meeting the neighbors

After dinner, I was washing dishes and talking to Dylan, who came over to hang out for a while. Mike was outside caulking little areas around the siding, and I was elbow-deep in soapy water while Dylan and Henry debated the relative merits of different songs on the YouTube channel Epic Rap Battles, of which they are both aficionados. Anyway, in the midst of this pleasant domestic scene, Mike starts yelling from outside: "Holli? HOLLI! YOU'RE GOING TO WANT TO COME OUT HERE RIGHT NOW."

So I dried my hands and raced to the door to find ... Mike getting to know one of our new neighbors.

This is George. He busted through the electric fence because the power to it got knocked out in a storm, and our human neighbors hadn't had time to reset it. The human neighbors, as it turns out, are a very nice Romanian couple, Radu and Joanna, who have seven children. The oldest is a boy Henry's age, so I'm hopeful he can make a neighborhood friend. Anyway, Mike and Max went next door and explained the situation, then Radu came out with them, and they all herded poor George back through the fence. What a way to meet your neighbors! "Sir, your cow came to visit, and we don't have a fence, so I'm concerned it might wander into the road." Can you just imagine?!

well, that was unexpected

Before we moved, as part of the sale, the previous owners told us that they had contracted to fix "the basement window issue." They told us how much they were paying for it, which was a lot, and we thought, "Wow, that's a lot to pay for a window! It must be something really special." And then we forgot all about it because there was a lot of other stuff going on.

So imagine my surprise when I came home from picking the boys up from school yesterday to find two Bobcats in the side yard. No people, just the Bobcats. But then a few minutes later, two giant trucks and a whole crew of workers showed up. Turns out the "window issue" wasn't the window itself, which had already been replaced, but the whole yard! It wasn't graded properly, and there was no drainage to speak of, so all the water was going against the foundation of the house and making its way through the weakest spot (the window). So the crew spent yesterday afternoon and all day today digging up the side yard, digging a trench and laying a drainage pipe all the way out to the pasture, and re-grading the whole thing so that water goes away from the house. Phew! Nothing like a major construction project to liven up the end of our first week here.

this kid

Despite having initially been the most reluctant member of our family, Henry has really gotten on board with the moving thing. He has worked SO HARD the past few days! We're really impressed. Yesterday morning, he spent a few hours with me and Avalon cleaning the old house and getting every last thing out of it. He found a rack of cassette tapes hiding in Mike's closet and got really excited because he thought they must be original Nintendo Entertainment System games (obviously he's never seen either of these things). 

For such a YouTube addict, it's been hard being without internet (*shakes fist in general direction of CenturyLink HQ*), so he's been happy to accompany me to the grocery store, where we could get coffee and take advantage of the free wifi so I could download work files and he could download ... videos about Minecraft, or whatever. Funny how much you don't realize you use internet until you have to go without. CenturyLink told me it would take a week for us to get a new modem that is compatible with our new service (*insert eye roll here*) but that night I woke up from a sound sleep, realized I could probably buy the modem on Amazon, and used my phone to do exactly that, with next-day delivery. So we're back in business, and I don't have to spend a week working from Grandpa's house. Which is a serious gift ... I love Gramps, but he loves listening to NPR at high volume all day long. (Note: I also love NPR, just not while I'm working.)

Henry has taken to the great outdoors (or our version of it) too. Mike showed him how to use the trimmer, so he's been clearing a path to the side door of the barn, through the overgrown pasture. Yes, we have a pasture AND a barn. We're still asking ourselves how this came to be.  

moving day!

Moving day is finally here! Things went relatively smoothly today, with the exception of a serious screw-up on the part of the phone company that meant I had to spend four hours (!!!) on the phone with them trying to straighten it out. Seriously, CenturyLink, get your act together.

Anyway, we had a surprisingly large crew come and help us today. My parents were both here, and all of my siblings. Bethany and Joe brought trailers over (one of them had been living in the garage at the old house for a week or so, and the boys and I had it all loaded up and ready to go). We weren't even expecting J, but he showed up mid-morning ready to help. Avalon did a ton of lifting and hefting, and Jack even pitched in to help with the blow molds. In the afternoon, Dylan and Cole came by and pitched in a few hours. The boys' favorite teacher, Mr. K, even came by once school was out and helped the boys put their beds together and get their rooms set up.

Everything was moved by early afternoon (though the last few loads just got stored in the garage for now), and the family went home to get some well-deserved rest, but then Lon came back later that evening and helped me set up all of our bedroom furniture, so we're all sleeping comfortably (and well!) tonight. There's still a lot to do, including going back and making sure the old house is cleaned out so we can turn over the keys, but we're moved in!

it's ours!

Closing was this afternoon, and now we are the proud and somewhat incredulous owners of a new house and five acres of land! Pinch us because we're not sure this is real. We went over to the new place just to look around after closing (and make sure the keys worked!), and my parents brought the boys over after school, along with surprise guest Gramps, who toured the place and declared it pretty great with one glaring exception: the tub in the master bathroom is surrounded by slick white tiles, and he rightly feels that it's a fall waiting to happen. We'll have to do something about that; I'll add it to the long, long list.

Anyway, here's a sneak peak of our pasture and front porch.

we're getting so close now!

The closer we get to moving day, the more chaotic things get around here. There are boxes everywhere, and my office looks like ... well, like this:

(picture with employee of the month for scale)

We can't even wait! T-minus seven days until closing...

academic super bowl

Friends, Liam has been studying World War I era science all school year as part of the academic super bowl science delegation for Lincoln. His team only has two people, and in the practice competition a few weeks ago, things didn't go so well. But today was the main event, the regional competition at Wawasee Middle School in Syracuse. There were something like 18 teams from different schools competing, and most of our teams did okay ... but the science team kicked some trivia ass! They ended up coming in first in a nail biter. It was down to the last question, and Liam's team got it right because Liam remembered reading somewhere that the mobile medical vehicles that went from camp to camp to x-ray the wounded were called "petite Curies" in honor of Marie Curie. It's a really interesting story, and I love love love that the final tie-breaking question involved a truly great woman getting the recognition she deserves. More of this please, academic super bowl organizers!

Anyway, Bethany and Klaudia came today to help cheer on Liam and the Lincoln team, and afterward Klaudia was reluctant to take a picture with Liam lest she look short. Sorry, Klaudia!

njhs induction

Friends, I give you Liam. He's 13, quite tall, and a newly minted member of the National Junior Honor Society.

Liam, we are so proud of you! It was an honor to walk down the aisle with you and pin you today. You are smart and thoughtful and more mature every day, and we couldn't be happier that everyone sees what we see in you. Congratulations!

mr. franklin will see you now

Or perhaps tomorrow, at the wax museum.

Henry has been waiting for this day for weeks! He picked Benjamin Franklin for his wax museum project, and he's been researching and honing his presentation nonstop. He knows ALL the facts about Ben Franklin, and he will gleefully relate them all, even throwing in a joke or two to keep the audience awake.

Q: What's the difference between Ben Franklin and a duck?

A: One has his face on a bill, and the other has a bill on its face.

a funny thing happened while we were out house hunting

Back in February, a house came on the market that really caught our fancy. It had more than enough room for all of us, was a style we liked, was near my grandpa's house, and just seemed perfect. A real dream house. Of course, we hadn't sold our house yet, but we took a whirl and made a contingent offer. They made a counter offer, and we made a counter-counter offer, but then things sort of fell apart, so we decided to revisit it later if it was still available once ours sold.

Fast-forward to yesterday. We've seen all the houses in Plymouth that are within our price range and have the requisite number of bedrooms. We've looked at some that would work and some that wouldn't. We've looked at country houses and river houses and even one very, very scary foreclosure. And yesterday, we were touring yet another house that was nice but with a yard that was not quite big enough and a floor plan that wasn't great ... when our realtor got a text message. From the people with the dream house. Asking if we would please like to make another offer now because they are ready to move already.

What?!?!?!

So this time, we made an offer, and they made a counter offer ... and we ACCEPTED. We're gonna have a house, friends!

And it's WONDERFUL. We can't wait to show you all. And possibly have a party.

Wheeeeee!

at the car wash yeah

I just really like this picture of Pluto going through the car wash with us. That is all.

cvnp, day two

Today's agenda: More trails! More waterfalls! More birds!

We started the day at Bridal Veil Falls, where Max and Henry gave a good impression of actually liking each other.

After that, we left the national park to check out an interesting place called Viaduct Park. It's part of the whole national/state/county/local system that makes up what they call the Emerald Necklace (catchy, right?), and it's not super-easy to find, but once we figured out where to park, we were golden. The big draw at Viaduct Park is the Great Falls at Tinker's Creek, which is an 80-foot-wide waterfall that used to power a saw mill. The saw mill is long gone, but to the delight of all three boys, there are still tunnels that were once part of the mill, so they had a blast running through and popping up unexpectedly here and there. The park's namesake is a huge, gorgeous stone viaduct over the creek, with a train bridge on top. The boys got as close as they could (which was not very close, but there was climbing and dirt involved, so they were perfectly content).

After fortifying ourselves with lunch and coffee (yaaaassss coffee), we headed back into the park and took the Station Road trail because we heard there were more birds. And indeed, along the way we spotted more red-winged blackbirds and great blue herons, but the big draw was nesting eagles! There were a couple of very helpful rangers out on the trail who had spotting scopes all set up, which was a good thing because none of us thought to bring binoculars. Still — EAGLES!

Henry kept talking all weekend about how he wanted to see turtles, and on the way back to the car from the trail, his wish was granted many times over. The sun came out, and so did the turtles, warming themselves in groups in the marshy areas near the river.

In the morning, we're heading back home, back to life and work and school and house hunting and reality. It's been a brilliant couple of days, though, and I'm excited that we get to come back next year when my cousin Quinn gets married!

cuyahoga valley national park

It's spring break, y'all! With all the house stuff going on, we weren't going to go anywhere this year, but a couple weeks ago, on a whim, we decided to look to see what the closest national park is. Turns out, it's right next door in Ohio! So for the boys' last few days of freedom, we decided to head east to explore Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

We weren't sure what to expect since the park winds its way through urban areas from Cleveland to Akron, but we were VERY pleasantly surprised. Our first stop this morning was Brandywine Falls, which was pretty impressive:

Next, we took a trail down a hill to see Blue Hen Falls, which was less impressive but still beautiful. As we were getting ready to head back up the trail, we noticed that Henry wasn't with us.

"Henry, time to go! Get away from the edge."

"But I'm taking a selfie!"

"Come on, Henry."

"Just one more try ... got it! A selfie of me licking a waterfall."

THIS KID.

Our next stop was the Ledges area of the park, which is just what you think it might be: giant rock ledges over the valley. There were crevasses aplenty for the kids to climb on, and many, many opportunities for us to yell "BE CAREFUL" and "GET AWAY FROM THAT EDGE BEFORE YOU FALL OFF THE CLIFF." You know — just the way we like it. The boys also mysteriously decided that they would like to be koalas/tree huggers for the day. I don't even know. Luckily, that impulse ended once one of them got scraped trying to slide down a tree trunk. Not-so-smooth move.

On our way back from the Ledges, we stopped along the side of the road because we had read that there was a heronry. And sure enough, we got our first sightings of great blue herons in nesting season. There were so many! It was really amazing. We also were befriended by a lady with a cocker spaniel who gave us a tip to go to the Beaver Marsh next, so that's what we did.

The Beaver Marsh area is basically a long boardwalk that goes along the river and through interesting areas. We saw lots of red-winged blackbirds, a couple of woodpeckers, ducks, and even a muskrat (yuck!) swimming along. But the highlight was a great blue heron that stood just a couple feet off the boardwalk, basically posing for pictures. We stood there snapping away, then Liam, from up the boardwalk, realized that something interesting was going on, so he charged back down to see, startling the bird, which FLEW RIGHT IN FRONT OF US only to land on the other side of the boardwalk and commence posing again. What a show!

We topped off our full day in the park by heading to my Aunt Dana and Uncle Brian's house for dinner. It was great fun. Dana made chili with unexpected ingredients that somehow worked (raisins! pecans! other things I didn't really ask about!), and the boys had fun hanging out with their cousin Aidan. We probably stayed too late, but that's what happens when the conversation is interesting.