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We finally decided it was time for Sean’s first haircut. His little mullet was getting out of control, so we gave it “the snip.”

Here are some before / after pictures:

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Emily and I decided to not let this be a typical lazy weekend. The weather was great – nice and cool with the sun shining. With all the wind storms over the last few months we had a yard scattered with broken branches – some so large, they even looked like little trees! Then we trimmed a ton of dead branches from the trees. I made a pile in the driveway about 7 feet tall and 5 feet wide. Going to take a while to get that scrapped and into trash cans.
Emily cleaned out the gardens – weeds, dried leaves, dead plants, and straightened up the boarder rocks. She filled two trash cans with crud. While she did that I gave the yard its first mow and spread some leftover mulch in our side garden. Mowing this yard is not a quick task. Very thankful for the in-laws riding mower. If I had to push mow this yard, I’d probably invest in a whole lot of ivy!
This morning I got out and put down some Scott’s weed and feed fertilizer. With all the work the previous owners put into the house, I don’t think they did much with the grass. I’ve never seen so many dandelions and “bad” grass. Probably going to take a couple feedings to take them all out.
Emily and I also started on our first project for the backyard. With the advice from my mom, we decided to start on a small project fist to get us motivated. The back yard needs TONS of work, but we picked a small 10×10 area just behind the house next to our stairs that come into the yard. It was a bit of an eye sore because the previous owners dogs used it as a sleeping area and it has a large cement slab that covers an old cistern. We are building a retaining wall there with 8 inch lodestone blocks and will fill that area with Irish Moss. Behind that, we plan to maybe put in some hostas, and a vine to grow on the trellis covering the stairs. We may also do another trellis against the wall for the vine.
So we laid down part of that this evening – at least the test run. Then we will need to back fill.
Glad we got that done this weekend as the weather is now predicting snow and rain Monday and Tuesday and low 40s-50s with rain the rest of the week.
That will sure make going to Florida Thurs – Sunday more worthwhile

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I decided to try to make some progress on our 3rd floor today. Our goal is to move our office from the 2nd to the 3rd floor. We want to make 1/2 of the 3rd floor the office, and the other 1/2 a play area for Sean. It’s a very large space, so it will work well. That way, we can do some work on the computers, and he can play. Check out his side, which is pretty much done except for babyproofing the outlets and getting the gate up, which I ordered today.

Also, a few pictures of Sean playing before bed last night in his awesome firetruck jammies.

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Apparently our house is a Sears and Roebuck kit house which were very popular from 1906 to 1940. These houses are a great part of history and luckily Sears has archived their history for us:

http://www.searsarchives.com/homes/

We are going through the floor plans and have a few that we think are the plans for this house. Our kitchen was remodled by the previous owners and I’m sure some of the previous owners have had their share of work into it.
It is pretty cool to lear a bit of the history of your house though. When Brian and Ash bought their house down the street, they went to the courthouse and library to do research on it. I may have to do that myself! These PDFs are priceless though. Depending on what model house we have, Sears priced them from $1600-$2500. Wow.

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Our real estate agent, Holly Nally, came over last night…we have an offer on our house!!!! We countered just a bit on it, and she will hear back from them today. We are so excited to only own ONE house soon! We are losing a heck of a lot of money on it, but that’s the market right now. At least it will be off our backs.

Please cross your fingers / pray / do a rain dance or anything else that you do to bring us luck! We should find out today!

*UPDATE*
They accepted our counter offer! So, now we just have to wait for inspections and loan paperwork, etc to be done and then waiting for the closing!

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We started out on Saturday by attending a musical that Emily’s cousin Wes was in. It was a small theatre group introducing a new Christian musical. We enjoyed it. Sean enjoyed his afternoon with his Auntie Gamma (Emily’s Aunt Laurie).
Emily made us a reservation at John Philip’s in Crestview Hills. Its one of my new favorite restaraunts. The menu is small (wine list huge), but the selection of appetizers and entree’s is not missing anything. I went with the Filet (with a side of mushroom bourdalaise sauce) and Emily got the prime rib. Having a restaraunt of this nature makes me feel we don’t need to drive down to the waterfront anymore! The service is great as well. Our waiter was never overbearing and even remembered the last time we came in (and he wasn’t even our waiter that time!).
Ashley kept an ear out for Sean while we were out to eat – Thanks again Ash! Another advantage of the colony! Emily and I finished up the night watching the movie Jumper – although she didn’t make it through and had to finish it on Sunday. I don’t know why that movie got such a bad review when it was in theatre’s, as we both enjoyed it. Def. a renter and not a buyer though.
On Sunday, Emily, Sean, and I went to the Newport Aquarium. We got the idea a few weeks back when we visited a Petsmart store. He just stared with great awe into the little aquariums there.

We had a great time. Sean stayed up for it as long as he could. We actually got almost to the end before he couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore. He only missed the penguins (We’ll just have to catch them when we go to the St. Louis Zoo next time).
On Monday, I came home to a Father’s Day surprise! Emily and I have been looking for a small table and chair set to have on our front porch, but never got around to picking one up. I had a model that I liked, but Emily was unsure about it. Turns out, she liked it enough to make it my father’s day gift – I was quite pleased!

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Real Estate Valuations

Now I realize that this website is probably not 100% accurate, but it gives you an idea of how your house stacks up against others near by.  Zillow.com gives you a “goggle maps/earth view of the surrounding neighborhood and then many details on the house you are looking at.  Give it a whirl!

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GigaOM SunRocket is Toast, MEMO «

Crap.  Yes, Sun Rocket, the nice alternative to VOIP (Voice over IP or Internet Phone) service Vonage, is going out of business – and without ANY notice to its customers.  I’ve got two SunRocket accounts and we pay for the service annually, at $200 each.  One account just renewed a month ago yesterday for another year!  I already transfererd our 859-XXX-1286 number to Vonage and it apparently is already working on their service.  We won’t have their “gizmo” device to make the phone ring for another couple of days though.  If you need to get a hold of us, just call our cell phones.

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Put up a couple sets of pictures from the last few days…

First, the bunny hole. As described in the post below, here are some pictures of it after mowing and fur removal. There are a couple of cute pictures of Megabyte in there too The lat picture is one of her tonight (5/7/07) sitting in the dark in the yard about 5 feet from the empty nest/hole, staring at it…just waiting for the bunnies to come back. Cute stuff.

Next, are pictures of Chip, just doing his thing. There are two pictures of him in his new favorite sleeping spot; in the recycling basket in the kitchen, and a few of him in a very dainty relaxation posture. Wierd cat.

And last but not least, some pictures of the day lilies that we transplanted from New York (at Emily’s dad’s) last summer and planted along the side of our house. We were worried that they wouldn’t take, with the differences in climate and soil, but they are up and growing strong. They haven’t bloomed yet, but it’s still early in the season. We can’t wait until then!

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Well, our family is shamed…we mowed our lawn for the first time yesterday and mowed right over a family of bunnies (they are all ok).  They had a nest smack dab in the middle of our fenced in yard!  All that time, and Megabyte never sniffed them out! 

For years, Megabyte has been known as the devourer of stuffed animals, and a threat to the life of any little animal that dares to come in our yard. When we found a family of bunnies that has been living in the yard for weeks, we were shocked and amazed that Meg didn’t sniff them out.

We remember about a month ago, Megabyte spent hours running around the yard with her nose to the ground, apparently sniffing out something, but never found anything.  I guess she was smelling the bunnies.

So, now she’s embarrassed and ashamed that she let 5 babies and a mommy bunny grow up in her yard without seeking them out and devouring them.  Try not to make too much fun of her if you see her.

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