Matt & Robin's Wedding

We went to see Nelson's friend Matt get married to Robin in Hood River, Oregon two weeks ago. (Nelson has known Matt, he is shocked to reflect, a quarter of a century.)

Hood River is located in the Columbia River Gorge. It's a spectacular gorge. Nelson has driven up and down the gorge countless times, growing up in Oregon. It was the rest of the family's first trip.



Waterfalls line the gorge. If you get off the main interstate and take the old historic Highway, you can stop to see them.





Here's Grace learning how to play horseshoes at the rehearsal picnic. Grace made her presence known throughout the picnic. "Nelson, your daughter seems to be enjoying herself," I was told many times. She waited until the groom's father speech to shout my name at the top of her lungs because she wanted more watermelon. There is Tony in a touching moment, complimenting his son and daughter-in-law, competing with Grace's voice, shouting, "Daddy?... Daddy?... I want more watermelon."





Matt and Robin were married at Mt. Hood Bed & Breakfast, located, not surprisingly, in the shadow of Mt. Hood.

Mutual Agreement

After dickering through the inspection and negotiations thereof,
accompanied by no small quantity of anxiety, we have mutual agreement
on the sale of the house, as of this morning. We have some work to do
now with a series of minor improvements/ fixes.

Offer

We received an offer on our house yeterday - for less than our asking
price. We sent a counteroffer to split the difference between their
offer and our asking price. Today, they accepted the counteroffer,
contingent upon inspection. So good news, and we'll hold our breath
until after the inspection.

Grace is completely oblivious to all the drama.

Grace and Holden Portraits

Grace and Holden had portraits today. Katie and Aimee took them this morning. Click here to see a sampling of photos. We have ordered prints of the best portraits. Not all of these posted photos are the best - some are just funny. We'll be mailing these when we get the photos back.

It's Grandpa's Fault

Some evenings, Grandma Katie comes home from work and takes Grace to
the YMCA. Grace is positively apopletic about going to the YMCA. She
can hardly control herself, she is shaking with so much glee. Today,
they went swimming. Grace put her head under water and came up
choking on water. "Why did you breathe in the water?" Grace was
asked. Thinking quickly, displaying the well-honed instincts of an
experienced politician, she replied, "It was Grandpa's fault."

Over dinner, we tried to get her to elaborate on that statement, since
Grandpa wasn't in the swimming pool with her. She maintained her
story, elaborating further that "Grandpa is silly." And pointing out
that Daddy, too, was silly. She'll be a great witness before Congress
someday.

Dotcom Paradigm Shift

"I want to go to Dotcom," Grace told Aimee today, as they drove around
looking for an open restaurant on a Monday. "Dotcom. Dotcom." she
said. Dotcom? "Do you mean McDonalds?" said Aimee. "Yes!" said
Grace. As you can tell, we don't take her to McDonald's for food
often - less than a handful of times. This day has every appearance
of being a paradigm shift for us.

The Curious Incident of the Cats in the Morning

Our cats, Mango and Chutney, have gone to live with Nelson's brother
and sister-in-law (Jaime and Michelle) in their condo in Bellevue.
The cats are doing well as they adjust to their new home. Those of
you who know Jaime know that nothing short of igniting dynamite under
his covers can get him out of bed consistently in the morning. We
have exhausted every possibility of getting him out of bed, with, as
it turns out, one exception: hungry cats. They do what a human can't
do: they relentlessly pester Jaime each morning, meow at him, and walk
all over him until he gets up to feed them.

House for Sale - Photos

We changed our minds over the weekend and decided to stage the house empty. So we have all moved in with Katie and Milt while the house sells. The house went on the market yesterday. There are quite a few photos of the house you can view by clicking here. We are very tired from packing up the house and finishing all the various projects.

Staging

We are starting to stage the house. Today we completed two rooms, Grace's room and the third bedroom (also known in our house as Peri's room, since Grace's friend Peri slept in that room two years ago).

Grace's room:


Grace's room:


Peri's room:

Goodbye chain link fence

To make the house welcoming, we removed the chainlink fence today (Nelson cut it out with the sawzall without losing even one finger).


We replaced it with a picket fence: (also pictured: Mark and Milt)

Grace's celebration of last day of school

Grace and teacher Alice:

Grace is very happy that preschool is over for summer break.

Grabbing a Camel

Holden is beginning to figure out what his hands can do.

Bedbugs

House Update

We definitely see the light at the end of the tunnel. We are close to
having all our possessions packed. The shed in the backyard is
filling up with boxes so we can show the house. Thank heavens that
shed is so big. It means we don't need to rent a storage unit to
store our boxes for a few months. The remaining work that needs to be
done has shrunk to the level that the human mind can almost, but not
quite, conceive of it. We plan to work hard on the upcoming Holiday
weekend and, hopefully, be ready to put the house on the market by
next Wednesday.

For all of our enemies out there that have ever hoped that fixing up a
house would exact some sort of vicarious revenge for you, you may
sleep peacefully in your vicariousness. Also, please note that your
vicarious revenge has hit fringe targets - the various friends and
relatives drafted into helping this rather large effort.

The Final Push

Through some small miracle, we might get this house on the market by the end of the month. This weekend we focused on the kitchen.

Mark, our home repair expert, otherwise known as "Mops":


Milt changing a light fixture:


Our new granite countertops (and the hole where the sink used to be):


We did have a classic home repair moment. I turned off the water supply to the house to remove the sink and to replace the broken water shut off valve at the sink. After we installed the new valve, I went back to the basement to turn the water supply on - and nothing happened. No water flowed to any faucet in the house. This was disconcerting. For an anxious half hour we investigated and tried to determine why the water pressure wasn't coming back on. We have an old system - so finding replacement parts would be difficult. Also, it's hard to sell a house without water. We removed the flow valve in the basement, looked at it, determined it still worked, and reattached it. Then the water started flowing again.

Why do you do hard things?

This morning Grace was up with me at 6:30am. Just before I walked out
the door, she asked me, "Daddy, why do you do hard things?" At 6:30
in the morning this is an extremely difficult question to answer.

Obligatory Sleeping Baby Pictures

We're contractually bound, as parents, to inflict sleeping baby pictures upon an unsuspecting public. (Photographer's note: The difficult part in these shots to somehow capture the peaceful image of a sleeping baby while framing the picture to exclude the piles of moving boxes and the piles of miscellaneous stuff waiting its turn to be put into a moving box.)

New floor tiles

We are putting new tile floors in the basement and in the laundry/pantry room as we get prepared to sell.

Old basement floor:


New basement floor:


The laundry room getting its makeover:


So - now, does anyone want to come over and grout a couple hundred square feet of tile?

Thing 1 and Thing 2

Saturday Morning, May 12

Here's a quick video of two happy children, Holden & Grace, on Saturday morning.



Click here to view this video directly on youtube.

Haircuts, Bedtime Attire and Happy Baby

We all have new haircuts.


Here is Grace with her new elephant towel and on Thursday night when she insisted she had to go to bed wearing bunny ears.



And here is just a great photo of one happy-go-lucky baby boy.


*As always, click on any of the photos to see full-sized pictures.

Scenes from a Baptism

Here are some of the highlights of Holden's baptism, including a 5 year old girl who was ecstatic to see her friends standing in the pews on the balcony. (Holden was baptized on Easter 3 weeks ago.)



Click here to view this video directly on youtube.

Holden Video - 3 Months Old

Here is a video of Holden at 3 months. He is smiling a lot now and trying to talk back when we talk to him.



Click here to view this video directly on youtube.

Goodbye Faithful Honda Accord

Good news - we sold the Honda Accord today. (It's a 1989 model.)
That's one more item on our moving checklist that we have completed.
We sold it to an African man who needed a car for his sister, who has
been in the U.S. for nine months and needed a vehicle to get to
school. Fortunately, his friend is a good mechanic who can do some
maintenace on the various oil leaks in the engine. They were very
happy to get it. And the neighbors will probably be happy that the
Honda is no longer parked in the street under the telephone lines
where the pigeons congregate and caked the car in bird poop.

Panda Bear

As we were getting ready to go to Grace's friend Tovah's house last
night, I told Grace that Tovah and her parents had moved to a new
house. "Have you see it before?" she asked. I said no. "Maybe they
have a yard that is shaped like a panda bear!" she said. She thought
for a moment. "Maybe it has colors like a panda bear, too."

Work Party and Yard Sale

Yesterday we had a work party and yard sale. It started as normal, with Grace waking up to Holden expressing his unhappy opinion about waking up hungry.

We finally gave up on that terrible structure on the back porch. We decided the house would be improved more by simply removing it than putting work in to making the structure look nicer.

We moved massive amounts of sod. Here's Jaime helping out. (He initially didn't want to help - "I'd like to help, but I don't like work" were his words.)

Here's a picture of Katie and Milt shortly before Milt worked himself to complete exhaustion.

Grace was entertained all day by playing with her friend, Peri.

Here's Eric posing in front of his truck. There's 1,400 pounds of sod in that truck.

Meanwhile, Aimee kept the yard sale moving forward... slowly. We didn't get as much business as we hoped at the yard sale - but we did get rid of a few things.

Sitting on the couch with babies

Dad sitting with his baby, Holden; his daughter sitting with her baby, Keaton.

Happy Baby

Here is Holden in one of his ever-increasing moments of happiness. He's smiling at the antics of his big sister.

Yard Work Day

Michele, Nelson's sister-in-law, came over to help hold baby Holden so we could get some yard work done around the house and prepare for next weekend's garage sale.

Adoption

Tonight's Simpsons rerun was about adoption. Grace wanted to know what adoption was. We explained to her how some children, because of financial or other reasons, didn't have mommies and daddies. And then other parents would come and adopt those lucky little babies. Those babies would become their children. You could almost see the light bulb of illumination flash in Grace's head - and she said, the Universe having revealed one of its nagging little mysteries, "Is that what happened to me?"

April 2007

You can look at the photo album for April 2007. You can also click on the new pictures below.

With Tuppence for Paper and Strings

You can have your own set of wings! With your fist holding tight... to the strings of your kite.

Grace has been begging to the fly her new kite for the last several days (in between Easter Egg hunts she gets bored). Today it was windy enough to fly the kite at the local park. Grace ran in circles shrieking and laughing at the kite.

Holden at 2 1/2 months.

Here's a recent photo of Holden, taken last week. He is a very even-tempered baby, and is going to be a little quieter than Grace. He is still very much attached to his Mother and doesn't like to be away from her during the evenings.

Baptism

Holden was baptized on Easter Sunday by Pastor Jami. Our friends Anne and Amy sponsored Holden. Grace got a front row stool to stand on and watch the proceedings.

The Great Easter Egg Hunt Marathon

Grace got to participate in three separate Easter Egg Hunts. All you could hear when the kids were looking for eggs was Grace narrating the entire event at the top of her voice. "An egg! Another egg! Look, an egg!"

New pathway

Over the last two years, since we installed our new porch and new front door, the path between the sidewalk and the steps turned into a mud trail, which didn't add to the house's aesthetic appeal, unless you were a deer. With the help of Nelson's parents, we put in a new broken concrete path.

Talking About Kidney Stones

I had a kidney stone that lasted six days. On Thursday, 10 days ago, I went to the hospital with extreme pain in my stomach and back and extreme dehydration. They said I had a kidney stone and gave me pain medication and injected me with fluids. The stone passed into my bladder last Tuesday, but I still feel a little sore today. That was the most painful thing I have ever felt. Aimee believes I was going through "sympathy pains" for giving birth to Holden two months ago.

Today we went out to eat at Snappy Dragon. Grace came in and sat down at the table and said to the couple beside us, "My Daddy peed out his kidney stone." I acklowledged this as truth, and thanked Grace for sharing with our neighbors. The man said that this sounded like news worth celebrating with a dinner out.

Dent

Coming out of Safeway this evening, Grace noticed that the car parked next to us had been in an accident. The entire back left side was crumpled. Two people were sitting in the front seat. She walked up to the car and said "Excuse me, excuse me. You have a dent in your car." The ladies in the car thought it was hilarious.

Grace's 5th Birthday

We celebrated Grace's 5th birthday with a dinosaur birthday party at the Burke Museum. I have posted some pictures of the birthday here. You can also see a couple pictures of Aimee's Dad, Bill, from his visit to meet his grandson.

The Indestructible Dinosaur Pinata

For Grace's birthday party we bought a very well-made dinosaur pinata that the children had no chance to break, and then equipped the children with a tiny stick. The results are in this video: