An Army of One

Shhh...I know that you cannot see her, but if you could you would have to admit that this is super cute. Anna has been preparing for her end of October trip to the northwest regions of the woods of William Penn.

Anna knows that her uncle is an avid hunter. A Nimrod of the east. (Nimrod is Hebrew for mighty hunter). Preston will be so proud when he is able to see her new pj's. Anna is an army of one in her pink camouflage sweat suit. She is preparing to show up Preston on the ways of the woods....it's in her blood.

If you look closely at the above picture:
find Sedgwick and move towards the center of the picture.
Look a touch to the left and that will be her abdominal section.
Right behind Sedgwick's hind left paw is Anna's head.
You should be able to see that even with an untrained eye. It is not camouflaged.




Night-night warrior princess.

A skunk eat dog world

So, Life on Union Avenue is not perfect. As Toni Dunmire has said in a comment, It looks like a good Life on Union Avenue, and it is. We have a great life- I will be the first to admit it. I love my wife, my children, my job, the perpetual student life, and many other things about our life.

As stated, it is not perfect. We get our fair share of urban rodents and pests. Union Avenue has even been known to have a crime once in awhile. (Not at our house though)!
Nevertheless, there comes a time when you have to admit something that downright STINKS!

I get home from work late in the evening. Usually I will hear Anna yell, "papa home"!from the top of the stairs and the dogs come running to be taken out for their last constitution of the night. This night it was 11:45pm.

I let Samson out and proceeded to the basement to see the progress of the trim work. Sedgwick, Anna, and Lydia joined me. While we commented on the lovely trim, built in bookshelves and window seat we smelled an awful smell. Someone on Union Avenue had come face to tail with a God given defense mechanism of the mephitis mephitis: Latin for the common striped skunk!

As I went to take Sedgwick 0utside I noticed a well defeated canis familiarus...Samson had been skunked!

After a quick argument over whose responsibility it was to clean the dog which Lydia brought into this marriage, I marched off to CVS to purchase some hydrogen peroxide topical solution.

It was OUR responsibility to clean HER dog.

Of course Anna had to help as well. She poured the water out of a cup while I scrubbed and scrubbed.
Here is the solution that Lydia found on-line. One teaspoon dish detergent, one quart peroxide, one-fourth cup baking soda. We doubled it!
Or did we triple it?
Samson is quite impressed with his little bath. Jen Reilly, his groomer, would be happy to know that he even had a bath between groomings.
I am using the scrubbing as a coping skill as well. I was upset...Lydia was mad. Let's say we scrubbed VERY hard.
Keep scrubbing......scrubbing....scrubbing.....It is 2:00am. Time for bed. Sam can sleep in the crate. (Of course he won't...but not on the bed).

I hope that you have enjoyed this as much as we did. Hmmm. Sometimes it is a tough day on Union Avenue.

Canine Life on Union Avenue

With all of the basement remodel, time with Owen and Anna, marital duties, school, and time away from home due to a thing called work- I have not had a lot of time for my dogs. I thought that they would enjoy seeing a post concerning them... since we talk all day long about our children.

Here are a few pictures of Samson and Sedgwick doing that which they do best:
1. Being lazy
2. Smelling up the couch
3. Being worthless

We love our dogs.
Sedgwick always messes up the pillows. This is a huge pet peeve of mine. I want the pillows in the proper order as well as the stripes vertical with the tag labels facing down. He comes along, with pure disregard for me and my feelings, and noses them around until he is able to curl up into the cute Sedgwick ball that we all know and love.
Samson is the classic lazy dog. Zoom in on his face. HE IS AWAKE! He is not even sleeping...Just conserving energy so that he can make it to the next meal!
Notice the little bone that one of them has hidden under the couch for future gnawing. In our house the dog days of summer are the dog days of life (on Union Avenue).

Colours (that is English for colors)

I am sure that all are becoming weary of the basement updates. I am getting wearing from the work that goes into these posts (I mean the manual labor, not the blogging). Here are the colors that we chose for the basement. We wanted something that would be light due to the subterranian qualities, yet something that was striking as well. We chose terra cotta for the back wall and a buttercream for the other three walls including the study area.

Brian Anderson helped to paint on his free time. He is always a great help around here. If I am ever a BILLIONAIRE then I will hire him to be my groundskeeper & chef.

I took an hour break and went with the family over to the Vedra's house for some iced coffee and a slice of cake that Emily made. We discussed theology and parenting (surprised?) and of course had a great time watching Anna and Noah pester one-another!

The great quote of the day was from Oma Malysa, she said, concerning the colors, "Oh..you're getting creative".

I sure am Irm, I sure am.

Second coat is tomorrow, but I will spare you the details.

Next we have trim, finishing of the electrical, and carpet..then all are invited to the basement open house!

Times and Seasons

Remember when you were a kid and the winters seemed as though they would drag on forever? Or how a 3 month summer vacation from school was so long that you forgot a lot of the material that you were studying, and how you really did not think that summer would ever end?

As an adult time moves more rapidly. The reason that it seems as though time is so much faster when you are an adult is that you have many years of life experience to compare time against. A day is nothing, weeks are nothing, years and even decades come and go all while having to face your own mortality. This can be very sobering to an adult. Time.

As a child time is nothing, they have very little if any cognitive life experience to back up their life experiences. A school day is "forever", and the weekend "is years away". These are common childish thoughts. They have no concept of time.

What is the point of this rant? Why depress you with the fact that we are all getting older? It is because I now get to experience what parents for generations have been telling to their adult children,
enjoy them when they are young....They grow up so quickly".

This week Anna turned 22 months old...She will be two on the 22nd of November. Owen turned 3 months old today. He is growing so quickly and developing so well. He is laughing, cooing, smiles all the time, and gives that look that he knows who his parents are. It is amazing!
(For reference..I turned 334 months this week too!)

We thought that we would share more pictures with you all for this special week:

This one Owen looks really serious. I am not sure, but I think that he is contemplating supralapsarianism verses infralapsarianism. Or he's looking at Anna.
Look at that little grin. It seems to be cute yet cheeky.
Here is one more of Owen. It is really weird to think that Lydia and I have been married 3 1/2 years and that we have 2 kids. (We are old!...but all the grandparents are older!)
Owen always enjoys a nice kiss from Anna. Notice the blanket that Toni Dunmire made for Anna out of vintage materials. We love it!
Here is what Anna was doing before I brought out the digital camera. She was reading quietly in her room. She knows that this is the normal Sunday practice around here. Quietly reading.
Here is when she first noticed me. She said, "papa"! She has begun 3 or 4 word sentences as well this week. One phrase that she has been working on is "Miss Moey" (Marion Pickering, her Sunday school teacher.) She was practicing it by repeating it after me, and at one point she said, "Moey Miss" and then laughed because she knew that it was not correct. Very cute.
Here Anna enjoys a hug and snuggle from Lydia. I guess that Owen can have one too!



* * * For my mom...
To leave a comment click the line that says # comments (# being 0,1,2, 3 comments, etc.) Do not click the little envelope. That is to email the article to someone. So click the comment word in the lower right hand corner and then post your comment.
You will post as "other". It will ask for your ULR...ignore that. Name, email address, and comment are all that you need.

You can do it!! (That was a motivational cheer for my mom!)

Cruddy Study

In between being scheduled full time at work, being a full time Master's candidate, and my many familial duties there are "fun" things that must occur in order to get our basement finished and the guest room (someday Owen's) finished. We are looking forward to having the order back in our home that we normally have....But for now we live in bedlam!

Here are some of today's pics of our study being de-shelved and packed up. (Of course it is in alphabetical order and all are being cataloged before they go into their respective boxes.

Here is where we are. We have de-shelved A thru L with the exception of the one's that slip through our compulsive eyes. It is amazing how many books have been done...At least 1000 thus far, I would imagine, and probably 20-25 boxes.
Here is a look at the mess at Lydia's desk. We will each have our own study areas and we are looking forward to that. Sharing space is awful when two OCD people live in the same house and have differing methods of organization! (So, we are little crazy?)
Here is Anna playing amongst the books. She thought that climbing them was a fun expedition. We had to put an end to it when she climbed to the six feet mark. (A little safety is a wise thing.)
Lydia worked while I cataloged and boxed...It seems that she has given up on a clean desk for now. (The book by her right hand is on "no cry" sleep solutions for toddlers. She borrowed it from the La Leche League library.)
The pile of boxes grows as shelves begin to be cleared. I am amazed at how many books are on the shelves that have not been referenced for years. Even with the amount of papers and research that goes on in the study many are not touched once they are read.
Anna thought that since we were both busy she would be at liberty to use a blue-green Sharpie on the folding chair as well as paint her nails with it. I thought that it was so funny but maintained a straight face when telling her that she has to let mama or papa paint her nails. (She has great fine motor skills for her age, if you ask me.)
Here is a cry for help! I think that she would like to do something more Anna focused right now. I guess that a bath and getting ready for bed is a good thing. She has to go play with Noah tomorrow at La Leche League! (She loves Noah!)

More to come as our remodel continues.

Gothic sub-terrainian dwelling aliens

Sometimes fun things occur and you are not sure under which life category these events would fall. There are times when the normal things seem to be laden with enigmatic qualities while the down-right bizarre appear to be normal.

Life on Union Avenue is one of these places. Our home is filled with laughter, sobriety, light conversation, and deep discussion about origin and destination. Here are a few of our lighter moments that have brought us joy:

Anna came home one evening and informed us that she had joined a goth band. We informed her that to live in our home their would have to be an approved level of normality. She complied, of course.
This could be the poster child for cocaine abuse, but it is actually the exhausted head of this home after an afternoon of sanding drywall in the basement. Lydia thought that I looked dead. Blessed are the labours of our hands!
I am not sure what you think, but this reminded me of some type of alien ship from the planet Fischer Price. This was Anna's Baby Einstein play gymnasium that her grandma and newly dubbed "opa" got her when she was a month old. Owen has been enjoying it as well, but not without the careful watching eye of his dear sister. (He looks a little creeped out by her.)
Here is another one of the children at play. Here Owen is cheering for joy! "Yeah!"

Anna's blogging abilities

So Anna said to me the other day, "Papa, blah oh-poo." Which is being interpreted as, "Papa I would like to open my own blog." I said to her, "Anna, you are only 22 months old, maybe you should wait until you are two." She responded, "no two." I thought, "what a persistant little creature." She then pointed at the digital camera and said, "mine"! I knew that she was going to have to prove that she was not quite old enough for her own blog. I said, "Anna, why don't you post a few on Life on Union Avenue and see how you like it? You know, blogging is not for everyone (Such as your mother, Justin Pickering, and Gretchen Johnson), you can try a few on papa's site." She agreed....here is the results of Anna's first blog post on Life on Union Avenue.
Klos-oo (Closet)
Car-poo mama's (Mama's carpet)
fl-oh (the floor)
nigh-nigh (bedroom, or place to sleep)
say-oo nigh-nigh (Sedgwick is sleeping)
tv off (please shut off that blasted devil box and remove it from my home before my brain rots into mush just like 90% of the mindless droids that come out of the public school system.)
toes (toes.)

Well, there you have it, Anna's first attempt at blogging. She is trying to get Owen into it as well, but he is more of a hard-copy sort of guy. He prefers the smell of a seventeenth century tome to the flicker of an LCD monitor. I do not think that Owen will be doing it...at least until he's two!

Drywall days: day three

Day three and we are finished!

We got up late...or at least I did, so we got a late start, but we were able to manage. We needed to get more top coat for the job so we went to Standard Lumber for some but they are closed on Saturday. (Tara, tell your dad that people do projects on Saturday...open the store!)

So we had to go to the killer of all "mom and pop" lumber yards...Lowes. Of course they had it. So back home to begin phase three.

Here is the finished phase. We were able to get the second coat of topping on, but we had to work quickly due to Lowes not having Durabond 90...we had to go with 45. 45 minutes per coat. Quick work!
Here are two of the storage areas. (Is the one full enough?)
This is the entrance to the bathroom, we were unable to finish that as well, but I will tacke it on my own. Should be fun.
Notice the Jim Eshelman corners. Sharp as a tack. That takes years of practice. (So they tell me.)
Here is what is going to be my study area. There will be a built in desk as well as other nerdy features. The circle is the desk light.
Here is Ray Lanning's contribution to the basement project. A 1930 Kohler sink that is an original that also had its original mechanics. Godwin Plumbing restored it for us. I am glad that we have something classic in the restoration. Paige Jaquith has this same sink and faucet set in her house.
Here is dad and I enjoying a libation together. Notice that it is MGD. I do not drink MGD. The reason that I was unable to drink Guiness or Bell's Oberon is that the Plasterer's Union REQUIRES that jobs be finished with an MGD. Man, I hate unions.

At least the job is done.
Now on to the fun parts: paint, carpet, and trim.

Drywall days:day two

Day two of the drywall work has come to a close. It is 21:30 and we have just finished. All of the drywall has been hung, the seams taped, and the first coat of topcoat has been applied. Tomorrow we will finish up....hopefully. We had a 13 hour work day today. Not bad for a couple of old guys and fat 20 something. Here is dad with one of the tools of the trade. "Nate, more mud!" Yeah, that is still running through my head.
Minus all of the supplies, this place is starting to look like a room!
Here is one of the windows that Doug boxed in nicely. This one is going to be a window seat with a hidden toybox. It will make a nice reading nook.
Here is Jim Bob standing around with his hand in his pocket. (This is rare..in the 13 hours, we took only a 10 minute Starbucks break.)
Here is the corner of the basement and another window. Can't wait for this to be done!
Doug framed in the stairs nicely and also built in an area under them for a deep freeze. We are looking forward to filling it with Jaquith beef again this year. Mmmmm..beef.
This illustrates the wonderful job that my dad does taping and covering seams.