It's A Girl!

We're having a girl! Hurray! We're so excited. Just what we wanted. She was very uncooperative during the amnio. She was bouncing and dancing around, not showing her spine to the technician. But eventually we got to see all her insides, fingers and toes. They said she looks perfect so far. And the test results came back ok! She's got all her chromosomes and they are all pointing in the right direction. Whew! The test wasn't too tough. Not like I've never been stuck with a needle before. The cramping afterward was unexpected and a little scary but it went away after a couple hours. So now we're into the 17th week and things are going great! We think we're going to paint her room lavender (with purple and mulberry trim). Going with dark wood for all the furniture if possible.

Halloween! - 3 months late...

Ok this is a little late but I've been busy and tired. Pregnancy does that to you. Here's a few pics from our first halloween in our house!

We had about 95 kids come by. It was good fun! Although we realized pretty quickly that we need to sit about halfway down the steps to give out candy so the really little kids don't trip on their way up and crack their skulls open. That would be bad.

Jonathan and I both love carving pumpkins. We wanted to do one for each step but that was a bit ambitious so we stuck to 4. I made a big batch of beef stew and we kept the horror movies going all night.

Our neighbors were very impressed with our decorating. Gwydion was kind enough to come over and supply us with some mini spots for the evening. We'd like to add fog next year. Of course it was nowhere near as cool as Chez Neumansky. We have some catching up to do.

Doorway for Baby!

So now that we have a baby on the way we need a little more access around the house. When we moved in the only way to get from one side of the house to the other was to walk to the entryway and cross over. We really need better access from the nursery to the kitchen. So Mom and Doug came down and stayed with us this last week and while they were here Doug helped us install a new doorway! 

Here's an adorable pic of Lucky explaining to my parents what she'd like us to do with the back yard. We tried to tell her that project was being put on hold for a while but she was being very insistent about the koi pond. 

BEFORE SHOT - So here is the back wall of our kitchen. The door you see goes to the small hallway that holds the office and 2nd bathroom. We decided to put the new doorway right in this corner so that we'd have easy access to the baby's room from the kitchen and by looking at the layout of the place it doesn't seem like this position would interfere with any electrical or heating stuff. and putting it in the corner wouldn't break up the wall in the kitchen or the baby's room. 

Here's Pandora helping mom and I lay out plastic. This was going to be one of those messy jobs so we cleaned out the kitchen as much as possible. 

The initial deconstruction went a little slow. Doug wanted to be careful we didn't cut through anything important or disturb any load bearing walls. We got lucky on this one. We didn't run into anything at all really. It just took a long time to get through the lathe and plaster which was underneath two layers of sheetrock. The first layer must have been the original from when the house was built. I'm guessing the second layer was from more recently. It was thicker. 

Eventually, the men started working from the other side of the wall. You can see Jonathan's "zombie shot" through the boards. 

Of course when the men got hungry Mom and I made sure they ate well. 

Here's the doorway with most of the framing in. Doug spent a lot of time online figuring all this out. There's a lot more to making a doorway that I thought! Having a house that is 115 years old means the walls are weird dimensions which doesn't make things standard or easy. You can see Jonathan is working on the threshold where there's linoleum and wood to dig out. Our neighbor said he might have a spare piece of oak that he could fit in there for us. 

AFTER SHOT - And here is the almost finished doorway, before and after sheetrock! Jonathan has been plastering the seams for a couple days now. Eventually we'll paint. (that's another blog entry)

And now we have a doorway! It took a week but it got done! Thanks again to the parents! It was great that you could help us out! 

New Addition to the House!

So in about 7.5 months we'll be getting a small new addition to the house! That right there in the picture is our future demon spawn! We're super excited! The Dr. says it's the right size and I even got to see the blood flow already! This week it's about the size of a raspberry. More updates to come!

Black Sabbath Pancakes 2009!

Instead of going to Burning Man this year, a lot of us old folks decided to stay home where it's clean. Actually, Jonathan and I are just broke from buying a house and don't have any vacation time left... and we wanted to be clean. But of course, old traditions die hard. We decided to bring the desert to  Alameda for one day! We set up the stereo, busted out the pancake mix, and had ourselves some Black Sabbath Pancakes, just like it used to be at Burning Man! Well almost...

Our food choices were a little healthier than the usual sprinkles and gummy worms. Of course there were mimosas and coffee vodka! 

Poop! GUNS! And FIRE!

Christine even made it all the way back from the desert in time to play with us for a while!

Once it got dark we headed over to Chez Neumansky and enjoyed the super pretty fire lounge!

All the pictures from that day can be viewed here:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=jdl5k87.1xpf23iv&x=0&y=-u6m8p6&localeid=en_US

Visit to Seattle

During the second week of August it just so happened that both our jobs decided to close up shop. We had a whole week off together and were barely getting paid for it. So we went to the best B&B in Washington Sate.... my parent's house! 

Normally, August has the best weather in Washington But when we flew in we realized we'd certainly missed the heat wave they had a couple weeks before. It was cloudy and kind of chilly! Booooo! But we crossed our fingers for Sunday and got pretty lucky.

Lanny & Juliet joined us for the one sunny day we got while we were there. Lanny brought his big huge tackle box and a couple fishing poles. Jonathan even caught a little bass! We went out in the boat for a while and then came back and ate fish! After Doug cleaned it and cooked it of course. Tasted like fish! There was BBQ chicken too. 

The rest of the trip was pretty lax. Clouds and occasional rain. We just took it easy and came home on Wednesday. Got to spend the rest of the week in the Alameda sun! 

Happy kitties and special guests!

Ok, so it's been a while since I posted anything. Just been busy I guess. Here's a few new ones to catch up with. Nothing big going on with the house. We've just been taking it kind of easy since the foundation got finished. The cats are back to acting normal. In fact, after several medicated baths & a few weeks of hissing and swatting, little Pandora has pretty successfully integrated into the household! Lucky is not super thrilled with her but at least she has been standing up to Pandora and showing her who's boss. Mu-Shu loves to play with the kitten and they chase each other around the house and play with toys together. 

Early in October we had a super special guest! Jenna and Isaiah were in town for a few days and made it over to visit! Irene and Natasha came over and we had a wonderful dinner together. Jonathan was a great sport while us girls sat around and cackled for a few hours. Isaiah was so cute. Walking around on his own, playing with the kitties, and munching asparagus.