March 2012 - Happy St. Pat's and other big news

Grandma and Grandpa were coming over for dinner, and Grace got to choose and make dessert. She chose to make Celebration pie, and it came out just like the picture on the cover of the recipe book. It tasted as good as it looked.

Here is Ingrid enjoying a piece - even several weeks later she still says it was delicious.

During March this year there was about two weeks of June-like weather. One of the first of the really nice days, the girls went outside to do their homework. Grace chose to climb up in a tree to do hers.

Ingrid just threw a blanket in the middle of the front yard to do hers. The more important thing to get out of this picture is that she is writing with a pencil she has that says 'Emma Willard', the bag she used to carry her books out there says the same, as do the side of the sunglasses she's wearing. Not only did she get in, but she got a huge scholarship. We're thrilled, and she is very excited about it.

Then it was St. Patrick's day. Another fantastic day. We parked way over on the west side of the park and walked to the parade, then afterwards we went over to the El Loco for a drink and snack. Gretchen is hoisting a toast to St. Patrick, and the girls are enjoying a snack.

January 2012 - After 14 years

Taking the plunge

After driving the old Subaru Outback since mid-1998, it was finally failing in a big way. Although I probably could have fixed it, Gretchen was convinced she'd never trust the car again, and since it's the car we use for camping trips and pulling the canoe trailer, this was a bit of a problem. After saying for 14 years that the only car I'd replace it with was another one just like it, that's exactly what we did. Heres some camparison shots, the 1998 and the 2012.



As you can see, the new one appears to be a bit bigger than the old one. The outside is, but most of that extra room was dedicated to the passenger compartment, meaning the that the cargo space is actually a touch smaller.

One interesting thing about this - in cleaning out the file on the old car, we found the old window sticker for it from when we purchased it. We compared it to the new sticker, and found that the price has only gone up $1000 in 14 years. Either we paid way too much back then, or the current price is pretty good.

It's a nice car, and it is much nicer on the road, but there are still some features that I prefer in the old one, such as the manual parking break, the larger cargo compartment, and the ROOF RACKS. The new roof racks stink, and they look bad too. It was still the right car for our family. We still need to put a trailer hitch on it for the canoe trailer. David will be picking one out and ordering it shortly, and then mounting it under the car before canoe season.

Here's the old one, cleaned up and ready to sell. We did much better selling it privately than trading it in.

December 2011

Gretchen's Bad Day

So while David was in beautiful sunny Columbus OH for a week, we had the only snowstorm of note all year (in early December of all times. About 8" of heavy wet snow fell overnight and into the morning. On getting up, the first thing she found was this:



The heavy snow had built up on the netting that keeps the hawks out of the chicken yard, bringing a lot of it down, and tearing what was still up. Not the worst thing that could happen, but no fun either.

Then, later that same day, while downtown. She got a flat tire on the Subaru. It turns out this screw was embedded in the tire, but for a variety of reasons it resulted in completely replacing the tire.

Then, on getting home, she found that the weight of the snow had brought this tree down across the driveway. This picture was taken after she had done some surgery just to be able to get her car out of the driveway. All in all not a very good day

On the brighter side, later that month the girls played Christmas music at a local bookstore after school one day. Here is Grace playing 'Angels We Have Heard on High' on her saxophone. She also played some songs on the piano.

Ingrid also played, both the piano and the flute. Here she is on the piano.

And here with her friend Abbey performing a flute duet.

Lastly this month, Christmas Tree hunting - which Grace had to pay for because the rest of us forgot to bring enough cash to buy a tree. Thanks Grace. Lots of great trees at this farm - we'll be going back there every year for sure.

And the finished product, decorated and ready for St. Nick to come.