Thursday, September 24, 2009

college

Well, it's official. We FINALLY got Anisa enrolled in school and she starts Oct. 5!~ :) She'll be going to Art Institute and working on her AA in Culinary Arts specializing in Baking and Pastry. I'm sure we will LOVE her homework! :) Sorry for no picture, but when she gets all her supplies, I'll post a picture of her in her uniform.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Postcards anyone?

Hey gang,
One of the sweet daughters of the family who moved into our Sturgeon Bay house is asking for postcards from all over the world for a class project. If you can send a postcard to her, email me or comment me for her address, or if you have my old SB address, you can just send it there to Ashton Spritka. Thanks!! love you all! :)

Saturday, September 19, 2009

BREAKING NEWS.....

Sara made Dance Team!! woot!

She went on Thursday to try-outs. They had to freestyle and learn the try-out routines. She came home tired and sore and has a huge bruise on her leg.

Well, Friday she said she might not try out because she couldn't remember the routine. She said it was harder than the finished routines on her last team. She couldn't do some of the moves, etc. Anyway, we all tried talking to her, but her mind was made up. She wasn't going to finish try-outs. We picked her up after school, got home and the phone rang. It was the coach. She asked Sara why she wasn't there, Sara told her the same thing she had told me....she didn't think she could do it, couldn't remember the routine, blah blah blah. The coach told her to come and try. If she couldn't get it after they reviewed the routine she could leave. Well, we never got a phone call to come get her. Anisa went to pick her up at 7, and at 7:45 she came out....ON THE TEAM! :)

She is a very sore girl. This team has a really hard work-out schedule, well, really hard if you're not used to it. ;) Anyway, we look forward to spending all our money, um, er, I mean watching our girl dance again this year. :) We had so much fun watching both girls dance at SB. These are the times I love being a mom. :)

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Tea Party, anyone?

We decided at the last minute to head into DC on 9-12 for the Tea Party. There was no tea drinking, just jillions of people in crazy outfits, t-shirts and carrying signs telling the government to stop spending all our money on stupid stuff. It was cool. Lots of energy. Everyone seemed happy to be there. Here are some highlights....





National Cathedral

Some of you know the girls were in Wisconsin for 2 weeks before school started. They had fun with their friends, and were sad to come back to DC.

Travis and I had 2 weeks ALONE. We were going to go camping, but the weather was so hot and humid we decided it would be miserable. We went into the city and went to the National Cathedral instead (well, for one day, anyway). Here are some pictures of it. Pictures don't come close to showing how really beautiful it is. But when you all come to visit us, we'll take you there! :)

Here is the north side of the building.













This is looking toward the front of the church.


















Here are some of the stained glass windows.


















This is my favorite little set of windows. When I saw them, I thought they were perfect inspiration for a quilt... ;)













Here is the front of the church, the Jerusalem Altar.


















Here is another shot of the outside from the garden.












After we took the tour at the cathedral, we decided to walk down one of the main road to find another metro stop. We ended up on Embassy Row (Massachusetts Ave). Here are some of the embassy buildings....
Britain's embassy...it's HUGE! This is only half of the building. Then there are the residence buildings on the side.










Ireland













Chad

Sunday, September 13, 2009

The HOUSE!

I finally have a few minutes on the computer to update my blog! :) yahoo. So, I guess I'll start with the house, since a lot of you (family, mostly) have been asking what the house looks like.

I'll take you on a little "tour" starting in the front. :) If you click on the pictures, it makes the big.

This is our little "pipestem". It's kind of like a cul-de-sac, but it's actually a long driveway off the main road. Pipestems are EVERYWHERE in this area. Our house is the first house on the right (duh, see all our vehicles?). There are 4 other houses on the pipestem. Our immediate neighbors next door are awesome! He owns a catering business. They have 3 kids, their youngest is a senior girl at Sara's high school. They are super nice. Our neighbors directly across are really great, too. The other 2 neighbors are crabby, but it's ok since they are also hermits and don't come out much. :)

The picture on the left is one that Travis took when he first got the house. You can see the house a little better than in the picture that I took. The trees were prettier, but not as full as they are now. The picture on the right is now. We are planning to possibly get an RV pad poured to move the trailer over, then we could actually park 2 vehicles in the garage. Right now, we have to move things around. It's kind of a pain, but oh well. *Sorry about the trash under the trailer. I forgot to move it for the picture, it's heavy garbage from under the deck going out tomorrow! :)

Come on in! On the left is looking in from the front door into the hallway downstairs. On the right side of the picture, is the staircase upstairs. Straight through is the kitchen, if you turned right, you'd go into the front room. Right in the middle of the hallway on the left is a little bathroom. In the picture on the right is the stairway, but we'll go upstairs in a bit...




This is the front room. It's small, so we don't use it too much. It is where the futon is, so if you come to visit us, it's where you will sleep. :) Unless we get the basement finished, but that's another story! :) It's in the front of the house, the room in the back of the house is the "formal dining room" that we use as our computer room. Who puts a family dining table on white carpet? Not us! tee hee

On the left is the kitchen from the family room. On the right is the family room from the kitchen. :) You can see the computer room through the doorway in the kitchen. There are 2 doors on the wall that you can see (in both pictures). The one closest to the family room goes out into the garage, the one closer to the kitchen goes down into the basement. You can also see where the hallway comes into this area (right there by the dining table).

Ok, let's go upstairs. Here's our room. It goes along the whole side of the house from the front to the back of the house. So, we've got plenty of room for all our junk. :) the picture on the left is looking toward the front of the house. In the right side corner is the bathroom, on the left is the closet. In the picture on the right, you can see the door coming into the room from the hallway. Our room is directly at the top of the stairs to the right.

This is our bathroom. The one of the left, is now. I wish you could see the color better. I LOVE the color that I painted it. It's a very soft aqua. The picture on the right is WHY I painted the bathroom. My towels didn't go with the red. :) Now, I just wish we could get a new sink, or rather, counter and sinkS. Shell shaped sinks should be banned. The shape seems to hold all the stuff that goes into the sink. I won't go into details, just take my word for it. :)

This is my sewing room. It's at the top of the steps. It's a TINY room, which is why I got it for my sewing room. It's kind of a mess still, but some of the stuff laying around is a project that I'm finally working on (I'll post the finished project when it's finished). :) I got most of my chickens up. The ceilings here are really low, so I couldn't hang my rooster quilt. bummer.
















Sara's room is on the left, Anisa's is on the right. They're still works in progress, but mostly the girls need to finish deciding what they want on their walls...pictures, shelves, blah blah blah Anisa's room is straight down the hall from our room at the back of the house. Sara's room is in the front of the house. Sara got the bigger room this time, since she's gotten the smaller room most of the time. This time, tho, the room is WAY bigger. It's kind of a bummer for Anisa, but they are happy to have a house, period. :)

This is the back of the house. We have a nice yard and a big deck.

So, now you know where we live. Come visit us! We'll take you around our new area. There are a ton of cool things to see, places to go, eat and shop.

I will post some things we've done around the area later. For now, I need to get ready for church! :)

Wednesday, September 09, 2009

really quick


I know I really need to update my blog with all our latest activities, but I just don't have time today. But, I did find this picture of a japanese dwarf flying squirrel family, so I thought you all could look at this cutest thing EVER, while you wait for me to get off my butt and post pics of my family. I love you all, and I won't keep you waiting much longer....I PROMISE. :)