Pix for the weekend ...

Here are a few pix for the weekend from various things recently.

Not sure where this one came from, but apparently Tim was bathing in the backyard.
Ben and Sami came over for a picnic one day.
These next two are interim pictures ... they don't show the shirts after we put the logos on them. First is Lightning Guy ...
Next up is Soft Cape

Today was the parent picnic at Emma's school so we went over for that ...

Timmy was pretty pooped afterwards.
We're very proud of Emma ... she was the student of the week for her classroom. She received a bunch of books and a free dinner at Mimi's.

"Light" followup ...

Just got a phone call from RedPrairie (the phone interview guys) ... the interview will be next Monday at 7:30 am, not tomorrow. I guess the guy that was going to do the interview as a deadline or something ... what's the matter with these people? Am I not the most important thing?!

Anyway, that should be interesting.

Neal

A light at the end of the tunnel?

Good morning all.

Just thought I'd share two elements of good news.

First, when we were all eating breakfast this morning, Timmy disappeared upstairs and then came down saying he went to the bathroom all by himself. This is great news considering he's actually been doing fairly well this week going to the bathroom in the big boy potty. Maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel!! This follows up Timmy starting to take a bit more interest in dressing himself too.

The other note of interest is that I have a phone interview with a software place tomorrow morning. You can be praying for me at 7:30 am Pacific time.

Emma's frient Macy (and her older brother Micah) stayed with us last night. It was a little bit of a late night as Emma was totally psyched to have Macy here and kept both of them up until about 9p. Timmy was also excited ... he wanted to sleep in a sleeping bag too, so he ended up staying up late as well. Should make for a longish day today. Macy and Micah may also be here today after school (they both go to Moiola, Emma's school). They're staying with us because last minute Mavric (their brother who is Emma's age) was able to have the final ear surgery after previously having been told it wouldn't happen until next year at the earliest. So I guess you can pray for Mav's surgery too (I believe a couple of hours starting at 9am).

So that's the fun happenings here. Tonight is family date night and the requests for activities were painting (from Timmy) and Ruby's (from Emma), so we'll probably try to fit in both!

Neal

Weekend Report ...

Hey all,

I don't think there's anything hugely exciting to report from the weekend, but here's a short run down.

Friday I worked from home, so it was fun to be able to walk Emma to school and then go and pick her up. That day, the guy who is taking the virtual tour pictures of the house was supposed to come, but he ended up not making it. I guess that was good as it encouraged us to get the house spic and span (although I have to say we're doing a pretty darn good job of keeping it clean anyway). In the evening was Bible study at our house.

Saturday was pretty rainy, so I thought maybe we should do a craft and suggested we all make super hero costumes. Before breakfast, we made some masks for Emma and Timmy. After breakfast Emma, Timmy, and I went to get some raw materials ... plain t-shirts at the t-shirt warehouse, fabric and velcro at Jo-Anne Fabric, and then a quick stop at Target for Emma to spend some money (she had saved her $1 for ice cream Friday at school and added that to some money she has been saving). She bought herself a doll (with a 50% supplement from the parentals). She was very proud of herself. So we got back from errands and I sewed the velcro to the shoulders of all the t-shirts and then gathered the cape material and sewed the velcro on there, and viola ... superhero capes. After lunch and quiet time, we all came up with names ... Emma was "Soft Cape" (because her pink cape is crushed velvet), Timmy is Lightning Guy (because his cape has got a whole bunch of Lightning McQueens, from the movie Cars, on it), Cyndie is Flower Power (due to her flowery cape) and I'm Hawkeye (my name from when I worked at Indian Village at Alpine). We then came up with logos and decorated our shirts. We haven't gotten them back on post-decoration yet, but I'll try to come up with some photos this week. All in all, it was pretty fun on a rainy day!

Sunday was church, then we went over to Jim and Laurie's for lunch and to hang out while the open house went on at our house. We had a nice time with them. All the kids get along pretty well which is nice (and something that used to be a significant problem). We walked over to the Foster's Freeze for ice cream and came home for dinner, a bath, and bedtime (and no day would be complete without a rousing game of "Emma and Timmy's Game").

Not anything horribly new on the kid front. Timmy is continuing to struggle with potty training. That's going to be a challenge! Emma is doing well in school and enjoying drawing a lot. She really enjoys books and being read to. I think that if she can be patient enough, she will really like reading books on her own.

That's it from us,
Neal

Wedding Report plus "Emma and Timmy's Game"

Hey all, here's the pix from the wedding. We had a very good time, saw some people we hadn't seen for a while, etc., etc. The pictures really tell a better story, so here it is ...

The wedding was in Simi Valley, outdoors with a reception afterwards inside. Ron Merrell married them ...


The "Lopez" table ... Robin, Stephanie (Dave's daughter), Judy, Effrain, Dave, Mark, Carlie, Dan (not sure where Audry was) ...

Tim and Judy ... Tim didn't look like he'd aged a bit since I last saw him. He told me he just gave up Roller Hockey (it had been his goal to play until he was 60). They both seemed very happy and doing well. I also talked with Alyssa a little bit. She seemed to be doing well to. Bruce (her husband) is now the senior pastor at Simi Cov. They said hello to everyone. Harriots ... they said a special "hello" to you Laura.

Judy and Cynthia Merrell. Cynthia is now living in Carlsbad, so we're going to try to get her to come up for dinner some evening. I should also note that these two were dancing queens, on the dance floor all night! Cynthia called Cyndie and I old fogies because we didn't dance more!

Cutting the cake ...
Us with Ron and Anna ... we had time for some good conversation. We're hoping to spend some time with them when we drive out to WI.

That's Ron and Anna's youngest (born Sept 14th) ... Brodie. They also have a 2 year old Braddock.
We stayed up in Simi Saturday night, so it was nice to be able to sleep in and relax a bit. Emma and Timmy stayed with a young couple from church that just got married this summer. They had a great time.

I made a game recently (Emma & Timmy's Game) with some help from Emma. The kids really like to play it. You roll a die and go around the board. You can land on yellow spaces to draw a card, and some spaces tell you to do things. There are things like "everyone go sit in the suburban" and "eat a piece of candy" and "drink some water". Timmy's favorite is probably "dance a jig" and Emma, being the health conscious girl she is, probably likes the water one best! Anyway, it's been a fun thing to do together as a family.

I even made a box for it! We're going to get the board laminated so we don't destroy it.

So that's about it for now. Nothing really new on the house front to report.

Neal

Updates from the West Coast

It's Monday again, so I'll drop the line on what's going on with the SoCal/Wildwood DeVries.

As you are all aware, the buyers with whom we were under contract on our house pulled out of the deal on Thursday. We (and our realtor, Gwen, as well) were very surprised it happened. The reason they gave was that they didn't think the house was big enough in the end. This was just a day after they had gone and had the house inspected (there were no real issues from the inspection). We met them at the inspection and they seemed very nice and excited about the house. I'm not sure they fully understand the market around here, because I don't think there's anything much bigger around here in the same price range, but whatever. Anyway, we were in morning for a day, but have come to grips with it and are moving on! At least God is in control, even if he doesn't check with us first!

Friday we had a realtor open house in the morning. Emma had school, and I took some time off and took Timmy to Mile Square Park while Cyndie ran some errands. Saturday we went to church to help with some landscaping work. Then afterwards we went to a pool party for a kid we know from the park. Sunday was church, then another open house. We received a call from our realtor at 11:30 (for a noon open house), "I just smashed my finger with a hammer while I was putting out signs for the open house. I'm going to go get stitches, but I'll be back for the open house as soon as I can". Anyway, she ended up having a pretty successful open house with what she thought were a few good leads. We spent the afternoon over at the Zones and had a good time hanging out with them. We all walked over to Emma and Maddi's school to play late in the afternoon, and then to Stonefire Grill for dinner after that. We got home just at bedtime. The whole family was in bed pretty early.

Lately both of the kids have been getting up during the night and Timmy has been getting up early in the morning. Last night Timmy didn't go to bed until around 10 (he was up and down a bunch). Anyway, I think it's probably a combination of the tension of the coming (and going and coming) move, some allergies/cold type symptoms, and (in Timmy's case) the compounding of the first two elements such that he's again sleeping in the afternoon (making him not sleepy at night). Anyway, they both seem to be doing a bit better now, and Cyndie is going to try to make sure Tim doesn't nap today, so hopefully tonight will go a bit better.

Emma seems to be doing better as school (after a rough week or two where she didn't want to go), so that's a good thing.

That's about it on this end.

Neal

Latest on the Move

Not a huge amount to report, but here's the latest ...

Yesterday morning was the inspection for Deodar. It went pretty well. There were no significant issues that came up. At this point, we're just waiting to hear from the buyers regarding their "demands" for what they want us to fix, then we'll negotiate on that. We were expecting to stay at the house the whole time, so we had to scramble a little when our realtor suggested that we make ourselves scarce so that the buyers could be there without anyone looking over their shoulders. We did meet the couple. They're younger, probably a few years older than us, with a 15 month old and another due in February. They seemed very nice. The wife was very friendly and outgoing and the husband a bit more reserved. Anyway, after meeting them and their agent, I definitely got the feeling that the agent is the one who has been agitating things a bit (and creating all these annoying counter offers with minute details being nit-picked!). Anyway, as I said, the inspection went well. We should hear back from them today or tomorrow regarding what they'd like us to fix.

The inspection on Wildwood is Friday. Dad will go to that, along with our realtor out there. We've also got our lender in place for that loan, so we're moving right along.

We created a big 4 foot by 2.5 foot calendar of the next several months so that we could get all the things that will be happening in place and start trying to figure out things like when we'll actually be leaving here, when Emma's last day of school will be and her first day on the other end, etc., etc. As of now, the important dates are the removal of all the contingencies on Deodar (next Thursday), the closing of Deodar (Oct 24), and the closing of Wildwood (Nov 9). We'll have three days to move out of Deodar after the closing (out by 8p Oct 27), so will probably leave the next morning, travel across the country seeing people, and arrive in the Lake Geneva area a few days before the closing. We're working on details with moving the stuff (probably UPack).

Anyway, there are lots of happenings going on!

Neal