Just an Update

Just a few updates:

Amy took and past a test to be licensed to handle claims for Rhode Island. Way to go Amy!

I never came back here and mentioned it, but we now have our Illinois drivers licenses. They take your other license right there at the DMV and then hand you a new one. Kinda cool to not have to wait for it to come in the mail.

Bugs suck. You walk out in our backyard in the late evening, you might as well be camping in the woods. I guess that is what we get for living next to a marsh. I spray some good OFF! on me, but I think it attracts some kind of fly. Always buzzing around my head. Uhhggg!

Played golf last Tuesday after the boxes were picked up (see below) and shot an 81! That was with two double bogey's and one quadruple bogey (not good). I have to thank Ben Hogan and the Bible he wrote. I am itching to get out again.

My cousin JR is getting married Labor Day weekend. We are trying to figure out if we can go. We can always drive, but it would be two days each way. To avoid keeping Elijah out of school too long, we would have to leave on Thursday to get there and start our trip back on Monday. So that would be four out of six days driving. We could also fly, half day each way. The cost of flying is not too much more than driving, but it is still nearly $1100. It will be really hard to make that work and all that driving would really suck, especially with a two year old, plus sleeping at a hotel for a night each way. We are using free miles I have to go home for Thanksgiving. I guess we'll see. Maybe we can try and sell a bunch of stuff on Ebay or Craig's List. We do have a clothes dryer we need to get out of the garage. A crib too. As much incredible fun it would be, we really need to spend some money on putting up a shed.

Last, and certainly not least, my sister is coming in next week. We did have my Uncle Rick and Aunt Annette stop by for breakfast 4th of July morning on there trek back home to Montana, but outside of this, we have not seen any immediate family since we left California. I am looking forward to it and we are planning to have a lot of fun.

p.s. The weather is going to suck this weekend. Supposed to be in the mid to upper 90's with that wonderful Midwest humidity. Mid 80's with the humidity, very manageable. The 90's? Not so much. Wish us luck. I'll bet we spend a lot of time in the basement where the temperature is aways very cool.

Backyard Friends

With all of our wonderful foliage in the backyard, we have made new "friends". Not all are friends. I will quickly call some of them foe's because I NEVER WANT TO SEE THEM AGAIN! Here is the first photo. Look carefully. It looks like there are berries on the tree.



As you look closer (see the next picture) you will see that they are not berries, but instead they are beetles. Japanese Beetles to be specific. Yuck!! Look at what they are doing to the leaves!



So I found a beetle killing spray that I connected to the end of my hose. Now there are many that are dead >:-) Yeah! Still need to spray some more.



Now there are some that I do not mind. Here is an *interesting* pair I found. In the words of Fillmore, the VW Bus on the movie Cars (voiced by the late, great George Carlin) with a 60's hippie tone, "There's a lot of love out there, man."

Boxes.......Gone!

We had our box pickup last week. It was nice to get nearly all of them out of here. In fact, they even took some cardboard that was not theirs. Woohoo!! We stuffed our living room, literally, and our garage had several wardrobe sized boxes. There were still a few that we did not get emptied in time, and we kept a few of the smaller ones, but for the most part, they are all gone. Below are two pictures of the living room. One full of boxes, and the other just after they were taken away.

House Pictures

I know it is a bit late, but here are some photos of the house. Obviously this is the front, but this time without all the snow. Who knew there was so much greenery? I did not notice any of this when we first looked at it. Of course a lot of stuff was dormant for the winter.

The next four photos are of the backyard.The first two were taken back, i think in April. Notice just some trees and evergreens. The background water is the marsh directly behind our house. The third and fourth were taken a couple weeks ago. Notice how everything is MUCH greener now??!! We certainly hve a fair amount of yard work to do. For those who know about our old house and the size of the backyard, I would say this one is 3 to 4 times deeper than our old house, and about twice as wide. It is great for the kids and playing around, but it takes at least an hourjust to mow the front and back. If I mix in weed eating, edging, a little hedge trimming (I did all this last Sunday) it takes about 2-3 hours. I try to mix in weed pulling too, but there is A LOT. I really need to bear down and take a half day or so to pull weeds before they overtake some of the plants. It is a gorgeous backyard, but it comes with work. Good for us though. Get outside and stay active.

Not all of this green is ours. Beyond the tall bushes and evergrees is marsh (county) property. There is a wire type fence that is not visible in these photos that runs the property line. Out here there is no green waste garbage can like there was back in California. Here, yard waste/clippings, go into large brown paper bags. My first pass at mowing the grass, it took almost three full bags. Mind you these are 30 gallon bags. Not small to say the least. Now that there is less rain, I am able to cram it into one bag. We have had good rain this week, so I think this weekend will be a two bag job for the grass. I really do need to pull a lot of weeds, so I will have probably two more bags for that. What you don't see in the more recent pictures is the landscaping around the deck and to the left and right of the deck. There is plent more. Again, looks great, but will alwyas need maintenance.

Slow Transition to Ilinoian

As each day passes, we get closer and closer to being Illinoians. We have bought a house, we have enrolled the kids in a daycare here. We have enrolled Elijah in school for the coming year. We now know about six different ways to get to work, and several ways to get around the town we live in. We have had an opportunity to get to know our neighbors. We even had one of them and their kids over for dinner a couple of weekends ago.

Well, this evening, I put on Illinois license plates on the cars. I think this was one of those moments on the checklist where things sink in further. A milestone, if you will. I remember thinking during our first week here, it still did not feel like we had moved. I know that we had the house, the movers had delivered our stuff, but when I went to work on the Thursday and riday of the first week, it still had the feeling of being in town for one of my every-other-week trips out here.

I was telling co-workers that it still felt like I was getting on a plane Friday afternoon to fly back to California. I also told them that when I drive home on Friday, instead of fly home, and then go through a weekend in the new house, it will finally feel like we live somewhere else. Of course, this was the weekend we first experienced the crazy weather! A nice "how do ya' do" for our first full weekend. That following Monday I was getting on a train to work in our downtown Chicago office. That was certainly different. As the first week passed, I set up the phone, electricity, gas, TV, etc, and these were all put into our new address.

So another item on the relocation checklist done, new license plates. Now, a new drivers license. We tried to get that done today but got to the facility too late. Oh well, they are open on Saturday morning. Maybe it was God's way of telling us we needed to study a bit more. We'll see. I guess, after this, we will be down to checking people off the relocation list. That is, visiting family and friends will be another stepping stone in the many chapters of life. Amy had her cousin and her husband visit a couple weeks ago. Tomorrow, Aunt 'Net and Uncle Rick stop by for breakfast on their way home to Montana. We are looking forward to seeing them. Then, a friend of Amy's will be in town the end of July. Then, my big sis drops by for a few days in August. It should be a blast. And for her sake, the nasty weather should be long gone by then. It will be just a tad humid then ;-)