Kitchen!

Well it's finally that time. There looks like actual there might be a kitchen in the near future. The floor is done, the walls are painted, the cabinets are put together, the plumbing is in. In the last week I have gotten two blessings from the heavens (and hard work by Mike and Dad) I have a temporary sink and a running dishwasher! It's the most amazing thing to be able to rinse a dish off without struggling. And even more amazing is the ability to put the dish in the dishwasher and not have to look at it! I LOVE IT! I've put some pictures below and will try to get some of what it looks like right now with the cabinets in. We are currently shopping for a new stove and trying to decide upon counter top. Can't wait...

I have been on a serious hiatus, so an update for you:

We had a lovely holiday and then vacation to Florida with the whole Moore clan. Disney with Samone, Joe and Walker, not to mention Mike was a blast! Pictures below. The camera died for good on vacation and we have decided on a shiny new one that we will order soon. I'm in my second semester of Portuguese and all is going well so far. Mike was rather happy to have been successful in his hunting endeavors. He got two does on the last day of the season. We have venison in our freezer for this year, yum!

The next item on the docket is the next Make & Freeze. This time there are 14 people participating. Wow! Hopefully it goes just as well as last time or better.

I also am beginning planning for a little birthday celebration for Mr. Keenan. Waiting for the big anniversary as well! Can't believe it's been a whole year. Busy busy....

December & January

In November, the snow starts to fly, piling up ankle high.

Come December, it's up to your knee, still a bride's a bride-to-be. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

Thanksgiving in Ohio was great. It was a long and late drive down on Wednesday night, but nice to be able to ride along to Cleveland on Thursday. Thanksgiving dinner at the Stephenson's was full of fun, love and excitement. The excitement came in two types, firstly Nick and Juli are PREGNANT! Secondly, Aunt Debbi and Uncle Bob brought all kinds of glass and pottery to give away! It was so much fun. The goats and chickens weren't far behind, supplying eggs and chevre cheese to the masses.

The rest of the weekend was filled with a visit to the Zoo to see the "Wild Lights", over 3 million lights were up. It was so neat to see all the animals taking naps, or in some cases with the nocturnal ones, up and about! We also had an early sibling Christmas as we will all be apart this year. I got a fantastic salt and pepper shaker set from Patricia that were chicken feet! I love them. Also Christy and Doug found the most gorgeous butterfly pin for me in New Orleans. Mike got a great jacket from Christy and Doug as well. Momma and Poppa Keenan will be running the roads to visit all of us for individual Christmas celebrations this year. We're up first with a December 15-16 Keenan Christmas.

My first Portuguese class is almost over. I have done pretty well I think. Eu fala português muito bom! Can't wait to have a break though. Have a lot to catch up on, including working in the kitchen.

The kitchen re-modeling is coming along, slowly but surely. We have most of the floorboards replaced and are going to have to order filler in bulk to fill all the cracks and holes! I am taking a day off on Monday, so I can have 3 days to refinish the floor. Hopefully, I get it all done!

Lastly, I organized the 3rd successful Make & Freeze. The menu was 10 dishes. With many more people than last time. 12 different people were making all or some of the dishes! And from experience I can tell you shopping for that amount of food isn't easy. It also draws a lot of odd looks and questions when you pile 45 lbs of brisket and 30 lbs of ground turkey in a cart that is already full!

Well the camera is back in semi-working order. Check out the new pictures... the album also includes pictures from our October Columbus Zoo visit courtesy of Momma K.

Zoo & Thanksgiving 2007

Another Month Nearly Gone

The year seems to be flying by because we still haven't slowed down yet. November brought about a very lovely birthday weekend for me. I got some great presents for my blooming little farm. A cute new egg basket, books on keeping dairy goats and backyard chickens were all exciting additions to my book shelf. I also got gorgeous new black pearl earrings from my wonderful husband! We had a nice quiet night out with friends and shared family birthday dinner the next night.

The floorboards have arrived for the kitchen! Mike and I have gotten some work done on the floors, but it has been slow indeed. We are doing the best we can with the time we have. Hopefully once I finish my Portuguese class for the semester we can get the floor wrapped up. And move on to cabinets. Kitchens are definitely hard projects.

This week we will traveling down to Ohio for Thanksgiving with the Keenan's, Dodd's and Stephenson's. I can smell the turkey and pie already and cannot wait to see everyone again.

We finally weened Bell from milk drinking. We are now milking 2 times a day and with all the excess milk our cheese making is hitting new highs! Our second experimentation with Chevre was an absolute success. We also made another batch of feta and plan on making more chevre today to take down to Ohio with us. I also tried my first round of cottage cheese. Not quite sure how that turned out yet. I think that once we taste it tonight it will definitely need some tweaking. I will have to get pictures of all our beautiful cheese up here soon.

Excited for the long weekend! New pictures below.......

11/19/2007

October is nearly gone

October is nearly gone and I haven't written a thing! Well here is an update, late as always.

On the good news side of life: the big transaction I was spending millions of hours on at work has completed! I have definitely learned a lot from this first multi-million deal. Can't wait to do another! (well maybe in a year or so)

The new chickens are laying eggs. We have went from 5 eggs a day to an average of 13!

Vernors is accidentally pregnant! Almost as unexpected as Bell & Heineken upon their arrival. Apparently those that quoted me the 3 month mark for bucklings to be able to reproduce, WERE WRONG! Also, I would like to quell the idea that does go into heat in late October. That also IS WRONG! hehe. Oh well, new kids are coming our way in January-or-so.

The kitchen has not been moving too quickly. But, we may have found boards that we can use to fix our 100 year old floor. Very exciting news, to me! Also Mike has started some of the plumbing deconstruction. One of these days, we'll get there.

On the bad news front: the saddest item I have to share is the loss of Heineken. Unfortunately, he got a urinary track blockage and ended up bursting his urethra. It was a very sad day when we took him to the vet and he had to be put down. I'm a little shook up and I have to admit panicky about the new "little Heinekens" on the way. Just worried that I could lose another one little one and that makes me sad. Heineken and his cute jumping skills will be missed very much.

Thankfully the only other bad news I have is the death of our camera. Silver Lake and the sand, I think, has done it in. So, that means no new pictures! It has been with Best Buy for 3 weeks. I will not start my rant and rave on how ridiculous that is, let's just say that I am frustrated and Best Buy will not be seeing anymore business from us!

Off to Columbus this weekend to visit Mom & Dad Keenan and hopefully, weather permitting, a zoo visit.

Fall is coming...

Fall is coming, well maybe it is already here and I'm in denial, but oh well. I'm not really ready for Fall and all of it's pretty leaves and crisp mornings.

On one of our last super warm weekends, we were fortunate enough to be able to take advantage of it. A fantastic trip to Silver Lake was in store for us last weekend and it definitely turned out to be just that.

Three buggies went up to the dunes and all three came back. To our surprise, not really broken at all. We had such a nice time with Brett, Jeanna, Renee and Will. Can't wait to get the dune buggy tuned up even more and head back up next summer.

We also have squeezed in some work on the kitchen in the last few weeks. Check out the progress with the Silver Lake pictures.

Another adventure this weekend as all of the planning I have been doing for the Make & Freeze group is going to test & tune. We have the first Make & Freeze (where a group of us get together, make a bunch of meals that we can then put into the freezer for future use) this Saturday. I'm excited that it will cut down on the food prep time in our busy household. Plus it will be a fun day!

Silver Lake 2007

Auntie - Nephew Trip 2007

Well, after a small amount of contemplation, I decided that of course I love my nephews as much as my niece. I concluded that in fact I wanted to do a trip with the boys as well. We had a great time this last weekend taking a trip to the Pigeon River Country State Forest Area in northern Michigan. Here is a link to the beautiful area, Pigeon River Country Association.

We had a very adventuresome weekend. We camped at Pickerel Lake. A very nice "rustic" campground. The lake was pretty and Sunday morning Walker and I spotted two loons. Saturday we went on an ambitious 6 mile hike on the Shingle Mill Pathway. It was about 2 miles too long for my companion hikers. After many breaks and one shortcut we made it. We encountered only a little of the wildlife, but we did see many signs of them. I did a very excellent job of not looking terrified when I realized that I was in 99,000 acres of wilderness with two small boys and lots of bears. (See the picture of the bear track! We saw a lot of them. Yikes!) Sunday was filled more hiking and swimming. It was a terrific weekend.

This week will be filled with lots of work on the kitchen. I will definitely post some new pictures soon, because we have walls again!! Hooray for the drywall.

Auntie - Nephew Trip 2007

Kitchen Progress!!

Well the kitchen just might get done one day. We had a big weekend of demolition thanks to our great friends, Nate and Denise. They were an enormous help in the major undertaking of busting out all the plaster & lath walls. Hopefully we can get the re-wiring done next week and then it's time for drywall!!

Check the pictures!

Kitchen Re-Modeling