The latest on the old New Addition!

When we last left off with a New Addition post in April 2011 , Miles and I were dealing with rotten flooring.  The original contractor never bothered to ventilate the effing attic of the garage, giving us a soggy moldy mess of a floor for the addition.  We had to rip it all up, peel out the nasty insulation, and put in new BCIs.

And on and on it goes.  We've had long lulls in progress over the last year, mostly due to the unavailability of funds, but things have been progressing much more rapidly over the last few months!  Not without the usual contractual faux pas, of course.  The latest being that our finishers like to disappear for days or weeks on end without any communication AND when they sanded the drywall last week, they didn't bother to put up a visqueen barrier between the addition and the existing house.  I came home on Wednesday to a house covered in white drywall powder.  Everything, EVER-Y-THING in our main house is under a blanket of white.  Behold:

The electronics...........are supposed to be BLACK.

I am ready to DISEMBOWEL these two guys!!!  We WILL be hiring a profession post-construction crew to clean this shit up ASAP.....paid for by the finishers.  Coming home yesterday with a new TV, receiver and 2 soundbars helped take the edge off this latest disaster, though!

That aside, we are SO close to being able to move our dinning room stuff into the new living room!  All they have to do now is paint.  I'll be painting the arctic entry myself -cuz I've got mad ideas for color-but the rest is up to them.  Once we have the wood flooring in the new and old parts of the house, we'll make the new addition our living room, the current living room will become the new dinning room, and our downstairs room will be the TV room.  THAT will be one chaotic circus of moving shit!  But I think it will also be fun FINALLY getting this house in order and making it NEW again.


The last few months....

Setting up the interior walls



Willa's construction

Wiring up

 

MY work!   Overcame my fears of electrocution and hooked up some outlets

 

Insulation going in.  I will have NO part of this!

Sheet rock!!!  Starting to see glimpses of a finished room!

And, as of yesterday, nearing completion!

Those 2 clowns just rolled into the driveway, so we'll see what today brings!

"Mr. Pruner's" Pumpkin Bread!

 

 

Last Tuesday was a lovely day spent with Willa's 3rd grade class making pumpkin bread.  Willa was thrilled to have Daddy the Former Baker Extraordinaire there to head up the lesson!  The kids paired up their desks and worked in teams of twos with one big bowl for each pair.  They got to mush up freshly baked pumpkin with their hands, cream butter and sugar, and hand mix the rest of the ingredients.  The kids were busy and boisterous but focused and having fun.  Miles did a great job guiding their culinary experience and the kids really took to him!  The warm and welcoming 3rd grade room slowly filled with amazing aromas throughout the morning.  The earthy pumpkin giving way to sweetness and butter...then the spices hit, one by one, all warming together into one final heavenly smell as they baked in the oven and the kids danced and sang with their Russian teacher.  I hope everyone enjoyed eating their loaves this Thanksgiving as much as we did!

 

 

"Mix. Bake at 350 until a toothpic comes out clean"

 

 

 



Happy Thanksgiving!

Family, friends, football and food.....and 3 naps, and outrageously amazing bread pudding, and hiking and puppies.....another great Thanksgiving at the "Ts" house.  It was SUCKY that Dylan had to work on this day and couldn't really be with us...and that's all I have to say about THAT.  And the measly 3 inches of snow up in Bear Valley was a bummer because that meant NO pre-gobble ski for us.  Last year we were pounding it out on a couple feet of snow pack, EARNING that huge dinner!  We aint got NOTHIN snow-wise, yet.  But we did all go for a nice brisk hike on the trails.  It was no more then 10 degrees but quite sunny and it felt great to get outside and move.
After, I blearily endured THREE football games chock full of crybaby shoving, turnover by ASS and nuttiness ...napping in and out, chatting and knitting a mobius scarf when I wasn't feeding.  Snacks and turkey dinner were stellar, as usual, at the Ts.  Miles and I supplied the dessert-our usual apple-cranberry  and pumpkin pies....but Miles also made a KILLER bread pudding with Bourbon sauce.  God-DAY-UM, it was FABULOUS!!!!!!  We rolled out of there around 11pm.

Despite the lovely day, my mind has been encumbered with worry about the mysterious medical issue that Dylan has been having(I'm sure she will be fine...it's just "the not knowing what is going on"), as well as the fact that the inside of our house-EVERYTHING- is now covered in a fine layer of white drywall powder due to our sheet rocker's incompetence and I don't want to even be there.....I had to remind myself to be grateful for WHAT WE HAVE-and what we have is incredible-and to know that all will turn out just fine. 

There are always mountains to climb in life...savor every step....RUN them, in fact....because flat would be DULL AS SHIT.

While on our hike we came across some people carrying foster puppies in makeshift baby carriers!  6 week old Alaskan Huskys.  SO friggin cute!!!! 

 

You KNOW you want one, Hunny!!!!

SHE does!
 

 

 

 

The sun sets on Sleeping Lady

 

 

Lantern Walk

Another lovely annual Lantern Walk at Willa's school.  This year, the event was not repeatedly impeded by foul weather.  Temps where in the high 20's, very comfortable with the various bon fires blazing and cups of hot cider.  It was a joyful occasion to finally have a permanent home for this yearly walk! After vacating our old downtown home at the end of school last year, everyone and thing "Winterberry"  is now settled on our campus in the university area.  Our brand new school nestled into the wooded trail system.
All the grade's lanterns where beautiful as usual, but the third grade's where truly exceptional!  Hand felted from raw wool, adorned with designs and each child's initials....they emitted the warmest glow....the light of the waning winter sun, captured.

Vancouver, Day 5- What a GAS!

Our last full day in Vancouver.  We took advantage of the fact that it was only misting out, not a down pour, and headed over to Gastown, the historic area of the city.  Shops, art galleries, food....the usual, just set in an older section of town by the waterfront.  Pretty cobblestone streets shimmering and reflective in the  wetness .  There were some amazing looking leaves-maple, oak, etc. that we don't have in Alaska.  Their colors of reds, yellows, umbers, maroons, oranges, intertwined in a way I have never seen before.  Freshly fallen leaves lying atop the older ones that were already splitting apart and melding into the sidewalks from being trod upon.  It was so beautiful and decoupage-like!  I collected some  to press in a magazine for Willa.  At some point we'll varnish them to try to recapture that glistening wet beauty of color play!

 

The famous Steam Clock...to please your inner geek.

 

 

That evening NYL held it's final dinner.  A combination of bad food-I KNEW we should have just gotten some Ben and Jerry's....- and kinda schmaltzy entertainment.  It was an off-Vegas-esque Cirque de Somesuchshit.  Lot's of neat folks walking around and performing fun stuff during dinner, but the actual show?  Meh.  There were some muscle bound dudes climbing all over each other which was sorta cool, but the "aerial" stuff was asi asi.  I had on an AWESOME pair of shoes, though!

 

 

 

Human marionette.  Neato!

Our friends

 

Wedgieeeeeee!

 

 

The hot tub called to us once again. Back at the Hyatt, we donned our swimsuits and hotel issued bathrobes, grabbed a lovely bottle of wine that we had purchased, a couple glasse,s and headed out to the tub. After soaking and chatting with another NYLer, a man appears dressed in a dark suit, and, I SWEAR, one of those thingies in his ear like the secret service! Very Matrix. So agent Smith says to stop drinking alcoholic beverages in that hot tub!!! ......or, uh, cough cough, just keep it outta sight. Off he goes and I say to Miles,"Let get our robes and slippers and walk around town for a goof!" He's always up for teh silly, so I grab my camera, wrap my hair in a towel, and off we go.

 

 

Lay your head back in the rain and this is the view from the roiling hot tub....

 

LOTS of weird stares as we walk through the hotel lobby, outside and down the street! Passing Hermes and Tiffany, snapping photos, smiling innocently at folks, I suggest we head over to the Winking Judge because that's a cool name for a pub. Once inside the first thing we hear is, "MILES PRUNERRRR!!!!!". A NYL bigwig type, lousy with booze, screams about our awesomeness walking about in bathroom gear and buys us a round! Thus begins our evening of "Dana and Miles-ROCK STARS". After the Judge, we made our way toward Granville Street and to our surprise, the street has been shut down for a few blocks! We are no longer the few wacky ones in costume. We are HOME. Freaks galore!  And then people start FLOCKING to us for pictures! Now, there were some pretty creative costumes out there, but everyone thought WE were the shit! NUTS!  And we were a HIT with the Asians!!!! We felt like the Beatles being chased down the sidewalk! Actually, we weren't moving very fast because everyone wanted photos of us! We walked up and down that street laughing our asses off.   Who knew?! Our "costumes" were free, drinks free, and now we are out there plastered, I'm sure, ALL OVER FACEBOOKS WORLDWIDE.

Here is just a visual taste of our silly crazy-ass Halloween: Wait! Disclaimer! Yes, we were sans kids for this Halloween. And that SUCKED. Some douchenozzle at NYL thought it would be ok to schedule Council during fekking Halloween. Between various friends and Dylan( who was a stellar big sis), Willa was well taken care of . She had a great time with her buddy carving pumpkins and  trick-or-treating. She was a tornado.

  I KNOW.

I fretted over how the hell I was going to make a fucking TORNADO outfit for the whole month prior. Anyway, afterward she got to have a sleepover with Dylan at Dylan's friend's house and all was well. Even though we didn't get to trick or treat with our little girl, :( , Mommy and Daddy had an uproariously FUN NIGHT!!!!! And Mommys and Daddys need those once and awhile, yes?!!

Tee hee heeee!

 

 



 

Awwwwwww!

NO idea what he's doing here.

It's just a JUMP to the left!

 

FRIDA!!!  I LOVE your work!!!!

"We love these 2 crazy American spa people!"

Just a quiet interlude...

 

Awwwww, again!!!

Me and "V fer Vendella" (a Willa-ism)  Occupy!

 

creepy

Get the hell out of the way, Miles!  That's Robert Downy Jr.!!!!!

We STILL have perma grin pain from that night!  It beat the hell out of sitting in our hotel room watching "Strange Addictions".
Sometimes you just need to step out of your comfort zone.