February snow melt

The snow has FINALLY melted and we are all back to our normal lives (ha!). I have had requests from many of you to show more pictures of the house. I promise it's coming. I looked through what I had and they are all pictures from when we were buying the house...meaning it's not our furniture. I will take pictures as I can and post them.

A picture of the front yard on a nicer day

Pippa walking along the driveway in the rain (with a paper umbrella)

We were pretty much snowed in through the weekend. I had a friend give me a ride to go grocery shopping on Saturday and we stopped by Les Schwab and picked up chains for both Dan and I. Dan ended up working all day Sunday. Remember when I said he was working at midnight on Thursday night? That didn't happen, he couldn't get his car out of the driveway. The snow was too deep - I think we got a little more than 12 inches or so. Anyway, he worked Sunday and I stayed home with Pippa. We did puzzles, cooked and just hung out. She's definitely not a fan of the snow either.

Here's a picture of our creek on Friday

The view from our front door after round 2

This weekend is Valentine's Day weekend. My dad is coming over for a visit and he will come with me when I take Liam to Parkour class on Saturday. Then he agreed to watch the kiddos so Dan and I could have a short date day/night. I think we will probably head to a couple of our local wineries for some tastings. If not, we will probably go to a movie. I know...we are a wild and crazy bunch. We have spent so much time with both kids recently (especially being snowed in) that it will be nice to just not have a child around for a few hours.

What else....Liam and I are running a 6k together on March 2nd. We ran the Shamrock Run last year but didn't make the registration cutoff for this year so we decided to do the Fort Vancouver 6k. I am happy it's closer than Portland and it's a smaller race, he should have a good time and I won't be as worried about losing him in the crowd.

We are having a "work party" at our house on March 1. About 20 of our friends are coming over to help us do some work. I promise to take before and after pictures. We plan to cut down a bunch of diseased and/or dead, unhealthy trees as well as carve out a few pathways in the yard so we are not constantly walking through the grass/mud. We are very thankful to have so many friends who have volunteered to help us do some major and much needed work on the outside. This should give us a great jumpstart for the gardening season and help a little more light get through to some areas of the yard that need it.

Dan got bumped from his crane operator position so he's doing something else now but he's not quite sure yet because he's training the person who bumped him! Interesting enough, the person that bumped him does not want that position so we are crossing our fingers that he will eventually get back there. It was a really neat gig for him and he really enjoyed it.

Our house is still for sale. Our agent has held a few open houses and has always had great feedback but no offers yet. We are kind of in limbo there, not sure what we will do. Our contract with her is 90 days so if we decide to sell still we will have to re-list. Otherwise, we have some friends that have expressed interest in renting the property in June. That could be helpful financially now and waiting another year to put the house on the market again may allow us to get a better price for it. Again, still not sure what we are going to do but we know what is meant to be will be.

We hope you are all doing well. There's not a lot else going on with us right now but as the weather gets nicer and the days get longer, we get really busy and I promise we will keep everyone posted on our happenings...and more pictures of the house soon!!!

February Snow

Good Evening everyone!

Today we got some insane snow!! Here are a few pictures I was able to snap before it got too dark out there. Dan's car was only parked for about 2 hours before I took these pictures. It has stopped for now but we are supposed to get another couple of inches tonight and another 2-6 inches on Saturday. Liam's school has already cancelled for tomorrow. It will be an interesting drive into work for sure. Dan is going in at midnight tonight so they can clean off all the switch boxes. He will work from 12-7 and be home during the day. It's a little change for him but I think he likes the variety.

Backyard snow

Gives you a good idea of the depth

Our driveway is in there somewhere...

Ironically, last weekend was so beautiful I took the dogs for a walk. Here is a shot of one of the side streets, now it's covered in snow!

Beautiful Saturday afternoon

We have discovered that one of our cats has gone missing. We have lots of coyotes around here and we think...well, we will let your imagination run wild. Anyway, we borrowed a trail cam from a friend at work and have been keeping an eye on the barn. One of the cats (although we never see him) IS still alive and around and regularly visiting the barn for food. We are very happy about that. Hopefully he will be a bit more friendly as summer approaches so we can cuddle.

Pippa has finished her antibiotic so she is doing much better. She still struggles with very sensitive skin and with the dry cold we have had, she had very chapped lips and some dry skin issues. We keep a humidifier in her room for the nighttime and it seems to help.

Liam at Saturday Parkour

Liam has joined an after school art club and is churning out some fun projects. The picture here is an oil pastel he did on his very first day! He loves art and has done really well this first semester in school earning a 3.667 GPA! Way to go Liam! Spring soccer will start up in April.

Oil pastel from art club

January and Sickness

I hope everyone is staying healthier than us out there!

Dan is finally home from two weeks in Missouri. He still has a cough but is feeling much better. While he was gone my dad came over quite a bit and helped me get the garage cleaned out and organized and we were able to organize some of the inside of the house as well.

Now that Dan is home, Pippa got sick. She has had a bit of a cough and a sniffly nose for a while now. Sunday/Monday she was running a pretty high fever (103) but we were able to keep it down with meds. I stayed home with her on Tuesday and she was back to "normal" on Wednesday. Unfortunately, Wednesday night she took a turn for the worse and I made a doctor appt for her on Thursday morning. They said she had a double ear infection that would not go away on it's own so she is on antibiotics now. Even after just the one day, she is doing SO much better.

On Monday, we got two new cats! Now that we have two barns, we wanted to get some outdoor only kitties to help control any rodent population. There is a program here called "barncat rescue" where they hook you up with someone who has cats they do not want anymore (who cannot be kept inside). Nancy came over to our house and left us her two Maine Coon kitties, Oliver and Davy. I'm surprised that Oliver is an outdoor kitty, he's very cuddly and he LOVES Pippa. Davy is a little more skittish though. They are still locked up in the barn as of today but tomorrow we will start letting them out during the day to explore. We kept them inside for almost a week so that they would know where their food is and hopefully continue to come back.

Oliver is in the back, Davy in the front

Liam started Parkour lessons last Saturday and he loved it. We will go back every Saturday that we have him while we can. Soccer starts in April so I wanted to keep him busy and active until then. The first semester of school is over for him and he starts all new classes on Monday. He is thrilled to be taking Art again.

I think that's about it for us. My dad is coming over again tonight and will go with me in the morning to paint a couple of rooms in the old house. Seems some of the paint was a little too off-puting for a few lookers so we are going to paint it a more neutral color in hopes that we get an offer soon. We will continue to remain faithful in our budgeting and donations in hopes that one day it will all come back and we will sell our old house so that we can focus 100% on our new home.

Go Seahawks!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone!

This one came in a little slower than others. Dan has been very sick over the last couple of weeks. He finally went to the doctor yesterday and they diagnosed him with sinusitis and bronchitis. They gave him FOUR prescriptions to help with the coughing, wheezing and pain. Hopefully he will start to feel better quickly.

We have the old house all cleaned out and cleaned up and it's finally listed for sale today! Please help send "quick sale" thoughts our way.
In the meantime, here are a few pictures of what we've got now. Our chicken ladies are very happy and we get between one and four eggs per day. We would like to get a couple more chickens soon and will need to expand the coop to do it.

The chicken coop

Our four ladies: Buffy, Big Red Chicken, Blackie and Zebra

 There haven't been a lot of sunny days since we moved in but we did catch this rather gorgeous shot. We have a LOT of trees so the view isn't of the sunset but we do get to see the colors. One day I will take the camera and walk down to the creek to show you the view from there, we love it!

Sunset view from the back deck

Almost TWO Years??!!

As I am sitting here on Christmas Eve I realized with a jolt that I still have a blog!! Apparently it's been close to two years since I have last posted. I am going to do my best to catch everyone up as much as possible then do what I can to keep it going.

Me:
I am no longer with the City of Vancouver, I took another position with Clark Public Utilities. I quickly realized that customer service isn't my niche so I applied for another position and got it! I am the administrative assistant for Fleet. I work with a great group of guys and my schedule is M-F 8am-5pm.

Dan:
Dan left his job and WaferTech after he accepted a position with BNSF. He has been there since May 2013. In July, he left the Air National Guard in favor of spending more time with family and staying on this side of the globe.

Liam (13):
Liam is well into his seventh grade year and is loving all of it. He still procrastinates a bit (don't we all?) but his grades have gotten better and he even received an award for Student of the Month! Since Dan and I are both working full time, Liam is home before/after school. He still spends about half his time with his dad.

Pippa (2):
Miss Pippa is fully potty trained now and we are having a blast with her. I'm astonished at her vocabulary on a daily basis. You can have a full "normal" conversation with her. She surprises me every day. Pippa is in daycare at Nancy's again (Liam's previous daycare) - she's like family to us. She misses Liam when he is gone and is annoyed with him when he is around. :-)

Our family has had some huge changes this year, 2013:
Dan's father, Dewey, passed away in January
We both started new jobs/positions in May
My grandmother, Florinda, passed away in July
We bought a new house (and moved) just last week!!!

We are fortunate enough to be able to afford both houses for while. Our hope is to clean up the "old" house and put it up for sale early in the New Year. Even if we make no money from the sale of the house, it will be so nice to not have to worry about it anymore.
We found a new house in Ridgefield still (same school district - I promised Liam) that is on acreage (4.45) and has chickens and a creek! We spent our first night there on Thursday and we are in love. We knew we wanted this house the second we saw it, it was perfect for our family.
We have been on a warpath to pay off all of our debt (starting last May). Most all of our debt is student loans, then we have my car and our homes. We have been plugging away as much as possible and are down about $20k in 6 months!

Pippa at our family photo shoot in October 2013

Liam at our family photo shoot in October 2013

Pippa and Liam swinging on the beach in Seaside

Big brother helping out his sister at the Esther Short Park fountain.

Okay, that was the quick and dirty update to bring you to where we are today.
This Christmas Eve my dad is coming to visit and we are having our big dinner. Dan is at home right now smoking a turkey and we will have scalloped potatoes, sweet potatoes, veggies, rolls and pie. Tomorrow we will open gifts and Liam will go visit with his dad. I hope to take lots of pictures of the kids, present opening, chickens and house to get everyone up to speed.

Where Does the Time Go?

I know it's been a long while since I posted and we have had so many family changes I don't even know where to start!

First, my job was cut from full-time (40 hours) to half-time (20 hours). While it may sound like I now have a ton of extra time on my hands...I don't. I'm busy looking for a full-time job and/or working to make our ends meet. We should be okay but I have a tendency to stress about money more than I should. We've made less than this before, had more debt and were fine. However, I have been able to claim a partial unemployment check and sell quite a few items on Ebay - who knew it was so easy?

Receiving his Arrow of Light before crossing over

In February, Liam crossed over to boy scouts and has been camping several weekends since. It's an entirely boy-run program so it's a big change for us. We are not allowed to tell them to do anything, they have to figure it out on their own. Hopefully it will help make him a more responsible person overall. He's really enjoying it too. Last week was his first band concert (he plays the trumpet) and the entire group sounded surprisingly well. Also last week, he had his "Math is Cool" competition and his school team took first place! My favorite part of all this is that these are activities he asked us to do! We never told him to do any of these, he wanted to do them. It makes me so proud.

First Place Team!

Miss Pippa has recently started walking, sort of. She takes a few steps here and there. With the camera on they are tentative but when nobody's looking, she walks from place to place with ease, it's pretty funny. She also finally broke through tooth #8! Now she's an even four on top and four on bottom.

Next up for us? We are just plugging away right now. Dan is working some mandatory overtime at work right now (60 hours last week). He will be on active duty for a while starting April 9th. Pippa will be ONE year old here in just a few weeks. She still feels like a little baby to me so it's hard to imagine. Not sure what our plans are for her party yet but we want to keep it small.
The weather was beautiful yesterday and we spent some time outside.

Outside with my gorgeous girl

Her new favorite thing! Showing her tongue. 03/18 - 11 months

Growling like a bear!

Family Updates

Pippa had her 9-month check up on Wednesday. She now weighs 18 pounds and 15 ounces. She's a lanky 2' 4.75" tall. It's funny how she went from being 99% in weight at 10 pounds 4 ounces at birth to merely 50%. The doctor is not concerned and neither are we. If you see her eat you would question where the heck it all goes!
Currently she is still just cruising and crawling but braving it by climbing up on things a little more and by taking her hands off the furniture to play with a toy.
We had a dog behaviorist visit us last Monday because Scooby has been showing some anxiety toward her and we have implemented his few suggestions. I'm happy to say we have completely different dogs. Scooby still avoids her but you can tell he is much more relaxed about it. I feel better allowing her to play on the floor when the dogs are around now.

01/18/12 - 9 months old

She's been teething for a while now and her upper tooth finally came in! Yay for a good night sleep. Then, as I was taking some pictures of her in the tub, I noticed tooth #4 popping through too! I can't believe how fast she is growing up.

Why do they love to chew on washcloths?

Notice her bottom right, another tooth barely popping through!

Liam has one more month of cub scouts until he crosses over to boy scouts! He will receive his badge and arrow of light next month. In a couple of weeks we are going to take him to a boy scout pack meeting so he can meet all the new kids. He also started participating in "Math is Cool" sort of a math bee type club that will compete sometime before school is out in June.

Dan is still adjusting to working the day shift but we all enjoy having him around on Sundays and he is much more awake and aware during any day. He has a great time with Miss Pippa while I'm at work.

I'm still waiting to hear the details of my job. Starting to have a bit of anxiety just not knowing and not being able to plan (as usual) but there's nothing more I can do. We should know in the next couple of weeks.