October 10, 2011

This week I was a slacker when it came time to take pictures of our current home. We have finally finished getting our old house ready for sale, and it is all ready to go. I did have a chance to take a couple videos of the kiddos this week.

The first is a video of Andrew where he talks about the visits he had at school with the firefighter and police officer. Don't worry...they came to see all the kids!

Andrew's Interview

The second is of Julia showing off her counting skills. Something she learned by playing cards with mommy and daddy. Yep, we are training her for Vegas. They won't suspect a thing when they see her sitting at the table!

Julia counting by five

Enjoy! Hopefully next week I will have a more lengthy post about the Adventures at Green Glass Road.

October 3, 2011

This week we have lots of photos of the kiddos. Keith was able to take a break from working on the old house to join us at the county fair on Sunday. At 52 degrees, it was the coldest fair I have ever been to in my life! Nevertheless, we had a great time seeing the tractor pull, animals, and trying out some new rides at the fair. The kids rode their very first rollercoaster and I think I can safely say they loved it. At the end of the cold and rainy day, Keith was able to mow our field. He found four turtles in the process, all which survived and one played with the kids for a while. All in all, it was a great weekend!

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September 26, 2011

Keith is still busily working at the old house trying to get it all finished so we can put it up for sale. I think I can safely say that when everything is finished, that might rank as one of the happiest days of his life. Well, maybe not quite, but I think he is ready to go back to working on only one house, preferably the one we are actually living in.

Weather continues to be cool, and wet, but we did have a welcome visitor today....the SUN!

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We have had our share of rain this fall, and our rain garden has looked like a pond on more than one occasion. However, we have lots of sand on our lot, so nothing looks like a pond for very long.

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Outside, we are starting to see some changes in the leaves. I am sure the cold weather that is coming in this weekend will help that process speed up even further. My only hope this fall is that we might get some great colors in the trees with all this rain!

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We also celebrated the only fall birthday in our immediate family this weekend. Good Ole Molly turned TEN this weekend. We celebrated by making pizza, which she didn't get to taste.

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However, I did let her have her own piece of strawberry shortcake that night. She has earned it after many years of eating dog treats for her birthday. It appeared that she enjoyed it a lot, although if you blinked, you would have missed the whole thing!

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The kids also enjoyed their weekend visit to the library. Now that Julia is starting to read some simple stuff herself, she is getting a whole new enjoyment out of picking out books. Although she is still at the point where she likes picking out the books based on their covers!

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Andrew enjoys his books too, as long as they are about tractors, tools, heavy equipment, robots or dinosaurs. Here he is reading up on one of those subjects.

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Lastly, when he is not reading, he enjoys being Captain of the Library!

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September 19, 2011

For many, Labor Day marks the "end of summer". However, around here, we still often get summer like temperatures well into September. In fact, last year when my parents came in November, it was still in the mid 70's most days. This summer has been unbearably hot (and humid), but I was still surprised to see it go away so quickly. Two weeks ago, we had lots of rain and cool weather. This was followed by a fairly sticky and hot Labor Day. Last week you could feel a definite change in the air. Gone was the thickness in the air and it was replaced by a feeling of fall. Then the temperatures shifted too, and this weekend we were dressed in long-sleeves and light sweaters to deal with the 60 degree days. The kids noticed the difference and started remembering all their favorite things that start happening when the jeans and sweaters come back out-i.e. Halloween, pumpkin patches, and eventually Christmas. I decided I would commemorate these changes by taking a weekly photo from our great room window. This is what it looked like this week.



Of course, this is also the time of the year when things get darker earlier, and brighter earlier as well. So it was time to put up the custom roman shades in the kids bedrooms. We have them for the other windows as well, but we will hold off hanging them until the windows are painted. That should be by Julia's high school graduation, I hope.





Alas, Julia, my early riser, enjoys getting up before the sun so she can see her friends to like to come and visit in the morning


To wrap up this week, I have some pictures of Andrew at the breakfast table showing us his many faces








And a final picture, I call this "ode to Liam", since he was copying a pose from his cousin that was taken a couple weeks ago by my brother

September 12, 2011

Well, we finally seem to be settling into a routine after our move, hurricane, and power outage. The kids continue to love their new schools, and the house. I am amazed how easy the transition has been for them. Keith and I have enjoyed the changes too, but we still have a long list of things on our to-do lists. We have been very thankful that Keith's mom and Bob continue to help us shorten those lists! The kids enjoy helping out with some of our chore too, so you can see in the pictures how we often mix work and pleasure. Besides the screened-in porch, the kids favorite space seems to be the great room. Largely, because much of that furniture is currently at our old house to "stage" it for selling which gives them lots of room to play. Andrew even created a new game called basketbasebowing ball. I am sure it will be an Olympic sport soon.

I also included some pictures of the rooms with our furniture since I had not posted any of those yet. As well as, the guest bedroom showing the small amount of boxes that still remain unpacked. In the final shot, you can see our grass coming in. We also have had beautiful weather now for several days. A very welcome change after all the rain last week!


Click on the link below to view other pictures from this week:
https://picasaweb.google.com/semerranko/September122011?authuser=0&feat=directlink

First we move, then we get an earthquake, and then a hurricane. Now we are ready for a vacation!

So it has been a very busy couple of weeks. We have officially moved into our new home, and have been living there since Saturday, August 20th. The kids have transitioned wonderfully to the new home. Three days after we moved in, we had an earthquake about 100 miles from our home. Needless to say, that was an experience I think we could all do without again. Thankfully, it appears that there is no damage to the house. Julia started kindergarten on August 24th, and she has really enjoyed being at the new school and riding the school bus. Andrew started a new school on that same day and immediately walked in, sat down in front of his new teachers, and didn't even look back to give mommy a hug!

Saturday, August 28, Hurricane Irene came to visit-an unwelcome visitor for sure! The winds were quite amazing, as was the rain, but our house and property fared extremely well. Even our old house only had leaves in the yard, no fallen trees or other calamities. However, the main road to our new home had several power lines down, so we had no power on Sunday, and as I type from our old house (our "vacation home" that has power) , I am not sure if we will have it tonight. However, the power company has been pretty responsive and I think it will be up and running very soon. Fingers crossed! Unlike the cable company which has yet to install our internet, tv and phone even though we requested it three weeks ago. So, in the meantime, our cell phones are the best way to reach us-or carrier pigeon :)

And yes, I will be continuing this blog as we put the finishing touches on the house, and beyond...New Adventures at Green Glass Road!

For some reason, I am not able to put the slideshow up from Picasa like normal. Please click on the picture below to take you to the pictures link for this week.

This is it!

The week that we have been working towards for the last 11 months is finally here-moving week. Last week we had our final building inspection, and we were told that we needed to add a front step hand and grab rail. That is in place, so we are keeping our fingers crossed that come Tuesday, all the inspections will be over. And not a minute too soon, since Keith's dad and brother plan on coming down this week to help us move. I can't believe we are really moving this week!

This weekend, Keith, Ronnie and Craig put in the wood floors in Julia and Andrew's room, hung more doors on the bedrooms, and remaining bath, and framed the closets for the shelves and clothes racks. We have some more doors still to go in (closets and office) as well as baseboards-but it really looks like a real house now!

The last two pictures are Molly this week. She decided to take a nap with Andrew's favorite blankie, and I snapped a couple shots before Andrew found out. I guess her grey beard is giving away the fact that she will be 10 years old next month. Good ole Mol.