Renewed Blog ... day 3

Yes, this is three, count them, three days in a row with the blog!

Things on my mind ...

• Timmy went with a friend (Alton) to Pierce's Farm this morning. His friend is from MOPS and pre-school, and this trip was with the pre-school that Timmy went to last year. Timmy really enjoyed playing with Alton, and another good friend from pre-school, Ben. I think Cyndie will try to arrange a playdate with Ben in the near future.
• Cyndie's big clothing exchange is tonight. The basement is full of tables, and the front room and dining room are ready too (they look far different than they did on Monday morning when I went to work when they were filled with cardboard boxes ... maze style).
• The kids are growing! We were talking about needing to get new winter boots last night during our monthly budget setting.
• Speaking of budgets, things sure shape up differently when you don't have a mortgage payment to fit into the budget!
  

Getting regular?

Wow, this makes it two blog posts in two days ... does this constitute a return to regularity? Only time shall tell I suppose. The cool weather I mentioned yesterday got even cooler over night and today. If yesterday was slightly fall feeling, today is fully fall feeling. As I sit here (at home) typing this, my bare feet are cold. Cyndie and I had a conversation last night regarding the definite need to buy some slippers. Fall is here.

We didn't end up going out for dinner last night (to celebrate the mortgage payoff). Emma ended up with a headache, so the kids watched Spy Kids and we had dinner at home. Emma was complaining of quite a bit of pain, but it went away with some food, tylenol, and laying down. We wonder if it may have been some allergy related thing. The wind was really whipping around yesterday, and there are lots of leaves on the ground and decaying. We're going to shoot for Wednesday night instead for the celebratory meal.

The big push around the house now is to clean up from Timmy's party (largely complete), and get ready for Cyndie's clothing exchange thing she does. It's now twice a year (spring in advance of summer, and fall in advance of winter). She's expecting around 25 ladies and lots of clothes. Yesterday the kids and their friends Owen and Otto (who live in our neighborhood and Cyndie and their mom Monica take turns picking the kids up in the afternoon from school) played in the cardboard box maze (it filled the entire living room and dining room), and then helped disassemble it. Owen and Otto were camping last weekend, so weren't able to make it to Timmy's party.

So there you have it ... life with a regular blog!

Caught a flick last week ...

Gow and I caught Inglorious Bastards last week.




Inglorious Bastards (2.9/5)
Interesting ... I think that was the first word out of Gow's mouth as we walked out of the theater. I'd agree. The movie definitely was not for everyone. It was very violent (big surprise from Tarantino). There were some really good characters, and he made me care for them, or at least some of them. Brad Pitt was fun as one of the leads of this ensemble movie. I liked Christoph Waltz as the slightly psychotic Nazi antagonist. But the plot was all over the place. It really was a high budget vanity piece, though this is typically the case for Tarantino movies. You either like them or you don't, I don't suspect there's much middle ground.

The overall summary: It's a deeply flawed movie, with some interesting elements, which is not worth the viewing.

Movies I've seen recently:
Juno - 4.8/5
Slumdog Millionaire - 4.6/5
Iron Man - 4.2/5
Lars and the Real Girl - 4.1/5
Wall-E - 4.0/5
Traitor - 4.0/5
The Dark Knight - 3.9/5
Star Trek - 3.9/5
Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist - 3.7/5
Definitely, Maybe - 3.7/5
Kung Fu Panda - 3.5/5
The Passion - 3.5/5
Valkyrie - 3.5/5
The Incredible Hulk - 3.4/5
New in Town - 3.2/5
Horton Hears a Who - 3.0/5
Inglorious Bastards - 2.9/5
Push - 2.8/5
Meet Bill - 2.1/5
Jonah, a VeggieTales Movie - 2.4/5
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - 1.9/5
Burn After Reading - 1.5/5

Back and Bloggin'

So, it has apparently been 18 days since I last blogged! What can I say, I got rather busy in there. I'm not going to try to recap everything, but we had a good camping trip in there (the first weekend I missed), and a big birthday party for Timmer (the last weekend). Added in there was lots of busyness with work, construction around the house (thanks Dad), adjusting to glasses for Tim, school for the kids, having a dog again, the weather beginning to get cool ... believe me, it was full of activity.

So here are some things I'm thinking about right now:

• Praising God that Cyndie just signed for the wire transfer to pay off our house here in WI! Man, that's going to be crazy come next month when we don't have a mortgage payment to make! I'm sure it will hit me first in a couple of days when Cyndie and I sit down to look at our budget for next month and have a bit more money to allocate! We're going to go out for a celebratory dinner tonight!
• Timmy's totally enjoying learning to read some words. I've started working with him to sound out words. When he does it, he get's this huge grin on his face, it's really cool. I think I'll work with him on some sight words too.
• Both the kids are enjoying playing with the gifts Tim got at his birthday party. Cyndie had a great idea to only let him open (as in the box they came from the store in) a gift or two a day so that he'd actually play with them ... and it's working.
• Lots going on with church this week as last Sunday (yesterday) was the last at the YMCA with this Sunday the first at our new location. That means a busy week of moving sound equipment, doing a practice at the new building for the worship team, etc., etc.
• It's feeling extremely "fall-y". Today is in the low 60s with high winds. Lots of leaves are falling down and it's feeling brisk!
  

Freedom!

So a couple of decisions were made in the last 24 hours which will provide much more significant freedom for me this coming weekend.

1) The business trip which I was scheduled to make to Baltimore starting Sunday was postponed, and possibly canceled.
2) I decided that our previously scheduled family camping trip was more important than the recently scheduled church meeting, so I'm not going to take 3+ hours out of the afternoon on Saturday to drive back for the meeting.

So as a result, I'm free to enjoy what looks to be a glorious weekend weather-wise with my family and some good friends. Should be fun.

Since this has become a number list blog today, I'm going to throw in another one for "major questions facing the Wildwood DeVries this weekend"

1) How will Pepper do on his first camping trip?
2) How big will the Vikings win on Sunday?
3) How will Timmy's requested "chocolate chip cookies as bread, roasted marshmellows as filling" desserts taste?

Yes, that's right. Our Timmer is going to be 5 tomorrow and has requested a deliciously (I think) gooey concoction of chocolate cookies and marshmellows for dessert. I'll be sure to report back regarding these momentous questions on Monday.

In other family news, picture day is today at school for the kids, and I'm stopping in Delavan on my way home to pick up Timmy's new glasses!

Floor basically done ... or so the grapevine says

I'm in at the office today ... doing the usual stuff as well as making some arrangements for my business trip to Baltimore next week. However, I did hear some interesting information through the grapevine ... the floor is nearing completion. When the guys left yesterday afternoon, they we're probably 70% done. It looks very nice. It's amazing the difference in two ways. First, just being a uniform look between all the different rooms instead of being broken up in all the different places. Second, having the nice, new, shiny look instead of the faded, pink carpet and the indescribable bird linoleum is obviously a big change. So we're pretty excited. Now we just need to get cracking on some more elements of the downstairs area so that we don't end up with partially finished projects all over the house!

In work related news, Cyndie was very excited last night that she was able to get done during the day (while Tim was at school) all the graphic design work she had planned for yesterday so that she could relax in the evening. It seems like a while since we've been able to do that!

Labor Day, with actual labor

It was a nice weekend. I won't go into the details, but there was family, a parade, wiffle ball, the pool, church, good food, more family and lions and tigers and bears (oh my). Whew. A good weekend. We had a bit more than the usual conflict between Ben and Tim for some reason. Maybe because they're both a little more tired than usual what with school and all?!

Spent quite a bit of time yesterday getting the house ready for the new floor to be laid. We took out the last cabinets that need to be moved for the new fridge/freezer (to match what we had at the SoCal house) ... not that that will happen any time soon! Then just spent time moving things out of where they'll be laying the floor. It was a pretty big project. The guys are here laying the floor as we speak. It will be nice to have it done in a couple of days instead of doing it myself and it taking at least several weekends!

This week is a short one, yeah! Then we'll head out to camp with Dale and Jeannine and the kids this weekend. It's the same place that we camped with them at the beginning of the summer. It should be fun! Pepper's first camping trip. I'm thinking he'll sleep in his crate in the car. After that we'll head back to Holte's to watch the Vikings first game together ... us Vikings fans have to support eachother, especially when we live in enemy territory!