Lorena works hard at getting us unpacked from our recent move. It is easier to see the floor in some of our rooms and more than half of the stuff has been moved out of the garage. The challenge now is that we sold and gave away a ton of stuff when we left North Carolina. Even though our living space is smaller here (we are not counting the daylight basement apartment) that it was in North Carolina, we are short on furniture to make it livable. It should be done to get the stuff, but in the meantime, our visitors are going to frequently be relegated to folding chairs.
The pictures in this post are our second floor landing/library. We hope to change the floor, add some bookshelves and make the railing be something you can see through, but that will come after we finish the kitchen and do a few other upgrades–hopefully including something to help us manage the parts of the property that are not purposely wild.
Lorena found a lot of our old homeschool plans, books and projects when she unpacked thing for the library. I hope I get the time before to long to go through them. I always get asked about how we did our homeschool, not that we think we did such a great job, and it would be kind of nice to be able to tell them something other than that we got good programs, tested, and worked hard. The planning was actually pretty extensive and we have the lesson plans at hand now to really demonstrate that.
This pictures gives a sense for the state of the kitchen when we got there on Wednesday night. It is much further along and I plan to post a bunch of new pictures this weekend. The ceramic tile back splash is completed (we love it). This is the ceramic guy getting ready to do his thing. We really enjoyed having him here working. He placed the tiles on Wednesday, then came back and spent another four hours on Thursday morning to add the grout and (non-silicon) caulking. I think he spent more time cleaning and shining the back splash when he finished installing it than he did on the installation itself. Lorena was super, super happy with how it came out.
Well, a ton of stuff got done today on the kitchen and Mark took a BUNCH of pictures for us. The problem is that he texted them to us and we do not have access to our text messaging on our phones until we get back to into (or at least within radio range of) America sometime tomorrow evening. Nevertheless, he got the pavers put down to make a pad for the propane tank which will be installed along with the gas lines tomorrow. That we means we will have a mostly working kitchen when we get home.
This post is not such an exciting one unless you are really into drawer and cabinet pulls, but later tonight we should have something on the shattered bottom oven of the double oven set. We will have to wait a week or so until a replacement door gets here. Everything is now installed except the stove hood. The back splash has to be all installed before that can go in. The black splash cannot really go in until the potfiller over the stove goes in, so I think we are a few days away from having everything. After that, they will paint. Hopefully, I will have one or two pictures of where we are later tonight.
Christian keeps very busy in Boston. Mostly it is work at the labs, but in his limited spare time so far, he went out and paid an exorbitant amount of money for a lobster roll. I told him it was a find investment and I would have been ashamed of him had he not done it. He lives within walking distance of a ton of museums, Fenway Park, Boston Pops, and a gazillion restaurants and coffee shops. I have to say though, I think a lobster roll is a great place to start, especially if you can wash it down with some Maine Blueberry Lemonade made with Wildflower Honey!
Since we actually believe (or desire, God willing) we will be in the house for years to come, Lorena has earnestly started to unpack the books and put them into what we hope to be at least part of our small, but memory filled library. We have what we have always felt like was lots and lots of books even though we have thrown out quite a few. This is about 1/3 to 1/2 of our books so I guess we really did not have that many in the end.
We still don’t have any appliances, but Mark is scheduled to bring them here and install them next week along with the propane tank and gas lines needed to run the stove. In the mean time, Lorena is on a regular schedule at Anytime Fitness again and I am working full time from my (somewhat messy) home office with the view of Rainier. This is ALL a very good thing. Mark will be here to do his work next week while we are gone. It is nice to have someone watch the house. The week after that is painting week and we should be all done.
We went to our friends’, Bob’s and Gena’s house after church today for lunch. The highlight of the lunch was the Camellia flower Bob and Gena’s daughter, Bonnie, put in Lorena’s hair. The Rhododendrons and a bunch of other flowers were in bloom at their house and Bob picked a beautiful bouquet for the table. Other friends came over (Jack, Norm and Linda) were there. It was truly an odd and wonderful sensation when I realized I was the most liberal guy in the group and those who know me know that is a pretty unusual situation.
Lorena and I were a little discouraged with the taco scene in the Twin Cities of Centralia and Chehalis even though we have only been here now for a couple of weeks. That has all been remedied now that we have been to 
Christian has been to work for three days and it looks like he is getting his arms around things in the lab. He really likes the area where he lives although he says the culture is a little more direct. Actually, he did not exactly say “direct,” but you get the idea. He hopes to look around a little in Boston this weekend, maybe get in a workout and see the art museum across the street.
I drove up to Vancouver, BC last night to stay at a Hilton close to where the brand new corporate offices of my new company are located. It is a beautiful drive up from Centralia and the border crossing is not too bad. Every time I come up here I think, “I don’t remember it being this beautiful.” It is truly an amazing place with snow-capped mountains, lots of beautiful stretches of water and a huge, cosmopolitan city. I am looking forward to being here now and then and my company says it is fine for me to bring Lorena.
Bob and Gena are true champions. They have been kind to us way above and beyond the call of duty. They arrived in Centralia with all our stuff from North Carolina Friday evening. All of us, including their daughter Bonnie, went to the McMenamin’s Olympic club to celebrate–the weather cooperated wonderful as we were able to sit outside and talk and talk.
Christian flew from Tempe to Boston yesterday to start an internship at MIT’s Lincoln Labs. He 
Bob and Gena are on the last stretch home with our load of stuff from North Carolina. We are very grateful for their efforts on our behalf, but also pretty envious. They had some excitement (see the burning car), saw some beautiful places, got together with family and made friends with some of our (and their) old, dear friends from Raleigh. This picture Gena sent along of their drive yesterday through the mountain west did not do anything to make me any less envious.
Mark came up to meet the granite guy who was here to measure the installed cabinets so he can cut the granite. It is a little bit of an odd shape, but he is pretty sure he can get it out of one piece. Mark installed all the cabinet doors, drawers and all three cutting boards. In addition, we were able to get the clothes washer and dryer pushed into place in the laundry room (see below). We left the cardboard in place so we do not mess up the floor as we move stuff in and out. The rest of the pictures are of what the cabinets look like with new stuff added. The appliances should get here next week and the granite should be complete by the end of the week. I am not sure it will all go that fast, but we can surely hope.
This is Olivia. We call her our niece, but we serve the role of (in common parlance) her God parents. She has always been quite a precocious child. This picture was taken on a ski trip we took with her family. Olivia’ dad, Al, told her to go tell the big guy to help her get something out of the car. The name stuck. To this day, I am “the big guy” to Olivia. We saw the beautiful Olivia last week at a church convention in Arizona. She is in high school now, even more precocious and has turned into quite the fashion plate. We hope to see more of her now that we are on the west coast. She and Lorena are negotiating with Olivia’s parents to arrange for to come up from California for a visit with us and with Kelly.
The internet came up today. Based on my previous experience with DSL, I have to admit I was stunned the whole process was so painless and even inexpensive. We plugged it in, filled in a few lines on the screen, set up the wireless router part of the whole deal and were up and running. Not only that, I checked the upload and download speeds and they were as advertised. I was pretty sad because we do not have access to cable internet on our property. We are not so far from town, but in a little pocket where it almost certainly does not pay to run the cable out here. I should have known that since the many years that have passed since we previously had DSL, they have gotten their act together. I know some of the speed and quality issues have to do with how close one is located to a hub and we are pretty close so that might be why everything works so well. On the other hand, we ARE close. That was a dodged bullet.