state of the house, part VII: done!

We moved into our home several weeks ago and have been starting and finishing small and large projects and organizing ever since. Over the past month or so a couple of friends, in particular, have been telling me that we NEED to have an open house party. NEED to have one, like, a party is mandatory. I've experienced many mandatory parties before, but the others all occured while I was in college, so it's been a while. So after thinking that over for a bit we decided to have a party this past sunday. I mean, who am I to violate mandates.

Other, farther away friends, have informed me that I NEED to post pictures of our finished home for them to see. NEED...again.

I suspected I would have no time for taking pictures during the party and I was right, but I really should have taken some pictures just before the party, when the house was the cleanest it's ever been or ever likely to be. Here are a few photos of our new home interior taken this morning.
The front door/entry way:

The entrance to the garage was moved from the kitchen to the entry way:


Erin's room, green per her instructions:



Twins' room, with hand-me-down bunk beds from Aunt Terri, which we will stack together once we figure that won't cause Kate to break her arm again. K&A each have their own closet:


The new girls' bathroom with a jacuzzi tub which does wonders with a little bubble bath soap:





The office/guest room (formerly space that was the twins' room). We have a queen size murphy bed in here which Grandma has used twice so far and proclaimed it quite comfortable. So all you far away family and friends should drop in, and stay a while. On the front of the murphy bed cabinet is a craft table which John designed:

Our room, larger than before with one wall pushed out, and wall-to-wall carpet gone:

The old hall bathroom was repainted, has new light fixtures, new toilet, and John re-tiled the floor in the 2 weeks before the open house:

Family room/former office space next to the kitchen had the wall-to-wall carpet removed and was repainted. That desk isn't being used now but when the girls are older we'll put another computer there and that will be a homework/computer work space for them:

Former living room is now the playroom with plenty of storage and a big craft table for the kids:

The new dining area is larger than before with the enclosing walls removed. This new table can expand to seat 10 people. John added more pantry cabinets and moved them to opposite wall, now that the garage entrance isn't there anymore:

3 skylights above the dining area:

Dining area continues into the new living room. Some of that space was previously Erin's room and there are 3 new skylights in here as well. John loves his new super-insane TV on his super-insane specially reinforced wall he had the architect design for that purpose. The surrounding cabinets were built for us by the same company that built the office/murphy bed cabinet system:

That's about it. The other rooms I didn't photograph (the kitchen and our master bathroom) were also repainted, and we have a new mirror in the bathroom, but overall these rooms are the same as they were before the construction.

Our party went well with many, many friends and neighbors dropping by, and our home, thankfully, looked much different afterwards than my house did after those mandatory college parties.

We are all enjoying the house and the substantial new space very much and it looks so nice inside that we are forced to start thinking about what to do with the front yard now, which remains a pile of dirt and some weeds. "Natural landscaping" I prefer to call it. I think our neighbors would prefer we called a gardener instead.

three girls, ski girls

We spent the last few days of winter doing the finest thing one could possibly do in winter--skiing, at one of the finest places to ski, Squaw Valley. We left wednesday after school and stayed at a lodge which is in the Squaw village and walking distance to everything. No, they aren't on spring break now. Yes, we took Erin out of school for two days in order to ski and I have a clear conscience.

The girls were signed up for ski school for both thursday and friday, which turned out to be a grand decision. There was NO ONE up there skiing those days. The ski classes, normally designed for 5 students per instructor, were nowhere near filled. Erin spent the first morning with just one other little girl in her group and in the afternoon she had the teacher all to herself. On friday Erin was with two others, the twins had their instructor all to themselves all day.

Allison was happy to see Erin back at the ski school after their lessons:

John and I had a great time skiing all over the mountain, mainly up at the top and on the backside--terrain we wouldn't be able to do with the girls on saturday, when we planned to be together. It was very sunny and fairly warm our first two ski days and the snow conditions were overall very good. I was having a blast. John asked frequently, "Where to next?" and I'd find someplace that looked fun to me. John's responses:
"Are you crazy?"
"You mean, on purpose?"
"Have you lost your mind?"

But he usually went along with the "delightfully challenging and furthermore, exhilarating" slopes I chose at least once. When I came back a second or third or fourth time he usually opted to take a different route and meet me at the back at the chair lift. Friday morning I saw a place in the village selling ski helmets for 50% off. I've never used a helmet in my 30+ years of skiing but I decided that it was probably time. John thought that was a good idea, "Then I won't have to worry so much when you go off on those ridiculous slopes."

I've never heard of anything so silly. There are NO ridiculous slopes.

After picking the girls up on thursday afternoon we all rode the cable car up to High Camp, a stopping point a little higher than about mid-mountain. Up there we looked around and got some pictures and went inside for hot chocolate:


spectacular views up there:

By friday afternoon John and I were talking about how we'd work the logistics of the 5 of us going up chair lifts together the next day...something we've never done before. Most of the beginner slopes have a lift that seats only 2, which would not work for us. Erin is too young to be trusted in a chair on her own. There is one beginner chair which seats 3 and it's a nice long run so we figured this is where we'd need to come. Towards the end of the day we headed over there to ride that lift and then ski the terrain under it to check it out.

In Oregon the ski school instructors told us that the twins were ready to start riding the lifts and doing the regular beginner terrain (as opposed to the nearly flat bunny hills right outside the ski school). But they weren't taken on a lift on thursday and we assumed because they had a new instructor for friday that they wouldn't go up that day either.

When we got to the top of the beginner chair I saw a woman get off the chair with two little kids, one in dark pink, one in light pink...hey...that's Kate and Allison! They were coming over toward us and then Kate recognized John, "DADDY!" The instructor said they had been skiing there all afternoon. "They're doing great!" she reported. So I took some photos and we skied most of the way down that run near them and they both looked so, so good and happy.





The next morning we took all the girls up to that same lift and we all skied together for the first time.


The twins did fine, Erin was a bit over-confident at her being back on a green=beginner slope after skiing most of the past two days on blue=intermediate. She and Kate seemed to have adopted the same general skiing philosophy: "turning is for suckas".


Clearly, if one wants to ski down, the most direct way to do that is to just go down. John was with Allison trying to show the her a good path to follow at a speed he thought she could match safely and was separated from the 3 of us when both Kate and Erin went BOMBING down the hill. I was just stunned to see Erin ski that way. I've never seen her ski so quickly or so aggressively. I took off after them and saw Erin slow down pretty well but then fall and lose a ski, so I headed for Kate and yelled at her from behind, "KATE! TURN! KATE! TURN!" and she did, slowing herself down and stopping safely and with a look on her face like, "what's the problem, old lady?"

Puh-lease. If they wanna see fast, I could show them some FAST skiing, but I'd like them both to be considerably better before we try a contest like that.

I got Erin's ski back on and lectured them both about staying with me and needing to control their speed with turning, reminding them that I don't just go flying down the hills either (when they are there to see me). During the next many runs they did better in that regard and I even took the two of them on a nearby intermediate slope to see how Kate would fare (she's much more confident that Allison at this point, but the blue run proved to me too much for her).

Here's John and his three little ski ducks following behind him:




In the afternoon I took Erin on some really challenging intermediate slopes and she did absolutely great there too. It's amazing to see the girls' progress this ski season. Erin tried one intermediate run last year, I think. She did a couple of them in Oregon last month but she was really anxious about them and exhausted afterwards. Today she skied them happily and confidently over and over and did just so well overall. And the twins started this year skiing for the first time ever, and have definitely progressed to the point where they belong on the chair lifts. I didn't think the 5 of us would have a chance to ski together until at least next year. What a great way to end this ski season. I can't wait to see what next season has in store.

erin go bragh!

Happy St. Patrick's Day to my fellow-Irish/mutt heritage Americans. A couple of weeks ago Erin and I were at a craft store to gather some supplies for a school project and she spotted a particular decoration in the St. P Day display area. "Hey, that says my name! That's me! But you don't spell 'brag' with an 'h'!"

Somehow she's made it through her first 6.5 years without running across that slogan before and come to think of it, I never drew her attention to it in past years (and know that my cousin, the Irish dance instructor from Chicago, would be soooo disappointed about this oversight). So I explained what little I could remember about it and we couldn't resist buying the decoration. When we got home and hung it up she showed it off to daddy and the twins. I also found a shirt for her bearing the same slogan so she could wear it to school today. She was so proud of it that her teacher asked her to come to the front of the class and explain her shirt to everyone.

This past weekend was the beginning of softball season and all last summer, fall, and this winter Erin made sure to remind me on a semi-weekly basis to sign her up for softball again for this spring. She is a Marlin this year (a Shark last year), so obviously the fishy theme continues. She has entirely different teammates than last year and a new coach too, who I am eternally grateful for. Her coach last year drove me nuts. He was late to every practice and every game and was generally supremely disorganized, and that characteristic makes me crazy. This year the coach is super on top of everything and I volunteered as the Team Admin which means I push paperwork around and set up the schedule and send out team emails and reminders about everything and answer the same questions 10 times each, kinda like a government employee.

Erin had a great time at her first practice and was one of the more reliable hitters/throwers/catchers because she played last season and for many of the girls this was their first time throwing a ball.

John took her to her team pictures/opening ceremony and first game last saturday morning while the twins and I were in German school. Then we came to the field and saw the last 15 minutes of her game on a very cold morning. I think it was about 50 degrees so she kept her jacket on. When we reached the sidelines her team had the field and Erin was playing first base and got two runners out, back to back. I was stunned. I was so surprised that I forgot to take pictures. John said she got another runner out in the last inning.

Erin finally got the hang of the game, mostly, by the end of last season but in the one opportunity she was given last year to play first base she wore her glove on her head for much of the time and used a stick to draw pictures in the dirt. Needless to say, she wasn't such a great rookie first-baseman, but I guess a year can make a world of difference.

Too bad it's no longer an Olympic sport.