The Best Community EVER!

We had a lot going on this weekend in our little family of five.  All of which was totally blog-worthy.  And I couldn't decide which to blog first!  But since I did some mommy bragging in my last post, I decided to write some house stuff in my post for today (stay tuned for more on my little ballerina!)

So, you all are fully aware that we are restoring this historic house.  There are plenty of old houses in this town, but the one we've been working on is really really visible (It's on one of the main roads.  Everyone passes it.).  Plus it's been vacant for the last thirty years & in disrepair for much longer than that.  (Not to mention, it's just plain cool!)  From what everyone tells us, they've all been saddened to watch it fall apart over the years & have been so happy to see a family restoring it & make it a home again.

We've gotten to know the executive director of the local chamber of commerce over the last year & a half.  He owns the local book store & coffee shop & we stop in from time to time.  Every time we get a chance to talk he tells us how happy he is that we're helping to revitalize the city.  He says they talk about us a lot in their meetings & he uses us as an example: "If the G's can save that house, any house can be saved!" lol

Well this Saturday was the annual "Green Up Vermont Day."  Which is super awesome in & of itself.  The goal is to take pride & ownership of our beautiful state & clean it up: clean up trash, highway debris, plant flowers, weed your yards, lay down new mulch, that kind of stuff.  To make this day even bigger, Scott thought it would be a great idea to use this special weekend to start a revitalization project.  He was choosing some visible spots around town that could use a few special touches to make the town look nicer with just a little bit of effort & was amassing a group of volunteers to pull it off.  They painted over this ugly painted dragon on a brick wall from a Chinese restaurant that closed over five years ago, did a little landscaping at the vet's office, and oh yeah: PAINTED OUR HOUSE!!!

Ohmahgosh happy tears.  This group of about ten people, out of the goodness of their hearts, came to our house for 6 hours & started to paint our house for us.  For no other reason than because they wanted to help us out & believed in what we were doing.  Seriously!  I'm still in shock that that just happened.

Of course in 6 hours you can't get an entire two story house painted completely, but we got a HUGE start & you can already tell how pretty it's going to be when it's all done!!

Some of our happy helpers

Big Helper #1

 

Big Helper #2 (Mark was at his lacrosse game)

This is Scott :)

Half-way up the other wall, plus that white makes a huge difference!

Mathew getting the columns

Lots done!  (We still have more scraping to do before we can get that moulding.  That'll make a huge difference.)

Halfway painted house plus we got a few fruit trees planted (so before long we won't have to look at that parking lot so much!  Ha Ha!)

So despite running around like crazy people with lacrosse games, practices, and dance recitals, we got a good start on painting our house.  I can't even think of how to thank these people properly!  It was such an incredible thing they did for us.  THIS is what a community is supposed to be like.  THIS is the reason why we decided to raise our kids here & spend our life here.  These people are amazing & I hope they realize what a rare gem it is.  We can't wait to pay it forward! :) 

     

Lacrosse

Confession: I am an overprotective mom.  Shocking I know.  lol  So when my boys got old enough to start playing sports, I said "absolutely not" to football, "no way" to ice hockey.  I had terrible visions of broken teeth & traumatic brain injuries & wasn't even going to go there.  (I can blame my career on that one I guess).  So they play soccer & basketball & have fun with those things.  Relatively low contact, but they get some exercise & have some fun, right?  Fine.

So then we moved up to New England & the sporting possibilities are much more varied.  Many of which we have little to no experience with.  One of these was lacrosse.  I knew it was a Native American sport, & I knew that it tends to be kind of an ivy league thing.  The extent of my knowledge on it was that it was kind of like field hockey but you scooped up the ball in your little net.  So when the boys asked begged me to play Matt & I agreed to let them try it out.  They participated last year in what was called "skill building" for the third & fourth graders.  They learned how to play the game & how to "cradle" the ball & all that sort of stuff.  Again, relatively tame.

Now that Mark is in the fifth grade, he gets to play on a real team this year with games & a little travel.  Ok cool.  He really enjoyed it, so that's fine.  Or is it?  On the first day we met in the gym so they could get their padding & helmets.  Nearly every inch of my kid was getting equipped.  I was allowing him to play a game where he needed to be armed?!?!  What the hell am I letting him get into!?!  (Enter overdramatic mom moment).  This is a whole other level of game than the fun little skills he learned last year.  (Cringe!)

Fast forward to this weekend & he had his first game.  Oh.  My.  Goodness was it fun!  Yes, I fear that I will give myself an ulcer with all of the worrying I will do with my kid on that field (and Lord help me when Gavin joins in next year!) but it was actually a really entertaining game!  And even more entertaining was watching how much my son really got into it & had fun playing.  I'll be the first to admit that my kids are not exactly sports enthusiasts.  They'll play, but they're usually... well... polite players.  Almost as if they tell their opponent, "that's okay.  You can have the ball.  Here you go!" lol  I feel like a broken record sometimes when I tell my guys "It's okay to get into the game.  Act like you actually want that ball!"  It's frustrating.  But Mark & Lacrosse??  He was ALL into it.  I was watching my kid shove his way into the mix & go after that little ball with a vengeance, even though many of the kids on the other team were twice his size.  I was half thrilled & half terrified!!!  Here are a few pics (granted I took nearly 200, so you're welcome for paring them down! lol)

He's #46 right there in the middle.  Totally doesn't care that that kid is HUGE!

Sadly this is not illegal.

Totally going after that ball

Look at him shoving his way in there!!  That kid ended up knocking him down, & he just jumped back up like "whatevs!"

Go team!

 So anyway, proud momma moment.  They ended up losing the game, but I look forward to watching these boys get better & better throughout the season.  And I may need a valium prescription to cope with my overwhelming urge to scoop my kid up off that field & carry him home to safety! lol ;)

And just for fun, I took a few pictures of Natalie too (and Gavin the few times he let me) during the game.  It was a beautiful day & the two of them were having a blast rolling down the hill & racing together.  Too cute.

Never a Dull Moment

Our luck in Vermont has certainly been a contrast from the constant barrage of drama in our lives in Kansas. But we are magnets to bad luck after all, & we could only hold it off for so long. (But comparatively speaking this one was no big deal.). I've given you all some highlights on Facebook, but I'll fill in the gaps here.

Last week, we had one of our first really pretty days of Spring. (All you Midwest people who have had plenty of days in the 70's can just shush!). So Matt opened all the windows in the house to let in some of the warmer air while he worked. We've told you before that he's had the occasional guy come & help him out with some of the easy but time consuming tasks so he can keep moving forward. Well this particular day, he had one of those guys there helping out doing clean up. Nineteen year old kid. Seemed nice enough. (For the sake of this blog we'll call him "Joe.")  In retrospect, Matt says that there had been some weird things he noticed on the days "Joe" was there. Like the front door being unlocked when he swore he didn't open it, those kinds of things. But he never thought much of it. Anyway, Matt did his work for the day, and as he was leaving, he locked up the house. But apparently, not being used to closing up all the windows, he accidentally missed one (or just didn't get it closed all the way).

That night, we had several rolls of copper wire & breakers stolen from the house, valued at about $1000. Ugh!! So here was the weird part: they didn't take all of the wire. They didn't even take any of the expensive tools that were right there in the kitchen. Just those few things. If it were a random robber they would've cleaned us out for sure. We had high suspicions that this kid had something to do with it.

So Matt called the police as soon as he discovered what was missing & filed a report, and he made sure to tell them about who he suspected, plus a few other potentials. That afternoon, they had the guy in for questioning for an hour. They also called in his parole officer (!!!). Oh yeah, turns out he's already on parole for stealing. Awesome! The guy then texts Matt afterward & says "I swear I didn't steal from you! I would never do that!" Mmmm kay.

Here where it gets really crazy (all over a few rolls of wire!). Now let me start by saying this is a small town, but it's not tiny (like 8,000 people). So this "small world" moment isn't entirely to be expected. Plus, given that I don't want to violate anyone's privacy with what I share here, I may end up being a little cryptic. My apologies up front.

So a few days later, we get a call from a friend. Respectable guy in town, business owner, all that. Out of the blue he brings up that he's aware that we suspect this kid is involved in the robbery & "we can be 100% sure he did it."  Whoa!  Turns out (again, being a bit cryptic) that this kid is involved with a family member of theirs & I gather that she shared with them somehow that "Joe" had obtained this wire to scrap for cash.  We seriously owe these people so much because without this tip the police didn't have enough evidence to prove anything!  The police contacted our friend & went from there.

Story gets weirder.  And most of it I'm just piecing together from what Matt's been telling me & what the police have been sharing with him.  Apparently they not only had a conversation with "Joe" but with the girl too (let's call her "Jane.")  I'm not sure what Jane & Joe confessed or didn't, but it came up in conversation that the one who actually stole everything was a guy we've never met who lives up the street.  They said he cut it all up & had several duffle bags worth & was going to take it to the scrap yard.  It also came up that Jane had an outstanding warrant in Burlington, so she was arrested at that time for her warrant.  Whoops!  No such luck with the guy they blamed, but every time they talked with these two their story changed.  Finally, the police were able to get ahold of the records from the scrap yard.  From that, the car that was used belonged to "Joe's" friend, and clearly in the car were "Joe" & "Jane."  The friend's driver's license was also given to scrap the WHOLE UNWRAPPED ROLLS!  He got a whopping hundred bucks for his trouble.

"Joe" has been arrested.

Matt found out that there are two judges in town: one who will punish the little punk & one who lets most of these things go with little consequence.  So guess what Matt did?  He took all three of my kids (I was at work) and went to the arraignment!!  (Lawyer was shocked to see him there.  I am not the least bit surprised. lol)  He figured the judge might be swayed if he saw that this petty theft affected a family.  (And PS, "Joe" was pretty shocked to see him there too! ha ha!)

So this is what came of it: "Joe" plead not guilty.  Of course.  He was offered $5,000 bail equaling a $500 bond fee.  He will have trial in 2-3 weeks.  The town attorney will send us a letter telling us more in a few days.  He had a job lined up to start next week.  He has now lost that job.  He will be on house arrest until his trial.  He has been ordered to have no contact with us & to go nowhere near our property.  He has also been ordered to have no contact with "Jane," but they live together, so I'm not sure how that's going to play out.  The lawyer told us that there is some sort of victim's fund that we will be repaid from.  "Joe" will have to repay that cost over time.
All that for a lousy hundred bucks. 

Huge story for a relatively small theft, and a happy ending within a week.  I can't help but think about the four times we were robbed in Kansas.  That tens of thousands of dollars worth of belongings were stolen from us, we had a short list of suspects then too, but we never heard a peep of any resolution to any of that ever.  So yes, we had a little robbery at our house, but the police here actually cared & we are so grateful that the "bad guy" didn't get away with it. 

Somehow now I am much more okay with Matt's ridiculous plan for high security around the house.  Electricity = surveillance cameras & alarm system.  No more bad guys.  ;)  

Holy crap! It's already April!

Seriously, how in the world does time escape me so easily??  Last blog entry I made was November*, & I swore then that I'd blog more often, but next thing you know, WHAM!  Five months have passed & I haven't written a thing.  (Five months??  Can that be right??). Wow.  I'm so sorry you guys. I'm sure you've all been hovering over your computers just waiting for an update from the mighty mom this whoooolllllee time, right? ;)
Tough thing is, I don't know where to start!  Some great things happened over the time of my blogging hiatus & I don't want to forget about them. But at the same time, we need to catch up. Maybe just a highlight reel?
Christmas came & went. I had to work, & Christmas 1500 miles away from extended family just isn't the same, but given all of that I think we had a pretty great holiday. Kids were spoiled rotten as usual. ;)

Matt's Birthday December 25th

New Years Eve was actually really fun.  We went to an activity here in town called First Night where we walked from place to place to see a bunch of different acts & do fun activities until a midnight fireworks display.  Our favorite part was seeing the hypnotist & little tired Natalie almost got hypnotized from the audience!

In January, we had a fabulous visit from Mathew's brother John & his wife Caroline. (Oh I wish I could've done a whole blog entry about their visit!). I can't tell you guys how happy it made us to spend some great quality time with them. They're kinda awesome. And we want them to move here. Not gunna lie. ;).

Ben & Jerry's in January?  Absolutely!

Hiking fun

Skiing at Burke Mountain

The whole winter came & went (well... it was supposed to go, but its April & I'm still looking at snow...). But in Vermont that means I missed out on blogging a whole bunch of playtime. The boys had a great time with their winter sports program, & this momma learned that she is NOT a snowboarder. :/. Wah wah wah...  It wasn't pretty. But next year they both say they want to ski, so I'll have a chance to redeem myself.

Mark & Gavin with their buddies Gabe & Carter

Mark went on a field trip where he even got to try out some cross-country skiing & he LOVED it!  That's much more Mathew's pace if he had to pick. So next year we anticipate tons of winter fun, assuming we won't be so consumed with the house renovations anymore & our bank accounts won't be as dry as the Sahara by that point.  Here's hoping!

So, on to the house updates.  This part is tough. If you've been through a full house overhaul you totally get it. Or if you do this kind of work you get it. But to anyone else on the outside I can see how it would seem as though things are moving at a snails pace. But honestly, it gets taxing to here the incessant question, "aren't you moved into that house yet??!"  Nope. But things are moving along quite well, I promise!  We are really pleased with the progress!

 

Mathew has been working non-stop. Imagine working on a house by yourself in the freezing cold with no heat or electricity all day every day. Add to it entertaining a kid (or three) throughout that cold day while Momma's working. With a bad back.  No fun. But still he's been working hard & getting a whole lot done, even going above & beyond to make his work perfect. He's insulating every wall, reinforcing every beam, re-laying floors that were too destroyed, and framing new designs to our bathrooms & kitchen. (All without electricity).

I mentioned in my last post (forever & a day ago) that the Academy was coming to put in electricity for us. Well, Christmas break came & went, then it was the start of the new semester. Then they had another project to complete. Meanwhile, we ended up putting many things on hold anticipating their arrival. Totally fine because, hey, they're putting in our electricity for freaking free!  But it did slow us down a bit.  They came this past week & started getting things moving.

The Crew

(P.S.: Having a rational discussion with your husband about where to put light switches after you've been awake for 24 hrs working a busy night shift is damn near impossible... Just sayin'.).

They got things planned out & put in some outlet boxes, but guess what!  Now it's spring break!  Darn it. Don't they know their priority should be meeeeee? ;). Anyway, after next week they should be back in full force & get things up & running.   Having the electricity starting has lit a fire under Mathew though (his words).  Now he's excited about what's ahead & he's deciding what to tackle next.  Today he bought a crap-ton of plumbing supplies & plans to get that started. Whoopie! :). There's also the radiant heating lines to be put into the floor & that's also on the radar to be placed soon. The school year's done in just 4 short weeks, so the electricity has to be done by then. If all goes well, we may have walls in our near future!  Actual WALLS you guys!  Happy dance!! And me?  Well I'm just daydreaming about what pretty colors to paint them. :D

So, I guess that's it. My highlight reel of the last five months. I hope to have much more to add as Spring finally arrives. It's coming any day now. Or so they tell me...


* Edit: I just looked back & I guess I did post one in December... Four months! Hey! I'm not as bad as I thought! lol

Our House

As promised, here is an update on our ever evolving project! :)
 I was looking through pictures to post here just now, pictures that we just took recently, & they are already so changed I didn't even want to post them!  The progress has been wonderful & we really are encouraged that we'll have it livable by the Spring at least.

Okay.  So here's the deal.  If I share these with you, you've got to promise me that you'll try to have "the vision."  At first glance, it totally looks like crap & I'll be the first to admit it.  But seriously, all it takes is a little bit of imagination & you will be able to see how cool this house will be when it's done.  Promise?  Okay.  Here goes.

This is a picture of the house itself as of today.  Siding is up!! :)  Yay so much better!!  Unfortunately we didn't get this step done until after it started to get cold, so this is pretty much how it's going to look until spring.  We'll paint as soon as we can.  We plan on a sage green color for the siding, white for the windows & trim, & black for the shutters.  Can ya see it?  I tried to use that Sherwin-Williams app that "paints" your photo so you can see what your house would look like with a different color, but it was pretty crappy.  So this is all we get for now.  (Anyone know of a different app that's good?  I'd love to play! :))

Here is a closer up picture of our front porch being re-built.  It's been an empty hole for quite a while now.  That was another project that ended up being bigger than we expected.  All of the concrete needed to be re-poured.  Fun times.  But now that is all being put back together & will be so pretty when it's done.  By the end of the day today, the other column should be put back up.  It's been down since we saw this house 10 years ago!  (Which means god knows how long before that it's been down...).

This used to be a great big gaping hole.  All sealed up & brick re-mortared.  Looks small, but it's a big deal! :)

Okay.  Huge deal here.  ELECTRICITY!!!  Hallelujah!  (Pre-siding, so as you can see this picture is a tiny bit older).  We had to route electricity from the pole to the house & re-do everything.  What was there was so old it was very unsafe.  So the ditch you see is freshly dug to ground the wire all the way to the pole & the box is all brand new.  Natalie is sitting on the spool of wire to give you an idea of just how massive this stuff really is!  Such a big step!
And here's the very best part on the subject of wiring electricity.  (God I love this town!)  So anyway, Matt & I ended up at the house last week on an unplanned 5 minute drop-in.  (He took the afternoon off & we were planning to go see a movie that didn't end up playing, so we shouldn't have been there).  Anyway, not 2 minutes after we pulled in, a car pulls in behind us in our driveway.  Umm, okay  Who's this?  Well it turns out it's a couple of seniors from the Academy.  They were looking for a project for their class & were directed to Mathew & our house by their instructor.  They are offering for their whole class (and their instructor's very strict supervision) to come in the next few weeks & wire our whole house for us FOR FREE!!!  Are ya kiddin' me?!?!  Hell yeah!  Sign us up! :)  So of course we said yes & we're working on getting things ready for them inside to get that started.  Yay Yay Yay!!

Final exterior picture: the porch/mudroom.  (Again, a picture before the siding was finished... well it's still not on the porch, but we're not going to dwell on that. lol).  This took pretty much all summer.  What is now truly another room of the house, used to be a sunroom type thing that was falling down.  It was so full of junk we couldn't even tell how badly it was in disrepair.  So that got yanked out (with the exception of the roof) and got all re-done.  Because of the angle, that entire foundation was re-poured with concrete one bag at a time by poor Matt.  (Couldn't fit a mixer in where we needed it).  He estimates it probably took 500 bags!!  Walls replaced completely, brand new windows, awesome.  We plan on it being a four-seasons room with mudroom storage for all of our winter gear before entering the house (it is Vermont you know! ;))  


Okay, next up: interior photos.  Remember, you've gotta use your vision, okay?  It's not as far along as you might picture.  BUT, there has been a lot of work going on getting things ready to all be put back up.  You wouldn't believe what it takes to make a house safe & able to withstand another century & a half!  Plus, there was a LOT of junk in this house that took a long time to remove.  So keep that in mind as you look at the nakedness that is our walls.  It'll get there I swear! :)

Here, I just need to illustrate the rediculousness we've needed to go through to rebuild this house.  Where Natalie & Matt are standing?  That's where our kitchen table will go.  If you look behind them you can see where the bottom of the wall should be.  Beneath the floor?  A ginormous obnoxious slab of slate.  OMG.  It's insane.  So in order to do a whole lot of things to make the floor stable, the rock needed to be chiseled down.  On the right of the picture you can see Natalie at the top (about where she's standing in pic #1) with me taking her picture from the basement below.  Who knew you could go rock climbing in your own house?! lol

This is the basis for our fireplace.  I have no idea where along the line of this house's long life that the fireplace was taken out (I'm certain there was one.  There was a chimney... and hey it was 1860!  Of course they had a fireplace).  At any rate, we needed to build a new one from the ground up & here is where it finally met the main floor.  The chimney is being built over to the right of the picture.  (it will connect at an angle above the fireplace itself).  The chimney is now all the way up through Natalie's room above.  (See!  Progress!)

The top of the stairs.  (Ehh.  They can't all be winners! lol)  Behind the wall with the oddly placed window (what will be stained glass when Matt is done with it...) will be the boys' massive closet.

Speaking of the boys' room, this is it!  They have the biggest room in the house & the best views.  We're pretty sure it was intended to be the master bedroom.  But because of how we wanted our house to flow we decided to give the front room to them.  (And they are not allowed to complain about sharing because they get this awesome room!)  That doorway is to the aforementioned closet.  We think it might end up being a closet/game room.  Seriously.  It's that big!

Next to them is Natalie's room.  View is from what will be the bathroom and you can see through to the boys' room.  Chimney needs to go through one little corner, but we should be able to still have plenty of room to make it cute.

(Across the way is the guest room.  I have no idea why I didn't take a picture of that.  But hint hint.  We have a guest room! ;))

And this is our room.  Behind that wall is our walk in closet & through that door and across a little stairwell is our master bath.  (This is why we chose the back room.  So we could have all of that space).  We think the house was designed so that the family could live in the front rooms, & this could be the servant's quarters.  That's what we've been told at least.  Oh well.  We like the back.  It's quieter! :)  That stairwell I mentioned goes down to the kitchen area.

Yikes.  This will be our kitchen (as viewed by the back stairs I mentioned above).  It's a hell hole right now & has become kind of a storage center for all of the stuff it takes to re-build the house.  So there will be a full state of the art kitchen where Mathew is standing, including custom built cabinets by Mathew himself.  The center doorway enters into the dining room and the doorway on the left is a giant walk-in gorgeous pantry.  One of the beautiful attributes to an older home.  (In need of some love though).

I didn't take a picture of the office, dining room  & living room right now.  They are filled to the ceiling right now with insulation.  You can see why here:

The picture on the left is when the insulation was all delivered.  I think it was six palates?  Whatever it was, the stuff is massive!  But even though it's overkill, this house is going to be the best insulated in town!  (All part of our energy efficiency plan).  The picture on the right is the insulation already going up in the house.  I think this is the wall of our weight room, which is located just below our master bathroom.  Slowly but surely this is going up on all of the exterior walls of the house as we speak.  WooHoo!

So that's it!  That's where we are right now.  (And when I say "we" I mean Matt.  I haven't done a damn thing! lol)  I can't wait until I have even more to share with you! 

So much to be thankful for

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!  We certainly did!  We've lived up here for 15 months now, & finally had our first visitor: my dad! :)  We all missed him so much & it was so great to spend a few days with him, and also get a chance to meet the new lady in his life, Nancy! :)  Here are a few highlights of our visit.

Natalie was my #1 helper in the kitchen for our Thanksgiving meal.  She's always so willing to help & I've learned with parenting the third time around to let them now or else they'll get bigger & quit asking! lol ;)  So not only did she help me out, but we were extra cute in our matching aprons.  He he! :)  I'm silly, I know.  Can't help it.  In case you're wondering what the heck she's doing with those sweet potatoes... well she really wanted to help me make them, but didn't think they smelled too good before we added the sugar! lol  That girl is too funny.

Yeah yeah, everybody had the same meal last Thursday night.  But I'm especially proud of mine!  I made everything from scratch.  Everything.  The rolls, the pie crusts, the cranberry sauce, everything!  Right down to the loaf of bread I used to make the stuffing.  And not only that, I made it all gluten free!  I was *terrified* that no one was going to like it.  That the gluten-free-ness (yes that is totally a word.  I said so!) would ruin it all if nothing else.  But it was good!  And not only that, my kids actually liked it all!  And the even bigger test: my husband actually got seconds (and thirds... lol) of stuffing & sweet potatoes!  He has *never* liked Thanksgiving food. Yay!! 

But now I'm exhausted.  Still. lol ;)  

Okay, this one was too funny not to share.  Way more funny if you were actually there, but I'll explain anyway.  So my dad used to do this thing when I was a kid with this silly voice.  He'd play three parts with this Vaudville-style dialogue that lasted all of about 10 seconds & was totally dumb.  But it always made me giggle.  He'd have one bow (or pretend to have one) and he'd put it over his mouth like a mustach & say, "You must pay the rent!" Then he'd put it on his head like a hair bow, & in a girls voice would say, "I can't pay the rent!"  The two would go back & forth & then he'd put the bow like a gentleman's bowtie & say in a deep voice, "I'll pay the rent!"  (girl) "My hero!"  (landlord) "Curses!!"  Totally dumb, I know.  But ohmygawd how that would make me laugh as a kid.  Apparently my kids are no exception!  (Why is it so funny?!)  Anyway, three kids, three parts, three bows.  After-dinner entertainment.  Awesomeness. 

So then we spent Friday showing PaPa & Nancy where we live.  A beautiful day for November in Vermont, so we took advantage of the sunshine & went for a walk. 





And now we have a bit of a tradition going where the boys make spedini with PaPa.  They love to cook! 

And again... gluten free bread crumbs were just as good. ;)  So fun.

Best part of visits with PaPa is getting to be just plain silly. ;)

So all in all we had a great visit.  Entirely too short, but great just the same.  We miss him already!  

So my plan is to make another post in the next few days about the house.  SO MUCH has been happening that every time I take pictures & plan to post about it, it's even better by the time I have time to type something!  So I keep putting that off, but I promise I'll update soon & give it it's own post so I can overwhelm you all with even more pictures! ;)  Stay tuned!