Snow, snow, and more snow...in Huntsville?

Christmas is always a special time of year, but this one went past special and headed right toward magical!

This was our first Christmas with Erin, our new daughter-in-law, so there was naturally some small amount of anxiousness about how our family traditions would mesh with her family's. It's the same rite of passage that every family has to go through when their children get married, but for both us and the Perrys is was our first time to tread those waters.

Well needn't have worried, of course, because Erin jumped right in as if she'd always been part of our traditions. As it happens, her family normally does their big family dinner and gathering on Christmas Day, and we have always done ours on Christmas Eve so there was no conflict at all. Erin even offered to sit with the boys on the steps for our traditional photo before we allow the boys to come into the family room to see what Santa has brought! What a trooper :-)

As the presents were being opened someone looked outside and noticed that it was snowing! We've lived in Huntsville for over 15 years now and, while it has snowed a few times over the years, it had never happened on Christmas Day! We ended up getting about 3 inches and had a great time watching the dogs play in it and taking pictures of the spectacle. Dave dutifully shoveled off the back deck and the sidewalk leading to the garage. He had to use a small shovel that made the task take twice as long, but then who has a snow shovel in Alabama?

When the presents were all opened, the cinnamon roles eaten, and the newlywed couple packed off to the Perry's for their next round of celebrations, we counted ourselves blessed for such a memorable Christmas.

Who knew that the snow would return again in just a couple weeks!

On January 10th it did, and with a vengeance! It snowed, and snowed, and snowed. And since Jan 10th was a Monday, there was the hope (soon realized) that school would even be cancelled! That had happened before in Huntsville for far less snow (once even for a forecast of snow that turned out to be incorrect - blush!), but this time it was legitimate! By the time it was over we had 8 inches piled up on the back deck! Before long even businesses were closing down, including Dave's job. Huntsville is just unprepared for that much snow and it took days for the city to clear the streets enough to make it possible to get to either work or school.

Thus freed from the cares of normal everyday life :-) we took full advantage of the situation. We made a snowman, did our best to sled in the wet, sticky snow, romped with the dogs, and generally reverted to childhood for a few days. It was a winter wonderland of fun!

After it was over, over the next couple of weeks, there were numerous forecasts of more possible snow to come. Both at work and in the schools, folks started to get concerned about all the days off and how they would have to be made up at some point. Somehow, the magic was quickly giving way to dread each morning as we watched the forecast.

But Dave found a way to fix it.

He finally went out and bought a snow shovel.

And it never snowed again.

Gerrit and Erin get Married

All of those old folks telling us through the years that time would slip away and before we knew it our boys would be grown were proven true in August. Our first born son got all growed up, graduated from college with two degrees, got married to the most wonderful girl we've ever met, and the two of them moved to Houston.

Once there, Gerrit began his career with Exxon Mobil and the two of them have settled into life as if they'd been married for years. We had a chance to visit them in October and had a wonderful time seeing the sites and spending time with them.

Now we're looking forward to seeing them again for Thanksgiving!

Wow, time sure does fly!

A satisfactory end to one journey, and the beginning of a new one.

It took nearly four months, but Dave's journey through unemployment finally ended on May 17th. In some ways that seemed like a long time, with all the resumes, applications, interviews, possibilities, and disappointments. But looking back now it seems more like an unlooked-for break from all the stresses and worries built up after nearly 29 years of working life.

The time off gave Dave a chance to refocus and get his perspective back, plus take care of the huge list of "to-do's" he'd been meaning to get around to in his free time. All the old family video tapes are now converted to DVD, indexed and cataloged. The back of the house got a fresh coat of paint it's been needing since last summer. The old bent-up storm door got replaced. The branches from the huge oak tree next door that were scraping the roof are now pruned. And the grass and shrubs around the house have NEVER looked so good!

Best of all, the extra time spent at home with Karen was a great opportunity catch a glimpse of what retirement together might look like in a few years. It looks like it's going to be AWESOME!

Thus rested, recharged, and ready, Dave begins the employment journey anew. Hopefully for the last time :-)

An Unexpected Vacation

In late January this year, Dave became an unemployment statistic. The Army program he had been working on through his company, i3, had an unexpected budget shortfall, and in a matter of days half the civilian engineering force was unceremoniously asked to clear out their offices.

Using the three weeks of vacation he had saved up, Dave began the process of searching for another job while still under the cover of i3. That kept a paycheck coming in for a while, but eventually even that dried up and i3 had to let him go.

Interestingly, the money didn’t seem to stop coming in. First there was the refund on our mortgage escrow. It seems we had overpaid what was necessary for our property taxes last year by a good bit, so they sent us a check. Then there were our tax refunds, from both federal and state, which should arrive any day now. Plus the i3 severance check. Karen also started noticing that her grocery money seemed to be multiplying. Every week when she went to put in what she normally budgets for groceries, there was already enough there to cover things.

We had to leave the company medical plan and start on COBRA, which we weren’t looking forward to, since it normally costs and arm and a leg. But it seems there was a little provision in the federal stimulus package last year that cut COBRA payments by 2/3! And it turns out that the provision was scheduled to end just days after we applied.

The outpouring of support from friends, coworkers, and even strangers has been amazing. We’ve long preached to others that accepting generosity from folks who care about you is as much an act of service as the giving, but it sure looks different from the other side :-) Our hearts have been touched by cards, phone calls, emails, gift certificates, and roughly a million offers to personally shop Dave’s resume around.

The search for a job still continues, now 40 days on, but our hearts are full of gratitude and peace. God has granted us an awesome gift of seeing life from an angle we never expected, and the view of His grace from here is pretty awesome.

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...