Happy birthday Michael

Sheila is closing an a house next week (NEXT WEEK?!?! - yup.) and she is going to be taking her TV with her. As of this morning the people who will still be residing in our house did not own a TV.

No TV?! how would football be watched? and Sesame Street?

Michael was sad. Tovina would be sad if she understood what is about to happen. Cara pretended to not be sad but deep down inside was a little bit. Mostly this meant that Michael was the saddest of us all.

Luckily for him he just had a birthday and made a very special birthday request.

Yup, we now own a TV of our very own. Admittedly there was talk of perhaps needing something a foot or maybe 2 feet bigger, but given all the other things we need to be doing, this will suffice for now and later (maybe for one of his 10x birthdays... which does sort of put this potential event sooner than I was expecting) this could be moved to a different room and another TV purchased.
So, after that build up, just how small is this TV?

40" inches.
As a point of reference, I think my last TV was 24" and cost me maybe $150. It also came with an attached VHS player. My TV before that was black and white and maybe as big as 18". Maybe.
Sheila's old TV can be seen lurking in the background.

Tree Down

Our next door neighbors had a VERY large dead tree removed from their yard today. 130 feet tall at least.
When Michael and Tovina heard the continuous heavy machinery being used somewhere in our vicinity they went to explore and saw what was going on.
It just so happens that we also have a fair amount of large dead trees and one of them happens to be hanging over the very same road as the one these fellows were already removing.

T's description of the what logically followed all these observations was this:
"Go up down up down. Cut tree. Fall down! Boom boom!"
She summed up the process rather well actually. The up down (and repeat) was the fellow in the bucket truck in case you were wondering.

We watched the entire proceedings of our tree's removal. It took about 30+ minutes and she never got bored - was really very impressed actually. She also liked how the trucks made beeping noises as they backed up. She makes a very similar noise (its great what you can teach your children) but had never before experienced that 'beep beep' in its natural environment.

All fired up

In honor of the warmed weather and lack of snow/rain, we lit the fire pit tonight and toasted us some smores. Emma and Brendan helped keep the fire going by collected sticks from around the yard and porch to feed the flames. Tovina thought that looked pretty cool and found a stick (okay, really it was a very, very tiny twig, but its all a matter of perspective, right?) which she could also throw into the fire. Tovina was very impressed with herself due to that particular feat.

T had to go sleep before we actually starting cooking things in the fire which was probably for the best since she would have wanted to cook her own marshmallows. But I'm looking forward to enjoying the sheer happiness on her face when she tries her first smore.

Which reminds me, I need to tell you about her chocolate experience on Shabbat - talk about sheer happiness!... guess I'll just add that to the 'to do' list.

Frolicking deer

There was some impressive snow fall the last few days followed by some even more impressive ice which was then followed by more snow. This made the trees around the house look just gorgeous, even if they are weighed down so much that many are actually bent till they are touching the ground.
This also makes the deer particularly easy to spot. This is nice since they have been frolicking in the snow. I thought I had seen deer frolicking before but I was wrong.
Deer can't really properly frolic unless snow is involved.

(Bonus question: Why is frolic with just a 'c' and frolicking with a 'ck'?)

Deer

One of the fun things about winter and all the leaves falling off the trees is that it is much easier to see the deer. While we usually just see them in their family groups of 4 or 5, sometimes we get a lone buck walking through, as you can see here. Other times we seem to get all the deer in the area to come through at once as a group of around 14. Its hard to get an exact count as games of tag which require loops through the yard and around the house make the deer very hard to accurately count.
Here is a video of one of the deer showing what she thinks of our neighbor's fence.

Moving and panics

Tomorrow the rest of our belongings are scheduled to arrive in our home. 'What belongings?' we hear you ask. Why, our furniture, most of Michael's clothes (including most of his winter things - he has been very chilly), pots, pans, other kitchen stuff, and all the other things that one acquires as one moves along.
We are very excited and a little panicky.
With any luck, a joyous posting will be made Wednesday in which we describe how well everything went.

Wild Animals

And no, the headline does not refer to Tovina.

This morning, while sitting at my computer which is conveniently located right in front of some large windows that look out over part of our lawn and the woods, I saw
1 opossum
5 deer (momma and 4 babies)
3 cardinals (2 females and 1 male)

If I had been facing another direction, I might also have come across
2 raccoons
another 7 or deer
1 blue jay
1 white and black kitty
1 woodchuck
many many little moles

New Toys

Today Michael picked up our chainsaw. 

That tree doesn't stand a chance!*

*That is, it doesn't stand a chance once our protective gear arrives and we also buy a shovel and pick to make enough room to do the undercut in the trunk so the saw blade doesn't get stuck when we try to cut through that monster and we practice on some slightly smaller trees to make sure we have at least some real practice before tackling that monster. 

But right after - Then that big tree is coming right down!

Ike's visit

When Hurricane Ike came through North America almost a month ago, he decided to stop by our house for a bit of a visit. Here is the root system of one of our trees in which Ike took a special interest.

This is where we use to have trees. Its hard to really appreciate the number of poor little snapped trees that the big bully tree knocked down.

This is why we are thankful that it fell away from the house. Yup, that's pretty close.

To make the story more interesting, all of this happened while Tovina, Michael, and myself were out of town and Sheila was here all by herself. Did I mention that the house lost power during the storm and a tree fell over the lane to our house? Fun times!

Taking care of the pond

One of the not so surprising things regarding home ownership is that there are a lot of things that need taking care of. Most of them we have absolutely no experience with. (That's what more than a decade of apartment living can get ya.) This particular house came with a pond that we have probably mentioned before.

It turns out that we were suppose to hang a net the previous owner left us over the pond before the leaves started falling. Why? Because if there are dead leaves in the pond they decompose and that hurts the water balance and can ruin the whole thing.

So what do you do if you did not put up the net in time and there are dead leaves at the bottom of the pond decomposing? You go in and get them of course.

Luckily (sort of) Jan (the previous owner) left us this cool set of waders to help us. (And by us I mean me - Michael gets to take care of everything else, I get the stuff on the porch.)

Pretty cool huh?

Just a few more miles

Having now seen our new home, Tovina and I decided it was time to leave the country again and head to Canada.
weeeeeee

T plus 97 minutes and counting

We may own a house but we are not quite sure yet because our power-of-attorney is not answering her cell phone.

We will cut her some slack though since we are guessing she is not answering because she is busy signing many many many pieces of paper with our names and then POA and then her name - Weee! 3 times the fun of just signing 1 name!

Unfortunately we are really tired so I guess we won't know if we actually are the proud owners of a house until tomorrow. We'll let you know then!

24 hours away...

.. till the deal is done. I just got off the bank and they even agreed that we do in fact have an account with them and they are able to send our money where we want it to go.

We need a fax authorizing the transaction.
It has been sent to you.
When did you send it?
Oh, about 2am your time.
Ah... let me check.

Now I understand that they don't know yet since they did just open, but this goes back to yesterday's observation - couldn't they open at 4am and make this easier?

Closing...

in 2 days on the house.
Definitely a new experience.
I think it might be more fun with more sleep. Why can't people in EST be awake at 4am when it is easier for me to talk to them?