Disneycruise Here We Come!!!

Two days and counting before we're sailing on a cruise ship on our way through the Western Caribbean. It's something we've been talking about for awhile and finally decided to do. We're going with Tami's immediate family, grandmother and our kids of course (11 of us all together). They can't wait to go on the boat with Mickey Mouse. I'm sure they'll have a blast. We plan to swim with stingrays, do a fair share of snorkeling and more than anything, get away from the cold and enjoy some nice warm humid weather. We set sail Saturday the 28th, head to Key West, then down to Grand Cayman, then to Nassau Bahamas and then to Disney's own private island, Castaway Cay. We'll arrive back at Port Canaveral on Saturday, Feb 4th (Brooklyn's birthday). I'm sure I'll have plenty to blog about when we get back.

Nothing terribly new on the homefront. The house looks about the same as the last picture I posted. They do have the basement slab poured and the suspended slab laid over the garage. Looks like they must have trucked in the slab already poured and just lowered it into place. We've been told they'll be starting the framing any day now. Hopefully we'll get back from our cruise and find an actual home. We'll keep you posted.

Making progress

Here's the latest picture taken this weekend of the new home. I'm standing just to the left of where the driveway will be. The basement walls are all in. The basement floor has yet to be poured still. They're estimating that we'll be in the home by the end of March. I'm not holding by breath, but let's hope we're in by then. As much as we love our little two bedroom basement apartment, we are getting anxious to get into our own place again. Here's a picture of the "bunker" room. It is where the theater room will be. They excavated under our garage and will put a suspended slab there so that we can have a nice 24' wide by 20' deep room completely enclosed in concrete . . . perfect for our surround sound theater. The floor of the room actually is about 2 feet deeper than the rest of the basement. The house you see on the other side of the street on the left will be very similar to how the front facade of our home will be except flipped with the garage on the right. We're also doing brick instead of stone.


We attended our new ward today (the ward we'll be living in once the home is done). It was Brooklyn's first Sunday in Sunbeams. She was a little timid at first, but I think she'll enjoy it. She's one of the older Sunbeams since she'll be turning 4 next month.

Happy New Year!!!

We hope you all had a wonderful New Year. We decided to celebrate the new year at the cabin even though we had just been up there the week before for Christmas. Tami and I and the kids went along with Brian and Stephanie. For about a year now, I have been bringing up a laptop projector from work and we have been watching movies "big screen" style. However, Brooklyn has now coined the term "Big Sheet". She loves watching movies on the "big sheet".

But we needed something for the kids to watch so that we could watch our movies as well, so we created their own little theater just behind the big sheet. They were so excited about their "theater" and the fact that they were able to sit on the trampoline made it all the better. Over the course of the weekend I believe they watched Tarzan II about 10 times and Pooh's Heffalump Movie roughly the same.

I made the mistake of bringing up my Lost Season 1 DVDs. I believe over the course of the weekend we made it to episode 16. Brian and Steph are hooked now. As for those who have not seen Lost . . . RENT IT!!! All it takes is the first few episodes and I guarantee you will not be able to put it down.

About a foot of snow fell New Year's Eve making it pretty much impossible to drive to Church that morning. So we just snowmobiled in. The church is about 3 miles from the cabin. The kids enjoyed the ride in. The next morning a few more inches of snow fell and it was time to play. The snow was just the right consistency for snowman building. Brooklyn and Isaac really got into it.


They loved seeing our little snowman come to life. Brooklyn named him "Frosty" of course.

On the other hand, Brian had much bigger plans for his snowman. At first it looked like a single pilar of snow, but with a little help from me, we were able to sculpt it into something a little more interesting. Remember that I'm 6' 4" tall. Let's just say it was a challenge getting the head all the way up top. I'd be lying if I said that we planned the upper snowman to be leaning to the side. It was simply a stroke of luck that added nicely to the overall effect. Too bad the top snowman fell a few hours later. It looked good while it lasted though.

And now we come back to reality and life after the holidays. However, just a few more weeks until we leave on our Disney Cruise!