News, stuff, events, and Christmas...

So, life is as stressed as ever with finishing Christmas projects. We're making a lot of stuff this year. Also, presents might be a little late in coming as they are taking a little longer to finish than expected, and the number of them is larger than past years.

We were enjoying beautiful, balmy, spring-type weather in the 50-60 degree range when we got hit with a big snow storm this last weekend. Now we are lucky to get above 20 degrees each day. Night time temperatures are in the single digits and with the wind chill (and there is a SEVERE wind chill and lots of wind), temps drop to the negatives. [sigh] And I was enjoying the shoveling-free, 50 degree December so much. Well, at least it finally looks and feels like Christmas.

Dalia is starting to show interest in the toilet. I actually got her to use it before her bath last week. And she is teaching her dollies how to use the toilet (imaginary toilet). We are (at last) gearing up to potty train Dalia. We had a failed attempt earlier this fall that was...well...a disaster. Majorly! Five pairs of panties for the washer in two hours.

Lily loves school, her teacher, her friends, singing nursery rhymes (with words of her own choosing), and playing on the computer. Yes, they have computer lab every week for an hour in kindergarten. Useful. I've been letting Lily and Dalia play the kids computer games that Holly gave us on the computer too. Dalia is good with a mouse. Really good. Better than Lily. Anyway, Lily is getting really good at sharing all the time with Dalia, though Dalia isn't yet. They are good friends and bitter rivals at the same time. At least they aren't enemies. [Sigh again]

I am looking at getting a part-time job after Christmas for the graveyard shift. Ken is working hard. His right arm/shoulder is still bothering him quite a bit. At least his blood pressure is down so he doesn't have to take medicine for it anymore.

We are spending Christmas with my family in Richland (we'll be all together for the first time since my sister Wendy's wedding in 2000). Good times ahead. Looking forward to Christmas. The girls are chomping at the bit for it. Ah, Christmas. Gotta love it!

Rosalie

Things Ken forgot to add...

So on Halloween we Trick-or-Treated my sister's neighborhood with great success. The girls got 3 to 5 pieces of candy per house because most T-or-T'ers go the the apartment complexes and not the house neighborhoods. They made quite the haul. So before Halloween I had put up decorations; one of which was a smiling ghost with rosy cheeks. The girls thought that it was so cute and started calling it 'the ghost light' (from Disney-Pixar movie "Cars' " short film "Mater and the Ghost Light"). Later when I asked them what they wanted to be this year for Halloween they both chime in "the Ghost Light!" I finally figured out that they wanted to be ghosts and not blue glowing lights. So I cut up a white sheet, cut eye holes, cut smiles out of some black cloth; and glued the smiles, black satin bows, and the white button teeth onto the costume. The girls were thrilled with their costumes. (Note to parents: Make the eye holes bigger than they need to be!) While we were out trick-or-treating we came to a house that had a jack o' lantern on the doorstep. However, this particular pumpkin was vomiting pumpkin seeds and gunk onto the porch. These are the girl's comments:

Lily (grossed out face): Ooh, he's sick!
Dalia (serious and motherly): Mommy, he needs to take some medicine.

Later that evening as we were walking along Lily (who is wearing a coat under her ghost costume even though the temperature was balmy compared to Utah Halloweens) starts commenting that her eyes were cold. Ken and I exchanged glances and repeated it back to her as a question to confirm this bizarre statement. Sure enough she claimed her eye balls were cold thou the rest of her was perfectly toasty. Hmmm.

So Saturday is come and gone and Christmas is up. Well mostly up. The outdoor lights and the window lights aren't up, but most of the decorations, the tree, and ornaments are all up and looking festive and we have begun our Christmas shopping. We also had the missionaries for dinner tonight. We had waffles and eggs with cheese, red bell peppers, and sausage. Breakfast for dinner. I asked, and we are the only ones to ever feed these two missionaries breakfast for dinner. They loved it! I don't think they get omelets and waffles very often. Probably don't have time to make it in the mornings. Ken and I are both teaching lessons in church tomorrow. Him the deacons quorum, me the gospel essentials class.

All hail the Holiday season!

Rosalie

So it has been about a month since my last post. The girls are doing well Lily is loving school and Dalia loves the free time she has with Rosalie every morning. We went to Parent teacher conferences and learned Lily is a lot like me. Very rowdy, and talkative when she is at home but at school she is a quite polite little girl. It reminded me of the time mom and dad came home from parent teacher conferences and told how they were not sure the teacher was talking of the same child because the teacher said I needed to talk and participate more. I have tried to get Rosalie to post some things on here but she does not want to. Several time she has said "oh you should post that on the blog" I try to get her to do it but she does not and by the time I get around to posting I have forgotten what it was she wanted to post. My new Calling as Scout Master is going well. The biggest difficulty is that the scout records have not been well kept, which I am trying to change I have one scout who is working on his Life badge and the council has no record of him receiving his tenderfoot, second class, or any of the 11 merit badges he has. I am working with the council and the troop committee to fix these problems. The girls were little ghosts for Halloween they had a lot of fun this year trick or treating. I was surprised that Lily was tired and ready to call it a night before Dalia was. Here are some Pictures, The first is the girls sitting at the counter, Dalia had a bucket on her head and after I took her Picture Lily of course wanted hers taken. The other is them at Halloween.

It is school picture time here are the girls pictures.


Speaking of schools it is interesting to me that I moved from Utah where they have the Byu Cougars whose colors are blue and white and The U of U whose colors are crimson to Pullman, Wa. where they have the Washington State Cougars whose colors are crimson. I just found it humorous that they combine the two Utah schools mascot + colors

Well it has been about a month since I have written anything, so I guess I had better write. A lot has happened in the last month but nothing real big. We have not had a weekend at home all month. Lily loves school and is learning a lot, she has trouble with math which for a Kindergartener that means she is not grasping numbers real well. But on the plus side she is learning her ABC's realy well. Here are a couple of Pictures of her first day of school




























I have a different truck now. The GMC was not doing well and I needed a 4x4 to get around this winter. Many of the job sites that I work at here in pullman include the directions turn off the paved road. They get about as much snow here as utah does, but here they are all hills. there is not much flat land. My new truck is a 1994 Toyota T100. It has 160000 miles on it but is a manual transmision and 4x4.
We have spent two weekends over at my inlaws helping Lavelle with projects. First we built a shelter for his wood pile, they heat their home partial off a wood burning stove. Also I installed some grab bars in his shower to help him after his Knee surgery.
We have both recieved new callings in the ward. Rosalie is the Gospel Essensials teacher and I am the new Scout Master. I am realy excited for my new calling Yesterday I attended a day long training. We have about 5 deacon age boys in our ward.
I think I will include my rant about home inspectors in here with Melanie and Dan wanting a bigger home, Nikki And Bryan getting a condo and Mom and Dad via Stacie and Grandpa purchasing a home. First for the most part I don't like them. They are not regulated by the state or federal government. Any one that wants to can purchase a buisness liscence and be a home inspector. That being said if they did not know at least something about construction they would not survive very long as an inspector. My biggest issue is that many of them feel the need to justify how much they are charging by finding a lot of non related items. For example I have seen home inspection reports that listed things like it apears that there has been a patch in the west wall of the south bedroom upstairs. well you are buying a used home there have probably been a lot of patches to the walls. That being said if you are not capable of doing much other than minor home repairs the inspection can be realy helpful. I don't even bother with them when I purchase a home because I am willing to take what problems come with the home and fix them. but many people are not and they will hopefully catch somethings that a normal buyer would not notice. The only other thing is that they are not held liable for anything, you could get a false since of security only to find something major after you move in which is why i would strongly suggest a home warranty. Any way I will get off my soap box for now. hope everyone is well and enjoying life.

Dad wanted to see pictures of our house so here they are..

The Kitchen looking towards the family room and outside

The kitchen looking back the other way
The family room

The office still has lots of unpacked boxes.


The Girls room, it was clean this morning.

Our bathroom/Laundry room

Double Vanity in the Bathroom

Our Bedroom

And a prety nice deck on the back of the house

Our small yard for the girls to play in.

Well we got our house sold, Many thanks to Dan and all of his work and help even spending the day with us waiting on the lending company. Got all packed up and moved in our new home. It was quite the ordeal for us. Rosalie and I droped the girls of at Grandma Clarks' where they spent the week playing with grandma and their cousin Xander. We flew home and borrowed Stacies car, thank you Stacie, and drove to Spanish Fork on Monday. Tuesday we picked up the moving van took care of some things that we needed a car for and then started packing, Thank you to all that came and helped us load the van. In the middle of packing we got a call from Dan letting us know that he had just found out that the lending company was requiring a handrail along the loft in the garage. We quickly installed a hand rail and continued packing.




We slept on the floor that night anticipating to close the next day. We waiting all day not so patiently calling Dan every couple of hours to get an update. We were unable to close and spent another night on the floor. The next day Dan came down and spent the day with us waiting to here from the title company so we could close at about 4 pm they called and we ran over there signed all the papers and left for Washington. We drove until about 10 pm when I was to tired to drive any farther and pulled into a truck stop to sleep in the cab of the moving van. after about an hour of napping we were on the road again. we drove a couple more hours until about 2 am when we pulled into another truck stop for a nap. At 4 am we sought out IHOP in boise on Grandpa Pete's recomendation, ate breakfast and then hit the road again. We drove to Richland where we picked up the girls an headed to pullman. We meet a some ward members at our new home and started to unpack ending a very stressfull and tiring week.



Boxes boxes every where and nowhere to sit. It is dificult to go from 1800 sqft plus a garage and a 2 story shed to 900 sqft and a couple of small sheds. But we are adjusting and enjoying this new step in our lives. Work is going well I am in charge of a kitchen remodel. It is very diferent living and working in a small town. We are surrounded by fields most of them wheat but also some lintels and peas. Pullman is home of the Lintel festival and Washington State University, Cougars. If it was not for the University there would be 60-70% less people in Pullman. It is quite a change from living in the suburbs.