6 months down...

So my Mom insisted that we have a photo session this week to document mine and Avery's progress. It was probably a good idea. We're both growing rapidly as you can see! I know a few others have been waiting for a new pic as well. Just know the only time you will ever see photos of me with my shirt up is with the preggo belly! All day today she has been very active. Her most active times are after I eat and when I sit down to rest. Gavin was able to finally feel the kicks from the outside tonight which was great. He seemed very excited, he has been waiting to feel her for several weeks. Anyway, this weekend we will be tackling the roof, so we'll be sure to take some after photos so everyone who isn't already coming over to help can see the difference.

2nd Ultrasound

Well we had our second ultrasound this morning. They measured the baby's head, heart, spine, kidney and much more. They tell us that... ITS legs and arm were a week ahead of schedule for length, which means it will be a long baby. I guess that means that... IT inherited some of my height. We saw cute little feet and hands and of course the sex!!! The pictures below show the following profile, arm and head, foot and lastly sex.

The Three lines the mouse pointer is pointing to indicate that SHE is a girl!!!! Her name is Avery Grace Stone!!

Happy Birthday to our first Baby!

Sydney turned 2 years old today! She has officially graduated from puppyhood, although she doesn't act like it. Like last year, we decided to give her a cupcake of her own to celebrate. She is looking up in the picture, waiting for permission to pounce! She took the cupcake down on the lawn, paper and all and started munching. She seemed confused by the paper, but when Gavin went to remove it, she grabbed it fast, like it was being taken away and ate it all up!

Growing, Growing, and more

Be careful what you wish for! Just about a month ago, I remember saying how I felt awkwardly pregnant, that I just looked chubby. It is a different story now! And this is only at 19 weeks, big Mommy or big Baby....maybe both!! We find out the baby's sex on May 16th!! We cannot wait. We're still leaning towards it being a boy, but don't really care either way. We would love to hear others guesses as well!

And here is a picture of the Happy Daddy, who is still waiting to be able to feel the baby kick! He/She kicks its Mom all the time now!

HEY! IT"S PAUL BUNYON!!

Oh, no wait, nevermind, its just Gavin! Chopping us some firewood for camping this summer. Check out my big, burly man of a husband:-)

Cutting down!

Gabby came over to help Gavin start the tree removal process. They had to first cut all the braches off with a hatchet and hand saw!

Then our wonderful neighbor Mahfuz came over to volunteer his chainsaw and services in cutting down the remaining portion of the tree. He also brought a friend with him to help. It took Gavin and the two of them several hours to cut the tree into pieces. The stump however, remains in place until we can rent a stump grinder.

The Storm!!

We didn't fare so well from the storm on April 16th! We had a huge spruce tree fall down in the yard. We were very lucky that it decided to fall directly in between houses without damage caused. I was sitting inside and heard this thunderous "THUMP!!" I went and looked out the window and there sat the 20ish foot tall tree. It kinda scared me, so I called Gavin at work and he assured me to just stay inside and I would be fine! I did have to venture out a couple of times to pick up shingles that had blown loose from the roof, it took some pretty good damage from all that wind. Luckily insurance is helping us to repair that, so any roofing volunteers are welcome! Posted above are pictures of the fallen tree!

And then there were three

For those of you who may not already know, there will soon be a new addition to the household!! By the picture I'm sure you have already guessed... We're having a baby!!!! The baby is due date is Sept 29. I have a funny feeling it will be a boy, but of course we will be thrilled whichever it ends up being. We wont get to find out for sure what it is until May. For now these pictures will have to be enough.

Presto Chango

Well maybe it is not quite as good as new but its a hell of a lot better then it was. Two weekends ago My father-in-law and I worked to repair my smashed up front end. He had the great money saving idea of doing it ourselves. It worked out better then I could have hoped. I ended up costing less then $400. I think it could have cost significantly more had we had it done professionaly. All the lights work, so thats good. We'll find out this friday if the job was good enough for it to pass inspection

Renovations

Here is the finished product of our renovations. The bathroom was in shambles for about a month while the slow transformation was taking place. We didn't have a toilet or sink in there for all that time. I just reinstaled them yesterday. Our downstairs half bath is in a little drafty part of the house so it was particularly fun on those cold nights to get up and go way downstairs to use the facilities. Now I can concentrate my attention on getting my car fixed.

Bathroom remodeling

Well I am picking up my bathroom project again. I changed out the bathtub and got a new toilet a while back. After having looked at my ugly bathroom for long enough I decided I needed to tare the rest of the walls down and get the darn process over with. I had to take the sheet rock down because there were these ugly pink tiles making a half wall. When you take them down it messes up the rest of the sheet rock. I also decided to pull up the laminate. I'm trying to decide if I want to pull up the subfloor to and start with a fresh new subfloor. Anyway the process was pains taking. I had to be careful not to damage the ceiling while removing the wall and it created a lot of dust which cokes you out and gets all over the house even with the door shut. Hopefully I can have new sheet rock up within a couple of weeks. I'm going to have Tim, the guy who built my deck, do the sheetrock because he'll be able to do it without leaving any seams showing. While he is putting up the sheetrock I will also have him install a replacement window. Since the bathroom is gutted it is the ideal time to replace that. Later on down the line I'll replace the rest of the windows in the house to match. After Tim is done with the sheetrock and the window, Melissas dad will help me put the tile floor down.

latest crack up

The picture speaks for itself... I'll get it fixed as soon as I can

See story below

Look closely there's blood on the glass from an injured tale

Three squirrel's, one on top of the other

The flew

two squirrels, again one on top of the other

One Squirrel

Holy Squirrels!!!

Well we had a little excitement this past weekend. On Saturday morning long after I had gotten up and headed off to work, Melissa was sitting in the living room having a morning cup of coffee, watching the news, and enjoying a leisurely start to a nice weekend. She had no idea what was about to start a new episode of drama in our house. Squirrels!!! Apparently there was a change of cast this year, instead of Santa coming down the chimney it was a pack of squirrels and they came a week early. Melissa heard some chattering and an occasional bark coming from the chimney and soon the dog, Sydney, also became aware. It did not take long to realize that it wasn't coming from outside but actually from within the chimney.

When I came home that night she had already informed me of our house guests or guest... at this point we thought there was only one! I opened the trap door to the flew hoping that he would eventually come down into the fireplace where they would be trapped behind the glass. The weekend went by and he did not emerge but continued to chatter from within. Each night after work, I went up on the roof to shine a light down the chimney on to my little menacing, uninvited guest. Sunday night my father in law and I made some failed attempts to extract the invador. Finally Monday came and I had a day off and with it an opportunity to solve this vermin infestation once and for all.

Dana, Melissa's uncle called and came to my rescue around 10am. He showed me that it was possible to remove the trap door. This proved to be the key. With the trap door removed I could finally see the little bastard's and it was then that I realized that there was not one, nor two, but three squirrels living in the chimney.

After several unsuccessful attempts to remove them including a home made net, poking and prodding with sticks, shovels, tennis rackets and trowels it became clear that there was only one way to remove them witch was to roll up our sleeves put on work gloves and reach up there and pull them out kick and screaming by hand!!

This was not an easy task. Being it my house and there for my responsibility to defend, as Dana pointed out on several occasions I was the lucky person who got to go after them. I reached up, grabbed the little bastard from the back of the neck pulled him down and stuffed him into a trash can we had positioned in the fireplace. We then put a lid on it and carried him out side and freed him. He instantly took off and up a tree. This sounds like it was smooth but it was quite a challenge. After helping me removing the first son-of-a-bitch-squirrel Dana had to leave. This left me to deal with two now very angry unhappy barking hissing growling squirrels. I took a break to allow them to calm down. An hour or so later I went in again after the second squirrel. This squirrel came out much as the first only luck was on my side and he did not put up much of a struggle and was relatively easy to remove.

After such success with the first two squirrels I went after the third, perhaps with little false confidence in myself. I pulled him loose from his perch and went to put him in the can. He fought like a son of a gun and I dropped him. Pulling my hands out of the fireplace I slammed the door shut. At this point I realized that he was a little faster than I had been. He was on my side of the fireplace door. He ran off into the living room and started scaling the drapes and attempting to head butt his way out the dining room window. I ran into the kitchen opened the back door and was able to finally shoo him out the back door after he knocked over a pile of cds and books. Just as he disappeared up a tree Melissa opened the front door. This was good timing. If she had come home a moment earlier with the squirrel still running though the house I'm not sure how she would have reacted.
Needless to say, we will soon be installing a chimney cap to eliminate the possibility of future invadements.

Baby Leo's Shower

This past weekend we had a baby shower/tea for Donna and Greg's soon to be son, Leo. I don't think anyone took pictures, which stinks, so I just posted a recent picture of me and Donna. We had a nice time, and Leo will not have to wear the same outfit twice for a while:-) Donna's doctors are predicting he will be arriving fairly soon. We can't wait to meet him, it's been a while since there has been a baby around!

The Endless Task....

We have spent a lot of time raking leaves this fall, and we're not quite done. These pictures are from about a week ago. We put all the gardens to bed which you can see behind the shot of Sydney. Oh, and don't let the non action picture of me fool you, I helped rake too!

It's a little late for Halloween...

We had a great Halloween this year. I posted the pumpkin we carved together. Sorry for the lack of creativity with the face, we could have done way better. Sydney is also there with the pumpkin in her possessed dog costume complete with glowing eyes! We had tons of Trick or Treaters, they're so cute in their costumes. Gavin and I sat inside and drank martini's and had a nice dinner, so we got our treats too!

Blueberry Bushes

Melissa and I went on a drive after she got home from work today. We ended up buying two Blueberry bushes at Broadway Gardens. When we got home we pulled up all the Marigolds (don't worry Dad I saved a bunch of seeds for you), and planted the new bushes. At the advice of my Dad I raked a pile of pine needles up from the next door neighbor's yard... they've moved and won't be missing their needles. According to Dad the needles will add acidity to the soil over the winter and Blueberry bushes do best with acidic soil. That make sense to me if you think about it the places where you find wild blueberries growing is often in woodsy areas.

Two Lives, One Path

Melissa and I went to the Wedding of Nikki and Matt Duplisea this past Saturday at St Patrick's Church. The wedding was lovely. It was the first wedding we've gone to since our own wedding and the reception was also at the Italian Heritage Center. Their Wedding party was huge in comparison to ours (compare the two) . We found it challenging to organize our wedding with only 4 brides maids and groomsmen. They had 10 of each! We wish them well on there trip to Italy and on all their years together to come.

Fryeburg Fair

On Monday Oct 2nd Melissa and I went to the Fryeburg Fair. I had never been before. Monday was Woodsman's day. They had a bunch of contests like a race to chop a 10x10 timber in half with an axe. The winner did it in like less than 30 seconds. I think it would have taken me all day. There were also a lot of farm animals, horses, cows, pigs, sheep, etc. Those work horses are a lot bigger than you realize. Their ass is like 6 feet tall. We also got italian sausages, fries, fried dough. We didn't buy any real souveniers... It gets expensive just to go. We brought the camera but in the end didn't take many pictures. Here's a scenic view near where we parked the car. Fryeburg looks like a beutiful place to live, half an hour from where Melissa grew up. I don't know if I could stand the commute though.