Happy 60th Birthday Dad

Happy 60th Birthday Dad! Here's to you and all that you mean to our family.

Although we've celebrated your birthday already, I thought you'd enjoy this card. The card isn't for you per se - my hope is that it just brings you some more smiles on your birthday!

Too Cute For Words

Manitou Incline

Today Stacey and Jonathan made it up the Manitou Incline for the first time. We dropped Julia off with my Mom as usual (on Wednesdays) and hit the trail at about 10 a.m. We went up the Incline but took the Barr Trail down. Round trip was about 5K - 2,000 vertical feet each way. Jonathan slept through most of the trip on the way up. On the way down he did a little sightseeing though. The top of the incline is at about 8,800 feet, so at the very beginning of the descent we had some good views of Pikes Peak. Not a bad way to spend your morning.

Coors Field

About 10 days ago I went to a Rockies game with some guys from Focus. The Rockies beat the Dodgers. I love Coors Field - so nice.

3 Months Old

Jonathan turned 3 months old today!

After breakfast we headed up to Rampart Reservoir for a hike and a picnic lunch. The trees are already turning color at that elevation. We hiked in and took in some food and scenery before heading back to the car. Julia wouldn't go potty in the trees and Jonathan pretty much slept the entire time. We'll post better pictures of Jonathan in the next few days so you can all see how much he looks like Stacey (and her Dad).

Soccer, T-Minus One Week

The adult outdoor soccer league starts one week from today. I've been practicing the past few Sundays with the team in preparation. The guys are very skilled - all played at least high school and some played D1 and D2 in college. It's fun to actually play with guys who know what they are doing. Unfortunately, I'm one of the younger guys. Most of the other guys are in their mid to late 30s - so speed, fitness, and endurance is a problem. Luckily we should have enough subs and can just rotate players in and out at will.

We'll see how it goes. Yesterday we practiced on a field that was 120 by probably 70 yards. It was huge so we only used 1/4 of it. I don't know how I'm even going to cope and I'm only 32 and in decent shape. A lot of the guys are probably better then I am - but I am faster and in better shape so it sort of evens itself out. Since we're starting in the third division I hope that means we're not going to play a bunch of kids right out of college! No matter how good we are, we'll probably get beat just because we won't be able to keep up. We should probably put the ambulance on standby.

Optimus Primed

I'm "primed" for my final outdoor project this summer. Today we hit up the 30% off Labor Day sale at Sherwin Williams and picked up some concrete primer (the white in the pictures) and a bunch of exterior paint that matches the house (gray, not yet painted).

For some reason John Laing decided to stop the siding on all of the houses in our neighborhood about 2 feet from the ground. On the houses that aren't stucco, bare cement is one of the exterior "features". Luckily for us, a gray house against gray cement is not as noticeable as some of the other houses that have color. Regardless, the houses lack a finished look because of it.

Here are the pictures of the large visible section after I've primed them. The goal here once painted is to hide the cement and make the house look like it actually goes all the way to the ground. The stucco houses provide a good example of what it will look like, so I know the outcome will be worth it. The third picture shows two houses across the street - one painted to the ground (stucco) and the other not. Once I finish this section I'll load a before and after shot so you can see the difference.

Fore "Closure"

Woo-hoo! The bank finally came today and changed the locks on the house across the street. I don't mean to sound happy at someone else's misfortune - I'm happy that this situation has finally been resolved. This has been going on for about 18 months at the property directly in view as I type this blog.

This wasn't a normal situation. The previous owner was not a nice neighbor. He (Kyle) would swear at his kids, liked a lot of beer, and liked loud rap music. You could hear this "playa" coming blocks away. I won't go into other things about him I've heard from other neighbors - let's just say everyone was glad when he left. In short, the owners got divorced in late 2008/early 2009 and she left the house. Kyle eventually walked away from the house at the start of last summer. The property sat vacant for a few months and then some shady characters moved in around August of last year. At first I wasn't sure if they were squatters. It turned out that they were friends of Kyle.

At this point things started to get weird. I noticed that lights were on the middle of the night, I wasn't sure they had the heat turned on, and they were piling all of their trash on the side of the house. What pushed me over the edge was the increase in unique traffic outside the house, usually for only a few minutes at a time. People would show up, be inside for a few minutes, and then leave empty handed. I assumed that he was dealing drugs - hopefully just weed and not cooking up meth or something else. At any rate, I didn't want to get directly involved if these really were shady characters. Eventually, the trash pile got so large that I was able to take some action and ding them on a "technicality" and to send a message. I typed up an anonymous letter asking them to move the trash "or else" and slipped it under their door mat. They didn't do anything about it so I contacted the city and a day or two later what looked like a policeman (code enforcement?) showed up, knocked on their door, and posted a notice. A week or two later they hauled away the trash. The trash wasn't so much an issue for me as letting them know they were being watched and that they couldn't just do whatever they wanted. For example, one morning I woke up and saw they had left a King Soopers shopping cart in their front yard. All this time, since the beginning of the year, I had been tracking license plate numbers and vehicle descriptions. Over the course of 3 months (December to February) I recorded about 25 different cars coming and going...about 2 a week from just what I saw. Of course, since I wasn't home all the time I'm sure a missed a lot of them. Later on I found out that other neighbors had noticed the same thing and had also suspected something going on.

The shady guys left a month or so after I reported them - around March. Since then, no one has been living there. I don't know what really happened, but I'd like to think it was because they knew they were being watched. In reality, it was probably that the house was pending foreclosure and that they needed to get out before that time. Well, at the beginning of August the house went up for auction and no one bought it (not surprisingly). Wells Fargo took possession of the house on August 11 (I have a realtor source) and today someone showed up to change the locks and start the clean up process. The curtains were taken down and I peeked inside after the guy left. In addition to a few items left behind, a big water bong had been left on the kitchen counter. I still think they were using other stuff too though. The good news is that the house looks in reasonably good shape. It's really true - from the time of the first missed payment the entire foreclosure process takes about a year to complete.

My hope is that someone decent ends up buying the house and moving in - ideally, a family. My wish is that it'll be someone who will keep their yard clean and green since it's what we have to look at. At the very least, for my and all the other families (many with small children) sake, we're just glad that we're finally rid of these shady characters.

The Game Plan

Now that I've had a couple of weeks off and some time to talk through things with Stacey, it's pretty clear to me that taking some time off was a good decision. On one end of the spectrum, I've been able to do things like clean and vacuum the mud from May 2009 out of my truck. On the other end of the spectrum, I've been able to spend a lot of time with Julia and grab coffee and go for walks with Stacey. Amazingly enough, I seem to have time for everything. Due to our "low overhead" position, Stacey's salary is going to be able to cover our month to month expenses including insurance. So, we could probably do this for quite a long time if we wanted.

The good news for everyone is that we aren't planning on doing this for an extended period of time. The plan right now is for me to take about 6 months off and then to start looking for a job. Around March 1 I'll hit the streets. If it takes 6 weeks or 6 months to find another job then that's just bonus time with the family. In the meantime, I'm going to stay busy with the family, playing soccer, and am going to tackle the last remaining indoor project on my list: crown molding. Oh, and GT5 comes out in November, so I've got plenty of things to keep me busy during the winter in addition to the holidays.

Most likely I will look for a military contractor position (like my neighbor's job). Really, I can't think of another job that I would be better qualified for and that would pay as much. You see, if I got a job like my neighbor (I have more experience and education then he did) then we could meet our financial goals very fast. Specifically, we could pay off our house in about 3 years. Also, that would give us options for Stacey's job too. If all goes according to plan, by the time Jonathan starts kindergarten we should be debt free and have a full time stay at home Mom.

We've had a lot of fun talking about our future these past few weeks. It's great to finally see our hard work, discipline, and blessings about to pay off.

The Family Handyman

For my birthday Michelle gave me a subscription to the "The Family Handyman". Believe it or not, the last issue I received in the mail addressed a repair project I was going to tackle in Julia's bathroom.

The linoleum was starting to peel up from the tub. This seems to be a common problem. Builders (or installers) take the linoleum all the way up to the tub and just glue it and caulk it down. Over time, water inevitably falls over the edge and causes the linoleum to peel back. Short of a major project involving new linoleum or putting in tile, the easiest/cheapest/simplest solution is to put some more caulk over the area and hope for the best. That was my initial idea.

That doesn't really sound like a long term solution nor effective. It's shocking to learn that a little bit of caulk isn't enough to hold down peeling linoleum (sarcasm added). The magazine recommended gluing a very expensive piece of corian over the area and caulking the seams. Instead, I picked up a $10 piece of nylon quarter-round at Home Depot and nailed it to the sub-floor. I caulked the seams and now have an attractive, cheap, and sealed edge that should last for a long time.