Following a little too closely!

I stole this idea from another blog that I follow...thanks Jackie! To your left, you'll see some words that say "Follow this blog". If you click on it, you'll be acknowledged in my sidebar as someone who follows this blog! Give a whirl!!

Better and better!

Just when I was rejoicing in finally starting this long overdue construction project, my day got even better! As some of you may know, Luci was assigned to the afternoon class in UPK (they run a morning and afternoon session at her school). This presented a problem as Luci is very young, she won't be four until the end of November, she JUST made the cut-off by five days, or she would have had to wait another year. And being young (the youngest in the program, I believe) she still takes the occassional afternoon nap. If you add a few hours of school onto that, you get one tired and cranky kid! She'd come home from school, crash and sleep through dance classes and then wouldn't go to bed at a reasonable hour. I mentioned my preference for the morning class to both the overseeing principal and to her teacher and hoped someone would switch with me. Today, I got a call from that principal letting me know that indeed there was someone who wanted to switch! So tomorrow (Tuesday) Luci starts her first morning class! It really made my day, it was the icing on the cake! Thankfully, this is only the second full week of school, so I don't believe she has made any true friends yet. Tomorrow she gets to meet a whole new group of them! Ahhhh, life just keeps getting better!

OMG! Demolition actually begins!!!! Yay!

Well, I never thought we'd ever get to it at the rate we were going, but it has actually begun! Today (Sunday), after Dean set the hottub back up (in the yard) he thought he'd start plugging away at the house. So I emptied out the small room in the far back part of the house. It was holding stacks of molding and cedar shelving boards. This room was actually (so we were told) a bathroom at one time. Not your typical bathroom, but an outhouse! There was a bench with holes in it! On the right of the below picture, the past residents of this house had written in names and dates of certain events, like births, weddings, deaths and even wars! I'll have to double check how far back the dates go, but it's at least as far back as the early 1900's, possibly earlier! (My mom wants to save this wall for its historical value, so we'll be cutting the section of wall where the writing is and giving it to her.) Anyway, below is the "before" shot.



Dean then got out his Sawz-All(sp?) and sawed all around the room and up over the roof. Here is the back of the house with the room sawn, but still in place.

Next, Dean hopped on the tractor and started pushing and pulling.

After getting one side to budge, he drove around to the other side and started to really heave-ho!

And it's going, going...gone!

Here's the back of the house now without that small room! Monday, he's taking off work to take off the next room, which you can see the doorway to in the picture below. That one is a larger, but still relatively small, uninsulated storage space that was used mostly by the mice! I think he's planning on pulling down the roof to the porch as well. We'll see what happens. I'll be sure to post pics as I get them!

Farmer Papa

Well, another weekend has come and still our old decrepit kitchen lives! I'm not the most patient person, especially when I'm so excited about what WILL be there as opposed to what is there right now! Oh well, a little patience never hurt anyone, I guess! We own nearly 27 acres of land and about 20 of those acres are a farm field. Ever since we bought the house, we have leased out our field to local farmers. The latest farmer has been farming the land for the last 4 or 5 years now and is a nice guy, but he's very busy with many different fields and also works as a farm-hand for other farmers in his off-time. He is constantly looking for help and this past week he found it...in my dad! My father has always expressed an interest in operating large equipment and when the farmer asked Dean if he knew of someone, he thought my dad would be perfect for this job! Here's his debut as "Farmer Papa"!



The farmer's dog, Cotton, is a true-blue farm dog! She has come with Jim (the farmer) everytime he's been here. She either runs around and plays with our dogs or more usually, she sits with Jim while he does his work. So when Farmer Papa started driving, she did the same thing! Below, you can see her peeking out. As a side note...my dad is also a tried and true Chevy/GMC guy, so to see him in a Ford is kind of funny!

I haven't taken many pics this week, so here's an extreme close-up of the girls!

Let's see, what else is new? Oh, Luci hadn't even been in school a full week before she missed not only one but TWO days of school due to a fever! Thankfully, the fever was her only symptom and she is now better. Drew is developing a cold which is no surprise. All summer long neither of the girls even had a sniffle, but the first week of school, the original germ factory and here they are, both sick! Ah well, what can you do? In construction news, we have at least ordered the insulated concrete forms for our future foundation. They'll be delivered on Friday. Wouldn't it be nice if demolition was done by that point? Dare to dream!

Here we go!

An eventful weekend, all in all. Art and Sara joined us again this weekend as we had planned on demolishing the back half of the house this past Saturday. Unfortunately, the guy who is bringing the big Trac-hoe(sp?) told us his machine is still in another town a few hours away and finishing up a job, so it wasn't available this weekend. That bummed me out. But we still managed to get a few things done. More on that later. Below, Sara joins Drew and Luci in a dress-up tea-party, babies and all.

Art stands idly by as Dean screws the deck down on his "new" trailer. Hee hee! Actually, Art drilled all the holes and had already finished.

At about noon on Saturday, I packed all three girls into the car and headed over to a baby shower for Julie's step-daughter, Brittany. I didn't take many pictures, and the ones I did get weren't great, so I won't post any here. At two, we had to leave the shower and head over to a birthday party for my niece, Sonja. Below, she looks absolutely surprised at her cake!

Later, Uncle Dan broke out the bouncy house and the kids had some fun!

I warned Dan that I was posting this picture! Here, he shows us his best impression of the knights who say, "Nit!"

Dan drives the kids around the yard.

Max having some fun.

Sonja was gracious enough to let Drew drive her birthday present, a Gator.

Ok, after the party, back at the house, we got to work. Here are some "BEFORE" shots of my lovely kitchen. I especially enjoy the chipped and broken floor tiles!

And of course, one of my favorite parts of the whole kitchen...the sink. Take note of the shims under one side of the sink cabinet, and the half-peeled Contact paper on the front. Also noteworthy is the huge gaping hole in the uper right hand corner of the wall and the superb "country kitchen" wallpaper that only goes half-way up the wall.

Here's a "BEFORE" shot of the back porch. It was completely enclosed with glass panels. Check out the funky disco tiles on the ceiling!

After the boys removed one of the panels, Art decided to do a little jig! Boys like destroying things!

We have a bee's nest underneath the porch somewhere and the more things the boys did, the madder the bees got, so they decided to do something about them. Art is double-fisting the bee spray!

Dean gets out the big guns to lift some sidewalk stones to get closer to the nest.

Apparently "the guns" weren't big enough, so Art hops on the back to give it more leverage.

Still looking...Dean breaks out a chainsaw.

He didn't find a bees nest, but I got my first glimpse of the old well that is under the back porch! I knew it was there, I just had never seen it. The water is about 15 feet or so down, but apparently it is around 45 feet deep! Dean made sure to cover it back up until we're ready to finish the demolition. Wouldn't want to have a dog or kid fall down there!

We banished the kids to the house since we were playing with the bees. Here, Drew peeks out from inside.

And now for something completely different...Monty must have chased this little guy up the tree and the squirrel turned right around and chattered angrily at Monty for a good 10 minutes!

So that was the extent of our weekend. Dean will be working tomorrow (Monday) but he plans on trying to take the rest of the week off to do some more house stuff. It's finally moving and I'm really excited! I'll keep you posted on the progress!

School Days!

I've been humming the tune all day, "School days, school days, dear old golden rule days..." Today was the day! Drew started first grade and Luci UPK (aka Universal Pre-Kindergarten). Technically Luci hasn't started yet, today was just a registration and "Meet and Greet" day. We were there for about an hour, and we wouldn't have been there THAT long except that I am longtime friends with Luci's teacher, Sue. Actually, I met her when I started dating her older brother when I was 15! But that's a whole other story and we won't go there! Drew was looking forward to riding the bus once again this year and Luci was disappointed that she wouldn't be able to ride it with Drew until next year. Oh well! She got over it quickly. Below, Drew's first day of school outfit had...what else?...skulls and crossbones on it! That's my girl! Her backpack also has a skull and crossbones on it, but you can't see it from this picture.



Drew and Daddy waiting for the bus to arrive at a bleary 7am!

Yay! Drew liked her bus driver, Pam, from last year and was happy to see that she had returned this year.

Miss Luci in her first day of school outfit...no skulls, but her at least her backpack is loaded with them!

This shot has become tradition over the last 2 years with Drew, so I couldn't NOT take the same picture with Luci! Here she is out in front of her school. As in the past, I have blurred the full name of the school in case there are some readers with less than kind intentions.

When Dean and I were finished with the paperwork, we walked down the hall to see if we could peek into Drew's classroom, but her class wasn't there. But I found her locker and took this shot. Drew is in a special type of classroom called Multi-Age. That means there are both first-graders and second-graders in the same room. The first-graders get the benefit of having "mentors" in the 2nd grade students and the second-graders get a confidence boost when they can help the younger ones. She'll also be in the same classroom next year as well. There are two teachers and when there are grade-specific areas which need to be taught, the 2 grades are split and a foldable wall separates the two classrooms. It's a neat concept which I think will really encourage and challenge Drew (in a good way!) As some of you know, Dean's mom is a first grade teacher (at a different school) so I asked her to do some informal "testing" on Drew. Grandma has a standard "test" to find the education level of each individual student in her classroom, who she then divides into three different reading groups. She does this so the slower learners won't drag the faster leaners behind. Anyway, after she did her usual "test" on Drew, she very happily announced that if Drew was in her class, she would definitely put her into her top group! Grandma also gave her nine beginning reader books to take home and she mastered them all in one day! Incidentally, Luci heard Drew read one of the books and then she picked it up and recited every word! Now, Luci is no prodigy, these books have pictures, so she wasn't REALLY reading, but the fact that she remembered all the words amazed us! It had sentences like, "I see the red ladybug." and she was even reciting the details like the word, "red". This is how all kids start out reading, by picture association, and she was doing it before she even got to school which is far ahead of Drwe at the same age! You've gotta love older siblings!! Drew is exceedingly happy to play teacher! Anyway, the only issues I'm having at the present time is trying to get Luci into the morning session of UPK instead of the afternoon session in which she is currently assigned. Both classes are full, so I've asked Sue to ask her morning parents if anyone wants to switch. Normally I wouldn't care...one less kid to get ready in the morning, right? Unfortunately, Luci won't be 4 until the end of November which makes her a very young UPK'er. She just barely made the cutoff! Anyway, she still naps with some frequency and we're going to have issues with her napping after school and sleeping through dance classes and any other extra-curricular activites...not to mention staying up late due to late naps! It's going to mess up her whole schedule! Generally speaking, there are always a few students who end up leaving for one reason or another, so even if no parents want to switch their child, it's just a matter of time before we can switch her anyway. I'll keep you posted on that. In other news, we're just 2 days away from demolition day! Yay! Can you tell I'm excited????

Birthdays, Baseball and Beautiful Brides!

Well, been a little busy as of late, but I've finally found a minute to post something new! Ninety years ago today (Thursday), a woman was born who would eventually become my grandmother! She's seen and done it all and will most likely outlive all her children...because she's too stubborn not to!! And we love her all the more for it! We had a surprise birthday party for her at her nursing home. After the initial shock when we all yelled, "SURPRISE!!" the first thing out of her mouth was, "Oh, you a**holes!" (It was said good-naturedly, of course! That's just Gram!) Below, Luci leans in for a smack from Nana.




Drew's turn for some kisses!

Here is most of the group who attended. We lost a few immediately after the meal, so not everyone is shown. She doesn't know it yet, but I'll be putting this picture in the local newspaper. Most likely she'll want to strangle me!

Here are the last three remaining "H" sisters. On the left is Great Aunt Kate, then my grandmother in the middle, Millie, and on the right is my Great Aunt Pat. They are 92, 90 and 82 respectively. (Longevity must run in my family!)

Ok, so I didn't mention the tea party in my headline, but it messed up the alliteration, oh well! The girls wanted to pose for some pictures, so we decided on a tea party theme and went for it. I got out this backdrop which I've only ever used once before for Luci's dance pictures, but I think it works well for this theme. Here are a few of my favorites.

Since my equipment was already set up, we talked Papa into posing for a Yankees picture! If you look closely, the girls both have on Yankees shirts as well. Obviously Papa is quite a Yankees fan, so I'm sure he'll love hanging this shot on his bedroom wall!

This past weekend, I shot a wedding in Alexandria Bay, NY. It was beautiful...though not nearly as stunning as the bride! Now you don't know her, but I was impressed with how a few of these shots turned out, so I thought I'd post them. I'm certainly improving! (Admittedly, it is quite difficult to get a bad shot when your model looks like this!)

The next two shots are the same picture, but I couldn't decide which one I liked better, so I posted them both. You be the judge!

I've got one wedding left this year (I shot 6 so far this year), but have booked two weddings for NEXT year already! Business is definitely good! On another good note...Dean has chosen a date to start demolition on the back of our house! September 6th is the day. I have a baby shower and my niece's birthday party on that day as well, but hopefully I'll be able to see some of the demolition and post pictures here! Until then, take care!