Clark Griswold Meets Charlie Brown

I am partnering with many Americans when I say that this is going (read: needs) to be a lean year for the Wirth family, so when my boss (who is also my parent's neighbor) offered for us to go onto her property and cut down a Christmas tree, we jumped on that train. We dropped Anderson off for some quality time with his grandparents and we headed into the woods. Oddly enough, I have never done this. We always went to a tree lot to buy one. Court has only done this as a kid, so it was a married first for us. The days are short up here, so we were fighting daylight, as you can see from this picture of my big, strong man chopping down our tree:

As we learned from Clark Griswold, trees look small in the woods, ours was 13 feet tall, and we had to cut it down to 8, which wasn't too tough to do. Once we got it to the right height, we schlepped it home:

Here she is in the nude. It is the greenest tree we've ever had! The "V" shape the branches have works nicely, because with ornaments the branches are almost normal. She isn't the most robust tree, but we love her.

All dressed up for the season (she has an angel on now, but you can imagine):

We hope you are all enjoying this beautiful season.

Eight is a lot of Months

Eight Months Old

Anderson

Crawls everywhere

Pulls himself up on anything shorter than 30 inches

Sleeps more at night (hallelujah)

Naps poorly (still)

Loves eating

Shys away from strangers

Laughs a lot

Plays with toys, but wires, dust, and outlets are his favorites

Adventures in Home Improvement

For the first time we are living in a home that we own. I have to say, it does feel different. Our (very) little house is charming. It was built in 1918, so there are a lot of quirks. But, as Court's architect dad told us, it has good bones. When we bought it, we knew that we were going to want/need to make some changes and we are currently nearing the end of these changes. Early on Court coined a phrase that we have used throughout our adventures it is "sweat equircise," it is a verb and it means "the act of getting a work-out while putting sweat equity into ones home." Take that, Webster.

Here are some things we have learned about home improvement:

• It is very useful to have a loving, caring handy-person who will come alongside you to help. This person was my dad. He has poured hours of his life into this house. If we sell it, we owe him a percentage, no question.
• Get a lot of quotes all at the same time, or else you will be waiting far too long to get the work done.
• Craigslist--with ample reference, ID, and background checks, --can be a good resource for tradespeople.
• Don't tile yourself--it's worth it to pay a professional
• Do paint yourself. It's not that hard. And we are not very talented in this department.
• Landscaping makes a big difference.
• Old houses are wonderful, but they can be very cold.
• Shop sales at hardware stores.

We have learned a lot more, but these are most of them. Today we had the electrician replace our old ("knob and tube") wiring and, I must say, that I am glad to have this adventure coming to a close. We are very grateful that we were able to make some of the changes that we wanted to.

Here are some photos:

Kitchen with the first layer of wall panelling torn down

Kitchen with new drywall--it is now a nice, textured yellow.

Beth after having torn down the quasi-rotten drywall behind the brown formica surround that was once our shower. Yes, I was wondering how this was all going to work.

Freshly tiled shower

Here are some shots of the house from the outside after our first snow.

Happy Christmastime!

Seven

Seven Months Today!

Monumental events in the seventh month of Anderson's life

He has. . .

• His sixth tooth coming in (a dental prodigy of sorts).
• Wiggled/army crawled/belly flopped his way to almost any destination (in the house, of course).
• Slept eight hours straight two times (we are holding out for more of these nights).
• Enjoyed the Giants winning the World Series.
• Witnesses the Ducks ranked #1 for the first time ever (his parents are in sports utopia).
• Been on a plane.
• Dressed up for Halloween.
• Experienced the joy of swinging.
• Survived his first fall off a bed (that one was mostly my fault, but Anderson isn't without blame--I told him he wasn't allowed to do that).
• Seen the leaves change into brilliant fall colors.

A couple other shots:

Our house with our pumpkins out front

Reading on the walk. . .

He Doesn't really drink out of that yet, but it's been a fun toy

Halloween Chaos

I went to a mom group for a meal and mom chatter, and someone thought it would be a good idea to dress everyone up in their costumes and take a photo. . .it was madness. The best costume, hands down, was a little guy dressed like Rod Blagojevich. He had a tie and a wig on. Incredible. Anderson, the skeleton on the end, is barely visible in the group shot.

Clearly unsure of this situation. . . .

Miro (aka Rod) is 7th from the left

Santa Barbara

We got to visit Santa Barbara a couple weekends ago for a whirlwind wedding trip to see Bdog and Meg tie the ol' knot. We had a blast. Anderson did amazingly well on all of the flights, and Santa Barbara is just as beautiful as when we left. I cannot believe we got to live there for ten years. I wish the weekend would have lasted a bit longer, but we felt really lucky to have such a great trip down to Anderson's birthplace.

Anderson got to see his friend Kalae (whose last name is Anderson). Kalae gave Anderson lots of kisses, but we couldn't quite catch it on film.

Auntie Layne!

Anderson and Shane at the wedding

Anderson's wedding outfit. . .sure some thought he was a girl, but he and we are confident in his masculinity.

Anderson and his dad at the beach

Thomas and Ramona enjoying the beach

Beautiful beach day

Anderson on the (very clean, I am sure) ground at SFO

Other highlights were:

Visiting Nordhoff, where Court used to work.

Seeing my wonderful friends and students at Anacapa.

Eating at some of our favorite places.

Staying with Father Jeff and Nancy.

Walking on our beach.

Dudes

Another visit with the dudes. Here are the three boys Joey, Anderson, and Bear at four, six, and two months. Bear is justifiably dubious of Anderson. They still don't really know that one another exists. . . .but one of these days they will be having a heck of a time.