Digging Out

We've made pretty good progress on digging out from under our avalanche of boxes and have an almost normal house. Our layout is a little weird but it works for us. We made Cameron's room out of the sun room that opens directly to the living room. We're trying to figure out what to do for a room divider to hide his perpetual mess. The formal dining room is now our game room/office. Except our computer is temporarily in the master bedroom because, for obvious reasons, there are no cable outlets in the dining room. Gotta fix that! At least Kevin and Cade have normal bedrooms. We still have some boxes in the house that we're slowly sorting through. A lot of them are on hold until we get the garage sorted out a little better. But at least there's light at the end of the tunnel and it ain't the train.

Since the weather has been rather yucky, we've been spending our evenings at home. The boys and I are hooked on Guitar Hero - or at least I am - so we spend a portion of our evenings playing games together. You have to play that game if you ever get the chance. It's fun. I'm almost embarrassed to admit we have it for both Cameron's Wii and Kevin's Xbox. Kevin has regular GH with 2 guitars so we can play head to head. Cameron has GH World Tour with the drums and microphone. No one is really brave enough to sing yet but we have fun with the instruments.


Kevin and I are playing together on his Xbox. If you look closely, Cade even has his toy guitar and is "playing" with us.



Cade likes to join in on the action. Here he is jamming out on the drums!



In case you couldn't tell by the gravel instead of grass, this is at our house in Las Cruces. Kevin got a new helmet for Christmas and gave his old one to Cade. Cade wore the helmet around the house and anytime he was riding one of his toys. Here's my safety conscious boy riding his 4-wheeler.

Doesn't he look cute? Unfortunately, there really isn't room to ride it here. There aren't any sidewalks on our side of the street and our driveway sure as heck isn't empty anymore.

A picture only a desert rat would take. We're still new enough to this environment to enjoy the sight of ice forming on everything. That is, unless I have to scrape it off the windshield. I thought the heated mirrors and rear window was a waste of money when I bought my pickup. Now I wish all the windows had heating elements!

Our subdivision has a playground not too far from here so Dana took the boys to play yesterday during an unusually mild day. She didn't get any warm, fuzzy feelings from most of the people she saw. Not that they were bad or scary people but I just don't think a golf course community is the right place for us. Unless they let me start riding on it! Bwaaahaaaahaaaaa! Sigh. I can only imagine. At any rate, we have at least a year here so we have plenty of time to figure out what we want to do or where to go.

We did finally meet some neighbors this past week! I have to back up a little to give you the full effect. Picture this: Its about 6:30 in the evening and Dana is doing laundry as I'm complaining about the house being cold - as usual. She tosses my pajamas to me, fresh out of the dryer, and tells me to put those on. I bask in the warmth and comfort that is clean, just dried PJs. She puts hers on too. A little later, someone knocks on the doorbell. The kids were literally running and yelling down the hall when she knocked so I couldn't pretend no one was home. I went ahead and opened the door and tried to do the peek-around-the-door trick so the person wouldn't see what I was wearing. When she introduced herself and told me she brought a pie to welcome us to the neighborhood I saw no choice but to invite her in. Dana tried to hide but I made her come out too. I wasn't about to suffer in embarrassment alone. She was a very nice lady, about the same age as us (Dana and I are still, like, 24 or so ). Turns out she and her husband own the Ford dealership in town. Funny thing was we had just dropped our Fusion off there for some warranty work about an hour earlier. Since then, when we talked to the people at the dealership, they knew who we were (Jim's neighbor) and have been very friendly and helpful. A far cry from Borman Autoplex in Las Cruces (those dopes told us the whistling through the door seal was "normal" and refused to do anything) but I digress. Now we've met 2 neighbors and both seem to be very nice. So far so good!

Hopefully the weather will warm up soon so we can get the kids outside more often. Today Cade broke one of our dining room chairs (broke both uprights on the back) and followed that up by wiping out a candle holder in the bedroom. Both times I watched it happen but was too far away to do anything. Then again, if they're outside they'll probably crash a soccerball through a window or something.