stupid picasa

so, apparently, my way of posting pictures on my blog has been changed by picasa/google. you used to be able to click on a picture, and get to the album of pictures to see the rest. apparently this is not the case anymore and now I need to put a link in to the rest of them.

with that - here's 70 or so from the fall. i'm still working on the wintertime ones.

Fall - 2009

- m

seriously?

so, we managed to sell our house in something like a little over a week. not too bad considering we're in a down economy. gotta love the girls - they talk about the bad economy and how everything is blamed on it. speaking of the girls, they had their hands full with sports this past fall

- Emma was running CC like her aunt & uncle - not like her father

- Bailey had her go at basketball for the 8th grade NE team.

so it made for an interesting fall to say the least. with getting a bunch of stuff done at the new house to have the mortgage company and insurance even think about it. but I will say that both those girls are going to great things.

back to the house. like I said, there was a bunch of stuff that we, as the buyers, had to get done in order for all the red tape to be cleared. this house is old and of course there is going to be issues, but surprisingly, it's rock solid.

oh, almost forgot, since we moved in, we have gotten that son that has always eluded us!

just kidding - brady and abby are thoroughly enjoying being neighbors...

I don't want to say that the previous owners didn't do a whole lot, but with there being nobody there for about 1 year, it was bad from a cleaning standpoint - and just from a update standpoint. there have been a few things that we did, that didn't take a lot of $ - just some time and the results were awesome.

this back door was replaced with the help of the dogs.

speaking of the dogs...

...i think that they absolutely love the house as much as we do... huge back yard that is all fenced in. they spend hours out there running around and fighting.

too much information - part three will be later today....

- m

just a whole lotta nothing...

that would be a statement to the contrary.

i guess that I could start back around July 1st. we get a call for a party on the 4th at the Fordyce's. sounds good... beer & fish. fireworks. Americana. several beers into the day, and after talking to many people the conversation somehow drifts into the house that is next to the Scotch's that has been for sale for almost 1 year at this point. it's run down, needs cleaned, and is just really old. we're talking 1846 old. tracy mention's that she's got a key for the place and if we wanted to look at the house, we could just stop by. little did she know that we would be stopping by the next morning.

they say that a person makes a decision on a house within the first few minutes of seeing it. and if you saw this house, you would have made up your mind also. just like we almost did. the key phrase is almost. when we walked in, the house just stunk of fish, stale air, dust and dirt, old food, and just old. every room that we went into, we just kinda looked at each other and shook our heads at each other. it wasn't looking good.

but like any decision you make, you talk about it. you mull it over, you think about all the pros and cons. we had been in our house on Mill St. for only a little over 3 years. we absolutely *loved* that house. the rooms were all updated - we just redid the kitchen and the bathroom off the kitchen. there was nothing we needed to do!

this house needs everything done. yard. bedrooms - all of them. kitchen is horrid. the yard is a literal jungle.

but then again, we've never been ones to sit idle on something and think things through.

let's do it.

we haggle and negotiate for about 2-3 weeks and finally get it for our price that we are comfortable with, and we now have to sell our house. crap. didn't we just do this?

so we get the house in order and start showings in the first part of August and leave to Hilton Head - on the way down, in the middle of NC we get a call ... Sold! so at this point we really need to get things done - cause soon we may not have a house to live in.

this is a two parter - second is coming up shortly.

- m

volleyball time....

the thing about middle school athletics, at least on the girl side of it, is that they don't follow what would be a normal sports schedule. so when the rest of the schools are on track and soft/baseball, the girls in the middle school are on volleyball.

ignore first the really nice picture I took of a bottle of wine - it just looked good

this was the warmups - and from the looks of it, it's gonna be a long game - most of their warmup serves didn't make it.

boo with the serve... and boom goes the dynamite. seriously though, she did a very good job - she was one of the ones to consistently make it over the net. which leads me to the fact that there aren't alot of action shots. there really wasn't. most of it was either NE serving it over and Harborcreek missing it or hitting it out of bounds, or their serve didn't make it over the net.

the smiles? yeah, they won. first game they won - and they only played two games so far this year.

all in all, i'm impressed :)

- m

communication breakdown?

if anything, far from it. yesterday was my birthday - thank you all for the kind wishes - they were very much appreciated. but this leads me to my post today....all the different ways that we communicate today.

i've got a group of friends, the tech/gamer/geek group. i feel that the people in this group all have the same core interests - technology being a driving force behind it all. we are always getting involved in the latest social networks, adding in other as friends/coworkers/acquaintances.

i'll take one of my friends - tracy. she, on my birthday, managed to wish me happy birthday via:

Twitter
Facebook
SMS
Blackberry Messenger

Even though she had a phone in her hand for three of those, she didn't call (not that I wanted her to!). Kinda ironic.

I guess that I need to put some pictures up to make this a blog-worthy post - but don't have any here to make that happen, so I'll let that go till tonight.

- m

welcome mr. Jackson

well, it was really only a matter of time.

seriously, it was a matter of just finding that one.

went to shelters. looked online. petfinder.com.

craigslist? why not.

found him!

so, if you wanted to talk about a dog that was absolutely petrified of anyone other than his owner, start here. when we first got there, Jackson really wanted nothing to do with us. tail between his legs, jumping away. nope, not happening.

after a bit though, he was warming up to us and it looked like it was a go.

she stated that he may not jump up in the minivan..... woops, nevermind.

now, the big thing is going to be introducing him to Sammy.


hmm.... that went ok...
you can't ever replace a dog - too much involved. they have their own personality. they are their own dog.

here's the next chapter.

click the pix for a bunch more...

- m

PS - THANK YOU JAIME!!!!

ski club

for parents...

seems that for literally the first time in forever, Sarah and I had a day off, without the kids. yes, we've gone on vacations to vegas, or overnight somewhere, things that were planned. this was an unplanned, non-saturday, day off together. without them...

so what to do? go skiing of course!

well, actually, sarah skied while I was snowboarding. just to update you on the last time I saw sarah ski, that was .... never. not that she hadn't before, she did alot before we met.

all ready to go, we hit the bunny slope to get her legs back under her. that was the first hour or so of our trip....at this point, she was ready to leave the comfy confines of the bunny hill and head out...

we head on out to other slopes and had a awesome time.... from blazing trails through the woods, and getting stuck (me) to simply saying that i'm not skiing down this hill and taking the skis off and walking down (her) - proof is in the pudding.... or picture in this case


so we skied as long as we were able to, got some food and drinks and made some plans to do this again with the kids next year... all season long


god help us

(click the pix for more)

- m

Nothing really to blog about

Christmas. Check.

New Years Eve. Check.

Getting your eye stuck shut by gum. Woah! That's something to blog about.

So, Abigail is downstairs with Emma, doing who knows what(we'll find out) and I call her up to look through some pictures.

Emma yells, "Her eye has gum on it," and I'm like a cougar. Pounce up, check to see what's going on, figuring it was just a little gum, and that it was a little stuck.

Nope.

It was in her eye, her hair, her clothes, her nose.

Took me a good 45 minutes to get it out and it's still a little bit there.

As always, click on the picture to get some more of NYE dinner that was delicious.


Yes, that's NA Champagne.....

- m