Small Steps

When Matt came home last night, he was as much in the mood for working on the train some more as I was! However, we still had to eat dinner, so by the time we got to work on the train, it was kind of late. So last night we just took small steps.

First thing's first.... we had to reposition ALL of the track so that we could make sure everything lined up on the risers. Then we had to trace the outline of the track so we new where to lay the track foam (the black foam that helps the train run smoothly and quietly).We also had to assemble the temporary supports for the bridge that we will build next.Of course, after we had set it all up again, we had to take it down again to lay and glue the track foam.We didn't lay the track foam over the whole track, just over the parts that we already plastered-- the tunnel areas, since we won't be able to lay that track once the tunnels are built.
Here I am trimming the track foam so that it makes an even transition at the switch point. We pinned the track foam down before we glued it so we knew how much foam we needed.I painted the glue on the plaster and then Matt came right after and layed the track foam down. The pins held the track in place while the glue dried. Meanwhile, Leela and Tungsten couldn't stay away during all this excitement!

That's all we accomplished last night. We didn't want to rush the glue since the track foam is the foundation of the track! There's still more to come... just not tonight-- maybe Wednesday night.

New Hobby, Old Train

For as long as I can remember growing up, my mom's dad, Granddad, worked on his model train set. Whenever we would go visit, we'd always ask to see the train that was housed in the storage room at the back of the garage. All of the grandchildren learned that you don't touch the train-- you can only look at it, but if we were lucky (and usually alone), Granddad would let us "drive" the train. As with most good things, they must come to an end. Nana and Granddad had decided to downsize and move to a smaller house and the train table was not among the items that were also making the trip. While the rest of the family was collecting the things from Nana and Granddad's that they just couldn't let go of, Matt and I (who were just dating at the time) asked for the train table. The table, which Granddad had already been taking apart (I guess he didn't think anyone would want it), remained stored in Matt's brother's garage for the past three years while we were in the apartment. As soon as we moved, so did the train table! Unfortunately, after building a platform for the table to sit on, setting out all of the trains, reading countless wiring books and websites, Matt and I realized that we were not going to get the train running again. Though we still wanted to use Granddad's trains and track (and inspiration) for our new hobby-- a model train set. So we got a kit. Here's our story....
To start, we (and by we, I mean Matt), had to continue what Granddad had started and take up all the laid track and scenery. Since our kit is a foot shallower, he also cut a foot off the table and sanded it as smooth as possible. Then we covered it with newspaper to protect the styrofoam base from any sneaky rough spots.
The base came in four sections, which we had to put together upside down, tape, flip, and the hot glue the inside of the seams. The track layout was already on the base.... so now all we had to do was sift through all of Granddad's track for the right size pieces.
It took us about an hour to get all the correct pieces in place and connected.
Then we had to remove the track in large pieces so that we could work on the topography.
We had to pin the flexible styrofoam risers over the sections where the track will be-- this was the first layer.
After each layer of the risers were pinned, we had to hot glue both sides of the bottom of the risers where they meet the base-- or the respective foam layer underneath, depending on what layer of risers we worked on. Here, Matt is gluing the second layer of riser-- the one that actually inclines. The glue gun we bought is a low temp glue gun and teeny. We had to alternate who pinned the risers and who glued since our fingers were getting sore squeezing the teeny trigger! ouch.
Once all the risers were in place and glued, we had to start plastering the first section. The direction booklet is very detailed and comes with many pictures, but I still had a better method of how to use the plaster covered cloth strips-- go figure, an art teacher with a sculpture background knows what she's doing!
For this step, we only had to plaster a few sections, but since we used team work, we were done in no time flat. I laid the plaster and Matt came behind me and smoothed it out. Speedy, we were.... Speedy!
As the plaster dried, we went upstairs and cut some more foam that will eventually form the walls of the tunnel. Measure twice-- cut once!
After a job well done, we sat and enjoyed our milk and cookies.

Matt started disassembling the train table around 10AM and we ate our cookies at 930PM. Granted, we had to take about an hour break to make a trip to Wally-World for some more glue sticks and grab a bite to eat, but we both had so much fun working together on this and it hardly felt like we worked for 10.5hrs on the train yesterday. Stay tuned for the next part of train assembly!

Western Trip (continued)

So there we were at the top of Blackcomb Mountain and we were freezing! So we stopped in at the snack shack for some YUMMY hot chocolate! After, Matt decided to have some fun in the snow. Luckily he wasn't throwing it at me! Since it was roughly 35ish degrees up there and we were scantily dressed (nothing more than a long sleeve lightweight shirt and a windbreaker), we made our way back down through the thick clouds via the chair lift. Matt said it was eerie going DOWN a chair lift. That night we had reservations at Hy's Steakhouse, a small Canadian chain. It was, by far, the best steak dinner I have ever had-- with service to match!

The next day, we had to say fairwell to Canada and head down to Seattle, WA. Though our fairwell lasted well over an hour at the border. Needless to say, America was a welcome sight. Seattle was fun, but exhausting! As soon as we got into the city and checked into our hotel-- which was right across from Safe Co. Field (and our room had a great view of the main gate)-- we walked up to Pike's Market, where Matt sampled some fresh sweet peas. The market happend to look down on the aquarium, so we walked down to the aquarium right before it closed. While we had a bunch of fun with the props, we were a little disappointed with the overall aquarium. There were not a lot of tanks and the ones they had reminded me of a pet store with a really good fish section! Oh well, you live and you learn, and traveling to new places is about experiencing new things, good and not so good. There was still some daylight left and we had some more time to kill before the Mariners game at 7:30. Where else would we go, but to the Space Needle. Unfortunately, we didn't actually take a picture from the bottom looking up-- slipped our mind. It was extremely windy and COLD at the top-- and I was getting more and more exhausted, so we called the hotel to send a shuttle to pick us up. All I needed was a quick rest before the ball game! We had really good seats-- outfield, just on the fair side of the fould pole. I know it was a Wed. night game, but it just wasn't a southern baseball game! I suppose at this point I was getting a little homesick for the south (and in serious sweet tea withdrawl). After the game, we made the long walk (across the street) to our hotel-- and went up to the roof, so that Matt could relax. I couldn't get in-- don't want to hard boil the babe.

Back to Portland! On our way to Portland, we detoured through Astoria. Sound familiar? It should! It's the location of the GOONIES! We had to take our picture in front of the house! As if that weren't enough... Matt had to listen to me saying, "I'M NOT A POLICEMAN, I'M A PRINCESS!! I'm not a POLICEMAN, I'm a princess. I'm not a.... oh, okay." If you haven't guessed, Astoria is also the location of the elementary school from Kindergarten Cop. Though that's all that's in Astoria... really... so we left.

Friday, Carrie had taken the day off so we could all go roaming around downtown Portland. Our first stop was to the science museum, OMSI. While waiting for the submarine tour to begin, we both goofed off-- as usual. Before our tour began, the guide told us that when we get to the control room, we weren't supposed to touch any of the buttons or knobs (just keep that in mind). This sub was the last comissioned diessel submarine, and boy was it teensy! This is Matt at the controls, great photo opp. Now me. Unfortunately, the guide was not so clear on what not to touch, so this is me getting in trouble for picking up a non-working phone. So I waited for him to leave the torpedo room before picking this up. We had gone to the science museum for Matt, so we went to the Portland Art Museum for me... and the M.C. Escher exhibit, but not before we grabbed a few tacos on the street for lunch! The cou de gras, however, was going to Voodoo Doughnuts. If you're not familiar, Voodoo sells anatomically correct doughnuts... among others. We waited in line for a while, but it was worth it! I got a Portland Creme (same as Boston Creme, only it has eyes), Dad got Coconut Cake, and Matt got Maple glazed Bacon (yuck).

Before we flew off Saturday morning, we spent Friday night hanging out. Dad and Carrie have two Bernice Mountain Dogs, Willie and Reba. Willie is completely laid back, but large and loveable!

Western Adventure

Matt and I just got back from our week out west. Since my dad moved out to Portland, OR last year, we decided we would make our way out there-- and then up to Canada during the week.

We flew in on Saturday and were met by Dad and Carrie at the airport. After we got our rental car, we headed up to Hood River, a little town just outside of where their property is in Washington that they plan on developing. On our way, we stopped at Multnomah Falls. It was literally a falls on the side of the road, like a rest stop-- but still very pretty. Of course, we hiked up to the first bridge. So back to why we went to Hood River... it is apparently the perfect wind and kite surfing place because it's protected from the ocean currents, being on the river, and as the river flows one way, the wind blows the other-- perfect conditions. These guys were crazy-- it was so windy and the water must have been FREEZING, and here they were, catching major air! The town is also very cool, a lot of little shops, but after dinner we were so tired (we had been up since 4:30 central time), so we crashed.

The next morning, we ate breakfast at this little Frech shop before going up to see Dad and Carrie's property. As we were driving through the hills, we passed these deer in a stream on the side of the road. AND... we also drove by this artist's stand on the side of the road selling his goods. He welds a bunch of found objects together to create his sculptures, like this cat. The road had been good to us. Matt asked Dad to pull over so that we could take some pictures with the background that goes on and on and on and, well, you get the point.

Matt was completely blown away at the site of their property (I told him he would be). While we were there, we found these GIANT dandilions that we proceeded to try to blow to bits, even though the tendrills managed to stay on through the 20 mile/hr. wind gusts. I practically hyperventalated trying to blow them all off-- it was like blowing out the joke candles on a birthday cake that just wouldn't completely blow out. Matt cheated. He stood in the wind and let the wind help him. Cheater.

Monday, we started the next leg of our trip up to Whistler, Brittish Columbia. Though we stopped in Vancouver to check out the Cappilano Bridge. We had a whole lot of fun goofing off and being complete tourists! On the other side of the bridge, they had an "Ewok Village" set up in the trees. There were a bunch of mini suspension bridges strung out between the trees and below was a walking path so that you could enjoy all of the "extreme nature." Even though we left our gorilla pod at home, we were still able to prop up the camera and evoke the self timer! So then came lunch. When I thought Matt was being kind and moving the camera off the table. Nope, he was catching me off guard. So I indulged him. Again and again. Then, I got him back... several more times!

Once we got to Whistler, we were blown away at how grand our hotel, the Pan Pacific Mountainside was. We were again, goofing off, as we waited for the lifts to open to take us to the top of Whistler Mountain. Then we took the Peak 2 Peak lift over to Blackcomb Mountain. THEN, we took another lift up to the peak of Blackcomb to see the glacier, where they have summer snowboard and ski camp.

(... to be continued)

Kabobs!!

I think Matt has cooked more meals on the grill than I have in the kitchen since we moved in. Granted, I still use the kitchen-- but Matt has been in grill with drawl for the last three years and has all this pent up grilling inside he's just GOT to get out. I'm not complaining.

The other night we made kabobs for dinner, yum. This is, by far, one of the easiest meals to prepare.Here are the fixin's... chopped pineapple, cubed onion (for Matt, not me), bell peppers (of the green and red persuasion), and, of course...STEAK, which I doused in olive oil and Worcestershire sauce.We each assembled our own, oh and we added some maple bacon we acquired from the butcher (yes, a real, live butcher in his own store... not the guy behind the butcher counter in the grocery store).I'm waiting for them to come back from the grill...and Matt is grilling!My mouth is salivating... fresh from the grillVoila! Dinner is served... with a side of mashed potatoes (not pictured). So we had a little bit from each food group: meat, veggies, fruit, starch, grain (we had toasted bread too), and I had a glass of milk for dinner.

ps. I love my new granite counter tops.

More than Mundane

To most, yesterday might have seemed a bit mundane, but to Matt and me, it was perfect!

Granted, Matt woke up at 6:20--unable to sleep, but after I was up... we ran a few errands. I had to take some lamps back to Tuesday Morning and Matt wanted to stop at Home Depot (how very "his and her shopping" of us!) to get an outside storage bin for our deck among other things. On our way home, we stopped at Publix, grabbed some sandwiches, and actually planned ahead for 2 meals!!

After some friends stopped by for a brief second, the grass was mowed, blinds were hung, bathroom ceiling was painted, pantry was reorganized, cookies were made, kitchen was cleaned, and laundry was put away. For dinner, Matt grilled some corn and BBQ chicken. I added some toasted bread, cherries and pineapple. This was our first meal at the kitchen table in our new home! (we have been eating dinner in front of the TV on trays, oh well)

I know it sounds like an ordinary, and to most- boring, day, but like I said earlier-- it was perfect. Waiting for the chicken to cook, Matt and I stood out on the deck, in the setting sun, looking at everything we have, and we are thankful.

God is good.

So Long, So New

I KNOW it's been a LONG time since I last blogged, but so much has been going on. I also know that means it's the perfect time to blog, but with all these things happening, I had to take them all in myself. So here's all the news...

I said goodbye to my work family of 3 years at Griffin Middle School last week at the end of post planning. I have been offered, and accepted, a position as the second art teacher at North Paulding High School-- Go Wolfpack!

Being at North Paulding will keep my commute short, since we just bought- and moved into- our first (and hopefully only) new house. I posted pictures earlier, so I know that's not really new news, but we have officially moved! Matt did a whole bunch of painting (I helped a little) and now we have a very saturated house. I even have my ORANGE room-- don't freak, it looks great! Matt even loves it!

Though one of the rooms won't be painted until August or September... when we find out the sex of our new baby! That's right, Matt and I are expecting. We are due Dec. 21, but I am convinced that baby will come on Christmas. My mom and sister will be in the delivery room with me-- and Matt will be anxiously waiting in the waiting room. He has every right to change his mind and come into the delivery room-- but he says he wants the doctors to focus on me and the baby-- and not on him passing out. No really, he WILL pass out. This is all completely okay with me (so please don't send me hate mail). Matt will be there up until the very last minute though.

Many people think that one event lead to the other(s), but actually I have been wanting, looking, and praying for a high school position for a very long time and whole I got to a bunch of interviews, none of them panned out. There was something bigger and better for me.

Matt and I had already started looking for houses once we got our lease renewal letter and decided that we didn't want to live in an apartment anymore. We weren't even really looking in the NPHS district-- we were just looking in Paulding County since houses are plentyful and priced right. We had made an offer on the house before I even interviewed at NPHS.

Of course the most surprising news came AFTER the house and AFTER the interview... the baby news. Needless to say, we were schocked and incredibly happy.

So there it is. Our incredibly new life (changes).

ps. my doctor said that I could help paint as long as we used laytex and kept the rooms well ventilated (which we did)