Not so lazy days....

So, on a day to day basis it seems like we don't have much to say, but then when a few weeks goes by it seems like you don't even know where to start. I guess we need to go back to Thanksgiving. We were on the brink of being overwhelmed. We had decided to host the family gathering as it would be easier than packing up a 4 month old child and all her conveniences for an undisclosed amount of time. It all began with a good thorough cleaning of the main floor; it was not too bad, but what added to the stress of the cleaning was the fact that we had fruit flies in the house. It had been a nuisance since Early August, but we could not determine the source. Since we had a garden and were always bringing in vegetables and going down to the farmers market we almost thought it could be explained by all the food lying around the house, although nothing was there that long that it was going bad. So this week before thanksgiving I knew that we had not had any fresh food in the open for more than seven days but the bugs still appeared from time to time, only in the kitchen and dining area. So the major cleaning began. We moved every piece of furniture and appliance and cleaned under it, we got rid of the dog bed and vacuumed and mopped every floor. Two days later the flies still were there. Then we thought that even though we had not seen any flies in the bedroom area that maybe they were somehow associated with the trash can in Addison’s room, so we moved that outside for a few days and the flies were still to be found. It was now two days before thanksgiving and I was embarrassed that we were going to have people over and we could not get rid of these pesky fruit flies. Finally, we had this house plant in the kitchen that was that was dying, and I chucked it out into the garden. Low and behold, after that day I did not see another fly. Thank goodness no more fruit flies, perhaps we should have guessed at that sooner.

Now we could concentrate on making a turkey. We used the recipe from good eats on the food network channel. I’ll say the Turkey turned out OK. Everyone claimed it to be the best turkey they ever had, however, with the attendance at our gathering, we only ate the white meat and did not need to get into the dark meat, and it’s a good thing because in our opinion it was not done. I think our temperature probe was a little inaccurate. So now we did not have hardly any leftover turkey and Michelle had bought a bunch of groceries to make stuff with the left over turkey. So on the Saturday after thanksgiving I bought a turkey on clearance at the local grocery store and we took another shot at it. This time we used two probes, one from our gas grill and the digital probe that plugs into the oven. We verified that the one in the oven might be about 5 degrees off so we took the second turkey up to about 170 degrees and let me tell you, it was worth the second effort. It was awesome. The white meat was super moist and the dark meat was done perfect as well.

Addison is growing like crazy. And she is becoming so much fun. At her 4 month appointment she weighed in at 17lbs 8oz. She is "in the 97th percentile for height and a little more than that for weight”. Those were Dr. Vanzee’s words. But at 4 months she still was not sleeping through the night without eating. So on thanksgiving weekend we considered a few nights of “tough love”. On Wednesday night we decided that she would not get fed, we would just take turns comforting her back to sleep. We were both relatively surprised that she was fairly cooperative. So that’s the routine we stuck to for the rest of the weekend and on Monday we went the next step and decided that if she woke up we were just going to let her cry. She caught on pretty quick. I think there was a mutual understanding there. So now she is holding out till about 5:30 in the morning but even if she wakes up she just lays in bed and makes quite noises, that is, until she hears one of us up and about, then she lets us know she’s awake. That’s enough for today. Even though I could go on about repairing molding that ruby chewed when she was a puppy and painting the dining room and both of us signing up for a triathlon in St. Anthony’s FL next April, and taking photos for our Christmas cards and trying to get those sent out. We need to stay on top of this blogging. We’ll try to post a few photos this weekend.

Yes, we're still alive

Ok, so we’ve neglected to pay attention to our blog for a while. We’ll try to get better at that. So, Michelle and Addison made a journey to California on Wednesday October 31st, Halloween, and returned on Monday November 5th. They were able to see lots of family and friends. Addison was able to meet her cousin Logan for the first time.

Plus she got to hang out with his brother Garret again (I think it’s pretty awesome that she’s been able to see her cousin Garret, who lives across the country, twice already and she’s only 3.5 months old – that could be an expensive trend if it keeps up for too much longer).

While they were gone I tried to get a bunch of chores out of the way. I raked all the leaves (which sems almost sensless and the yard is filled with leaves again right now), washed and waxed Michelle’s car and washed my truck, changed the oil in the truck, did work on the snow-blower to get it ready for winter, plus a little laundry and a few miscellaneous items around the house and still managed to get in a couple bike rides in a last ditch effort to prepare myself for an rapidly approaching event. They returned home on the 5th. Michelle has a few stories to tell about traveling with an infant, and they had both caught colds. The week was a bit of a challenge getting Addison back on her schedule after dealing with daylight savings time change and jet lag but it was not too awful. Late in the week I managed to catch the cold that the girls brought home with them. Then Saturday morning I headed out the door at 5:00 a.m. to drive up to Kalkaska and do the Iceman , a 27.5 mile mountain bike race. By the time it was all said and done I didn’t get home till 9:00p.m. and still had to unload/unpack my gear. Needless to say I slept good that night. Last night when I got home from work we loaded up the child and the dog and went for a little hike at on the trails at Robinette's Apple Orchard. This was a blast by the way, Addison was over-stimulated by all the colors on the leaves.

and Ruby was over-stimulated by the unfamiliar scents. It’s so much fun to get that dog out of the city where you can let her off the leash and not worry about her getting hit by a car. Everywhere we went she just ran circles around us. We were only out there for about 30-40 minutes but it was still priceless time spent together as a family.