Christmas break 2009

Christmas this year took on special significance for our family. Gerrit will soon be graduating from college, marrying Erin, and moving to Houston in the new year, so there's no telling when we'll see them for Christmas again! Tuck is happily adapting to college life at the University of Alabama. And Philip is rapidly approaching driving age. Our little family is steadily sprouting wings and leaving the nest!

So, we wanted to make the most of the time we had together. For Dave that implied more than just family dinners and board games, though. Not being sure when he'd have all of his home-grown man-power together again, he decided it was time to purge the garage, the attic, and just about everything else that wasn't tied down. We hired a construction-sized dumpster and started throwing away the accumulated junk from 14 years living in the same house. After three days we had just about filled a 30 cubic yard container. The fact that we had that much junk was more than a little embarrassing, but the sense of relief we felt when the truck came to haul it away was wonderful!

Having completed our "big chore" for the week, we set our minds to more entertaining pursuits, like making graham cracker houses! As anyone who knows us will suspect, it turned into quite the competition. We split into four teams of two: Karen with our visiting friend Carolyn, Dave with Philip, Gerrit and Erin, and Tuck and Morgan. The results were quite impressive, and each team claimed victory for one reason or another, though Dave is sure that his "architecturally correct" recreation of Notre Dame cathedral (complete with flying buttresses!) stole the show :-)

On Christmas day we packed up our rented Expedition and took to the road to go see Dave's parents in Charleston. We normally get a chance to see them with the extended family in Lexington at Thanksgiving, but since it hadn't worked out this year, heading to Charleston seemed the logical thing to do.

Since Erin hadn't been to Charleston before, we had the perfect excuse to tour the city again. After driving around the city and seeing the sites, Erin and Gerrit took the historic carriage tour while the rest of us strolled through the market.

Dave's folks rolled out the red carpet for us, continually offering their hospitality in the form of more food than an army could possibly eat. The conversation was great, fueled by collections of letters Dave's mom had saved through the years, and by Grandad's reminiscences from his thirty years in the Navy.

One particularly special evening, the guys all bundled up and sat out on the back deck, puffing on cigars that Gerrit had given Tucker for his 19th birthday, and listening to Grandad tell some pretty amazing stories. No one seemed to notice the cold until we'd been out there for hours.

Eventually though, we had to pack up and make the long drive back to Huntsville, then turn our minds back toward school, work, and our regular lives. But the holiday gave us one last thrill by dumping snow on Huntsville just as school was resuming, giving us an unexpected additional holiday as schools and roads were closed for the next couple of days.

Nice.

Renovations

It all started with the oven door.

After fourteen years in the same house we had gotten used to a lot of the little quirks that made this 35 year-old house our home, and one of them was the fact that the oven door had begun to stick on occaision. It wasn't all the time, but when it did you had to know how to hold it to get it closed again. Then Dave's mom came to visit, and since her heart wasn't warmed by our house's little heart-warming quirks, she left us money for a new oven.

After a while we started checking out the local home improvement stores to see what might be available. The news wasn't good. You see, our oven was a 28 inch wide slide-in model, and it seems that sometime after the seventies the appliance industry had decided that 32 inch widths were the new standard. Trouble was, the space in our cabinets where the oven fit was only 28 inches wide.

So, in order to change ovens, we'd have to have someone work on the cabinets. If they were going to put a bigger hole in the cabinets, we'd probably have to have the counter tops redone. As long as we were redoing the cabinets, we might as well redo the hardware. And since we were getting a new oven, we should probably go ahead and replace the fridge and dishwasher so they matched. Oh yes, and a new stove hood. And since we were changing counter tops and updating the cabinets, we should probably pull down the old wall paper and repaint. Except for the back splash area - maybe something in stone would look good there...

Once we settled on a contractor and he got started on the kitchen, we began to think about the upstairs bathroom. I mean, the contractor was here anyway, so maybe we should just go ahead and do it all at the same time, right?

We saved a few pennies by doing some of the demolition work ourselves. Tearing out the old tile using a pick ax was a TREAT! Philip also scraped off all the old "cottage cheese" ceiling. That wasn't nearly so much fun.

By the time the last domino fell, we had redone the kitchen, living room, dining room, hallways, stairwell, and our master bedroom.

All because the oven door stuck.

Annabelle joins the family

Sometime early this year it became evident to all of us that our faithful dog Maggie was starting to show some signs of wear. She was greying around the edges, and her persistent skin tumors seemed to be multiplying at a faster and faster rate. Sensing an opportunity, the boys began making the argument that we should get a NEW dog now, while Maggie was still able to help train it, rather than wait until after she's gone. Their pleas were met mostly with skepticism that such an idea was even valid, and coupled with memories of what it's like to raise a new puppy, the whole thing didn't really gain much traction.

Until Karen started "harmlessly" looking to see if there were any pups available in the area...

And what do you know, she found a litter not far from our house! What could it hurt to just go take a look?

As everyone knows, it is humanly impossible to see brand new Labrador puppies without taking one home. It's written into the fabric of the universe, or our genetic code, or something. So, we made our pick, determined that she should be named Annabelle, and brought her home.

The next few days were spent acquiring a new kennel, new collar, new leash, new dog bowl, and all the other paraphernalia that go with having another dog. Miraculously, Annie did indeed follow Maggie's lead, and she was housebroken practically without incident. Being inveterate fans of "The Dog Whisperer", we complimented Maggie's training regimen with tips and tricks we'd seen on the show, to include making sure Annie got LOTS of exercise. When taking her for constant walks around the block proved to be impractical, Karen found a treadmill cheap and trained both dogs to walk on it. And so, a daily routine was born: wake up, let the dogs out, run them on the treadmill, and then feed them.

Feed them a LOT.

One other law of Physics relating to puppies is that they GROW. Startling so. Before you know it, they're gangly teenagers, eating you out of house and home. It didn't help any that our vet literally gasped at the size of Annie's paws during one visit, proclaiming that this dog was going to be HUGE! Great.

And teenagers do tend to push the boundaries a bit. While Annie fell right into line with Maggie in her respect for the boundaries INSIDE the house, she tended to feel released from all inhibitions when OUTSIDE. While most of her attention seemed to be focused on sticks of various sizes, she also found time to extract and completely dismantle the drain pipe from the sump pump under the house. The subsequent cycle of repair and re-dismantling went several iterations before Dave constructed a fortress of chicken wire and concrete blocks to protect the pipe. So far so good.

Annie also managed at some point to "get acquainted" with a nest of wasps, which led to some rather comical swelling and a trip to the vet, though it produced no discernible lack of enthusiasm on Annie's part. The swelling took a couple of days to go down and she was none the worse for the wear.

Since then, Annie has continued to grow up and grow more accustomed to being a part of our family. She and Maggie get along well, though Maggie clearly feels her hold on the "top dog" slot slipping as time goes by. And you can tell by the picture below that Annabelle feels that she is now the queen of all she surveys...

Gerrit Sky Dives!

Gerrit Puts His Knees in the Breeze

Since a lot of our Christmas this year revolved around things at our house, it didn't seem fair to make Gerrit share all of them and then head back to school. We needed something that was just for him..

For years now one of Gerrit's dreams has been to try skydiving, and since Dave's flying puts in touch with a community of people who know about such things, we decided to find out if it was possible. Turns out it was not only possible, it was almost convenient! So, a few days after celebrating Christmas the whole family headed down to the airport in Cullman, Alabama.

The weather was spectacular, which was a relief since both the day prior and the day afterwards ended up being yucky, but Gerrit's day was perfect. After watching a quick instructional video, Gerrit was teamed up with an experienced diver from SkyDive Alabama and he got all suited up. We got a chance to watch two or three other groups come down before Gerrit's turn. In each group there were some tandum "first-timers" and several experienced parachuters. Finally it was Gerrit's turn and we watched as the airplane carried him up to over 14,000 feet.

He was just a speck against the blue sky when he first exited the airplane, but we had arranged for someone to video the whole thing from up in the air, so we all got to share the whole ride down later at home. After what seemed like an eternity, we saw the chute open and followed his progress all the way down to the landing. It was probably as much fun for us watching as it was for him doing it! Well, almost :-)

Tuck's new job

It looks as if Tucker may have finally found his calling! It's true that he's still in high school, but after working in the kitchen at Guthrie's and singing for tips at Cold Stone Creamery, he was pretty sure that the fast food industry wasn't what he wanted to do for the rest of his life.

It turns out that Grissom High School has a program that allows students to work as part of their studies, so Tuck took a shot and asked his orthodontist, Dr. Dickson, if he might be interested in having a co-op student. Turns out "Dr D" was very interested and after all the paperwork was submitted, Tuck donned his mask and started what may be the coolest job ever! Dr D has been great about teaching Tuck all about the job, and has even allowed Tuck to do some of the work on select individuals (brother Philip included). He's made molds of people's teeth, created retainers, inserted spacers, and a host of other things that most guys probably never get a chance to do until dental school. But most of all he's learned that the right front-office person can make or break a practice - Cathy is AWESOME at keeping both of the guys in line :-)

Time will tell if this ends up being the start of a lifelong occupation for Tuck, but at least for now he's having a blast while learning a lot with a couple of great people.

We discover Geocaching!

The Wilsons came for a visit in May this year, and when we got to thinking about what we might do, Tucker suggested we take a hike down the nearby Aldridge Creek greenway. It turns out a friend of his had shown him the locations of some hidden caches of trinkets that are part of an activity called "Geocaching". Tuck showed us where the caches were as we walked along the greenway, and we got curious about how many more might be near our house.

When we got home we went to the Geocaching web site and found out more about the sport. Well, one thing led to another, and before you know it, both we and the Wilsons had acquired GPS units, and were becoming consumed by the sport!

The following Saturday, our family went back out and found five other caches! It was so much fun that we decided to create our own cache to hide up the mountain behind our house. By the next weekend, we were up to 14 finds and it was reaching obsession status (at least for Dave) :-)

So what is it all about? Basically someone hides a container with a log book and perhaps a few interesting things, then they note the location on their GPS and upload the information to a site like geocaching.com .

Other folks find the locations for caches near them by using their zip code or home coordinates, and then they go searching.

The caches can be so small that they contain only a strip of paper for logging your visit, or they can be large enough to hold various trinkets. The idea is that you can take anything, but you should leave something of equal or greater value. Once you get home, you go back to geocaching.com and log your visit. For more information you can visit the geocaching.com information page.

The beauty of Geocaching is that it can be done anywhere in the world, and it adds another layer onto just about any trip or activity. Going on a vacation to Colorado? Just look up the caches in the area by plugging in the area code. Away ball game in another town? Same thing.

As with any sport, the more you get into it, the more there seems to be to it. What's nice about geocaching is that it seems to be easily picked up by someone new to it, yet it provides enough of a challenge to keep it interesting for veterans. The cache locations are often used to bring attention to special places with great views or historical significance of some sort.

Our first cache documented the history of our street, which is rather awkwardly split in half because early residents feared it would become a throughway for folks traveling to the south. Since that one we've placed a total of 10 more around the Huntsville area, and somewhere along the way we've managed to find over 1000 caches in three countries and 11 states!

Vacation in Costa Rica

We head to Costa Rica purely for fun, and to celebrate our 20th anniversary, Gerrit's 18th birthday and impending departure for college life, and Philip's 11th birthday.

We've spent a lot of vacation time and travel over the last few years going to Venezuela for mission activities, but with so many family milestones happening this Spring we thought maybe it was time to head out for a purely fun trip. We had been hearing great things about Costa Rica recently, so Karen starting looking into it, and before you know it, we were on our way.

Costa Rica has been well known for its stability in an otherwise turbulent region, and it's recent ecological focus has inspired lots of eco-tourism. As admirable as that may be, we went for the volcanos and the beach!

We flew into the airport at Liberia, which is less well known than the one in the capitol city of San Jose, but far closer to our destinations. We rented a 4-wheel drive car (which ended up being a good thing) and headed to Arenal for our first stop. There are active volcanos running through the middle of the entire country, but the one at Arenal seems to be the most popular tourist spot.

Our hotel room was actually a chalet that had a gorgeous view of the volcano. Sitting in the rockers and watching the volcano turned out to be as much an attraction as the outings we planned to do things like: walking the hanging bridges through the cloud forest, white water kayaking, and horseback riding up the volcano.

We also watched butterflies emerge from their cocoons at the butterfly house, and sat in an outdoor jacuzzi one night watching glowing red lava spurt out of the volcano.

After three days we loaded back into the car and headed further up into the mountains to Monte Verde. The trip up required us to traverse about 30 miles of really bad, unpaved roads, and about twenty miles in we suddenly realized one of the tires was going flat.

Considering the fact that we'd seen very few houses, and almost no other cars we were glad we had a good spare. But things started looking a bit grim when neither Gerrit nor I could loosen the lug nuts on the flat tire (clearly they'd been enthusiastically tightened with one of those pneumatic wrenches).

Well, what looked like a potential disaster turned into quite the "God story". A lady walked up from the opposite direction and announced that a tire repair shop was just up the road. Moments later a car pulled up with a man and his dad offering to help. Between our two jacks, a couple of flat rocks, and some creative engineering we were able to get the flat off, the spare on, and drive to the tire shop to get the tire repaired.

Monte Verde was an interesting place; a strange combination of gorgeous mountain rain forests, touristy restaurants, and hippy hangouts. But the reason we'd come was for the zip line through the forest. Once we got all harnessed up and trained, we climbed the first tower and worked our way through nearly two miles of cables through the trees, out over deep valleys, and back into the trees. The views were spectacular and the ride was totally thrilling!

From Monte Verde we headed to the beach at Tamarindo where we stayed in a luxury hotel on the beach for three nights.

While there the boys took surfing lessons, we all went snorkeling (we saw a sea turtle, several kinds of blow fish, and hundreds of other fish), Karen had a massage on the beach and then found a place where she got a custom bathing suit made.

Each night we explored and ate at different restaurants. There was lots of kickback time to read on our own, but we especially enjoyed Mom reading aloud from the book "Marley & Me" about a family with a totally out of control Lab.

Far too soon it was time to head back to Liberia and our flight home. The flight took us over Nicaragua and it's picturesque lake with two volcanos in the middle.

It was a trip to remember!