Since it is close to the end of the year, I have updated the Cost of Home Ownership page. With all the maintenance included, it looks like we spent around $1,100 in house upkeep and maintenance. Scroll down to the bottom for the “12/3/2008 Update” for all the other numbers that are included in that.
One of my high school teachers used to call me a turkey all the time….
Anyways, on with the fun. This Thanksgiving was the first time we have celebrated it at our house. Kimberly did the vast majority of the cooking, and I did the vast majority of the eating. We had Susan, Amber, Barbara, Adrianne (sp?), Jeff, Jesse, and for a brief time Brian over for the occasion. Kimberly did a great job of planning everything out, and the food was great. Before everything happened, she was dead set on getting everyone eating promptly at 3:00pm. I told her I thought it would be a good learning experience in helping both of us understand why nobody else’s Thanksgiving/Christmas dinners ever start when they are supposed too — and sure enough, our was an hour later. In Kim’s defense, all of her stuff was completely done at exactly 3:00pm — but then we had to wait on the other participants to put the final touches on the food that they brought.
Friday we headed off to Tyler to see the my side of the family. We tried to go by Dad and Sherry’s first, but they were both out of town (one at the deer lease, the other shopping with Bill and Ruby for a Lexus…drooool). We called Heather and went to a late lunch with them at Olive Garden. It’s a lot of fun getting together with the Wiebke family; it’s a lot more….relaxed….than a lot of the other places we end up going on family-visits. Oh, and Vicky is a diva, and Taylor isn’t a mute…who knew?!
Friday night, Mom hosted another mini-Thanksgiving for us. That was pretty neat. Most of my favorite people were there (Steve, Becky, Matt, Granny Bobbie, Paw Paw, Piper, Mom), so naturally it was a great time. Our dogs were continually trying to attack (play) with Piper though. Cricket made the most improvements…you could tell he was really trying hard to be calm around her. He would only mess up and start barking/chasing her if she surprised him.
Kali on the other hand…was rotten the entire time. She was constantly growling at her. I must have spanked her 50 times…and when I got tired of that, I switched to just thumping her butt to stop her from growling. Then, if Piper was ever in a room with Kali alone, Kali would let out a loud bark to scare the crap out of her. Needless to say, Piper isn’t quite sure about Puuuup-perrs (puppies, but she says it like that).
Let’s see…slept on the recliner at Mom’s house that night, went home the next day to start my vacation (which was really just a short weekend at that point). I got to level 80 on World of Warcraft…now I’m getting kind of bored with it again. It’s probably time for me to start up another one of my hobbies.
Congratulations to Ben and April on their recent pregnancy! The due date is July 21st, 2009, so let’s hope the baby is one day late so (s)he can share the birthday with me!
Kim is getting excited about buying baby stuff for them…I’m just going to start stealing stuff from Russell and Melanie’s house!!
This weekend started out pretty great, and then ended up being pretty crappy. The good parts are that Kim finally got her new car. It’s a 2009 Honda Accord Coupe, it’s awesome. It’s about time too, her car was getting pretty old. It’s still a good car (Jesse gets it now), but it is in the stage of life that a new driver needs to see how much used cars can be!
Yesterday was pretty relaxed. Kim went over to her mom’s for a little card playing party. I went over to Chief’s to watch football and drink the beers.
Then today, mom called me and let me know that my grandmother is having some tissue from her lung biopsied. The doctor is pretty sure it is cancerous, but we will know for sure on Tuesday. The good side to this (if there can be a good side to lung cancer) is that it was caught in her routine checkups, so it hasn’t progressed to the point of her being able to notice side effects from it. The doctor also says that it is in an operable location in the lung, so they can go in and remove it. Of course, she’s an older woman, so anything is dangerous.
Today we had to take Cricket to the vet hospital. Well, we probably didn’t have to, but we did. There was a big bump on his back and Kim was worried. I told her that if it was still there tomorrow we might take him in. Then he started wheezing and trying to clear his throat like it was closing up, so we went ahead and took him. It was probably a bee sting, and they just gave him a shot and sent us on our way. All is well.
We also went with Brian and Amber this weekend to see that “..make a porn” movie — it is really funny, and really shocking. Today, I went and saw “Religulous” by myself. It isn’t really insightful or super entertaining at all…basically just a “All religious people believe they have the correct religion, and all religions preach of a war against the others, and these are the people making the decisions in our country” kind of film. We all know that fanatics are…well…crazy…nothing new in the movie really.