RhonDave news

If you believe only what you read here, you might think we haven’t done anything for the past couple months. On the contrary, we’ve been quite busy. I think it was mid-September that we decided to fix up the larger lake house and move in there by Christmas, so we could save money (one whole house payment, at least) and afford to do something more permanent. So I spent a number of weekends down there, as much as possible — painting, tearing up carpet, and various other maintenance. We also had an electrician come down and fix the major hazards, as well as a few other things that probably weren’t necessary. But the stress finally caught up with us (me not getting any free time, and Rhonda not getting a break from taking care of the kids) and a couple weeks ago the work stopped. We’re currently reassessing the situation and trying to establish more reasonable goals.

Rhonda’s brother stayed in the little house for several weeks, hoping for a little quiet but also a chance to search for a new job while the union tries to settle with Northwest. He went back to PA for Thanksgiving, then plans to head back to Minnesota.

My blog and wiki have been a little more active than this one. I’ve been battling stress by diving into Linux, so most of the posts have been about that (with a few on Diabetes & other topics).

I forgot to write about this last week, but Serena earned a trip to the emergency room by sticking sunflower seeds up her nose.

I saw her one day with a seed partially inserted in her nostril. I removed it and told her not to do that, then didn’t think any more of it. A day or two later, Rhonda caught her putting a seed up her nose. Upon further investigation, she discovered several more that she removed with tweezers. She reached a point where she couldn’t see any more, but Serena wasn’t cooperative enough for her to be sure that she had gotten them all, so she headed to the urgent care. When she was signing in there, the doctor suggested that the hospital was better equipped to handle the situation since they had some sort of suction device they could use to extract any remaining seeds.

Details beyond that are spotty (Rhonda didn’t want to talk much about it), but at the hospital they didn’t find any more seeds, so further extraction was not necessary. The doctor sent her home with a prescription for antibiotics.

So, this isn’t the type of thing you generally share with the world, but I’m going to do it any way. Serena decided this past week that it was time to start using the toilet. We’ve been working with her for several months, but there’s nothing special we’ve done recently. We do have a relatively new potty training video that she watches, in which a young girl talks about how her younger brother just completed potty training. Rhonda thinks it was this video that did the trick, because it compares big kids and little kids and the things that they do. She still has accidents, but she’s also made it through some nights with a dry diaper.

She also wants to help with nearly everything we do. When I load or unload the dishwasher, she’ll say “help?”. Then if I don’t let her put the dirty dishes in or take the clean ones out, she gets upset. Yesterday she helped with the laundry too — putting clean clothes from the dryer into the basket, moving wet clothes from the washer to the dryer, and putting the next load of dirty clothes into the washer, then pushing the start button. Having a front-loader made it possible; the only thing I had to help her with was lifting her so she could reach the button. She’s a long way from doing laundry by herself, but it was cute to see her helping.

We went to the lake today. We grabbed fast food on the way and ate lunch there. The weather was a little better than it has been — the temperature was below 90, and the humidity wasn’t oppressive.

After lunch we decided to take advantage of the weather and go for canoe rides. Rhonda went first, taking Serena for her first canoe ride. She paddled over near the Latta shore, even getting a good glimpse at a Heron. It started raining while they were out, so I thought they were going to get drenched, but by the time I took the camera back into the house, it had stopped raining.

When they returned, Rhonda and I traded places, and Serena and I went out the other way (still toward Latta, but then up toward the area where Gar Creek empties into the lake). The water level was really low, so I didn’t dare go too far up toward the creek.

After returning to shore, I had to relax for a bit (it felt much hotter then I thought it was earlier). Later, I went over to look at the pontoon boat that came with the neighboring property, which my parents bought in June. The floating dock had broken free a few months ago, with the boat attached, and at the time I attached it to the pier to keep it from floating away. Since then, the rising and dropping water levels have used the boat to slowly pull the pillars out of the lake bed. I’ll have to get a sledge hammer and see if I can drive them back in, but that’s a job for another day. Today, I detatched the boat from the floating dock. I attached the floating dock to the pier, but I don’t know if it will stay there — I’ll probably pull it out of the water next week. Then I took the boat and, using a lone canoe paddle, moved it over to the floating dock on our property, which is in better shape.

Now we need to get an estimate for repairs and decide whether it’s worth fixing or if we should just sell it.

This morning when I was leaving for work, I said “See you later, alligator”. Serena ran toward me with a smile on her face and said “Kok-dial”. At first I was confused, but then she expanded on it with “See ya kok-dial”.

The water level at our lake cottage is a bit high (100.6 as of this post). Nowhere near the level it reached last year when our lawn mower was submerged for a week, but enough that the grass within 8 feet of the usual bank will probably die if the water level stays up for a few more days. I don’t know if they’re expecting much from Dennis, but we’ll be keeping an eye on it.

We went to the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia SC today for Serena’s second birthday. We had planned to have a small birthday party, but had to postpone it because she’s got pink eye . We got to the zoo at about 3pm, in 90 degree heat and overcast skies. We thought it was going to rain on us, but we only felt a few scattered sprinkles throughout the afternoon.

Serena really enjoyed the animals. The first thing that caught her attention was the sea lions. We just missed the feeding, but they were swimming around and splashing in the water, which she enjoyed. She walked much of the zoo, going from one exhibit to the next, saying “more?”. At the farm exhibit, she loved petting the cow, who was quite talkative. At the birdhouse, she enjoyed the penguins and climbing inside the replica hollow tree. There was even a large blue bird that looked a bit like a peacock that did a dance for her that made her laugh.

We skipped the gardens, but saw most of the animals, including the lions and tigers and bears (oh my). We capped off the visit with a ride on the carousel and left shortly before the zoo closed at 6pm.

We had some family pictures taken, you can view the better ones here. This one of Eden on the flag was particularly funny:

Eden Tiare was born today — flag day — at 9:58 am. Her first pictures are here

After numerous other attempts with varying tools, I’ve decided to try a “blog” (as much as I hate that term). Stay tuned for updates on our family.

I also decommissioned the old postnuke site, and moved the few bits of information that I had there. Those posts appear here with dates prior to this entry.