First Birthday

Nathan's birthday was almost two weeks ago, but as you can tell from the pictures, a good time was had by all... especially the birthday boy!

Opening and playing with birthday presents...

Introduction to sugar, via cake and frosting...
Testing...

Why didn't someone tell me about this stuff before now?!

Garcon! More, s'il vous plait!

The Ecstasy

Despite the dog's help in licking chocolate frosting off some of Nathan's skin, the boy still needed two baths to clean him up for bed. Bath #1 in the utility sink in the laundry room to remove the chunks of cake and frosting; Bath #2 was in the bathtub with soap, etc. to get to that "clean baby" smell again. He left chocolate rings around both tubs.

As for us? We're trying to keep up with his increased walking, increased babbling, greater curiosity, and still keep pace with the other events in life. I'm involved in three semi-weekly activities plus the usual house/boy care that our family needs. Trent is works from 6 a.m. until 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday until the middle of next month; he's also trying to finish off the chain-link fence around our back yard, finish the trim in our bathroom, help with a scheduled Network seminar next month and (as of last night) replace our roof in his spare time. We thought we could wait to re-roof until next spring, but recent rainstorms gave us water spotting on several ceilings. Sometime in the next month we'll be reshingling.

Bright spot #1: Trent's dad is in the roofing business, so materials will be inexpensive for us.

Bright spot #2: We don't have shake shingles underneath the top layer of asphalt on this house - faster tear-off time.

Bright spot #3: We shouldn't have to replace all of the plywood sheeting under the shingles, unlike last time.

Bright spot #4: The pitch on this roof isn't nearly as bad as our last house; we can walk on it, rather than rapelling over the peak with ropes tied off to our front porch.

I'm trying to be upbeat, but this definitely wasn't anywhere on our radar for now.

-One last thought: I don't miss having the internet until I try to play catch up. Dealing with email and blogs and such in one shot is a long session! : )

Internet Deprivation

Egads... Four days after my last post, we moved the bulk of our belongings from storage into our house. Five days after that post, we spent the first night in our new home.

The following two weeks are a blur of cleaning, unpacking, organizing, arranging, decorating, flattening cardboard boxes and playing swap shop with my parents ("Here, these are yours..." "I found these in the bathroom you were using here and thought you might need them...").

One week after we moved out, my sister-in-law-to-be's parents arrived to stay with my parents prior to the last wedding of the Jongewaard kids. One week after that, Trent started a new job with another electrical company in town and relatives from both families from all corners of the globe arrived for the wedding itself. Having been warned ahead of time by my sister-in-law (not the one who just joined the family; the other one) that family members like to trek through the latest family property, I set that week as my goal for being completely unpacked.

As I said, it was a blur, but somehow I actually met the goal. -Ok, the basement is still pretty cluttered and messy, but still: no cardboard boxes left on the main floor. Considering our library of books is somewhere between 1200 and 1400 books now, that's a HUGE accomplishment!

We're still working on projects here and there. Tonight I touched up places in the laundry room and back hallway that got paint scraped off in the moving process; Trent's digging the post holes for the chain-link fence he's putting around our back yard.

Nathan's first birthday is this Friday, and it'll be a family dinner: eight adults and the three grandkids. I'm hoping to have the basement done before then (in the midst of meetings and making applesauce for the freezer and cleaning and caring for Nathan and...).

This post is meant to bring you up-to-date in a rush, but also as an apology. We don't currently have Internet access at our house, and don't know when we'll have it. My access to Blogger is entirely dependent on a trip back to my parents' (like now). I have no way of knowing how long it'll be between posts. My apologies, and I will try to keep up with email and this when I can.

Back to the basement!