We have a house!

The house is ours. We closed on the 27th (my favorite number!) and got the keys the next morning. Kate was sick and Doug took her to the doctor, so Andy and I went to meet our realtor at the house.  It was the beginning of what turned out to be a very rainy few days--the sort of weather that makes you want to cocoon in a blanket and eat soup and not go anywhere at all.  Not what I would have picked for embarking on such a venture, but you can't plan these things. 



I had a guy come out and look at the bathtub (which we are hoping to get replaced), so Andy and I hung out at the house for a while, waiting for him. Andy amused himself by making letter shapes with his body in front of the reflective fireplace doors. (Here he is making a "J".)

Moving is a pain--even without torrential rain and sick kids--but we are excited about having our very own house.  Lots more space, a bedroom for Andy (who's been sleeping in our room since he was born), a garage, and a lovely little yard with flowers and birds.  There are a lot of things that need to be done on the house, but they don't have to be done all at once.  We will take our time settling in and making it ours. 

"About Me" Bag

Kate had an assignment to bring in a paper bag with 5-8 items representing her. She came up with the idea to have this sock puppet coming out of the bag. She had me cut the hole in the bottom of the bag and attach the sock (duct tape), and then she made the eyes.



I can't think of a better way to represent Kate. She's always finding ways to turn things into funny little creatures. (I don't think she came up a name for this one ahead of time, but her class started calling it Bob.)



We also included her swim goggles, a pencil, a drawing of a dragon, a family picture, a picture of Wrecking Ball (Skylander figure), and Lego Kate.

I remember doing the same thing for a Relief Society activity at church.  It's a fun way to find out about people!

17 years

Catharine Tracy came over and took our traditional anniversary-day pictures for us (not in the field this time, since it had been raining).  17 years!  It's been quite the ride.  And here we are about to become home owners (or at least mortgage owners) for the very first time.  We're excited to embark on this next phase of our life together. 



Goofy kids!

I'm still messing around with post-processing images from my 60D. These are looking a little weird to me, but it may just be that I've been staring at them too long. Sometimes I really hate editing photos.

Third Grade, New School!

Moving is a big deal.  We haven't even begun the actual move yet, but Kate gets to move school districts.  She started her first day of third grade at her new school on Tuesday.  It was a rainy morning, so we couldn't do our traditional pictures out on the sidewalk steps. 




I digi-scrapped Kate's lunchbox!



University Place schools started the day before Tacoma. They also start forty-five minutes earlier, and until we get moved into the new house we've got a commute of 15-20 minutes, so we've had to adjust our schedule. We will miss walking to school, and chatting with the crossing guards. Kate has some good friends that she will miss also, but hopefully we can still get together.  (I also had to buy "real" clothes this year, since this school does not have the uniform-like dress code.  Lots of adjustments!)



At her desk and ready to go!

I wasn't sure how Kate was going to take switching schools, but it's going well so far.  She's already made a couple of friends in her class. They play something they call Pink Ninjas at recess. Sounds like Kate's kind of crowd.

Evening at Owen Beach

A quick outing to the beach on the last evening before school starts.



The water is cold! Andy only sat down in the water once this time (on purpose). A few weeks ago I had to wade out (in my Salt Water Sandals) and rescue him when he tripped and sat down not-on-purpose.



Andy goes in and out of the water, and throws rocks. Kate finds sticks and other interesting things.



A lovely way to finish up summer vacation!

Kate's Dragons (2013 edition)

Kate wanted to do more dragon pictures like the ones she made a couple of years ago, so we went out after church and got some photos, and then she went to work in Photoshop.



This little guy wants a bite of Kate's marshmallow.



The bright sunshine drove us into the shade by the rock wall, where I discovered that we were getting some great reflected light off the parked cars. (That's Santa Pillbug crawling up the wall in the background.)



Dragon in a tree.



This one's hatching out of an egg.



(I helped with the arm overlapping on this one--she had it down but I just smoothed out the lines a bit.)



So cute!

Pending Sale

If all goes well, this will be our new home. We've been house hunting for a few months now. We were hoping we might be able to get into University Place (adjacent town, which, contrary to what you might expect, does not have a university) but we weren't sure if we would be able to find anything there in our price range. Whenever we mentioned this to anyone, they would nod sagely and say something along the lines of, "Yeah, and if anything does come up in U.P. you've gotta be right on it, because it's gone like that." So it seemed like a long shot.  We looked at a few houses in other areas but still hadn't found anything that was quite right.

Well, just a week ago (Thursday) I happened to be looking online right after this house was listed. I called our relator at 2:00, we got in to see the house at 3:00, and put in an offer. They got seventeen offers right after us, within 24 hours, but we were first and they said we could have it if we were willing to pay closing costs.

I wasn't convinced that this was really the house I wanted--I wasn't in love with the layout, and the kitchen is very small, but we went back on Saturday with a contractor and looked at things in more detail (without the kids running around shrieking), and discussed possibilities, and we decided to go ahead with it.  So we had the inspection on Monday, and now we're in the midst of getting things together for our final loan approval. 

On top of everything else, with a week to go before school starts, we're moving Kate over to the U.P. school district (we figured it would be easier to just start her over there now than have to change schools after we move) so we have been up to our ears in paperwork.  Nonstop excitement.  It's amazing how quickly everything has been happening.  We've never done anything like this before so it's been quite the education.

Keep your fingers crossed for us!

Painting for Penzance

The Tacoma Multi Stake Cultural Arts Committee presents:  The Pirates of Penzance.  I got to do some of the set painting.  (Yay!)



My contribution was the big scenic backdrop, and these plywood rocks.    (That's Fiona's library in the background, which was not part of the production--they just hadn't moved it off the stage yet.)



Anne Marie helped out a couple of times.  That green grassy stuff in the background was done by another girl that came to help one day, but it just wasn't working so we ended up changing the whole thing.



This was during the time that my camera died, but Anne Marie got a couple of pictures for me on her phone.   "This is my brush!"



I was still working on the rocks right up until the day of the first performance. You can see the rocks on the backdrop, too. The whole thing was very rocky. (And that backdrop was crazy... it ended up being way more complicated than it should have been, and cost Anne Marie some late night sewing hours.  My part with the painting was relatively straightforward!)



They had seven performances over two weekends, and it was just fabulous.  The house was packed (I heard from many people who enjoyed it so much they went back and saw it a second time).  Patrick Watson as the pirate king really stole the show, but the whole cast was amazing. There was a brief incident during opening night when the Major General's mustache fell off in the middle of the song, but they handled it with panache and some hilarious ad-libbing.  There's a video clip here.  The funny part starts about halfway through. 

Working on stuff like this is always fun.  It's just so cool to see it all coming together and then see it in the performance.  

Alphabet Attack

As we were preparing to go camping, I got the idea to make a set of foam letters for Andy that we could take along.  Unlike many other ideas that I get, I actually implemented this one right away--picked up some foam at Michael's, and then spent Sunday afternoon drawing and cutting out letters.  This is what happened next:  Andy fell asleep on the floor, and Kate labeled him. 



She thought this was hilarious and of course we had to get out the camera.  Which led to taking turns spelling out things upon the sleeping child:






(Andy is a very sound sleeper.) 





Kate pulls out the big guns--the whole entire alphabet!  If you look closely you might see Andy in there somewhere. 

Andy loves his letters, and was also quite intrigued by these pictures.  Perhaps he wonders how we took them.

Robin's Nest

Breakfast for hungry babies, June 19th.

We've had a special treat watching this family of robins right outside our apartment building.  The nest is just above my eye level, which means I can lift Kate up so she can have a good view.  Kate had been pretty sick and we missed the day the eggs hatched, but when I noticed the babies I gave her a piggy-back ride outside to see them.  We waited very quietly and after a while Mama Robin came to feed them (after chirping at us angrily from the sidelines for a few minutes).  Kate was entranced. She said, "That's a miracle!"



June 23rd.  The babies are getting bigger!



Mama is still suspicious.  I had to wait her out for about twenty minutes.





June 25th.  I never did get any more feeding pictures.  I hung out for an entire hour, but Mama just wasn't going for it. 



June 26th.  Something must have happened to one of the babies--there are only three now. 



Watchful parent.




The babies fledged on June 27th (the kids' half birthday!)  I was heading out to run some errands and stopped to check the nest first, and just happened to catch the last baby standing on the edge of the nest, looking uncertain.  I grabbed the camera and got a few shots before he fluttered out. 





We didn't really see the babies after this. Their parents continue to feed them on the ground for a couple of days, but apparently they decided that right outside an apartment building was not the best place to do it. Kate asked me what will happen to the nest now. I told her they might use it again, or they might decide there are too many people around. Enough with the paparazzi!