Exciting NEWS!

Well, it seems like EVERYONE out there is having a baby and so we thought that we would jump on the ban-wagon so-to-speak. For anyone out there that is a little concerned, I just want you to know that we've thought long and hard about this decision. Here is what we've come up with:

1. We married (And thus it only seems natural.)

2. We're old enough. (I think that early 30's would easily put us in the "mature" department.)

3. We're secure. (We have a house, a paid-for car, our bills are easily paid on time, we are gainfully employed.)

4. We considered the cost. (Money, time, energy, social disruption/acceptance.)

5. We've prayed about it. (What good is it if it's out of God's will?)

6. Everyone else seems to be doing it. (Yeah, not so strong of an argument, I know, but that's why it's last.)

So, with that said, I would like to introduce you to our newest member of the family:

David Pavlovich

We'll be calling him "Davey" for short. Once upon a time, when my mom was my age (yikes!), we all piled into a car to drive somewhere. Before we (us kids, that is) knew it we were driving down a dirt driveway that had several large signs that said "No Trespassing" and "We have Guns" (well maybe not, but the signs I could read we're just as scary in my 7 year old mind).  I expressed my concern. Mom said "Don't worry." Sure thing mom...didn't you just read the sign??!! Anyway, we got out of the car and were met by a big litter of Great Dane puppies! Mom picked out one and we were on our way back home. In the car, she asked us what we should name our new little puppy. "Rocket!" shouts my brother Tommy. He named everything "Rocket". "Black Tulip!" shouts my 2 year old sister. What? Um, no. I conveniently can't remember my suggestion, and I'm sure it was equally silly, but it didn't matter anyway because Mom named our newest bolt of lighting, "Goliette" (a feminine version of Goliath from the Bible). Golly was by far our best dog ever or at least our favorite and in honor of such a great dog, we have named our new little boy David.

I expect that I'll be getting some hate-mail from this post for such beginning trickery. :)

The Whitest Garage in All the Land

Before we even finished signing the paperwork for the house, Alex has been dreaming of "finishing" the garage. We, I should say he, waited patiently for a year and the moment our income tax return was deposited he was out purchasing all the necessary items to complete the garage. He has never "finished" a garage before so every step of the process was a little longer than it would have normally taken but I think it looks great.

This was taken a little more than a year ago when we first moved in. The only walls that had dry wall were the ones that connected to the interior of the house.

Tommy, Alex, and I took turns nailing the dry-wall into the studs because it was truly 20 degrees outside that day. A few days later, Alex started on the mudding, sanding, taping, sanding, mudding sanding, mudding, sanding process. This is before he "taped".

Finally after a week of mudding and sanding the garage was ready for the primer to go up. This took two days because Alex covered everything very thoroughly and even primed the ceiling. I found it humorous that many of our neighbors came over to see "how everything was going" but not a single person helped. In their defense, Alex wouldn't have let them anyway. He was bound and determined to do it all by himself, and he wanted to get it finished before his dad came for a visit.

I had to take the picture at night because during the day it looked like the presence of God dwelled in our garage- at least on film. Alex can finally rest easy at night knowing that all his Man-toys are in their assigned and organized place. Now that everything is done and over with, I can see why people would pay for someone else to complete the job. 

I think we'll be taking a rest from the "Home Improvement Honey-do List" for a while. 

Just Livin' the Dream

Life has been plugging along for the last week or so and now that the snow has all melted and the trees are blooming again this is what we've been up to:

Alex shaved his beard and now has a handle-bar mustache.

A little cooking.

Dad came to visit for 3 days.

Our back stairs before the boys got a hold of it. Isn't it pitiful.

Dad working on the new staircase.

Alex and Dad putting on the finishing touches.

The new back stairs.

That sums up our last week or so. The semester is almost over and so far I still have straight A's. Only 3 more semesters to go!

The Best Snow Day EVER!

For the previous week, all anyone could talk about was the blizzard that we were suppose to get on Friday, March 27 and Saturday, March 28. Throughout the week the reports from the Weather Channel kept getting worse and worse and all the warnings were predicting 8-15 inches of snow in a 24 hour period with really high winds. Almost all the schools cancelled class for Friday and I would say that most of business were closed by 2 PM. This is what we woke up to on Saturday morning:

All that snow is pretty much level from the top of our driveway out to the street. This was taken around 2 PM on Saturday and the snow had already begun to melt on the roof and a little bit on our stone retaining wall. The only way we could get out of the house was through our back door. Here's our front door:

That's about a foot and a half of hard compacted snow and ice that had drifted against the house. We were first drenched in freezing rain, then snow, then freezing rain, then snow. It made great snow balls and you could walk on it pretty easily without breaking through. It was a killer to shovel! This is one of my favorite pictures because every single leaf is completely surrounded by ice.

Here's a close-up of our ice-covered tree. I'm pretty sure that it won't bloom again and I'm hoping that it will recover quickly and green up again after being frozen.

Our neighbors, Veronica and Robert, invited us over for brunch that morning and we almost never say no to food. Afterwards, they all made a snowman while I took pictures of the house and then I made this snow angel in the other neighbors yard. It kind of hurt my head because the snow was so darn hard and I really had to work to get snow angel wings, but the neighbor kids thought it was great fun to watch.

Here's Veronica and Robert (we call him Babby because we already have another Robert that lives down the street) next to the unusually large-headed snowman. Aren't they cute?!! Notice that Babby is holding Veronica's hand. What's up with that? It's like their newly-weds or something. :)

After all the fun was to be had we all grabbed our shovels, and as if we were good little Amishmen, worked as a community to shovel out every one's driveway with Jana and Robert (our other neighbors) taking the lead. When everything was finished Jana and Rob came over for dinner (chicken tostada's) and a movie (The Red Violin). I think this turned out to be probably the best snow day I've ever had!