Snowing after Christmas, but in time for second Christmas.

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Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone.

Hope your holiday is filled with fun, family and good eats.

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Finally finished with the east roof of the Family room

Finally, vacation for the holiday is on and for the first day off I had a somewhat nice day to finish up the shingles on the East side of the family room I almost got finished before my fall; btw I am working on getting the video I caught on my surveillance camera of me falling, the whole 5 sec.

Anyways I am happy to say that I am finally finished with that part of it. Now if I can get another nice day this week, I need to finish up the hip ridges and maybe do the final trim on the overlapping shingles in the valley on the side I just finished. I will have to wait until a stretch of warm, dry weather to get sealed down with roofing cement but it should be fine until then.

The only other thing that also needs to get completed soon is the roof vents for the bath and laundry exhaust fans. I still an trying to figure out where to locate them on the roof since the spot left under the solar panels is too on the roof to work right...the vent pipe would have to contort out one end of the fan, up over the fan housing, then up through the roof and one would have to cross a rafter; not the best path for air flow and not the easiest to connect up since there is only about 18-24 inches of clearance that close to the eaves.

Ml'll...sorry Aimee just screamed and jumped on the other side of the table as a very thick bodied spider came crawling out from under a stack of papers... I killed it post haste, see picture.

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Sam's second birthday celebration

We spent all week gathering party supplies, cleaning up the house, moving all the dislocated house furnishings into the unfinished master bedroom. We then got cupcakes to have after dinner on his actual birthday with a special birthday dinner of Mac & Cheese, green beans and chicken tenders. Sam got to open up his main gift that night also; a wooden train set with a bunch of track, a bridge, tassels and three train sections. He had a hard time stopping play to go to bed that night.


Then the morning of the party Aimee decorated the family room when Sam went down for his nap and I went running around getting the cake, party supplies, veggie and fruit trays, balloons and other last minute items. Aimee got the house finished and people started showing up before I got back with the final batch of stuff, including the 20 mylar balloons from the dollar store; we gave them to whoever wanted one when they left.


There ended up being 13 ~2 year old s, 3 other kids under 7 and 25 adults. Our little house was quite packed but everyone got along and there was evidently enough toys out to allow everyone to play nicely with each other. There were no tantrums or fighting that I saw; maybe some minor squabbles over who was going to get a specific balloon, but other than that all the kids and adults played well together.


Our friends from the Birth-to-Three classes we went to consisted of the bulk of the families there, then there was my sister and her two kids, Sam's daily babysitter and her two boys, and our chiropractor, his wife and their two older daughters. My and Aimee's parents were all there as well as Aimee's grandmother, Ta. I was kinda disappointed that our friends from Portland didn't even respond to our invitations, but maybe something happened in the mail or something.


Sam did great at blowing out his candles; even with the little drip of drool on the edge of the cake that turned into his piece of the cake. The cake was white with a creamy filling and white frosting with primary colored balloons. He got the two candles out in two breaths but got them out none the less. He enjoyed his cake and wanted more, but on a mostly empty stomach we told him that he would have to wait until later. I don't think he ever got another piece, now that I think of it.

Some of the highlights of his presents were: wood block set, a stuffed tiger, a play doctor's kit, a sit-n-spin, some art supplies and coloring books, some clothes and a pair of shoes, a lacing shoe block sorter, and a road track set that the adults almost has more fun playing with than the kids did.

When everyone left, we had a spaghetti dinner with french bread with the family that had come and we invited out friends from church, Sarah, Terry and their boys Zach and Tyler, to stay also since we knew we would have plenty to eat. I had fun playing with the kids and Terry; we got out the road track set and were having fun setting it up with different obstacles and using shoes and other toys to make mountains the little cars had to climb.


Some other pictures from the celebration:


Pictures with Sam’s friends who came:


And a few pictures from the after party before dinner was served:

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RSVP rudeness

Even though Sam's second birthday turned into quite a party, I was a little disappointed in the lack of response we got from some of our friends who have kids that are Sam's age. Aimee had invited over 25 families, but several were from out of town, of which I think all of them didn't come and most, outside of family, didn't even respond to the invite or Rsvp in the negative.

Do people these days just not understand that if you are invited to something and cannot make it, it is polite to respond to that effect. We invited some people that we don't see very often since we moved out of Portland, who we considered to be good friends, but didn't receive any response, not even a birthday card since they couldn't make it. I guess we don't get invited to their kid's parties either, so maybe it is more than just the distance. It is just harder to accept that these people we thought were friends don't respond to invitations to celebrate my son than it is when they ignore or don't acknowledge me and/or Aimee.

That being said it was amazing how awesome our friends here in town are. We have really built some great friendships with the families we have met here through Birth-to-Three and from our church. Even though we happened to schedule the party on the same weekend as the OSU vs UO civil war game, almost everyone either came, had a conflict, or a sick kid. We are quite blessed to have such a good group of friends.

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I had the distinct feeling I was falling

I started on the Familyroom roof on Wednesday and got a third of the roof done that day after starting at 11 am and doing all the tear off. I was able to get some reprieve from work stuff to get up there again yesterday after lunch and got to the row of vents at the ridge, except for maybe about 4 feet right next to the valley before it got too dark to see what I was doing, around 5:00 pm. I was trying to finish up before Aimee got home with Sam, which was going to be around 5:30.

I will preface this for those I haven't told that I am fine.

That said... prepare yourself, Mom... I fell/jumped off the roof from the top of the ladder as I was trying to climb up with two flashlights so I could see to finish that last little bit of the valley. I lost my balance as I was taking the last step from the ladder to the roof and the ladder kicked out to the side ever so slightly. In trying to correct from that I started falling back but was able to somehow turn myself around and jump away from the ladder and over the concrete pad to land in the thin layer of leaves under the cherry tree.

As the Willamette Pass commercial on the radio describes, I pulled a serious lawn chair, and kinda folded up, when I hit the ground. I find it a little strange that I don't really remember falling all that much, after the fact. I know I didn't hit my head so it probably isn't a concussion, and probably can be explained by some biological response to the fall trauma.

I layed there for a short time trying to figure out how bad it was and started moving joints and testing limbs. To my surprise everything worked and nothing really hurt, considering. So I got up, found the flashlights both had busted bulbs, figured I was done for the night with out any light and then climbed the ladder and got the tools off the roof. It was as I was coming back down the ladder that I realized I was getting a little shaky.

Thank you, God, for your protection and guidance in that split second between roof and ground.

I figured out it only took me half a second to make the trip... landing at about 22 feet per second, with a force of about 700Newtons (for those scienve guys out there). You can seriously find calculators for everything on the internet.

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Blogging from my android phone

Trying out blogging from my phone. It may be easier to keep up on posting when I can do them anywhere. I guess we will see how often or how long the posts are but entering text with swype is pretty slick. I just realized I could blog with google voice too... which could take some time to figure out the quirks since it seems to want to add new text to the beginning of the post each time but won't record for longer than a sentence at a time.

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