The Ethington Chronicle

Mobile post test and some photos of the house

2012-01-11T13:42:00.003-06:00

This is my first attempt at posting from my tablet - it kinda worked. I ended up editing a bit from computer before posting but all the photos were inserted by the tablet!

I had kept waiting for the house to be in order to post pics. That is not going to happen anytime soon so here are some pics of the new house in all its total disarray. I apologize for the sideways pictures, I was hoping the tablet would auto rotate them for me... Better photos will be posted when we are really settled in a month or so maybe!

Our one-story house from the front, huge front yard and long driveway is a change for us. We wish more of this yard space was in the back instead, but I guess we can fill the space with holiday inflatables!

W and H inviting you in for the tour...

Entry opens to a long hallway, with a display nook at the 45 degree turn. To the right is the family room and dining room. The closed double doors to the left open to the guest room/office/storage room.

Looking into the family room

Looking back at the family room from further down the hall, you can see the double arches that frame these formal living and dining spaces.

The dining room through the arch from the hallway

Looking into the dining room from the living/family room. The kids have been playing out here a lot!

W showing you a quick look into the guest room/study/storage room - you can see the pretty window at least! As of now it is mostly boxes so not much to see anyway.

Looking on down the entry hallway at the 45 degree angle into the kitchen, note in particular the nice long wooden train W built today. I am sure this long tile hallway that goes the whole length of the house will often double as a road for truck racing and train tracks... To your left here is a short hallway to the guest bath that is totally blocked in by boxes at the moment so not shown. Also there is a nice deep coat closet also not shown.

Part of the kitchen, also looking back down the hallway. The coat closet door can be seen beyond the fridge. The door on the right goes into the laundry/pantry and garage entry.

The rest of the kitchen, dirty dishes and all! We are loving the granite and stainless steel details. B is halfway through installing knobs/pulls that match the tile backsplash inserts. The door on the left is a small pantry.

Showing the back to back pantry doors with a glimpse inside. The small pantry has small kitchen appliances and large pots/bowls stored inside. The area seen in the large pantry is where the washer and dryer will soon be (hopefully)! The door goes out to the garage.

This is the pantry side of the large pantry. The garage entry door is to the right, with the laundry area behind me.

Looking from the kitchen out over the high bar into the great room. Not a great photo because of the many and large windows that really light up the room when we want it to! But before we go there we detour down a hallway not seen here that is off to the right.

The hallway off the kitchen leads to the boys' bathroom and bedrooms.

H's room

W's room

Now into the great room, looking from the breakfast nook into the family/living room. Still a lot of unpacked boxes hanging around here, and more toys of course!

Showing a better view of the magical gas fireplace that turns on/off with a remote switch and the double door entry into the medial room. For those who voted in my poll, you can see what we ended up doing as far as Christmas decorations. We got a little fake Charlie Brown tree that we had out originally at our old house and was easy to bring to the new house, and put up stockings, and that was about it. Oh we also put out our little German Glockenspiel Christmas Chime, which turned out to be cool because when the fireplace heats up, the chimes ring, making the fire all the more magical! All together it was enough to make Christmas special even during our move.

The star of the home - the media room!

Looking back at the breakfast nook from the family/living room. The arched hallway leads to the master suite which I forgot to photograph so pics of that will come later.

Looking out the back door to the small covered patio and backyard. Lots of shade and only 2pm - hopefully it will be similar in summertime! It is so much smaller than we are used to but we think we can still make it fun back here once the grass grows some roots!

Whirlwind Week

2011-12-28T21:14:00.002-06:00

It is so hard to believe, we live in a new house! Leaving a new grocery store today, I said, "Let's go home!" and W tentatively asked, "Which home are we going to?" Yes, for the moment, we own two homes. It was easy however to clarify that Home to us now is where we sleep (since the other house is almost empty), even though we might still sometimes call the other house "home" at times as well. Yes, confusing. And just to clarify, W doesn't WANT to go back to the other house - he loves the new house even more he says. I suspect it's partly because the LEGOs have been out all week and won't soon have to be put away for a showing...

So here's the whirlwind of how we got here:

Wednesday last week - We closed on the new house, then went straight to the house and started working. Before moving in we wanted to paint 3 rooms and seal all the tile grout throughout the house.

Thursday - We were busy with final packing and still working on the new house. Thursday night we were up half the night with H coughing and crying in misery, poor kiddo.

Friday - Moving day! 5-year-old W had a great day doing the following:

pitching in carrying some items: funniest was his mattress topper that we had wrapped into a huge ball with plastic wrap, which he hefted and said, "Look, I'm Super Mario!" - the moving guys got a huge kick out of that one.
coaching the movers along: "A little further, you can do it!", "You're almost there!", "Just a few more steps now...", "Great job guys!"
running around observing how the old house emptied out and then later how the new house filled up.

The rest of the family did not enjoy the process nearly so much... but we survived even with the lack of sleep from the night before!

Saturday, Christmas Eve - We did some unpacking, some shopping for needed items to get us through the weekend, and a bit of organizing. Then we headed back to our old house to put in a load of laundry and gather some left-behind items that were needed sooner than later. We joined our best family of friends for dinner, only to have H's cough become even worse over the course of the evening (sorry friends, truly hope nobody else got it), so we left early to retrieve our laundry and head back to our new Home.

Sunday, Christmas Day - We truly had a wonderful Christmas morning, disorganization and coughing and all! Santa found us and brought all that was wished for, and the other presents given and received brought joy and happiness to givers and receivers. Santa brought a nice pair of slippers for each family member to improve navigation of the cold tile floors here. We debated staying away but in the end did take H's germs to our Ethington family so we could all enjoy the togetherness and food and presents. We did skip sharing the germs at church however, and instead stopped by the old house for another carload and then headed Home again. We got to talk to some of E's fam on the phone and enjoy time playing in our new Home!

Monday - Unpacking and Organizing (and building new LEGOs). We also spent considerable time and effort shopping for a new washer and dryer, a task that was made more complicated than expected due to some unusual characteristics of our laundry room that we didn't realize until we moved in. Challenge #1 - both width and depth space for machines is limited by walls or doors that won't open if things are too big. This narrows down the selection of washers and dryers that can fit into our space. Most notably, it eliminated B's dream pair of Samsung machines. Challenge #2 - the house is designed with the washer on the right, which makes getting a front-load washer (our strong preference) difficult since almost all front-load washers open to the right and the door cannot be reversed. With the door opening to the right, it becomes an obstacle between the wet clothes and the dryer on the left. Luckily, we did find a couple that have reversible doors, but the one at the price we wanted had to be special-ordered so we'll probably be doing some laundry at the old house in the meantime (ugh). Still we can't complain though, since in the end we overcame the challenges and though not exactly what we'd planned, we did find ones that will work. I hope.

Tuesday - Unpacking and Organizing (and building new LEGOs). B went back to work today.

Wednesday, today - Having stretched as long as possible, we had to venture out to go grocery shopping. Plus we stopped to get the mail keys along the way. I am happy to say that I both backed out of and pulled into the garage without incident, hooray! Oh, and I also did some unpacking and organizing (and W played LEGOs).

And through it all, H is still coughing - but improving a bit each day. I keep debating whether to take him to the doctor, but I'm pretty sure they'll just give me antibiotics without confirming if he needs antibiotics at all anyway. But maybe he does need them... but maybe he doesn't - hence the debate. I think we'll see what a couple more days of good naps and Vicks baby rub and the humidifier can do...

And if you've actually read to this point, I'm sure you're looking for photos of the new house. Ha, you think I know where the camera is at this moment? Let me do a little more unpacking and organizing (our Unit is coming on Friday) and then for sure I'll post some pics!

We Love Yes!

2011-12-01T07:41:00.002-06:00

H has been shaking his head "No" for months but he just started clearly nodding "Yes" over the weekend - it is soooooo cute I think so I had to save him doing it once.

Birthday Boys!

2011-11-30T10:58:00.005-06:00

While I am here waiting and hoping the mortgage lender calls me back, let's see if I can't at least post a few photos from the birthday boys a few months ago.

For W's Star Wars Birthday Party we took a few of his friends to play indoor glow golf before going back to our house for some light saber dueling and lunch. Hopefully the glow golf pic below is blurry and dark enough that no one is particularly recognizable... W is the brightest shirt in the middle and H is the little one on the bottom left. We had an awesome-looking Darth Vader pinata that held up to one playful hit (maybe because it was a pull string pinata?) before coming apart. Oh well, the kids didn't mind as long as they got candy!

For H's birthday we had everyone over to celebrate all the E-fam end-of-September birthdays, so mostly family with just a few friends. Uncle J and W were ready to blow out the candles but H was a bit confused about the whole thing. Once he got a hold of some cake though, there was no confusion about what was to be done!

H made some very expressive faces while opening presents - just so cute and fun!

Time to Bring the Blog back to Life!

2011-11-30T10:39:00.002-06:00

I keep thinking I need to get this blog going again, and in theory I should have more time to do so now that I am the "stay-at-home-mom"... As if! I can keep a whole day busy without getting half my list of Things That Need Doing done. How can this possibly be? It's a mystery, for sure.

But still, I need to get posting and back to letting my far-flung family and friends peek into the window of what we are up to, since they so kindly let me peek into their blogs also!

So where to begin... back up to birthdays and Halloween, or jump right in with getting ready to move?

Launch of Space Shuttle Discovery

2010-04-18T21:05:00.005-05:00

B and I were lucky enough to see the recent launch of Space Shuttle Discovery. Below is a collage of photos and a description of our experience. I HIGHLY recommend going if you get the chance in these last few shuttle launches. I wish now we'd made it more of a priority to go to a couple before now!

We got up at 2am on April 5th to be on the bus at 2:30am to head to Kennedy Space Center (KSC) for the launch. We took a pillow and a blanket from the hotel, in addition to 2 digital and 1 video cameras and binoculars and snacks. In spite of being very tired, sleeping on the bus was a bit futile.... As we approached KSC we entered the logjam of cars and buses lined up to get on-site or to find a place to see the launch. People were camped out on lawns and everywhere it seemed. We were one of the first dozen buses to arrive at the Banana Creek viewing area (I think we got there around 4:30 but I really have no idea).

In the dark the launch pad 3 miles away looked like a small city from our angle. We could see only all the lights on the structure with the Space Shuttle Discovery positioned on the far side from us. We staked out a place in the bleachers on the front row for easy access and laid out our blanket. We had teamed up with a fun lady from my company and her sister so that one pair of us could hold the place while the other explored. At the Banana Creek viewing site is KSC's Saturn V (five) building, containing a full-sized Saturn V, many other museum-quality artifacts and displays, a food court, and a gift shop. They took the first turn while we enjoyed the view and watched the people arrive and find places. A whole contingent of Japanese folks (we think) settled in the row behind us. We were a bit worried when people started settling in out in front of us also – it was so crowded! But the view was to be 95% in the sky so it was not a problem.

We took a turn to explore as well, but spent most of our time just waiting on the bleachers. People were continuing to pile up, and the excitement was building. Around 6am, there was a flyover of the International Space Station (ISS), which the Space Shuttle would be chasing and rendezvousing with about 48 hours after liftoff. The ISS is flying over the earth all the time, and is easily visible when it happens to be flying over your location around sunset or sunrise, when your location is in near or total darkness at the same time that the ISS is still/already in the sunlight. The huge solar arrays make it very bright, and conditions were perfect for seeing it’s bright dot zipping across the sky for several minutes!

After being up most of the night, it really just seems like a dream that we were there at all – except that the memory is so vivid. When they were cleared for weather and started the last 9 minutes of the countdown, over the loudspeakers someone led the whole crowd in the Star Spangled Banner. The power of the emotion that was added to the excitement at that time was already almost overwhelming! Then all systems were reported “GO” by launch control – and the pad lit up… I had the binoculars to my eyes and the camera pointed in the general direction and took whatever photos the camera got as Discovery rocketed off the pad. The tears were already running and then the sound and vibration hit us and the reality of it was just so overwhelming I couldn’t even use the binoculars anymore and just stared up at the fiery outpouring of that controlled explosion with my hands over my hanging-open mouth. I don't have the words to say how amazing it was to be there and see it in person so close up!

I can’t say really how long we could hear and feel it... I remember hearing the call for Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) separation which is 2 minutes into flight, but I can’t remember if the roar had faded by then. I was still just in amazement! I can’t even talk about it or write this now without tears coming to my eyes! While we could still see the star-like dot of Discovery, the horizon began to light with the breaking day, showing us the huge cloud drifting away from the launch pad. The Shuttle was so bright in the darkness of the early morning, we could see it for what seemed like a very long time. The sun lit up some wispy clouds in the darkened sky that looked beautiful with the glowing horizon and star-like Discovery fading away into the distance. Less than 10 minutes after launch they called for us to be back on the bus and with one last glance at the sky, we gathered our things and left still feeling the power of the launch and the unexpected emotion that came with it!

There are 3 more Space Shuttle launches currently planned before the shuttle is retired from flight. We would dearly love to see another launch before the end, and bring W next time... but it all depends on the launch schedule and life working out to make it possible. We shall see what the future holds!

A Few Things We've Been Up To

2010-03-28T21:26:00.003-05:00

W's First Soccer Game

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Baby On The Way

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Fun at the Rodeo Carnival

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On with the next thing

2010-01-04T22:58:00.003-06:00

I am so far behind on EVERYTHING. Christmas cards. Birthday wishes. Catching up with my family. Weeding and planting my garden (running 4 months behind there, and more). Posting on my blog. Scrapbooking (untold number of years behind). Emailing people to keep in touch. Exercising. Writing down all the funny things William says before I forget and the moment is lost forever because my brain is full of holes. Let's not even talk about cleaning and organizing this desk and the rest of my house. Going to the temple. Laundry. Even at work my list of things to do far exceeds the number our hours in the day that I'm stuck there. See? I really do mean EVERYTHING.

So, pretty much, I've got to let it all go and only do what absolutely has to be done. It will be impossible to catch up. Ever. I hope I will finish the mini-2009-in-review photo album I wanted to send out for Christmas wishes to everyone, but it's going to be more of a... happy Groundhog Day wishes maybe, maybe even St. Patrick's Day? Who knows. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, I am looking for some advice/input (if anyone out there is still reading after my sad lack of posts). I am feeling a bit insecure about the permanence of a house, partly brought on by the discovery of rats in our attic (soon to be resolved hopefully) and partly just my life-long anxiety about house fires and partly just that I have so many digital photos and half of them have never been printed and I'd be devastated if I lost them all! I have backups on multiple media/devices, but at present they are all located in this one seemingly vulnerable place...

I've been browsing photo storage websites (free and costly) and looked a little at online backup services (all with a price). So the question is, does anyone out there use a photo storage/printing website or an online backup service that they would recommend?

For a photo-only website, it would be nice if it had:

unlimited storage
upload, store, and retrieve photos at full resolution easily
upload and retrieve multiple photos at a time

For an online backup service, hopefully it would be:

relatively inexpensive
unlimited storage
easy to set up
automatically updates per user-specified schedule, preferably only what has changed since the last backup

Please, if anyone has experience to lend or info about what you're using, let me know!

The Rat

(that is Brandon's size 13 foot beside it)
yuck yuck yuck