Going to the dentist

On any average day, this is how Cora dresses.  She loves all the reactions she gets from strangers as she walks by commenting how pretty she looks.  

She had a great time at the dentist this time, being very patient with the cleaning.  She most looks forward to petting the dentists super-duper nice doggie, Leroy.

The Flume

KTs parents are in town, so we went to the Flume yesterday.  It is a little slot-canyon thing, which reminds me of Partnachklamm in Garmish.

Aside from the canyon, there were a lot of huge glacial boulders sitting in the middle of planes, which was really fun.

One funny happening: I noticed 3/4 of the way through that my keys aren't in my pocket.  I looked in all of our bags, then ran back through the trail to find them.  I want all the way back, and turned around to catch up to everyone else.  Right before I caught up to the others, KT calls me to let me know that Aaron has my keys.  He saw them fall out where we had stopped for lunch, and put them in his pocket.  Once he noticed I was gone, he asked KT: "Where is dad?"  "He lost his keys and went back to find them," she replied.  "I have them right here," he says as he pulls them out.  Lesson learned: always put keys where they can be zipped in, and always notify everyone in the group that you have lost something.

It was a great place to go: my only complaints are that it was kind of crowded (lots of tour buses of Chinese and German tourists) and it was expensive ($16 for adults, $13 for kids).  I would probably try to go next time during the week.

Our new house

So we bought and moved into a new house.  Not new, but new to us.  We had put an offer on it way back when, and were out-bid.  Just as we had given up, I came back from Japan with news that the sale had fallen through and we were given our original asking price!  So we closed on the house 2 weeks ago, and I spent a week painting, cleaning, and generally fixing things.  I knew this was the right house when I found 3 frogs sleeping on the porch light:

I bought this awesome tool at Home Depot for doing edges: once I got proficient, it cut my taping down by like 80%.  I'm totally sold on this thing!

We are trying to get rid of some of the gold bling in the house, so I spray painted a lot of the bathroom fixtures...

Here is an intermediate pic of the boys bathroom: pre-beige days.

The boys bedroom (same color as the bathroom ended up being)

 I actually didn't get to the living room: I ran out of time.  I was painting our bedroom the morning of the move, and I have had to finish bits and pieces along the way...

Here is the upstairs bathroom while I was in the middle of cutting the edges.  We for grey over the stripes....

These are the woods right behind the house: we have a trail from the backyard which hooks up with a utility road through the forest.

This is at the beaver dam right behind the house:

Here is the kitchen/dining room right now.  We still have to "unpack" and find places to keep all of our crap, but at least it is a little more livable.