Airsoft Fun

Four Wheelers: Both Fun & Useful

(More fun than useful)

 

Noah comes up with a lot of ideas.  Some work and some…don’t.

   In this video Noah uses his leaf blower to clear the road of leaves using the four wheeler.  Aaron’s the one driving. They also tried getting some air on a steep hill.

Noah & Aaron

 

Noah & Aaron

Sledding w/Aaron-Video

.

   The video above shows us sledding with Aaron in our backyard. Stay tuned at the end of the video for a short clip that I edited and made a lot more dramatic. Sometimes I think that I just have too much fun editing.

Snow & Sledding

 

Ballet, Raccoons, Water Heater & Painting

Before we left for the ballet performance we found that our water heater was leaking…on further exploration we found that the bottom of it had become rusty and could bust anytime. The thought that at any time 50 gallons of water could suddenly start gushing through our basement and into our new carpet wasn’t too soothing.

We attended the performance of the Nutcracker that night. We’ve never watched ballet before so it was…well…a new experience. I enjoyed the first act because it looked more like a play than a ballet, but after that it was pretty much just a bunch of twirls and such.  The music was fantastic.  Hey, but you never know!  It was something new to try! Who knows but maybe the three of us would’ve gotten hooked on it and would’ve demanded that we start taking ballet classes ASAP!?!  (After watching a few movies of Fred Astaire I started taking tap dancing lessons.)  Well, unless one of us takes up football I don’t foresee ballet in our future.

  We got some nice family pictures while we were dressed up but unfortunately the SD card got corrupted and I’ve lost those photos.

This morning Benjamin found a raccoon in one of his live traps by the trash cans. This is the third raccoon that he’s trapped and he’s never skinned any of them. The first time he gave the raccoon to a fellow trapper and the second time it was real young and he let it go. He cautiously released this raccoon as well.

Kate left this afternoon to make a final Christmas shopping trip and Benjamin & Mom dropped off the new water heater at the house before they went shopping.

 

Aaron stopped by and hung out for awhile    We’ve taught the word “Aaron” to Lydia and she likes him a lot

Prepping the hallway bathroom for the paint

Grandma & Glenn came over to the house and worked on getting the new water heater installed.

 

While I painted and Glenn worked on the water heater Grandma and Noah setup the Christmas tree.

However, Noah decorated the tree by himself and did a pretty good job.

We hauled out the old water heater with the dolly so that we could take a look at the rust forming on the bottom of it:

(Middle) You can see the hole where the water had been leaking out

2

I replaced the light fixture in the bathroom and found the last remnant of wallpaper behind it…I can still remember listening to a Faith & Freedom Tour album while I was scraping off the wallpaper a few years ago!

I continued painting the bathroom and was halfway finished with the second coat until Benjamin and Mom got home after midnight.  They had bought more groceries home than anything else, so we had to put those away before we headed for bed. I packed up my painting supplies and went to bed. Kate got home a little before 3 am.

Oh yeah, our Christmas party got rescheduled at my Aunt’s house so thankfully we won’t have the stress of trying to get the hallway bathroom setup tomorrow.

Dec 16

  The roads were still just a little bit icy today after our freezing-rain yesterday.








Some two handsome chaps…Noah & Aaron.

This afternoon we had an appointment at the Millennium hotel in downtown St. Louis.  My Grandpa was going to be fitted for some custom tailored dress shirts.

We were a little bit early so we went to the 28th floor of the hotel where the riverfront restaurant is located. While eating dinner you can get a great view of St. Louis, not only because it’s so high (like their menu prices) but the dining area actually turns around in a complete circle! It takes an hour to go around in a full circle, during which you can get a fantastic view of the Gateway Arch, the Mississippi river, the downtown area and also a look down into the Busch stadium where the Cardinals play.

The room’s view has already changed between this picture and the picture above.
We also visited our Grandpa this evening before we drove back home.
Every time we go to a friends house I always gasp when I see their Christmas tree…we’ve never even thought about setting up a tree until now; there are a few other things that are a priority such as making room for the kitchen table, so that we can have a place to eat!



Just a few random shots of Noah:


Trying not to smile                                  Look out!  He’s about to throw that knife!! (He must not have really thrown it because at that range there’s no way he would miss the photographer who is posting these pictures.)

Moving Appliances and Skating in Forest Park

It seems that during this renovation in order to get a job accomplished it requires a series of steps in order to finally get the job accomplished. Noah and Mom were up ‘til 2:30am painting a second coat on the laundry room walls. We had to paint so we could put on the trim so we could move in the washer and dryer so we can do LAUNDRY!!!

We haven’t cleaned a load of clothes here at the house since before we left for Florida and that was back in October! It’s pretty exciting…as soon as the dryer and washer get hooked it’ll officially be LAUNDRY DAY!

Wow, I guess when you eat 2 long-johns for breakfast you start writing in all caps with exclamation POINTS!!! You may think that the picture of Lydia to your left has nothing to do with laundry, but Lydia’s pretty tired of wearing stinky clothes too…and she does wear clothes….

We loaded up our comfy leather couch to deliver it over to my Grandma’s place. However, to move the couch we had to move the chairs that were blocking the washer and dryer which had to be moved out of the way so we could move the boxes that were on top of the couch so that we could move the couch unto the dolly! Whew, all in one breath!

             

Picking up breakfast…I think that we’ll need some Wheaties too…

 

The dolly made it fairly easy for us to get the couch to the front door, but we had to lift it to get inside the doorway.

Mom was getting the trim placed in the laundry room while the rest of us worked on getting the appliances out of the garage.

 

Installing the anti-tip device                                                Measuring for the trim

The next appliance was the most difficult of all and that was the refrigerator. When we had moved it out to the garage a few weeks ago it barely squeezed through the front door and it was so heavy that it required all 5 of us to move it. However, this time we’re going to take our time and do a few things to the fridge first to make it lighter and thinner.

We duct taped the sides of the door way to minimize the chances of the fridge getting scraped up.

 

 

Grandma and I worked on getting everything off of the refrigerator and freezer and moving the food into the kitchen.

Removing the doors                         We also had to detach wires and a water hose for the icemaker

 

 

Then once the fridge was on the dolly it was smooth sailing

Re-attaching the wiring and also hooking up the water to the ice maker…which was a project that happened a few days ago.

The entire line for the ice maker had to be replaced because it was rotten and we also had to remove the old filtering system and replace it with a new one. It’s been at least half a dozen years since the icemaker’s worked, so getting this set up finally is pretty exciting.

The trim was finished in the laundry room so we could move the washer and dryer in. We were pretty excited at how the white trim and the white appliances popped off the pomegrante walls.

When we setup the washer we found that both of it’s shut off valves were leaking and will have to be replaced.

This evening we went to Webster Groves to have some fun…Grandma and Glenn came along and also Noah’s good friend, Aaron.

We ate dinner at Dr. Jazz’s which is designed to be an store that you saw in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”  We found these two guys on a park bench who needed a meal so they ate with us too.

 

 

 

After dinner we drove to Forest Park and went ice skating.We didn’t start skating at the rink until 11pm so we stayed until it closed at midnight. We were all pretty tired so it was a quiet ride back home.