Looking good

Garage door guys came today, as did electrician and gutter guys. It was crazy around here for a while, and poor Lucy was about to lose her mind barking at everyone.


But look how beautiful this is! More on the chair to the left in a minute.


Is it sad to be excited about new gutters?


Also had a guy out to get another bid for redoing the driveway. Unfortunately an unexpected added expense. What is hard to see is the huge trench right next to the concrete edge here.


One of our projects to do ourselves is figure out how we are going to close off the fence areas that opened up when the town made us move the garage back about five more feet. We are ready to get rid of our redneck dog barrier. And you can see the electrician has another day of work - the yellow wire is where an exterior plug is going. After coming from our house in Dallas where we had no exterior plugs, having two outside (one on the house and one on the garage) is going to spoil me!


Our other dog barrier. It will be nice to actually be able to sit on our chairs again.


Another project for the weekend will be to HAPPILY move all this crap back into the garage. Hooray!

YouTube version

Click here to see the video on YouTube - the video screen is much bigger there. The video says it is currently still processing, so hopefully once the entire thing is done the video will be much clearer. You can click on the icon of the four arrows pointing out forming a box and it will make the video full-screen.

Also note that this group was the only one to entirely sing the number. Most of the other songs either have the kids just dance along with a song or if there is singing they do it with the original song playing along. Ours had Cat Stevens taken out and just the kids' sweet voices carrying the tune.

Variety Show number

Grace performed night #2 tonight at the Tamaques Variety Show. Kids do songs and/or dances in groups of similar age. Grace is fourth from the right. Part of the skit also had the kids dressed up as what they wanted to be when they grow up, which was included in the slides during the show. Grace's slide is the third one. You can't see what it says on the bottom of the screen (because it ended up superimposed on her friends Elie, Katie and Sierra) but her dream is to be the "first female baseball player for the Texas Rangers." That's my girl!

Hope the video plays - I know it is sometime hit or miss. Be sure and try it more than once; that seemed to work for me on previous videos.

NOTE: I think we may try to put this on YouTube to share because Blogger doesn't allow you to click on it and make it bigger. I'll put up a new post once that is done.

Painted garage and flowers

Only one picture of the garage today.


Because honestly other than having the rest of the siding on the front, the paint doesn't look much different than the siding did. But it is painted, and looks wonderful. The garage door will arrive Monday morning, the trench has been dug for electric and all the fixtures have arrived. Now we've got a couple of appointments set up to get some bids for replacing the driveway (gotta love unexpected expenses!).

So since I only have one garage pic, how about a peek at what is starting to bloom around the house.

The azaleas are getting ready to burst. This is the big purple one next to the driveway. Maybe it will soften the effect of the huge blue dumpster that is still there.


The multitude of hostas are starting to pop up. That was one thing I loved about the beds around the house when we first looked at it. I've got a bunch of spots where I'd like to plant some more - I really like these plants.


Tulips are starting to replace the fading daffodils.


The nice little grove of grape hyacinths next to the big tree in front of the house. You can see a red azalea getting ready to bloom right behind them.


This bleeding heart surprised me and showed back up this year. I thought it had died away, but I guess it is truly a spring plant. As soon as we get everything off the deck and back into the garage (and I can find a shovel) I'm going to move this little guy.


This is why I need to move him. He's that lone plant in this barren bed in front of the house. This is the year we are going to make those go away and just extend the grass all the way to the sidewalk. Now if Jim and I can just stop arguing about whether to keep the corner beds in the front with all the beautiful tiger lilies...

Sunny days = garage building

After a BUNCH of rain (apparently the past 12 months have been the wettest in NJ since they started keeping track in the 19th century), we finally have some sunny days again so work on the garage has continued.

Door and window were installed, and roof put on. These first two pics are from a couple days ago.


Getting ready for the garage door.



Almost all the siding is on the house as of today.


Apparently they are a little short, so he has to order a bit more siding in and finish on Monday. Tomorrow I'll go purchase the garage door, and the light fixtures are on the way!

Few more Statue trip pictures

I didn't want to overload everyone on the last post, here's a few more pictures from our Statue of Liberty visit.


This is the kind of gorgeous shots you can get as the ferry takes you from Ellis Island to Liberty Island.


Of course this is what the kids were doing when we were seeing those awesome views.


There is a neat museum inside the Statue base that talks about how it was made. This is a replica of the face of the Statue. Alex wouldn't go near it, but the other kids loved how her nostrils are kid-head-sized.


After the museum you go up to an area around the base of the monument. This is what you can see looking up. Notice our amazing blue sky we had that day!


And this is one of the views looking out from the base of the monument.


Just some beautiful photographer next to me (I love my niece!).


Shot of the kids on the ferry on the way back to the car. Sun reflecting off the water, wind whipping their hair, camera acting up - not the best picture of the day.


When we'd almost made it back to shore Alex started asking about the "King Kong building." So I pointed it out to him and told him we could get his picture in front of it. This was the best we could do since I did it quickly (we were all ready to get home by then).


I'll leave with a great shot of the amazing skyline as seen from Liberty State Park.


And with a great shot of me and two of my favorite things in the world.

Lady Liberty trip

Kathy and family were up here for Spring Break. Second year in a row for them to come visit, just as fun as last time! I let the kids play hooky from school yesterday and we all went out to see the Statue of Liberty. We started at Liberty State Park in New Jersey (you can also start from NYC). You take a round-trip ferry trip from there, going first to Ellis Island and then to Liberty Island.


Cousins with an amazing backdrop (unfortunately the one I got with all the kids smiling had the Empire State Building partially obscured behind Alex's head). This is from the ferry landing at Liberty State Park.


Alex gets lots of holding (hugs?) from cousins when they are in town.


Ferry ride to Ellis Island.


Rest of our crew.


Two little buddies enjoying lunch together.


Look at this sweet face! Laughing at funny Uncle David.


I think this is where the kids had the most fun. Playing imaginary tree houses on Ellis Island.


Ellis Island as we are ferrying away.


I was informed as Alex was looking at this picture with me that they were watching the boat "toot". Apparently that is what all the bubbles coming out the back of the ferry looked like.

I've now got a 5-year-old breathing down my neck for a chance on the computer, so more pictures tomorrow.

Progress

Lucy looking into the same doorway Alex was looking out of above. She's probably noticing that great big backyard escape hole in the front of the garage.

Rain rain has gone away (hooray!)

I sit here listening to the beautiful sound of hammering in the background. After the deluge of rain we had this weekend it is nice to know work is once again progressing on the garage. The paper pointed out yesterday that New Jersey got a months worth of rain in 48 hours this weekend. Kathy and family are up visiting for their Spring Break this week and got stuck in Dallas overnight due to the horrible weather up here, which was for the best. The ground was saturated already from all the melted snow we've had this year, so when the rain poured down all day Saturday we ended up with our backup drain leaking slightly into the basement (sopped up with about six beach towels). But worse is that our shower in the basement filled up with stinky water. So we spent an hour or so baling the water into the sump pump (and had a very restless night of sleep hoping we wouldn't wake up to more water down there). I can't complain though - a neighbor down the street ended up with NINE inches of water in their basement, apparently backed up through the basement toilet.

Poor Emma was hit with a stomach bug yesterday and spent all day downstairs in bed, so the rest of the kids (once my kids were back from school) spent the day playing board games and video games. It was still drizzly and cold, so exploring NYC wouldn't have been much fun for them anyway. Luckily today Emma is much better, the weather is 55 degrees and SUNNY, so the Genet's have taken the train into the city.

My kids LOVE having cousins here visiting. I've told Grace and Alex they can skip school on Thursday to spend one last day with the Genet's before they fly home on Friday. We're planning on finally going to see the Statue of Liberty, and it looks like this glorious weather is going to hold for us!

Today's work

Framing - yay! (Just in time for three days of rain.)


Front


Side view


Back

A little bit more

Finally some movement again on the garage. After being hung up because the town demands a survey be done after putting in foundation footings (to the tune of a few hundred dollars - another one coming down the road), then not taking an emailed copy of the survey so we had to wait for the original to be mailed, town engineer looking at it, etc., we finally got an inspector out here to give us the thumbs up to continue. So the masonry guys were back out here to backfill the huge piles of dirt into the trench, plus they leveled everything out and added a layer of rocks. Hopefully the weather will hold out for us long enough that we can get the framing started before the rain hits tomorrow night.

Coming out of his shell

Can I tell you how happy I am that Alex seems to be moving past his shyness? I credit it to meeting his two newest best buddies, Peter and Henry. My little non-participating guy is now doing a gymnastics class once a week and started an indoor soccer league this past Sunday. And for both activities he is asking "How many more days until..." on a regular basis. I think a lot of that is due to having his friends in class with him. And Alex will even go over to a friend's house WITHOUT me, which is a very big step for him. Here's hoping the new found bravery will last into summer so he will participate in a couple of camps once they are paid for, and even more so last into starting kindergarten in the fall without these two boys.

More snow and a little garage work

Our big snowfall last week brought garage work to a screeching halt.


The initial foundation footing had been poured with some cinder blocks built up on top, but then everything got snow-covered.


This is what it looked like at the base of our back door at 7am Friday morning, and it kept snowing all day. I could only shove the door open about 18 inches.


Luckily it was good snowman (or Snow Alex) making snow.


After a couple of sunny 40+ degree days the guys got back to work today. I think they have finished the perimeter of the garage.


Here's another view of the work finished today. Once we get the surveyor out here tomorrow to give us written proof we are within code for spacing from neighbor and our own house, and the city out here on Thursday to sign off on the progress, we are hoping to begin framing on Friday. Praying that any more precipitation we get this week is minimal!