Sunday, November 9, 2008

November 1, 2008: Tom & Pa have birthday celebrations

Last Saturday Greg, Andy, and I drove down to the lovely neighborhood of Jamaica Plain to go on a tour of the Samuel Adams Brewhouse in celebration of Tom now being old enough to enjoy these kinds of pleasures. It turns out the tour is really just an excuse to drink some free beer! They toss in some beer making know how in the beginning, but the most of the tour is in the tasting room.Our tour guide - he knew why we were all really there..
Tom, Andy, Greg, & Jill with our free tasting glasses trying out some pumpkin beer that was a test case only, they admitted they made it just for an employee party but we all got to try some and we all agreed it was tasty, even Andy and Tom who are not pumpkin beer fans.

Tom went back to another city almost as nice as JP where he goes to school to take a nap before his 21st Birthday Party was to take place with his friends at Fitchburg State that evening. Andy Greg and I went straight to our grandfather's (Pa) 80th birthday party. Here he is getting ready to blow out the candles on his ice cream cake!
Auntie Nancy made us write down stories about Pa to be shared with everyone. I got the pad first and told Andy's and my favorite memory. Pa bought off my Dad our first home computer, and IBM, because he wanted to use it for his TV repair business. This computer took those huge floppy disks, and it came with one game for kids called Gertrude’s Quest. It was a learning game, math, spelling, etc and even despite that fact Andy and I loved paying it. Pa kept the computer in the basement of the house (Essex Street), a very old house with a very damp, dark, scary basement that was full of old TVs, radios, and whatever other electronics Pa was fixing up. Every time we were over Nanna and Pa's we made Pa bring us down to the basement and set the game up for us so we could play. He would always set it up for us no matter what. What I forgot to mention was how when for the majority of my life when I would visit with my grandparents I would go to say hello to Pa and this was always what followed...
[Jill] Hi Pa
[Pa] How is my beautiful granddaughter?
[Jill] I am OK
[Pa] No you're beautiful!

Floorplanner.com

A few weeks ago Greg, Andy and I were talking about how we would expand our home to give us all more space as well as increase the resale value of our home. Greg and I would love to get more space as that would make our current home a place we could stay for a long time, which would be great. We love the area our home is in, we have a nice big lot, and sharing a two family home with Andy is great and easy really. The only negative beside our portion of the home being on the smaller side is the main street our home is on, street traffic can get loud with our home almost sitting right on the street with only the sidewalk separating us. Well I digress.... after kicking around some ideas, I found this great website though a blog I read call floorplanner.com where you can design your own floor plans. I had some measurements of our house already from a class I took this past summer and from the plans that were made when we ordered the new kitchen cabinets and created our existing floor plan of our apartment on the 2nd floor (Andy's layout is very similar on the first floor). Then from there I came up with a floor plan with the addition we talked about. Here are the results of my hard work...

Current Floor Plan
Possiable Addition Floor Plan
Click on the photos to make them larger, use the back button to get back.

Friday, November 7, 2008

Time for an update!!

Ok so we got behind on what we were hoping this blog would be, so let’s try to get back into that.
One week ago today was Halloween and it was a BIG day! Sophia Regina Sauk make her début! Congratulations to the proud parents Nicole and Phil!

Sophia weighed in at 7 lb 15 oz and is 18.5” long.

Here are the photos we took the next day when we went to visit.



Greg and I got to go see Blue Man Group that night! It was so fun to have a date night out in the city. We first got some cheese fondue at the melting pot, then after the show got some lettuce wraps and other yummy appetizers at PF Chang’s. Since it was Halloween and I assume most people were off at house parties we walked right in to both popular restaurants without reservations and got seated right away! All in all a great Friday!