Snow Cold

I'm sure you haven't heard about the big snow storm that shut down the south this week. Well, we learned that getting to our house on the mountain is near impossible in a storm like that. So we can choose to be home or away, but we can't have it all.  Here's the house from the entry to the neighborhood.  You can see how high it sits off of the main road below. You can also see that the road was covered in snow/ice. It is impossible to drive up a road like that (with no chains). Don had to park over a mile down the road and walk home. In 20 degree temps on a slippery road.  On his birthday.  Kudos to him for not landing the truck in a ditch like 75% of people who made the same attempt to get home.

Once home, he learned that it's actually quite peaceful up there when no one is driving around and all of the woodland animals are hunkered down.  

But being the nice guy that he is, he went back out and helped other stranded folks. Walking them home, giving his coat to a 4 month old and his hat to the older brother. What a nice guy. 

The kids enjoyed the snow. Of course.

And made a tiny snow man.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, I missed all of the southern snow storm chaos.  I spent most of the week in Chicago as a lab inspector for the College of American Pathologists. Speaking of Chicago, there was no (falling) snow, but the wind chill was pretty darn spectacular. Please note that the actual temp was -8, and the wind chill was -27.  I really didn't think it was so bad, for 2 reasons: 1) I knew I was leaving in 4 days and 2) I only walked 10 feet at a time (hotel to car to lab to car to dinner).

We inspected a system of 12 labs. It was nutty, but at night, we ate and ate and ate and ate! Oh my! With a daily per diem of $150, we were able to eat quite well. And our pathologist had it all planned out.  I don't want to eat anything for another week.  It was great to sit and eat with my new coworkers. We laughed SO hard. Great times. Here are some photos from the night at Carlucci's. One night was a Brazilian steak house (have mercy! I've never eaten so much meat in my life) and another was seafood. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. And of course we had to have appetizers, desserts, the whole nine yards.

This is the view from my room.  Please take note of the frozen creek/river that is supposed to be running through there.  Chicago was great fun and I hope we can get back there soon. When it's warm, of course.

And now I've had enough cold and I'm ready for spring. Please mister groundhog, don't see your shadow!!!

Lordy! Lordy!

They say age is just a number. And really, it is. But I think we can all agree that some numbers are bigger than others. Take 40 for example. It’s not that big of a number I guess. I mean, if you said there was a 40% chance of rain, I might still go to the beach. But if you told me I had to go out and run 40 miles, um, that’s insane. But 40 years, that’s not so bad if you’re kind of a risk taking, daredevil, live life to the fullest kinda guy. So, happy birthday to my sweets – may there be 40 more for us to enjoy together. I’m so glad you were born and so glad you chose me to be part of your life adventure. So, in honor of your big day, here are 40 reasons I’m glad you were born!

1. You make the morning coffee. I need it. Every day. And it is SO GOOD. In fact, I’d still be brewing coffee if it weren’t for you. I mean, the Keurig is good, but it doesn’t beat pressed West End.

2. You are an amazing cook, and I’m thankful that you cook for us most nights. I’m also glad that I bought you the Green Egg. Without you, the food wouldn’t be nearly as tasty. I mean, I couldn’t even get the thing started for Pete’s sake!

3. You love cars that look like Minnie Mouse’s shoe. It’s fun.

4. You lift heavy things, hang heavy things, remove heavy things from our house.

5. You kill the wasps that live around our home. I’m still a little suspect of your cup on a stick method, but it gives me a lot of joy to watch you try it. Unless you get stung. That doesn’t give me joy. Just the stick thing.

6. You call for takeout because you know I hate to do it.

7. You take Foster out to potty in the mornings when it’s ridiculously cold. Yeah, sometimes you don’t actually go out, but you open the door and face the cold air either way.

8. You’re good at elephant noises. You make the elephant noise 110x better than I do.

9. You don’t burn pancakes, and they’re always super good.

10. You are a great fashion consultant. Without you I wouldn’t have embraced the tights craze. With you, I look cool and my legs are warm. You also buy me things I would never buy for myself, and they look great!

11. You are a good Bridge Run buddy, even if your knees are old and rickety.

12. You always seem to know what’s wrong with my car and sometimes you can fix it yourself. If not, you talk to the garage guys so we don’t’ get ripped off. Oh, and you find someone to change my tire when you’re many, many, many miles away.

13. You clean the floors. I hate to clean the floors. You’re so good at it. No, really. I’m not just saying that so you’ll keep cleaning the floors. 

14. You keep us high tech. I know it kills you when I don’t see the need to upgrade my phone. Bless your little techie heart.

15. You negotiate house sales. Actually, you negotiate a lot of things, but this one I’d be completely worthless at.

16. You get us out of house purchases. I’m still sorry about that one, but I appreciate you for it.

17. You clean up half dead, half digested animals out of the yard/house. Yeah. I’m not too squeamish, but I invoke the husband’s role to do this job. Ick.

18. You do bath time. No one cries.

19. You listen to good music. And in turn, I listen to interesting music.

20. You often give me afternoons off to decompress/work out/shop. I don’t think you know how awesome that is.

21. You make special “Daddy loves Kate” treat bags. Yeah, she stashes them in her closet until the treats mold, but she cherishes those things. I love that.

22. You’re not afraid to confront non-handicapped people that park in handicapped spots. I think if more people had friends like Walter, they’d do that too. But you’re nice about it and most of all not afraid of the confrontation, and I think that’s cool.

23. You continue to explain physics and statistics to me, even though it’s a lost cause. You do it better than anyone I’ve ever met.

24. You really love bikes and that makes me smile.

25. You know history. Your first Trivial Pursuit pie piece is yellow. It’s my last. The kids will need you when they’re in school – I’ll be useless.

26. You go to work, sometimes to jobs you hate, to support our family.

27. You protect us. From wasps, from the paper boy at 4 am.

28. You know how to navigate the mountains. I’m not sure how, but you always know exactly where we are. You also know how to find all of the good waterfalls.

29. You’re patient with the kids when I am not.

30. You are a great cheerleader when I need one.

31. You stand up for others.

32. You have beautiful blue eyes and big smile. They’re both so amazing that I didn’t even notice when you shaved your head for the first time. 

33. Kate and Mason. Without you they wouldn’t be here! And I like to think they have all of our good qualities, and not so much of our bad.

34. If we’re ever on Naked and Afraid, I’m 100% sure we’d survive and live like kings. Here’s hoping your survival skills are never necessary.

35. I know how to kayak surf because of you.

36. You have great taste in dogs (Foster thinks so too).

37. You’re a witty guy.

38. You encourage me to try new things. I’m still low on the entropy scale, but I’ve come a long way, baby.

39. You are always challenging me to think differently. I hope you always do. I mean, I think we’re on the same page about Communism now, but maybe we agree to disagree about Taylor Swift.

40. We have fun. Life’s not always fun, but when it isn’t, it’s more tolerable for me because of you.

Thanks for being you. Love you.

J

Home Sweet Home

Finally! After we've been in our new place for 7 months, here are the pictures (some of) you have been waiting for. We have a beautiful new home, on a little mountainside.  We get amazing orange sunsets, views of the mountains in the day and the twinkling lights of the city after dark (when the leaves have fallen off of the trees). This place is finally starting to feel like home. Maybe it's because we've spent a Christmas here, I'm not sure, but I'm liking it more every day.

Now, it's a good sized place, but currently we only have 3 bedrooms and 3 1/2 baths. So unless you want to sleep on the couch or in the basement, you'll have to book a room at the Hampton Inn or at my parent's place (if they aren't in town). I'm a huge fan of the 1 floor, split layout. I like that the kids don't have to go up and down stairs to play and get things out of their rooms. We looked at an amazing place with a view of the Saluda River, but spending 2 minutes in that home with it's beautiful staircase and my 2 year old was pretty convincing that I prefer 1 floor. There's a whole second house worth of space downstairs that is ready to finish, and would add 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, a living area, kitchenette, gym/sewing room, and a laundry. Not to mention an additional house worth of storage space and a 3rd garage bay that comes in handy for lawn equipment.  We've got some serious slopes in our yard, so we're hoping for some snow this winter to sled.  Ok.. so on to the photos...

This is the view when you walk in the front door.

To the left is the office:

And to the right is the dining room. There was no chandelier in this room when we moved in, so we purchased the one you see here.  I'm not sure about the purple-ish color on the wall, but it's growing on me.

There's also the stairwell that goes downstairs. I'm pretty happy that the people who built this house put a gate at the top. Otherwise the kids would be tempted to play on the staircase.

Then there's the living room. The tree in this room is huge. Too huge probably, but it was beautiful.

 Looking back towards the dining room and office from the living room:

And then there's the kitchen. Oh my how fabulous this space is! I feel totally undeserving of this kitchen (not to mention the entire house), and often think someone needs to pinch me. Look at that island! Holy cow. Amazing. It is.

More kitchen.

And more. Because this really may be one of my favorite rooms in the house.

Looking into the breakfast room - that opens onto a large, covered porch. 

Here's a shot of the porch, looking towards the breakfast room.

And a view from the porch. This is when the leaves where changing. The photo doesn't do it justice. Lots of grilling occurs on this porch!

The half bath - in the hallway towards the garage. And while there's no photo, there's a laundry room. It has another refrigerator. Yes, that feels decadent. It comes in handy for storing drinks and popsicles and things that we don't want in our normal fridge.

The kids each have their own room and their own bathrooms. And, their own walk in closets. I thought it would be wonderful for them to have separate rooms after sharing for 6 months. You know, cut down on the bickering and whining. What did I hear the first week in the house? "MOM! Mason's in my room! GET OUT OF MY ROOM!" Ok, so much for that.  She did finally stop pining for the bathroom in the Wilmont house - the cute Jack and Jill that they shared. It was fun.

K's room with the pink Christmas Tree. Speaking of pink, we've ordered her a pink bed. She's pretty excited. Then she can pass this one along to M.

And her bath.

M's bedroom and his "ordinary" tree.

Cute little boy bathroom.

Now we're headed out of the kitchen, back through the living room.

Ok, across the house going into our room. Don gave me this beautiful linocut for our anniversary (by Mark Mulfinger).  It's hard to tell from this photo, but it is of the rooftops in Charleston. A familiar scene from my 7 years in an attic apartment downtown.

 Our bedroom is just lovely. They picked a great color.

The Master Bath is next. It's large. Too large, I think. There's a lot of wasted floor space, but is it very nice.

The kids love the tub. It's really hard to wash them in there, so they take more showers than baths (in this bathroom).  The shower is nice because I can get in there with them and not get wet. One of the benefits of a large shower!

And there's a little closet off the master bath. There are a lot of things about this house that are completely silly on the luxury scale ( (our luxury scale, of course). Maybe I'll do a post one day when we get this thing organized the way we like it. I've filled my side up. Proof that you really don't know how much stuff you own until you have the space to spread it out.

And there you have it.  We looked at quite a few homes before we settled on this one. It feels a lot like the Wilmont house. I still love that house, so having something similar is very comforting. I miss my old  fig-ivy covered front steps. We took some pretty awesome kid pics there. But, we have a new front porch, a fancy set of doors, and some stone that will soon have a little fig ivy of its own.

And it's not bad for photos either.

I leave you with one of my favorite moving-in pictures. This boy watching Daddy cut the grass shortly after our move-in.