Blogs that never happened

These pictures and videos were intended to be blogs... but motiviation, time, and priorities got in the way.   We should be getting ready to move, but haven't quite found the time to do that either.  One of these days life will slow down and I'll get back to regular blogging.  Until then, hope you enjoy the blogs that never happened.

House Hunting - West Point

While Kurt and I hate actually moving (having our stuff packed, unpacking, the logistics of moving, buying new condiments, etc) we actually like moving to new places and finding new homes.  House hunting (rental hunting) in West Point was more difficult than we both expected though.  There weren't many listings on our two typical websites, so we went up with only about 4 homes in mind that we wanted to see.  Before we got up there two of those homes had been rented, so we had to expand beyond our ideal parameters.  We ended up seeing about 8 homes on our first day up there, and it was exhausting.  All of them were workable, but none of them ideal.  We had pretty much decided that the best fit was this old colonial house out away from everything a bit on 7 acres of land owned by this art center trust.  It was a bit expensive, but it was bigger than most and had a big yard with creek running through it and a really nice three car garage.  We were holding off on sending in the application because there was one last home that we were seeing the next day at 1000.  The last home was listed as a 4 acre horse farm, ready for 2 horses, with a completely fenced in property good for dogs too.  We initially ignored this ad as it was an old home and it didn't show many pictures of the inside, but changed our mind because it was significantly cheaper than the other homes and didn't have an outrageous realtor fee like the others.  We were pleasantly surprised by how cool the property was - vegetable gardens, a grape arbor, raspberry bushes, a small pond, two horse pastures, and just cool places that the kids will love exporing and playing.  The completely fenced in property is really nice too as I'll have a bit more piece of mind with Jon and the dogs running around.  It hasn't been lived in for a while and needs some TLC, but the landlord was all about letting us do whatever outside.  Kurt will be busy during the summer months.  While the house is over 200 years old, it is in surprisingly great condition.  It didn't feel nearly as drafty as the colonial we were looking at and the landlords are going to pay half the heating (can't beat that!).  They'll also do the mowing and they are leaving a snowblower, but their nephew will come by and plow when needed.  Score. The house has a lot of character, something that was important to Kurt, and has plenty of room for all our furniture.  And you might think that a 4 acre horse farm would be out in the country a bit... nope.  It's right smack dab in the middle of a neighborhood.  We're thinking the farm is the oldest thing there and the neighborhood grew in around it.  We were told the neighbors are very nice.

Front of House - old picture

New Picture

Back of House

Side of house

Barn and Stables (we won't be using, told the landlords they could use it for their storage)

Driveway from the house

Walking out the backdoor towards the driveway

Back Patio - kitchen door straight ahead, door to main hallway of house on the right

Kitchen

Dining room

This used to be the kitchen, that's a cooking fireplace.  Room will probably have a pull-out couch for when we have guests.

Front Living room

Back living room (looking into front living room) - will probably be our office

Part of the yard in need of some TLC

Walkway up to the front of the house is to the left

This isn't our house.  This is the military academy.  It was cool to drive through.

Parade Field

Took this picture for Gabe

As we were driving out of town (10 minutes out) we stopped for gas.  I looked across the street and this is what I saw.  I had no idea it was so close!   New Windsor is indeed in Orange County, NY.

Shamrock Marathon

Sorry for the slow blogging, life has been busy!  To catch you up...

Last weekend was the Shamrock Marathon in Virginia Beach.  We've participated in this race for the last three years (not counting the year I was deployed), but we always ran the half-marathon.  This year in preparation for Kurt's Ironman he stepped it up and ran the full marathon along friends Todd and Dave.  Because I'm doing a race in April (VA Duathlon), I was content to sit this one out and hang-out with the kids.

Our trip started mid-day on Friday.  I worked super-late on Thursday so that I could leave early on Friday.  It was a smart move as we made it down to Williamsburg prior to rush hour traffic which is horrible around DC on Fridays.  We picked up the Estes family in Williamsburg and then kept on going down to VA beach.  There was a little bit of traffic getting to the beach, but I didn't mind as we had separated into a boy's car and girl's car at that point :)  We checked into our hotel, which the kids were excited to find out had an indoor pool, grabbed some dinner, and took the kids to the race expo to pick up the guy's packets.  The expo was fun because it had balloons and leprechauns and really tall, fast-looking guys walking around.

On Saturday I had made plans to meet up with my friend Kathryn and her family to visit the VA Beach Aquarium.  I had been here once before, but it was with Micaela when she was little and neither or us really remembered it well.  It was a fun time, Kathryn has a little girl about Jon's age so the two of them ran around and got some of their energy out.  Some of the highlights were the otter-tank, the aquarium tunnel, petting the stingrays (Micaela eventually touched one, Jon almost fell in he was so anxious), and seeing the Kimono Dragon up close.

 There are otters in there somewhere and they are quite playful!

Not a posed picture, it was just that cool! 

 Micaela asked me to get a picture of her petting the stingrays, but my arms got tired waiting so I just took a picture of Jon and Kurt instead.  She eventually touched one though.



This was one of my favorite parts. I hadn't seen these big guys before (or at least didn't remember if I had).  I was too big to get in the bubble but Micaela and Jon went in for a closer look.

Next came one of my favorite parts of the trip - lunch.  Adam works down in VA Beach at the Naval Station so he knew about this awesome hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant, Gringos Tacos.  It was amazing.  Reminded me of California.   We will definitely be going back next time we are in VA Beach.





That afternoon we met back up with the Estes family, spent a little time at an arcade playing ski-ball and shooting hoops (arcade style).  For dinner we went to our favorite pizza restaurant - Pi-zzeria.  The food is always good there and I love that they give the kids balls of pizza dough to play with while we wait.  We had a couple other friends from Williamsburg, Pedrick and the Hylands, come down and join us for dinner as well, so it was a good time.

Then came the big day... and this is what it looked like 1 hour prior to the race start.

Kurt had actually gotten up early and had all his stuff ready to go.  Our hotel was one-block from the start line, so since he had some extra time, why not lay down for a little nap?  I would have been a ball of nerves, but not Kurt.  Micaela and Jon on the other hand had no desire to get up and watch them start the race, so we planned to see them at the 12-mile point and hour and a half later.   Todd was the first to come by at an 1 hour and 45 minutes.  He was pretty easy to spot; he saw us too and came over to give Will a high-five.   Kurt on the other hand was a little difficult.  We had crossed the street and were looking into the sun, so instead of getting a picture of Kurt, I got a picture of this guy:

Good job random guy!

I went out to give Kurt a high-five and he ended up grabbing my arm and trying to get me to run with him, but I wasn't having any of that.  We waved goodbye and headed over to the beach to play in the sand until they finished.

After about an hour and a half at the beach we headed over to the finish line.  We went early because Todd had been running so well for the first 12 miles, but I didn't expect Kurt for another 30 minutes.  I pulled out the folding chair and Micaela sat down with Jon on her lap and it wasn't 10 minutes before he was fast asleep.  It was pretty cold, especially with wet jeans from playing in the ocean, but Micaela was a trooper holding Jon and not complaining.  Kurt's goal was to finish in 4 hours and right on cue, at 3 hours 58 minutes Kurt crossed the finish.  He didn't even look that tired or in pain (as I was after running the LA marathon all those years ago).  He kept a steady pace and was very happy with his run.  He never hit any walls and his equipment (shoes, watch, clothing) held up just fine.  He even had enough energy to drive from VA Beach back up to Williamsburg

This weekend we are just chilling out at home as next weekend we will be heading back to Williamsburg so I can do the VA Duathlon.  I'll tell you how it goes in my next blog, if I'm still alive afterwards!!

Why I Love Summer

Wait, what do you mean it's not summer?

 

I know 70 degrees is a California winter temperature, but out here it is a welcome change! 

I was sweating at work today because the government is silly and won't change our building from 'heat' to 'air conditioning' until 15 April no matter what mother-nature is doing.   Then I got home and changed into a pair of shorts for the first time since early last fall.  It was lovely.

 Here's what Jon and Micaela were doing:

The tractor is on loan from our neighbors who haven't used it in a while (score!). 

And here's what Kurt was doing:

Um... well... that's supposed to be a picture of Kurt cooking.  But it looks more like a picture of Kurt eating cheese balls.  Oh well.

Not too much else going on here.  Kurt will be running his first marathon not this weekend, but next weekend, and then I'll be doing my first Duathlon a few weeks later (both in VA).   In the mean time Kurt will be training and I will be working and making powerpoint slides, sending emails, preparing brieifings and doing all the other fun things Army Staff Officers do.

Oh, one final thing.  Kurt wanted to let Gabe know that his hand is okay, just in case you were wondering :)

Fun with Video Games

10 Random Things

1. First of all - Happy Superbowl Sunday!  We kind of forgot about the Superbowl this year (since the Steelers didn't make it) so our spread is a little underwhelming.  We're going to crash our neighbors house this evening, haven't told them that yet, so hopefully they have a bit more.  Right about now I'm missing Kris' Bree cheese bread.

2.  It's been a rough couple of months in our household.  Kurt went through all the stages -  denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance and go ahead and through in shame, outrage at PSU, outrage at the media, and finally - glad this is all over with.  He's still a Penn State Fan and thinks highly of JoePa and all the good things he's done.  Thanks Joe!

3.  Miniature trains.  We didn't really grow up with miniature trains.  I remember the one that Uncle Bill had when we were little visiting our cousins in McKeesport, but that's about it.  Kurt on the other hand has 3 generations of trains that have been handed down to him.  They've been in boxes for the past 5 years and he finally decided to get them and see if he could get them running.  His parents were a big help in this, buying him new track and a transformer for Christmas and then picking up stuff for the town at flee markets.  I had no idea they were so intricate.  The lights on the train crossing light up and the red and white arm goes down every time the train passes.  The train cars and some of the houses also light up.  And there is smoke and a whistle that come out of the train too.  We're not going crazy yet, but Kurt had fun setting it up and Jon had fun playing with it.

4.  After a year and a half, Kurt ended his job at Bethesda Softworks.  His job wasn't in the department he wanted, but he wanted to get his foot in the door and see how the Company worked and get something on his resume.  It turned out to be a good move.  BSW is an awesome company and it is doing really well.  The only complaint I had was that they didn't pay overtime (something they changed earlier this year).  Kurt was very proud to have worked on two of the most popular games published in the last two years - both Game of the Year winners.  To celebrate this, we made little shrines in our basement :)

5.  The Lake Placid Ironmen is sneaking up on us so we've cleaned up the other part of our basement and turned it into a workout area.  I've actually started using Kurt's bike trainer and it's really fun.  Yesterday I did a Tour or Rome that took 30 minutes and only had a few hills.   The GymPac is something that was sitting in Kurt's parents basement.  It's from the early 80s, but it still works really well.

6.  Not helping the Ironman training, but loved by everyone else in the family is the automatic M&M dispenser that Kurt got for Christmas from one of his co-workers (thanks for the M&M's mom!).  It's set to automatically dispense a small handful every time you put your hand under the dispenser.

7.  I haven't seen Micaela in a while.  That's because she finally got to a high enough level on World of Warcraft where she was able to get a mount (something you can ride) and has been glued to the computer for the past day.  She picked a winged horse for her mount.  "Oh, a Pegasus" (me) "No mom, it's a celestial steed; Pegasus sounds too girly" (micaela).  Ha! We've turned her into a dork :)

8.  After living in this house for 25 months, we finally got curtains put up in the formal living room.  While we were at it, we did a little re-arranging around the house.  Never mind that we will be moving in 4 months.  We moved Jon back to his original room with the sports theme in it, but we gave him different furniture including the double bed that was in the basement.  Micaela also got an upgrade.  She stayed in the same room, but got the furniture that was in our guest room.   Miceala did her own decorating and Kurt did up Jon's room in Star Wars stuff.

9.  And what prompted this room change and rearranging of furniture??  Did we just feel like replacing our guest room with a sitting room?

Nope.  Kurt needed somewhere to play his old video game consoles and they can only be played on the old CRT TVs like we had in that room.  He got the Atari for Christmas and the rest were mostly given to him by people who had them in their attic and weren't using them anymore.  It is so much better playing Mario on the original Nintendo with the original controller.  I've also taught Jon how to play Sonic the Hedgehog.  He's better at it than Kurt.

10.   If you haven't done so already - please donate a few bucks to Livestrong!  Kurt is running his first Marathon in March and has signed up with Livestrong to be on their team and raise money for them.  He only has a little bit left to reach his goal.  Just clink below and then click the "donate to Kurtis" button above the thermometer!  http://laf.livestrong.org/site/TR?px=1006461&pg=personal&fr_id=1140&et=3CRhjkMB9M8rH4BAhl3Vtg&s_tafId=1321