound. The majority of the ultrasound was checking to make sure that all appendages and organs were are present. So far so good. After we get unpacked I'll post the ultrasound pictures.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Ice Storm

I've been coming out to MD to do work at ARL for the last 3 years or so. Several of the trips have been during winter snow storms, causing the entire area closes down (including canceling church). Every time there is a storm and stuff gets canceled I wonder why everyone out here is so afraid of the snow, till now. Earlier this week we got a few inches of snow with intermittent rain and hail. This combination turned the snow into fairly solid ice. I can walk around our back yard on top of 4 inches of snow and not leave any foot prints!

All this ice makes driving a real pain. Before we can even think of going some where we had to dig the 1-2 inches of ice off of the car windows, which takes about half an hour. After finally getting into the car we found that the roads, including I-95, were not fully plowed. It took them about a day after the storm ended to get things cleared up!

The rain didn't just freeze to the ground. Some of the windows on our house had some very pretty and elaborate ice crystal growths on them. The trees caught a lot of the ice on their branches and like to throw it at anyone who happens to walk by. Some of the trees that have lost all of their leaves look pretty with the sun bouncing off their ice covered branches. Combine the shimmering trees with smooth unbroken glistening white covering the ground and you get some pretty picture opportunities. I hope I can get out and take pictures next time.

Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it's off to MD we go!

It's official, our stuff is all packed up and will soon be making it's way across the country for delivery in a week and a half or so. Em, Joce, and I took a quicker route and were safely delivered yesterday evening, though our luggage failed to follow us. We will be living out of the hotel, maybe till our stuff shows up (not the lost baggate but the stuff being shipped), not sure yet.

Now that we are all here (Joce has been back in Draper for the past few weeks) the dogs have gone back to their normal behaviours, Zeek and Joce playing nicely together and Toby picking on them till they gang up on him. They are also enjoying play time at the post offices big field next to our hotel where boys chase each other around and Joce sniffs about. We can't wait till the fence gets put in at the house so they can spend as much time outside as their little paws can take before freezing. We close on the house later today.