The House!

Some of you may know that we've been involved in a very long and drawn out house closing process. Well we will finally be closing on the 9th! The house was just shy of foreclosure which makes all negotiations take twice as long since the sellers bank also had to be involved in everything, and apparently they make decisions by committee. If you're wondering if we need anything to help fill up our new home you'll find "the list" after all the pictures. If you're thinking gee I sure wish I had a home improvement project for the 10-11th you can come help with some of ours. If you're thinking man I'd do just about anything for some free pizza, you're in luck again because that's what you'll get if you help us move on the 17th.


The front

The back
you can just see the edge of the basket ball court (hopefully to be destroyed and replaced by a veggie garden at some point in the future) Moira is modeling the deck and gazebo. The house has two sliders situated about 4ft apart. I guess one just wasn't enough?

front door

living room. The fire place appears to have never had a fire in it. Unfortunatly the place has electric forced air heat so we hope to replace that with gas once we have more $$ and to supplement that with either a stove insert in the fireplace or adding an addtional wood stove in the large family room which you'll see in a bit.

The family room. While it doesn't look that big in the picture this room is quite large and will house all of Moira's toys.

The garage has been conveted into two rooms. Their mostly finished, but there's no heat in this part of the house.

The kitchen is in between the dining room and the family room. We've decided to put the dining room table in the dining area rather than the dining room because we don't think we'll ever use it if it's relegated to its own room. Of course that leaves us with a silly empty room right off the living room, but we'll figure something out.

Moira inspects the cabinets

THE LIST

If you see a good deal on craigslist or know anyone looking to get rid of any of the following let us know!

Need to have

help updating the breaker box (if you're interested I'll send you the inspetion report)

respirator

washer/dryer done, yeah for craigslist

lawn mower and weed eater

a few light fixtures

curtains for downstairs (I'm making these so Jo-annes coupons and gift cards or sewing help would rock)

mini blinds for upstairs

extension ladder

regular ladder

Nice to have . . .

100 yellow daffodils, and any other flower bulbs

book shelves x3

oak stereo cabinet with door (to keep little fingers away from the buttons)

wheel barrow

Trick or Treat!

Awww. . . the cutest little pirate

This year Moira was initiated in to the time honored tradition of mooching candy off of complete strangers. We started out the evening with a trip to Microsoft for the company halloween party. They had lots of stuff for the kids and the theme this year was pirates, so Moira fit right in. We followed that up with a couple of trips to the neighbors and called it a night.

Aren't I Cute

Moira has discovered she gets lots of attention if she prances around in her fancy hat. Hopefully this will carry over into actually wearing it outside. Other than that I'm off for a weekend of flyball. Of course I'll enjoy the freedom of being away from home for the weekend, but because of baby #2 I wont be able to take full advantage of a weekend to myself. I'll be continuing my judges training, and will still need to find one more tournament with the correct level of supervising judge to complete the first phase. This unfortunately is not as easy as it sounds and I might have to travel out of state. Luckily they have said I can have a 6month maternity leave since newborns and flyball don't mix particularly well.

Toddler School

I thought I'd post some pictures from Moira's school so everyone could see exactly what all she gets to do. There's basically two groups of kids in the class, a bunch that just turned 2 and some the same age as Moira. Moira's very busy and independent, she doesn't really bother with me much and just does her own thing while we're there.

The master at her craft

Moira's absolute favorite thing to do at school is paint. She makes a bee-line for that area and stays there for at least 30min. I have bought her some paints for at home, but I haven't been brave enough to get them out.

Other fun things include the slide . . .

. . . and the teeter-totter.

If you ever need to be the pied piper of toddlers I strongly recomend bubbles, lots and lots of bubbles. The kids drop whatever they are doing and come running when the teacher puts on the bubble song!

In addition to all this there's some snackin' and singing. The best part is that Moira always takes a HUGE nap after school!

potatoes and pumpkins

We headed out to a pumpkin patch as part of a "family activity" for Moira's toddler group. Moira wasn't terribly impressed with the pumkins, but she had fun clowning around with dad and petting the goat.

Moira's favorite toy right now is a potato. She has three of them, but one potato in particular is her favorite. She carts it around all day in a measuring cup or bucket. She decided to have a nice snuggle with it this morning.

Moira's a pot head and other cute pics

People these days . . .

So Moira and I had a pretty exciting morning. Some of you may remember that I had fainting spells when I was pregnant with Moira. I had thought I'd avoided them this time since I'd been feeling fine, but that was not the case. After cruising around Fred Meyer for 30min I got really dizzy in the checkout line. As soon as I was done paying I took Moira out of the cart and sat on the floor just past the checkout. As soon as I felt a little better I decided to move to a bench so I didn't look quite so odd. Well next thing I knew I woke up laying on the bench and Moira was gone. Luckily she had only gone about 10 feet away to mess with the toy vending machines, but it was pretty scary.

Now granted I should have told someone I wasn't feeling well, but I was within 3 ft of 2 different employees and countless other people. I figured if I actually passed out someone would come to my aid. Well not one person even asked if I was ok. There was one woman who gave me a bit of a double take as I was getting up, but didn't offer any help. Now I could see someone thinking I was a bit odd and just taking a bit of a catnap but the toddler roaming around w/o supervision should have clued them in a little. Anyway that's my rant for the day! I'm feeling fine now and Nick's going to come home early so I can rest. Hopefully this will pass soon as it did with Moira.

Toddler School

Well Moira has started school. She goes for a couple of hours once a week. She had her third class today, and seems to really enjoy it. It's basically two hours of total chaos with some singing and art projects. Oddly enough I get college credit for it:) Not that I'll ever have any use for it, but I find it amusing that I can earn college credit by watching Moira paint. One of the many nice things about it is that she gets to do art projects that we would never do at home . . . here's her latest masterpiece.

Fickle Landlords

Well last monday our landlord called to say they were selling the place and we had to be out by the end of october. We immediately went into crisis mode. . . for those of you who don't know our family is going to get a little bigger in April. This only added to feeling that we really had to get things together in a short amount of time unless we wanted to rent for another year. So we now have appts with loan officers throughout the week and a realtor and we spent all labor day packing. Well today my landlord informed me that they are not selling and we don't have to move. While relieved I was pretty pissed. You'd think you would be sure of your decision before you told your tenants they were out on the street. Since we've already started packing and we'll need another bedroom anyway we've decided to forge ahead in the home buying direction. Now fortunately we can take our time and don't have the same sense of urgency. We'd like to see what prices are going to do in the next couple of months. We've already seen several of the houses we were interested in sitting on the market for months and then lowering the price 20k or more. People are starting to realize they just can't get inflated prices anymore. I'll keep everyone updated on baby #2 and house prospects!

Tagged

Here's a little game that Amy passed on . . .

RULES - Post rules before giving the facts - Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves - People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules - At the end of your post you need to tag six people and list their names - Leave them a comment on their blog, telling them they have been tagged and not to forget to read yours.

1. When I was a freshman in highschool I loved the cure. In fact the first cd I ever bought was standing on the beach staring at the sea. Of course by my senior year I'd sold them all off to the used cd shop, but to this day I can still easily sing along with any cure song on the radio.

2. I was in Air Force Jr ROTC in highschool. I was pretty in to it for a couple of years. I attended 2 summer leadership schools. In one I ranked 10th out of 500 in another I was 2nd out of about 300. In addition to this I was the Honor Guard Commander aka. sabre team I was smallest and only female member of the team. A glorious military career thrown aside . . . I'm the one on the right.

3. I often daydream about the fall of human civilization. Regardless of the cause I know exactly what stores I would loot and what supplies I would collect first. So whether we are faced with a cataclysmic natural disaster or zombies take over the city I'll be prepared. This also carries over to my friends . . . I realized some time ago that I categorize people into two groups. Those that could survive the apocalypse and those that would perish.

4. I really love my dog. I mean REALLY. I think she's beautiful and I could watch her run all day. I take pride in the fact that someone else threw her out and I have trained her to be a champion. Pretty much everyone else hates Kess. She's very hyper and needy, so I guess she's lucky she found me!

5. I have horrible eyesight . . . I'm a devout contact wearer so very few people have ever seen me in my glasses. I actually got a hip pair in Capitol Hill after we moved to Seattle so I don't mind them as much, but generally I only wear them when I'm sick. I'm too blind to get the eye surgery so until science advances enough I'm stuck with my contacts.

6. I take a ridiculous amount of pictures. Most of them are of Moira or Kess. It's very hard to delete pictures of you're baby. As if to say that she wasn't cute enough at some particular moment and therefore it warrants the trash bin.

7. I'm a tv addict. While we don't have cable we do have rabbit ears and in Seattle that gets you all the major channels and PBS. I've also discovered most of the shows I like are online now. I could watch tv for hours on end. Luckily this summer I've been able to read instead of watching quite so much tv. I go through 1-2 books a week. Thank goodness for libraries.

8. I wanted to come up with something really spectacular for the last one, but I can't. So here's several quick random facts. I was born in Vredenburg, South Africa. I grew up in Texas. I played the violin for 5 years, but stopped when we moved and my new school didn't have an orchestra. I like putting videos on youtube . . . I check them often for comments and to see how many views they've gotten http://youtube.com/user/tombiericson1. It took me 10 years to get a degree in Biology with an emphasis in Zoology, and I don't think it will ever get me a job. I guess that's all. I don't really have anyone to tag but my sister Nicola Liebsch.

Kess and I kick some tail

Kess and I competed in the Northwest Regional Disc Dog Championship. The top dogs from 7 states converged in Mountlake Terrace, WA to compete for invitations to worlds. We took first place in both Novice Distance and Accuracy and Team Distance and Accuracy. It was super fun and I achieved my highest score ever with Kess making 9 out of 10 catches. In addition to this I have arranged for another competitor to "borrow" Kess. Since I'm super busy I just can't keep up with everything Kess is good at Kess will train and compete with my friend Aaron for the next year. He has been a world finalist with his dog Leo. Unfortunately his dog is getting older and is ready to retire from constant competition. So it's pretty much a match made in heaven. I get more time and he gets a dog he can compete with. While I may come back to frisbee some time in the future having a dog activity every weekend during the summer was getting to be a bit much.

http://picasaweb.google.com/tombi.ericson/NWRegionals2007

I'll have my people call your people . . .

Moira has started to play pretend a little and spends a lot of time mimicking everything Nick and I do. It's pretty amusing to hear her babble at Kess in an stern tone when I'm getting after her for not listening. Nick's doing what he can to encourage Moira that dogs are no good, but he's fighting a losing battle. Moira is infatuated with animals and loves nothing more than to go to frisbee with me on wed night, as there are several dogs that like kids and she gets to hug and kiss them to her hearts content. Kess still pretty much wants nothing to do with her, and aside from the occasional snuffle and lick avoids her like the plague.

Mmmmm. . . . Nectarines

A day at grandma and grandpas

We managed to squeeze in a visit to Keron and Ross's during our weekend in Bellingham. As an added bonus Kip and Nonnie were in town. It was great to spend a little time with everyone and it was especially nice for Moira. As usual she turned on the charm . . .

Dave and Nicole tie the knot

We were up in Bellingham over the weekend to attend Dave and Nicoles wedding. The ceremony and reception were held in a beautiful location right off of the Nooksack river. Their vows were lovely and there was hardly a dry eye in the place. It was really wonderful to be a part of such an important day in our two friends lives. You can find more pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/tombi.ericson/5aug07wedding

Mmmmm. . . Berries

Strawberries have proven to be one of Moira's favorite foods. I actually have to avoid them in the grocery store because she starts screeching if she sees them and does not relent until I pitch some in the cart and give her a few to work on as we finish shopping. I guess there's worse things she could throw a tantrum about!

Cuteness Update

We had an action packed week while dada was away. Here's som silliness from just before he left. Everyday was a new adventure. Most of our fun was geared towards staying cool. We played in the sand, went swimming, played in the sprinklers, went to Grandpa Deans birthday, and went to sheep herding. I'm glad Nick's back so that everyone will quit worrying about me sitting at home alone. I'm worn out and ready for a couple of days of nothing.

Does This Diaper Make My Butt Look BIG?

Our deck has turned out to be the best spot to spend the long hot days. Thanks to the greenbelt behind us there's only sun on the deck from about 12-2. While I see this as a huge disadvantage most of the time its been a blessing the last few days. Moira spends most of her time pulling all of the flowers off the plants and sticking them in her little bucket, which she hauls around for a good portion of the day. She also has a little wheelbarrow that she likes to load up with toys and cart around. We filled up Moira's little pool and she's pretty sure it's only there to throw things in to. She's less enthusiastic about actually getting in it, and would much rather that I retieve her toys for her when they've drifted to the center.


In addition to hucking everything into the pool that's not nailed down Moira has figured out how to climb on to the couch, recliner, and coffee table. As a result we've had to raise our child proofing efforts another two feet. Pretty soon we'll be out of spots to put things she shouldn't get in to.

Four Generations of Fiesty Women

My Grandmother (and Moira's Great Grandmother) Anne has been in town for the last couple of weeks. She's headed back to South Africa today and had just enough time to stop for one last visit and to get a photo of four generations of our family! Luckily we had several cameras available and managed to figure out the time delay feature on one and between Judy's lens and tripod and my camera we managed a functional set-up.

It was great to get to spend time with my grandmother, and the only thing that could have made it better was if Nicola (my sister) could have been here as well. Well I take that back, it looks like I could use a hair cut. Nicola has actually just returned from a huge trip including several countries in Africa and Europe, and I can't wait to hear about all of her travels. It's always great to spend time with you're family and have the chance to see a little of yourself in someone else.