Merry, Merry Christmas Everyone!

I hope this finds everyone well this Christmas season. As I put the ornaments on our little Christmas trees today, I thought about each ornament as I found a place for it. My first Christmas ornaments were from a Young Women's lesson when I was a Senior in High School. Since then, every year I have acquired at least one new ornament. I have two from my mission - I was serving in France at the time. Many from friends who have traveled - I have two from Isreal. But the most important part of Christmas is remembering our Savior.

While it has taken me a while to get ornaments on our little trees, it did not take me long to put up the nativity sets.

I love thinking about each person who was present that night when Christ was born. Perhaps one day I will start collecting Santons. They are figurines made in France to depict the "Creche". The biggest difference is that not only do you have the Shepards and the Wise Men - but the butcher, baker, tailor - the whole town comes to see the Christ child.


This little tree is the one I went to JoAnn's for in 2006 - Mine and Patrick's first Christmas. All the Christmas decorations were in storage in San Diego. I thought I could do without since we would be going over to family's - but by the time the 22nd rolled around I had to bring Christmas into my home. This is similar to another tradition from France - the manger scene is under the tree.

I know things have been tight for many this year - us included. Remember that despite the economy and obstacles that fall onto our path, the Savior has given us the precious gift of the atonement. He loves all and invites all to come unto Him. I wish you all a very Merry Christmas.


Did you notice I'm singing one of the songs? Didn't know I was a country singer in my previous life, did you? :-)

Here is another wonderful song - just follow the link http://www.joytoeveryone.com

Winter in Pocatello

Well after several days and weeks of temperatures threatening to drop only to reach up to create some beautiful autumn days, winter is definitely here. We have found a second company to take care of our mold so hopefully we'll be able to focus on other parts of the house. This is the last week of school for Patrick. I have to work until Christmas Eve, but then I have the next week off. We still have boxes all over, but several of them are now serving as "tables".

These are some pictures of a sunset one evening. I must admit, besides the wind, the beautiful sunsets have surprised me.















With the time change I've even seen some beautiful sunrises.















And this would be why winter is definitely here, as well as why Patrick hasn't cut his hair! brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I know I haven't posted for a while, things have been hectic. The house is slowly get put into place. We had another company come in to give us a second quote on solving our mold problem in the basement. We are just waiting for the final dollar amount now. In the meantime Patrick has been working hard at clearing out all the random shelves, cupboards and paneling. I spent Monday getting all the "extra" boxes in the kitchen have been moved out, so we had a real, clean kitchen to cook Thanksgiving dinner in.

An exciting thing happened this past week. After moving all our stuff in, we realized that the laundry area was set up for a gas dryer rather than an electric one -like ours. :-( So we have been hauling laundry to the laundry mat each week. The exciting thing was that on freecycle - this group where people offer stuff they want to get rid of for free, had a gas dryer listed on it. I called and the guy still had the dryer in the back of his truck and said he'd just drop it by. So not only did we get a free gas dryer - but we got free delivery too! I couldn't believe how easy that one fell into our laps. Now I just have to brave the spiders in the basement to do laundry.

Earlier this month we went to Boise for Popsie's 80th birthday party. Here we are with the birthday boy. I know it is blurry - you can blame Karen.

At the party they put together a bunch of balloons. The two red balloons represent Popsie and Momsie, the yellow balloons all their kids, the green ones are grandkids and the blue ones great-grandkids. I'm not sure exactly how many there are, but I do know its over 100.















Here is mom and dad. They came for the party too. Aren't they cute! It was good to see them and spend some time with them.

Some House Updates

Just thought I'd put some updated pictrues of the house. Since the basement still has the mold problems we can't put anything down there yet. I'm also reluctant to hang anything up on the walls just yet. After all the repairing and painting, the curtains and the lights are about all I can do just yet.

This is the living room. I decided when I first started taking pictures I should take shots along the process from the same point of view.

These are the curtains we got up. I found these cool double rods that made it so I only had hang up one set of rods.

These are the wall scones we hung up. The one in the back by the blue wall is the one that we can't find a switch for! It works wonderfully, it just will stay on all the time. We took the light bulb out to save on electricity.

We put the same wall sconce in Patrick's office.

I didn't have a picture of the kitchen so I thought I'd put one in this time around. On the counter is the pepper plant that we grew from seeds. We didn't start the seeds soon enough so we had to bring him inside when the temperature dropped. I'm glad we did, the peppers ripened and we've eaten 3 of them. There are two more waiting to be cooked into something.

Halloween

Here are some of our Halloween pictures. No Costumes this year, but we did get some more Trick or Treaters than last year.

Spooky Jack-o-lantern.

Patrick and Jack.

Lisa and Jack.

Dawn on Halloween.
I suppose there are some nice things about Daylight Savings being extended so late in the year.

Still Moving in...

Little by little everything is finding a place. I've included some pictures that show the floors. We found some curtains that are slowing getting put in place. We got the light fixture up in Patrick's office. As the rooms get put together we'll get some more pictures up.

This is the front room.

This is the bedroom.

This was moving day. There is space to move around now - but there is still much that needs to find a home.

This was our first snow from last week.

This is one of the rose bushes on the first day of snow.

Next step done!

We got the rest of the paint up!!!! All the rooms, well the 2 bedrooms and the living room all have color up on the walls. No more wallpaper. The trim and such still needs work, but that part will have to wait.

It has been a long week with Patrick starting school and getting his school and work schedules set. School has also brought homework to his plate. At Lisa's work a co-worker came back from maternity leave and the office was rearranged to make room to include a new employee. Jobs are changing and it is as confusing as having two houses partly packed and a mess.

This is Patrick's office in yellow.

This is the back bedroom in a light blue.

This is the view from the front door. The living room in blue and green.

This is the view from the door to the kitchen.

This was a surprise. Some of you may know the sadness of the old rose bush. The sellers razed the old bush during a miscommunication about fixing the concrete at the base of the house. At the time the saddest part was that they reduced this old rose bush to 4 inch stumps. It was almost as tall as Lisa! Today as we checked out the side of the house - turns out the outside water bib leaks (see Lows and Highs). Anyway, we discovered this new growth on the little stump. We'll see how it grows back.

Paint! Paint! and more Paint!

Just some pictures of the primer up on most of the walls. It will be finished tomorrow - well the primer will be.

This is the back bedroom. With the white walls the trim and doors look really yellow. The final color of these walls is a light blue.

More of the back bedroom. This door doesn't like to stay shut.

This is the living room from near the front door. We didn't quite finish the front room. My friend Joan came and helped so we definitely got further along with her help. Thanks Joan!

We've got mail!

Everyday seems that we go back to the old place a little sooner than we'd like. There is always a little more that needs to be done. We've got a schedule down - go to work/school, hurry home, race through dinner, go work on the new house and stop at Maverick on the way back to the old place for Icees. I think the guy at Maverick is beginning to recognize us.

We finally got to some painting on Saturday. We needed to get to the next point so we felt good about making some significant progress.

The biggest change however is the cool new mailbox. Patrick did a great job fixing that hole in our wall.

This is the new mailbox - ready for mail - lots of mail!

From here you can see the big hole covered up on the inside of the house. After some foam insulation and a big square of drywall and lots of drywall compound - no more hole in the wall to let in the cold winter of Idaho.

I did not endorse this picture! However, it is me putting the finishing touches on another drywall patch. You can see all the other patches on the wall.
Afterward we set up fans to help it all dry so we could sand and then prep for paint.

Finally - this is the front office ready to be painted.
You can see the blue tape around the window.

Here is the same spot with primer. The final color will be a pale yellow.
Hopefully, you'll see a yellow wall come sometime this week.

Anyone up for painting? We will be at the new house every night, we even has some extra brushes :-) The frig is stocked with soda, gatorade and popsicles.

After the painting we'll be staining the floors, waiting a few days and then moving stuff in. I am sooooooooooooo looking forward to having all our stuff in the new house.

And the work goes on...

The work this week has gone on. Slowly but surely things are looking better and better. Not many pictures this week. Most of visible work happened in the last two days. Here are some pictures...

We rented the big floor sander and Patrick went to work. You can see the first section done for the first sanding behind him.

Lisa took on hand sanding the edges. Thank goodness for power tools.

Bye, Bye big machine. Notice it is still light outside! It only took us two days of sanding. Not too bad for sanding 1520 sq. ft.! Next on to fixing the walls - lot of old holes and a few places where the plaster has come off the laths. And the hole in the wall for a mailbox. Our first day working the mailman introduced himself to Patrick and told him that our mailbox sucked. We agreed - a giant hole in the wall during winter didn't appeal to us either.
Speaking of introductions...we've met more of our new neighbors in the past two weeks than we have met in the place we are at now.

Lows and Highs

Well we made it through the first week. Tired, tired and more tired. Still more ahead of us, but at least we have a few things looking up for us.

Low----This a picture of one of the lows...the water seepage/leaking into the basement. This is the leak on the basement floor. The outside wall was still damp on Saturday - two days later. We have a guy coming to look at the mold in the basement room on Tuesday and a co-worker of Lisa's has a husband who worked mostly in concrete. We are going to see if he can recommend someone to look at the leak and give us some suggested next steps.

Middle---This is part of our documenting the wallpaper. This green floral is the base in the bedrooms as well as part of the hallway closet. I believe I'm up to seeing evidence of 8 different wallpapers. Luckily not all on top of each other, but the 4 layers in the back bedroom are proving difficult.

Again more of the wall paper documenting. Oh, and Lisa in a blue hat. Normally this is my rock hounding hat - keeps the sun off the top of my head and ears and is easy for Patrick to find me when he wanders off on his own rock hunt. I has proven helpful in keeping things from falling in between my eyes and my glasses, as well as keeping sweat and stray hairs out of my face.

High---This is the linoleum in the back bedroom. As Patrick was pulling up the carpet staples it just came up in one giant piece. As Patrick says, "The house rejected it." And nice surprise - hardwood underneath!

This is the hardwood in the back bedroom. After everything else this week, this was a very nice surprise. I have to end on the good things.

Almost 1 week with the new house

Here are some of the interesting pictures of the week. We have also been keeping track of the different layers of wallpaper. So far we have the gold/cream stripe that is throughout the house, a green with roses, a gray/red/cream plaid sort of mixed stripe, a gray mix of paisley and square pattern and finally a red. Interestingly the red is on a wall that I had been thinking about painting red. We've also run into a few paper clippings - if we could find when the first mass in the new Catholic church in Aberdeen happened we could date the one piece. We've had a piece of base board with a signature and a piece of wallpaper with a name and a phone number.

Here are some pictures of the house in progress....


The back bedroom reveal some interesting linoleum underneath the carpet.

Although this might look like some nice hardwood floor in the hallway, it is actually "wood" linoleum! Luckily this started peeling up as we pulled the tack strips off.

Tack strip destruction! Good safety with the eye wear - as well as fitting with the music in the background..."I wear my sun glasses at night...." You can also see where the original house ended and they enclosed the porch - nice line across the floor!

These are the disappointments this week. We had been watering the lawn - we weren't expecting the basement to be watered as well! grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

The moisture proved to infiltrate the one "finished" room in the basement as well. Now to deal with mildew and refinishing the room right. Lisa might not have a work space for a while.