Weekend Recap ...

So we had a very nice weekend in Door County, even though it was pretty rainy and the drive up there was a bit longer than we anticipated. Door county is the finger going out into Lake Michigan on the eastern side of Wisconsin.
We left about 12:30 and got up there around 5p. The house was a really cute little old house that the current owner is fixing up. The kids really liked the big swing in the backyard in a big old willow tree ...


Emma was also thrilled to find the screened in porch. We had recently read a book called "The Sleeping Porch", so this porch instantly became the sleeping porch. It had a swing seat in it, and some nice comfortable patio furniture.

One of the activities we did several times during our stay was go to the park. The kids love new parks. Somehow I'm not sure we needed to drive several hundred miles just to find a new park, but whatever! Cyndie and I got a kick out of the merry-go-rounds. For insurance reasons, or whatever, you never see them in parks any more. However, both of the parks that we went to in Sturgeon Bay had two merry-go-rounds. The kids loved them.

On Saturday, it rained a lot. So the kids wanted to go out and play in the puddles. We took a walk in the rain, and got a lot of funny looks from people who happened to drive by.


This is the stairway up to the second floor. Everything was really cutely decorated, but the house was pretty darn small. There was one small bathroom that we shared. It made me think of when my family used to live in Alaska and we all shared one bathroom.

Saturday we drove up the coast to explore a bit.

We had a nice lunch at a place called Julie's which had been recommended to us by a girl from Covenant Harbor who leads groups up to Door county frequently.

We spent several hours in the afternoon in Pennisula State Park hiking and exploring. There was a 80 or more foot observation tower that we climbed up to take in the view.

Timmy is very afraid of heights, so it took him a long time to climb up, and even longer to climb down ... with his hand held the whole way. It was a bit awkward to climb steps that way, especially given the wet conditions. It really was pretty darn high though ... we were WELL above all the trees.


We did lots of exploring and hiking.


The first hour and 15 minutes or so of the actual hike the kids were running ahead and playing a lot. By the last 15 minutes they were dragging behind and pretty tired. I guess they hit a wall!

All in all, it was a very nice trip. We'll definitely try to do that again!

Readying

So we're packing bags, cleaning house, and generally getting ready to head for Sturgeon Bay in Door County for the weekend. I think it will be a bit of a hectic trip, but I think it will be fun and good for us to get away too. Hopefully the kids will do well, especially with the somewhat long drive. I have a route picked out to get up there that is "scenic", but if they start getting a bit rowdy, we may have to revert to "fast". We'll see. Emma is going to do a half day of school, and then we'll leave around noon.

If any of you are interested in getting onto facebook, my profile is at http://www.new.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1477292801&ref=profile.

I think that link will get you there. It's been a lot of fun to reconnect with some folks after many years via that mechanism.

Timmy's Birthday

It's Timmy's Birthday today ... the big 4 years old. We're having a small party (this is his year for a "family" party ... the big one will be next year) this afternoon. Timmy brought cookies for the snack at his school today and got to serve them to everyone. Big excitement for a pre-schooler! More later on the party and festivities when they happen.

The big excitement for yesterday was soaking in the jacuzzi. It works great. What a great way to wind down and spend the end of a day!

Tomorrow we leave at noon for our weekend home exchange up in Door County/Sturgeon Bay. It'll be a short trip, but hopefully a fun family get away.

Jacuzzi update

At last check, the jacuzzi is up to 95 degrees! Perfect for us and the kids to get in for 15 or 20 minutes before dinner tonight, and then a quick heat up to 100 for Cyndie and I go soak in after the kids go to bed! We're all very excited.

On the heater/AC front, it looks like we'll be getting the new one installed next Thursday.

Back, and Bloggier than ever ...

Well, again I have become delinquent in my posting ... I'm going to chalk this gap up to a number of things ...

• A burst of work on getting the jacuzzi ready*
• My friend Chris getting me on to facebook.
• My Guitar Hero/Shovel arm syndrome**

So now I'm back, the jacuzzi is running (and warming up) and you'll be again bored stiff with my blathering.

*Jacuzzi update. I think we really starting hitting it late last week. We dug out to level the ground between the existing deck and the new doors we put in. Laid rock, leveled it. Laid sand, leveled it. Laid the pavers. Moved the jacuzzi (man that thing is heavy!). Filled the jacuzzi (our outdoor faucets are straight from the well, untreated, so we ran a hose to the indoor faucet) ... that took about 3 or 4 hours. Ran electrical through the basement. Added a new exterior cut out switch with GFCI. Wired the jacuzzi. Added a new 50A breaker*** in the box. Made sure everything worked. Started the thing up. Whew ... that brings us to today. The jacuzzi is currently running and heating up!

**My arm has been hurting lately and I didn't know why until I played Guitar Hero with my Mom and Cyndie on Thursday. I think it's a combination of the strumming motion from that game (which I really haven't even been playing much lately), and from shovelling in the nasty clay soil that we have around here. My injury is to the tiny muscle that is on the thumb side of your arm, about two inches toward your elbow from your wrist on the top/back of the arm. Very strange. It's not even a place that you think about having a muscle! It swelled up noticeably a few days ago, and has been painful since then. I'm trying not to use it much, so hopefully it will heal!

***The only bummer about the new breaker I added is that we got one with the used jacuzzi we bought, but couldn't use it since it was a GFCI breaker, and the switch I added outside by the jacuzzi was also GFCI ... you can't put two on a circuit or they'll just keep tripping each other. Oh well, we only had to spend $15 on the new breaker ... $35 less than I expected to have to pay!

So the weekend was mostly just relaxing in the mornings, working on the jacuzzi in the afternoons, and a swim at Grandma and Grandpa's pool in the late afternoon to cool off. Emma continues to enjoy first grade ... Timmy had his second day of preschool and that went very well. We had some bad news on the heater and air conditioner front. I'm not going to go into the whole story right now, but the bottom line is that we probably have about a $4000 bill that we were not expecting at all. We're working on that, updates as they are available.

The big event for the rest of the week is Timmy's birthday party tomorrow. It'll be a small family affair, with one friend, Lucas from church. Friday around noon we leave for Door County for a long-ish weekend.

Pre-school update

So I guess the first day of Timmy DeVries pre-school would be considered a success. Cyndie had to stay for a half hour with Timmy to get him to start participating. Apparently he didn't want to go in, then he'd go in, but only in one of the rooms were there were no kids (there are three joined rooms that they class uses). Finally he decided that he wanted to do a puzzle with Lucas, our pastor's kid that he's pretty good friends with. By the time Cyndie and I got there to pick him up he was having a good time and was very excited about school.

So as I said, we'll chalk this one up as a success.

Rainy Thursday

It Thursday, which means Timmy's first day of school. He was a bit hesitant this morning, so Cyndie was kind of leading him along by telling him that it's really like nursery at MOPS and trying to help him understand that it would be a familiar place, etc. She's not back yet from dropping him off, so I'll try to post again later to give you the low down on how that went. When Cyndie get's back we're going to go run a few errands and hopefully pick out a birthday present for Tim ... he turns the big 4 a week from today.

As the title of the blog indicates, it's a rainy day today. It's been raining steadily since we got up at 6, and, if I remember correctly, it was raining in the night when I woke up too. That's good as we haven't had much rain for the last month or more.

We've had a good time with Gow, Laura, and Sally here. We've mostly been just hanging out and eating! Mom and Dad were over for dinner last night (for very yummy Beef Stroganoff, go Cyndie), and after the kids hit the sack, we had a little informal jam session with Mom on the bass and Gow and I doing the guitar thing. That was pretty fun.

It looks like we'll get our AC issues straightened out finally tomorrow. The problem with the blower motor going out will be free to fix due to our worry free plan ... that saves us $200 or more. The leaking condenser pan will cost us around $300, but that's better than replacing the whole unit! In the meantime, we've been blessed to have nice cool weather after the hot day on Tuesday.