Sarah's Blog

The last 6 weeks have been crazy...

Bill got 2 interviews with Apple before Christmas, and then we waited. After 4 weeks, we received the hard copy of the offer, and we accepted it. With only 3 weeks to work out all the details before his Feb 15 start date, we planned a last minute house finding trip last week.

Bill called his mom and gave her 25 minutes notice before she had to leave for the airport! We all knew this trip was coming, we just didn't know when we could do it, so she was surprised, but not shocked. Bill and I left later that same evening and we all passed each other on I-70. The kids had a great time and we were able to find a rental house in the Silicon Valley.

We got home around 9:30 Friday night, visited with Bill's mom for an hour, and then went to bed. We had to leave by 6:30 am to get Bill's mom back for her return flight to TX, and we had other plans in Denver that day, so we packed up the family and headed to DIA. We worked at our Parker house for a couple of hours getting it ready to go on the market tomorrow, and then spent the rest of the day with friends who just moved to Castle Rock. We made it home by 8 and immediately in bed for a good nights rest. We are exhausted, but glad we found a house, which is much more difficult than in other parts of the country due to our large family size.

In that area of California, a "mansion" is over 2500 sq ft... we have lived in 1800 sq ft for almost 7 years and we would like a bit more elbow room for our now teenagers. The house we found is 3100 sq ft and has a huge yard with lots of fruit trees, a very large deck, covered patios, pool and hot tub. It is almost 40 years old, but it is well kept. The house faces open space hills with walking paths and is close to lots of parks and a lake. The area is beautiful, and the family is excited for a new adventure.

Now we just have to sell 2 houses, before we can make the full transition to California...

Happy New Year! I haven't updated my blog in a while. Things have been quite crazy around here the last few weeks with putting the house on the market again, and finding out that our renters are getting transferred, so we also are putting that house on the market as well.

We are trying to get out and ski, but since everyone is dragging their feet, we have to tell ourselves that we are taking a ski vacation! in our own backyard. Jacob and Isabel are doing well with skiing, which is so fun to be able to all go as a family.

We are trying to stay focused on school, but with the various life changes that may be happening soon, it has been hard. Today I painted the whole downstairs of our house and tried to trim stuff from each room to make the house show a little better... so people walk into our house and say, "ahhh, look how big this house is... I have to buy it!"

I got a crazy idea this evening to upload some pictures to flickr, and found I already had an account... since 2007! So, you can check some of the pictures out HERE.

Each day this week we looked forward to watching another segment of the HBO miniseries "John Adams". We loved it and it has inspired Bill and me to learn more about great leaders.

I started running on the treadmill this week and am going to try to read more this year. My first book is Your God is Too Safe, which is excellent so far and getting me focused again.

I also started selling books again, and l was surprised to see how quickly some of the items were going. It is very exciting to be selling things that we don't need. I have had a long list of things to put online to sell for quite a few months, but have been dragging my feet. On craigslist, we sold 1 motorcycle, 1 4-wheeler, and 1 MacBook... not bad. Only a few big items to go, and I'll have a ton of space in my garage!

That's it for my random update. I am excited about 2010 and what exciting adventures it brings with my family.

An excited group of kids...

Anna was surprised to receive an iPod Nano... pink and engraved... She didn't ask for anything except puzzles for Christmas, so this was quite a surprise, and fun to watch her open.

We finally took the time to decorate Christmas cookies... I think they ate more than we actually got decorated, but they were yummy!

I got a new lens for my camera and got some opportunities to try it out.

Isabel with her lemon bars for her birthday cake... yummy!

There has not been much snow this year so far, so we have waited to get everyone out. We went out a couple of times last week and got Jacob and Isabel more sure on their feet. Isabel is skiing by herself well now, and Jacob is crazy, but needs a little more time with the tether. He doesn't want the straps, but with them, we can go down just about anything, so that is good for me.

We had planned to go on Wednesday morning before co-op and Andrew woke up with strep again! So we called the doctor, left him home and I took everyone else to the bunny hill to give the littles a couple of hours of practice. It was great to get on the mountain again, even if it was for a short time and on the platter.

Isaac with his new braces!

Ducks in a row...

"NO MORE TIES!

Skiing with the Asplins!

Thanksgiving dinner with the Asplins... we set up tables in the carriage house and were able to seat 14 people comfortably!

Our Lego League team at state... they won first place for "Outstanding Robot Design"... good job Mountain Lego Maniacs!

Our co-op "Littles" class on the last day of the semester

Building a gingerbread house

Jacob got a new Anikan Skywalker suit from Grandma Buddy and is SO excited to wear it.

I am off to Houston tomorrow for 4 days (by myself) to visit my grandparents. They have been sick lately, and I wanted to go spend some time with them.

The boys are off to the State Lego League tournament while I am gone. I am kind of glad to not have to endure the stressful Saturday, but I will miss seeing them compete.

See you Monday!

We have had all sorts of last minute changes to our lives... yesterday in the middle of co-op, Bill found out he had to be in California today.

During our lego league meeting, he got all the travel arrangements made, and headed to the car rental place before it closed. Well, he got to the Silverthorne Enterprise location at 5:40 pm and no one was there. They weren't supposed to close until 6, and he had a reservation! Many phone calls later, he just came home, because there was nothing he could do. There were no rental cars in Summit County. This place drives us crazy, especially when stuff like this happens. And the woman on the phone with Enterprise said he didn't have any grounds for a complaint because we don't know if they had a family emergency or not... and they weren't interested in finding out. Oh well.

Plan B... Bill drove our car to the airport at 2 am to make his 6 am flight. I will be without a car today, which is not a problem. Thankfully, I have no plans. I was going to try to take everyone skiing, which I can still do. Since it is -9F outside, I don't think anyone will last too long in that temp, so I think I can wait until next week to go skiing.

Long story short, we are passing each other in the airport on Friday as I fly to Houston to visit my grandparents for the weekend. Bill returns home to be with the kids and then to go to the Lego League State tournament on Saturday.

I was just reflecting yesterday how I was feeling "normal" again, and not stressed. I am trying to remain that way amongst the craziness that surrounds me.

It has taken us a little longer than usual, but we had a fantastic evening as a family decorating the Christmas tree and opening St. Nicholas Day gifts. We totally missed St. Nicholas Day this year, but we celebrated tonight, and the kids didn't mind.

It was Isabel's turn to put the angel on top of the tree, and she was very excited.

This was one of the best years decorating the tree (after getting the lights on... they were all tested, but once up, the middle strand, of course, didn't work and we had to redo almost everything). The kids did everything, and we all had a great time. Jacob, was occupied with his new "Harry Potter" coloring book, which certainly simplified the process. Andrew taped the whole thing and made a time lapse movie of the evening. Since we now have children taller than me, they can put on the high and fragile decorations as well.

We were going to catch up on a few nights of "Jotham's Journey", but Jacob moved it right before we started decorating and couldn't remember where he put it. "Sorry, Mommy. I don't know where it is." Oh well. Bill read another book instead.

Good memories.

Well, this week we got an e-mail from the Colorado First Lego League coordinator with our invitation to the State competition. We thought that there was a mistake because it is only now 7 days until the competition and we thought we had not qualified. But, no, after several e-mails back and forth, we are indeed going to compete next weekend at the State level.

It's very exciting, and quite overwhelming because we threw all of our props away for the project presentation and we took apart the robot and all the table accessories.

We have some work to do, but the team decided to go for it and compete anyway. We have 7 days now to prepare and they will do great!

I am going to miss this, since I already had plans to go to Houston for the weekend, but Bill is good with the video camera and will have it all taped for everyone to see. Since we had such short notice, we don't have the whole team going, but the parents of those participating are all jumping in and helping to make this a success.

Bill just released a new iPhone app to the app store called FotoBrisko and it is waiting on approval.

It is an application where amateur photographers can explore the world to find shots that they want to reproduce. It's also a great tool for travelers to use to find places they want to go see on their trip, or to find what is near you at any given time. It uses geotagging and geolocation to find where you are and where pictures were taken. Once the pictures are saved to your shot list, and you are on your trip, you can see how far you are from the exact location the picture was taken. It's very cool and fun to find excellent pictures all over the globe.

Here is a YouTube preview for a contest Bill entered. While there, please make sure to up-vote.

Thanks!

Oh my... I finally joined Facebook. Just like twitter, I joined, but I am not sure how much I'll use it. It does suck up a lot of time, which I just don't have and should be spending on other things, but it has been fun finding old friends.

Our other printer ran out of toner again, and was making some funny noises as well as was getting jammed every time we made a copy, so it was time to buy a new one. After a little bit of research, I found this HP LaserJet M1522. It took quite a while to get delivered from OfficeMax, but it is a great printer/flatbed copier so far. We have stayed away from so many printers because of their size, but after too many bad printers, we decided to try this one even though it isn't small. We had to move some things around in our house to fit it in, but we are glad to have it.