Can it be four months already?!

I haven't posted much lately (Maddie's been taking over blogging duties!) but I realized on the first day of spring that we've been here four months, through the end of fall and all of winter. Aside from about six weeks of sub-normal (read ridiculously cold) weather from mid-Dec to late January (when I was wondering how many of these winters I'd get through before I started to dread them) the freeze broke and we had lovely late winter weather that was perfectly tolerable.
And now, there are little flowers and strappy leaves poking up here and there in our yard, delightful surprises from past owners that make me jump up and grab a watering can, anxious about these ignored bulbs.
We've got a couple flats of seedlings in the ground (lovely actual dirt again! Not that hard, rocky decomposed granite of Murrieta -- even though it is on the clay-ey side, I'll take it anyday!) in one of our cold frames, and I've got four raspberry plants waiting impatiently for me to decide where their patch will be. Steve's been digging up ground for a strawberry patch, which I'll have to finish up and get planted as well.
Steve's been biking into town in the mornings, for exercise and coffee, which stokes his desire to get an in-town job and stop commuting to Boulder. It will be interesting to see how things develop for him on that front.
He and I got to go on a lovely sunset bike ride during my folks' visit and it made us greedy for more, so we've made arrangements with a friend whose son our kids *love* to play with to trade kids-watching for massage for her! So, more dates on the horizon!
All in all, I think we've made the adjustment here very well. Maddie and Steve are completely gung-ho to be here, and I'm largely happy and enjoying the new places and experiences to enjoy, though I do feel still a bit wistful and transplanted sometimes and missing my folks. I can't say for sure with Harry, but he seems increasingly comfortable here, though when I mentioned our old home and life a few weeks ago, he said he misses it still.
Off to open a box of games that I ordered online, cool imports from Europe that my group of gaming friends reccomended as good family games. They include Settlers of Catan, Metro and The Amazing Labrynth.
When Cindi and the boys come up tomorrow, I'm going to make them play them all with me!

Frosty the snow Monster

We had some snow the other day and in the school yard behind our house we made a huge snowman -- actually a snow Monster!

Just look at how big it is!
I would say about 4 stories tall!



















Actually, this is the real size.























how are you going to throw that!?!?




















Here are some pictures not related to snowmen but are still cute!
oh how i love snow!























ok, I'm stocked up and ready to go!
















Tag! You're it!

RATS

Oh no, there's a rat in the house! There sure is, but it's our pet. Ever since our mice died we have wanted a little pet. We had heard that gerbils were good pets so we went to Petco thinking that we would get a gerbil. At the time, we thought they were solitary but we found out they really aren't. A person at the pet store told us all about them. She said that thay actually do like to be together. She also said that they might not be playful right now because they had just came in and are also young. And then she said that she had 11 rats in her house and one cage for the boys and another for the girls and babies. Now that's a lot of rats! She also showed us some rats that were up for adoption. They were so cute!!! We just had to adopt them!!! So now we have two extremely cute rats named Remy and Emile. Remy is all black. Emile is black-hooded and white. ha ha! I like the names. Here's some pictures of them. Enjoy!

sunny + fang = love

Today my grama and grampa came to our house with their dog Fang, a pure white German shepherd and Sunny's boyfriend too. We moved a month or two ago and ever since Sunny's missed Fang and Fang's missed Sunny. But today (as i told you) they visited us and Fang visited Sunny and of course she was overjoyed! And ever since Fang and Sunny have been playing furiously! Today WOW is down, so I'm whiling away the time blogging. Anyway, Sunny needs a bath again ever since Fang came she's needing baths 24 seven!!!!
(I blame fang) He cant stop licking her!!! And Maggie just wants to sleep (Maggie's our 15-year-old dog in our years. And in dog years 108!!!) I know she's very old but she's doing fine. Astonishing!!!! Well, I can't put up any pics; I'm on one of our laptops. Oh well. Anyway, hope you like this post.

wow!

Today we got into world of warcraft and are having a blast! We are on a few realms we filled up Hydraxis (our main realm) and we're on our way on filling up a couple other relams such as: dragonblight, venture co. and duskwood. And harry has played a big part in doing so. He has the most characters by far. Harry doesn't really seem to like levelling up one character; he likes to make a bunch of characters (human girls mostly) and get them up to level 5 or lower and make more. I on the other hand do enjoy making characters but I mostly like playing my main (a level 16 druid). I don't really like levelling up new characters. I enjoy playing existing characters that can do more spells and so on.

I enjoy druids the most, I would say. They can shapeshift.Starting at level 10 they get bear form, then next is seal form they get at level 16. Seal form makes you swim faster and you don't run out of air when you swim. And at level 20 they can do cat form. I like it the best. Then you can turn invisible (rogues can do it at level 2 if they train.)

That's all the druid forms i know. Our highest level character is a level 21 night elf druid and that's why I don't know any other forms. I also like the druids because they have long-ranged attacks and a spell called entangling roots. It will entangle the enemy in roots and if you get out of its range you can attack it freely with out it attacking you, but if it has long range attacks it can stil hurt you. But it's still not a drain of your mana because it still dose nature damage, a type of attack, but if your target is immune to nature damage it is a drain of mana but as far as i know this would only occur if you were fighting another player and only a night elf at that. So i think druids are pretty darn cool. Harry likes the rogues because they can stealth; that's what druids in cat form can do but rogues get it much sooner.

And there's much more I could type but I want to watch my mom and Harry play. Harry wants to get his rogue a bandit mask (only rogues can wear it). Well, I'm going to stop typing and watch my mom play. Hope you enjoy this post, by!

As all good projects are wont to do...

the remodel has bogged down. After a day of lightning fast demolition and a day of solid reconstruction, Steve came down with a stomach virus, leaving Lincoln to finish up drywall taping on his own. Then I discovered that you can't reliably order bathroom furniture based on your son's name (the manufacturer told me, when I called to check on delivery time, that they actually *didn't* have it in stock, as they told me they did, and it would be six to eight weeks. oy) So, back to Home Depot a few times and down to Lowes in Loveland and we finally have a vanity, counter and medicine cabinet sitting in the garage, along with boxes of tile for floor and walls, whilst Steve wrestles with backerboard and two illustrations for the Times due Friday.
Have we bitten off more than we can chew? Will we finish it in time for Mom and Dad's visit? Stay tuned!