Wii-Hoo!! A Wii Party

Erik had a nice cake with the mario bros and eleven blue candles.

Five boys overnight and we had to have hot pretzels on a cool rainy night. A fine time to open some presents.

Five boys overnight and no mass destruction? Wow! OK, minor destruction, but inbetween was the calm of video gaming.

Wii'd Like to Play

Yep, we beat the holiday crowds and found a Wii! Well, Karen found it with quite a bit of phone calling. Anyhow, we have it in time for Erik's sleepover birthday party. Should be quite a hit.

Erik is already figuring it out. At least he's more active doing this than the other games. Not too worried about Jakob as he doesn't sit enough to play many games.

Jakob has found a new pasttime he can sit still for, at least for a few minutes at a time. Puzzles. Nothing too challenging just yet, 100 pieces for now, but he does them pretty well.

Jake's Agave

OK, this is the agave stalk I was talking about. Pretty tall. One of the ribbons came loose during our all day rain yesterday, but that happens.

We got ahead of ourselves and did some of the red before the silver. If we do it again, we'll do the whole stalk in silver then the branches with red and run the red onto the stalk.

The main thing is having fun and that we did!

Big Helper!

I thought it would be Erik helping decorate, but Jakob wanted to help. We cut down an agave stalk and wrapped it with ribbon. Got too dark to show off the stalk, but will get a nice shot up tomorrow...Jakob really did a pretty good job on it too.

Had I thought of it earlier I could have a good shot of him consentrating on the task.

Thanksgiving

Alright, no pictures, but after working most of the Thanksgiving weekend, we managed to get together with Grandma and have a real thanksgiving dinner on Sunday. Erik wasn't too happy about Thursday's drive-thru and meeting Dad at the park for dinner. That's not what its supposed to be!

After eating and playing some games, we went to the pool only to find it was closed for repairs - it was supposed to be closed starting Monday. We ended up playing pool instead. A first for the boys! Going to need some practise I can tell you that! But they weren't the only ones in need of practise!!

Never Too Late for Halloween?

OK, so halloween is past, most everyone's candy is faded memories by now. I got one of those fake pumpkins and had a little fun a few years back. This is Calvin (of Calvin & Hobbes) as his alter-ego, Spaceman Spiff with a few monsters thrown in for good measure.

This year I got another post-halloween pumpkin and since the boys or at least the other little boy (Erik 'owns' the first one) is way into SpongeBob, this is what I came up with. Oh, and in case you can't tell, since my monitor is so bad I certainly can't, the crabby patty 'monster' has sesame seed eyes, lettuce teeth, a tomato slice tongue, and Bob is holding a spatula and his hat is jumping off his head. It shows up fine on the camera image, so it should work here. If this stinks, I'll work on getting a better shot and getting that up here.

Anyhow, enjoy this little post Halloween treat.

OK, so this is what I've been up to lately. The back room was originally a room off the garage and now houses the pantry, freezer, water heater, and washer/dryer. The closer room which was the pantry/laundry and entry off the garage (and doorway to the back yard) is still an entry/egress (but now with new doors) and houses the stove/micro and fridge. The cupboards are all new, plus one more to go in in front of the stove and one to go above the fridge.

Lots of new water lines - new and moved electric - new flooring - well, you get the picture. Very near to finally finishing this part of the house and moving into what was the kitchen/dining/family room and making it a great room. The cabinets will go into this room from the room you see in the picture, but the existing cabinets separating the kitchen from the family room will be removed and the whole room opened up. Lots of work ahead, but it feels good to have most of the first stage complete!

This is another time consumer - or hobby. Finished this drawing in pen & ink and once I make a few copies I hope to hand color them with color pencil and see how that looks. The bell has that light green-blue patina that I think would give me headaches trying to get right.