Happy Father's Day!!

We Love You!

To Boldly Go Where No Man Ever Wants to Go Again

Monday - Jay went above and beyond his fatherly duty. Earlier that afternoon, Lexi informed me that her favorite lion had gone down the sink drain. Fine I thought, we can just loosen the pipe and shake it out thinking our pipe had the traditional 'J' in it. Mmmm .. no ... not so much ... it's not 'traditional', but stick STRAIGHT - leading away to who knows where. After much consoling, and mourning, Lexi came to terms that the lion had gone to sea (what else was I going to tell her!?).

That evening after Jay came home, I told him what had happened in the event Lexi told him. He told me that there was a 'sink trap' in the basement and he thought he could get it off to see. Well - after six earrings, a stone, a pound of hair and inches of goo, in the very bottom of the trap sat Lexi's beloved lion (from Uncle Bob - he gave Lexi his prized zoo collection he had when he was a boy). After rinsing, washing and soaking in bleach, Lexi was reunited with her prized possession. YAY!!!!! and GO DADDY :)

Now - on a side note, I think this is so cute. Lexi adores animals ... A-D-O-R-E-S them. Adores .. Adores ... Adores. She has a great variety of stuffed and play figures - somewhere around 100 or more play figures aside from her stuffed collection - seriously - thanks to Uncle Bob who shared his prized toys with Lexi from when he was a boy. Well - I am a firm believer that it's not the toy that creates the play - but the child - because the lion that went down the drain was NOT shiny or fancy, didn't have bells or whistles, wasn't produced by Nick or Sesame - but was a well worn, well loved, well broken-in lion that is probably reaching 40 years old. I love when things can take a child to places only their imagination can - with just that, their imagination and it thrills me that Lexi will have many more memories with her favorite lion. I'll think you'll smile too when you see what brought Lexi to tears and her Mommy too as I watched her understand it was gone - and again when her daddy fished up to his elbow in goo to fish this little guy out:

I put the lion next to Pecan so you can see how tiny it is and then....

I took a close up so you can see how special it is :)

CELEBRATE WITH US...IT'S OFFICIAL!!!!!

Cue the music and celebrate with us!!!!!

CONGRATS JAY on the completion of your graduate program at the University of Minnesota and receiving your Masters of Geographic Information Science!! You worked HARD - you deserve it!! I'm SO SO very proud of you!!!!

HOORAY!

Happy Birthday Jay!! :)

Jay celebrated his birthday yesterday (12/28). Lexi and I baked a cake - I frosted it - and Lexi decorated it all by herself :). I think there is a whole package of Hershey Kissables on it :) We had a nice dinner. This weekend we're going to go to the coast for the day.

Happy Birthday Jay / Daddy - we love you!!!

Mt. Katahdin

You may have noticed a small picture of a mountain to the left on our blog (under our profile). I thought it would be neat to take a second and explain what that is. That is a picture of Mt. Katahdin Jason took when he and some friends climbed it. Mt Katahdin is the highest peak in Maine - it is roughly one mile high. Jay and our friends Brian and Keri and Brad climbed to the peak one day last summer. Not me ... I was seven months pregnant (I'm not even saying I could do it if I weren't - nope). I thought I would share some of the pictures Jason took during their climb. Every picture you see is some place they had to cross or climbe. One note - the blue spots on the rocks are to mark the path to the peak. :) One more thing to keep in mind ... is that all hikers have to start at ground level - there is no parking lot to drive up to - so - they had a long haul up. One more ... HA ..... Mt. Katahdin is about 20 miles north from where we live.

Demo Day!

Well ... We're 3/4 of the way finished with our ceiling demo I'd say. ALL of the panels are down - the gridwork too. The lathe from the original plaster is down (WHAT A MESS THAT WAS) - and now, Jay is in the process of priming the beams. After that dries, we'll be able to paint - and then CLEAN UP. All of the wood and mess has already been taken out - but we have a FINE coating of plaster yuck EVERYWHERE. A gross gritty coating over all most everything even though we removed most of the furniture and covered the others that were left in place. SO - you know what's in store for us. I'm including photos - the one with the 'pretty' grid work is the original drop ceiling. Hopefully I'll have a 'finished' one to post tomorrow. We will be doing the trim next weekend - but at least the biggest part will be over (HOPEFULLY today).