September 23, 2009
Fall already?
The front page of our web site has been horribly neglected this year, but our photo gallery has been very active thanks to my lovely wife.
Most recently we attended Lisa Emory and Mike Franklin's wedding. Ruby was a flower girl and looked absolutely adorable.
We've spent a good portion of our summer remodeling our kitchen. Our faucet sprung a tiny leak under the counter that went unnoticed for approximately up to a week according to the inspectors that came out. Our kitchen was completely gutted and mold removal specialists quarantined the room off for 4 days. The next week was spent reinstalling insulation and drywall as well as having a gas line run for our new cooktop. We also updated some of the plumbing fixtures while we were at it. We bought a dishwasher, wall oven, gas cooktop, sink, cabinets and a counter from IKEA. They were so easy to assemble that even Ruby could help. Once the cabinets were in we installed black and white diamond tiles. The counter we chose is acrylic solid surface LivingStone with an integrated seamless sink. The finishing touches seem like they've taken twice as long as the heavy lifting, but are finally done except for a few wall accessories.
Nick came out to visit just after the kitchen leak but before the massive renovations. We hung out playing real bowling and wii sports resort bowling and enjoyed a fancy brunch at the beach.
Ruby had her first haircut on July 3. She sat very still and behaved herself.
We went camping in Yosemite National Park in June around Father's day. Sunni's boyfriend Kevin reserves a camping spot every year around the same time of year there. Kevin and I hiked from the valley floor to the tip of glacier point, a 4 mile long hike that took us 3200 feet in elevation. Kate, Sunni and Ruby drove up to glacier point to meet us with lunch, and I took the air conditioned car ride back while Kevin chose to take the same hike back to camp. Yosemite is an amazingly beautiful place that anyone should try to see, but not so beautiful that my legs would allow me to see it going back down that trail.
Other than the above excitement, we've kept busy using our Disneyland annual passes, going to the beach a few times, riding around with Ruby's new bike seat, attending the NASA JPL open house, celebrating Ruby's 2nd birthday, and just hanging around taking it easy.
Ruby will probably be Minnie Mouse for halloween this year, but before then we're taking a trip to IL for a certain mom's Oct 14 birthday. Hopefully everyone will be coming to our house for Thanksgiving since we have a brand new kitchen to cook it all in. We can probably fit 15 comfortably, but will make room for 50 if need be, just be sure to RSVP at least two weeks in advance, haha!