Exciting Events

We had a great time this past weekend traveling to Charlottesville to attend our friends Randall and Kristen's wedding. In addition to the wedding, we were able to fit in a visit with both our parents and Chip got to have a mini vacation too at my parents house (thanks again for watching him!) The beautiful wedding was in the Chapel where we got married, which is always fun to go back to and we got to hang out with some old friends who it was great to catch up with! Here are a few highlights...

Jim and I outside at Farmington during cocktail hour

The bride and groom arrive

Cindy and Cristina

Friends since living in the same dorm our first year!

Cindy and Cristina with the groom Randall

And in other news...our kitchen cabinets came yesterday!!! We aren't ready to install them yet, but its pretty exciting to have them anyway! We are off to another out of town wedding this weekend, but hope to really get down to business with the kitchen when we get back.

Lots of cabinets in the dining room and kitchen!

Jim with one of the upper cabinets

Goodbye for now from Chip!

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

We finally made it to the new Nationals stadium last night for a game and we had a blast! We took my dad too as his birthday present and even though the Nats lost, he still had a great time. Jim was happy since the Mets won. And I was just glad it was an exciting game...the Mets won 9-7 and there were 5 home runs! The stadium is really pretty and has a lot to offer...hopefully we'll make it to more games next year.

Here's some highlights from the evening....they were celebrating "1/2 way to St. Patty's Day" (who knew that was a holiday??) So we got free green Nats hats and everything was decked out in green (including Screech)!

A view of the field from our seats (I think that's David Wright at bat)

Screech and Cindy

Another view of the field

me and my dad

Jim posing in his new hat

And a view of the jumbotron with the moon rising in the background

Everybody's Working on the Weekend...

Jim had his scheduled Saturday work day (he usually works one every 2 months or so), so he was busy most of the day Saturday. I was also working in my volunteer capacity at a parade in Centreville to campaign for my boss. It was really hot, but a successful event.

Cindy with some of Team Wolf

After all of our real work was over, we got down to business on the house work we wanted to accomplish for the weekend. It mostly consisted of plumbing! Yep, more plumbing. We needed to move the pipes that were coming up into the kitchen since they weren't quite in the right place and Jim took the opportunity to streamline the connections in the basement at the same time.

Jim reassembling the pipes

The washing machine aka workstation

The newly installed pipes...copper goes to kitchen faucets, washing machine and utility sink. The PVC is our kitchen drain pipe.

A view of the new pipes from above. Now in their proper place underneath where our new sink will go!

Another project that's been in progress for the past few days is getting the floor prepped for cabinet installation. We now have the floor levelled out and the tile backer board in place. It's starting to come together!

View from the dining room

Looking toward the basement

Looking toward the side door

The next step is doing the electrical wiring and then drywall! It's a lot of work to accomplish and our cabinets are supposed to be delivered a week from tomorrow. So they will probably be waiting around for a little while to be installed. But we are on our way! We have out of town weddings for the next 2 weekends, which will keep us busy, but hopefully we can get some weeknight progress done in the meantime.

Of course Chip continues to be a source of enjoyment for us. We continue to laugh at how he sleeps in a million different (often uncomfortable looking) positions. He's so funny!

Klapmust Kitchen '08

Labor Day has come and gone and fall is right around the corner. This time of year signals the beginning of the heated election season and the countdown to November 4 (55 days if anyone was wondering...) Particularly in my line of work, where it's not just hearing what's being broadcast all over the media, but also living it every hour at work and working extra hard to not only get your boss re-elected but making sure you have a job in January.

Ironically, this year we also seem to be working toward a similar deadline for our kitchen. The way we are progressing, it seems feasible that by some time in November we'll have a functioning kitchen (maybe not all finished, but at least functional!!) So forget all the McCain vs. Obama brouhaha...I'm voting for a kitchen in '08!

In the meantime, you'll have to bear with me as things get busier and busier as November approaches...as it seems I'll be working towards two big goals with a similar end date. But if all goes well, November will bring much cause for celebration!

Back to Labor Day weekend, we struggled with a tough decision of doing fun things or getting back to work over the weekend. Work won out, since we had just been out of town and will be gone 2 weekends in September at weddings, we knew in the long run working would be better.

The main project was removing the siding on the exterior of the back kitchen wall, to replace some more of that pesky damaged (from a previous leak) wood that was still back there. The more we opened it up, we realized how bad the wood was and how glad we are that we've taken the time to fix everything.

Jim starts to remove the siding and foam board

Starting to expose some of the damaged wood

Close up, you could literally poke your finger and pick this wood away it was so bad.

See, I help too! I even learned how to use the sawzall this weekend.

Towards the end of taking it apart

Starting to hang the new wood, you can also see that we replaced the old galvanized vent pipe with PVC

Looking from inside at all the new wood

Putting it back together...I don't have a final picture yet, but I promise all the siding is back on our house now :)

I also worked on some final demo/clean up of walls and floors in preparation of hanging new walls and laying down the floor.

Looking towards the basement steps (I also ripped up most of the nasty old carpet going into the basement)

Clean walls and floors in kitchen, ready to be built out.

We also crossed another major milestone by ordering our kitchen cabinets!! We put our order for Kraftmaid cabinets in through Home Depot and we are pretty happy with our choices. I think we've maximized the space we have and we are looking forward to their delivery on Sept. 23! We also have all our appliances picked out and will be ordering those in the near future too.

Here's a pic from Kraftmaid's website, we are getting a similar styled white painted maple cabinet. And actually the wall color I've picked is similar to that blue.

This past weekend we spent time celebrating a few birthdays! On Friday night we celebrated with my friend Adrianne and on Saturday night we celebrated with Matt as Mary planned a surprise birthday dinner and a Rockband after party. We also caught up on sleep and house chores and worked on some more kitchen planning (seriously, who knew you had to pick out so many things when re-doing your house...)

Girls celebrating with Adrianne!

If you look through the glass, you can see that Matt is surprised!

Matt enjoys his sushi dinner, with Mary :)

Chip wanted to help blog, but then remembered he can't type and really just likes to follow the mouse arrow around :)

Back to Reality

We have been back from vacation for over a week now, but my brain hasn't caught on to that yet and I'm still getting used to being back to work and all the day to day activities. Thanks for understanding my delinquency in blogging and hopefully I'll catch up this week!

Needless to say, we had a wonderful vacation. It was a great break and very relaxing to be away. We fit a lot of activities in to the time we were gone and enjoyed every minute. We spent a couple days at Ben and Erin's in New Hampshire and then we headed off to Maine.

Jim with the stuffed car!

Our first stop in Maine was the beautiful Ogunquit, a cute little coastal town. We did a small hike along the Marginal Way, which follows the coast. The weather couldn't have been any better and we saw some great sights. We ate lunch at a seaside restaurant, where Jim started his seafood tasting tour through Maine.

Jim and Cindy on Marginal Way

We continued driving up the coast with a short stop in Kennebunkport. We drove through the town and surrounding areas. We saw some gorgeous multi million dollar vacation homes, a beautiful church by the sea and the Bush compound. We also made an important detour to the Kennebunkport Ben and Jerry's.

Church by the sea

And the view near the church

Bush Compound from the road (all the way zoomed in)

We made our way to our stopping point for the evening at a small cabin in Freeport. Freeport is home of the L.L. Bean headquarters and there's 3 or 4 huge stores. We made the requisite visit to the main store and got a few last minute camping supplies there too.

Jim and Cindy at L.L. Bean (with a kid who oddly looks like a small Jim)

The next morning we woke up early to drive to Acadia and hoped to score one of the first come, first served camping sites at the Seawall campground. We arrived around 10 am and got one of the last few sites available. After setting up camp, we went out to explore Acadia. Thankfully, we got camp set up before the rain arrived and it didn't rain too much to ruin our visit.

Ben at our campsite

Our first stop in Acadia was at the popular Jordan Pond House for lunch. As in the old times, we enjoyed tea and popovers while over looking Jordan Pond in the heart of Acadia. We set out to do some hiking and exploring and saw Bubble Rock, Eagle Lake, Sand Beach, the ever disappointing "Thunder Hole" and some other sites along the way.

Jim holding up Bubble Rock

Hanging out on Sand Beach

Looking back towards Sand Beach

We saw lots of pretty boats too!

After driving through some more of the park, we headed out to get more supplies and ended up eating a very late (but delicious) dinner at the campsite. And Jim even got the rain soaked wood to start a fire so we could eat our s'mores :)

YAY we finally have a fire

Jim loves his s'more

Cindy loves marshmallows (and headlamps)

It was a late night, but we still set our alarms for 4:30 am so we could make it to the top of Cadillac Mountain to see the sunrise. "They"say (although I'm not sure who "they" are) that this is the first place on the east coast to see the sunrise. It was breathtaking and well worth it.

Afterward, we took advantage of the timing and walked across the sandbar that's only crossable during low tide from Bar Harbor to Bar Island, which was pretty cool.

On the sandbar looking toward Bar Harbor

On the sandbar looking toward Bar Island

We spent the rest of the day seeing some other parts of Acadia that we hadn't seen the day before. We attempted a "very strenuous" hike up the Beehive...Jim and Erin made it to the top, while Ben and I made it half way and enjoyed our PB&J sandwiches while watching them walk across iron rungs and climb a ladder to get to the top of the summit.

Halfway up the Beehive

Looking to the top of the Beehive (you might be able to see Jim and Erin in there somewhere)

We also made our way into the town of Bar Harbor and shopped around a bit, with another important stop for ice cream, this time at Ben and Bill's Chocolate Emporium. Jim continued his seafood tour by tasting their famous lobster ice cream. He said it was good, but "chewy" and opted for a cone of mint chocolate chip instead.

Erin and Cindy enjoying their ice cream

We rounded out our last day in Acadia with a visit to one of the million lighthouses that dot the Maine coast. (For the record, don't ever use a lighthouse as the subject for a 20 questions game unless you are trying to play 100+ questions).

Bass Harbor Lighthouse

Our trip home included a couple planned stops to break up the 7 hour drive (THANKS again to Erin for being a trooper and driving us all over New England!!). We stopped at Sea Dog Brewery in Topsham and were "surprised" to say the least with the size of their beer "samplers" (they should really re-name these!)

Our giant "samplers"

And a stop at Pirate's Cove for a mini golf game and the winner will remain a pirate's secret ;)

Thanks again to Ben and Erin for hosting us and joining us in Maine. We had a great time!