Regular Grammie just IM'd me to let me know the blog link wasn't working so I fixed that.   Been working this weekend a bit on rebuilding the stone wall next to our deck.  I mistakenly told our contractor to just build the stairs and knock part of the wall last summer.  He knocked the wall down and dug out with heavy equipment but didn't dig out enough beside the stairs for me to rebuild the wall.  I'm now digging out and piling up the rocks that I'll use to rebuild.  This would normally be pretty easy but because of it being so close to the deck stairs it's rather challenging.  Hopefully in another weekend I'll be rebuilding the wall.  I've been trying to get back into doing the outside repairs needed before winter.  There's still quite a lot to do so we can get the house on the market for next year.  

Not much else to report really.  The boys are doing good.  Jon is in school only 2 days a week now for the rest of this month.  After this we hope to start him in a gymnastic program for a couple months until school starts up.  He's excited about that.  

Yesterday I did the final cleanup on the floors of what was my office room.  I had to use "Goof Off" on the floor to remove drops of latex paint and other stuff that accumulated during the rehab of the room.  Also put up shades and moved Keiran's stuff in there.  Keiran really seemed to like his room when we let him loose in there.  He jumped around and ran from one end to the other.  He seemed happy to finally have a new room.  He was most excited when I put the acoustic guitar in his closet.  His favorite thing lately is listening to me play guitar.  Especially before he falls asleep at night.  He really loves the "tar" as he calls it.  Last night was the first time in a couple days Keiran slept through the night.  For the last couple days he woke up at 3am which of course woke us up.  Not a fun couple days.  Hopefully he sleeps through tomorrow as well.

Our Christmas went well.  The kids got tons of toys but Keiran just wanted to play with the take along trains he had opened first and then wasn't interested in opening much else.  Jon wasn't much different.  He opened about half his stuff and then just wanted to play.  He also was skipping every package that even looked like clothes.  Most he'd open just one corner and then set his clothes aside.  Russ, my Mom and Grammie came over a bit after noon and we opened more presents.  A pretty good day even though Danielle had a pretty bad cold.  We had a pretty uneventful new years.  Neither of us made it to midnight.  

I took my trip this week to New England Demolition and Salvage to get the doors for the office room. The place is way down in New Bedford Mass. Quite the hike from Gardner.  I guess it took a little over 2 hours to get there.  It was worth the trip though.  I got two doors and all the hardware for 188 dollars.  The van rental and gas were about 90 bucks so for under 300 bucks I got what I needed to finish things up.  When I looked for solid doors at the homecenter here in town they wanted 280 a piece for just the door and they wouldn't have been nearly as close a match as these are.

We've all had colds this past week but thankfullly we seems to be near the end of it.  Keiran went into a real bed about a week ago after he was trying to escape his crib.  He's on an inflatible bed for the moment but we have a real one waiting for him upstairs.  We'll probably set him up with it early this coming week.  

Not much else to report.  There are new pictures up on the website here and some new video from Halloween and a couple others.  

This weekend I'm finally painting the room that was my office.  Ceiling is all painted two coats and primer is on the walls two coats waiting for the finish color.  Today we'll be heading out to get the wall paint and Thursday of this week I plan to go to New England Salvage and get the doors for the closet and entry. A couple more weekends and we can finally move Keiran into it.  Due to us wanting to sell this place this room will probably never be my office again.  By the time the room he's in now is done we'll be putting the place on the market.  Not much point in moving him back.

Not too much else going on other than Keiran continually waking up at 4:50AM.  We've tried pretty much everything to get him to sleep.  If he goes to bed later he gets up at 4:50, if he gets his nap he wakes up at 4:50, if he doesn't get his nap he wakes up at 4:50.  It's getting pretty old for all of us but there doesn't seem to be anything we can do about it.  At least Keiran is in a bed now though and out of his crib.  Next thing is to take his pacifiers away. 

Been a busy few weeks.  My Grandmother's 90th birthday party was last weekend.  The festivities were held at Aunt Pattie's house in Wilmington last Sunday.  Pretty much the whole family showed up for the festivities.  We brought Jon and Keiran and stayed as long as we could.  Grammie enjoyed the day.  There are a few pictures of the day up in the Jon and Keiran pictures section.

Our deck is completed and a few pictures of this are also up on the site.  There's still some work to do to dig out where our stone wall was and rebuild it but overall the deck looks good and is much more solid than the piece of junk that was there when we moved in.  There are a few pics up on the website of the deck and the kids out there.  They got to go out there once or twice before it rained for several days straight.  Hopefully we'll have a few more good days they can be out there with us.  

Yesterday we went to the apple festival held at Wachusett Mountain.  The company I work for gave us vouchers for the tickets so we got in for free.  Jon got to paint a pumpkin and paint a cookie (he really was more interested in just eating the cookie) and we had a nice lunch.  There were lots of vendors for gifts and crafts.  We left with some apple donuts, cider, chocolate covered pretzels and Keiran and Jon each got a lolly pop using the money their Grammie sent them for Halloween.  It was a good day and though it was cool it was a nice sunny day for it.  We didn't get apples because Jon is going apple picking with his school this coming week.  

Today the white death has come.  It has been steadily snowing for about an hour now.  Though it doesn't appear to be accumulating just the thought of snow in the middle of October makes me feel squeamish.  I  still have a lot of stuff I wanted to get done outside and still need to change the oil in the snowblower.  Hopefully the snow can wait to accumulate for a little while longer.  Jon was asking if we could go get our Christmas tree.  Sigh. 

Been a long week.   We've all been sick with a cold this past week.  Nothing really bad but Keiran was up several times during the night wednesday which of course woke the rest of us up.  Keiran and Jon were both really grumpy thursday.  Fortunately we've all been getting better.

Our deck job started a couple weeks ago.  For the job we got a huge dumpster which has been great for getting rid of the massive amounts of crap left over from the remodel upstairs and even the toilet and tank left over from the bathroom remodel.  Our old deck has been removed, sonar tubes in and concrete poured.  Lumber is here as well.  We should have a new deck by next week.  The whole thing is being done with pressure treated because its the least costly.  It'll be nice to have a deck with proper handrails that's safe.  

Not much else going on.  Still busy at work and working on completing my office here at the house.    Just need to coat the drywall once more then fill in any bad spots and pinholes.  I still need to find replacement doors for the room too.  How two doors went missing I'll never know but they didn't come with the house :/.  Found a place down towards the cape that sells used house doors and hardware.  They claim to have thousands of doors.  Hopefully they have something that fits.  Once the office is done we'll move Keiran in there so I can start on his room.  Then we can move him back.  

When I was on holiday from work for a few days a couple weeks ago we concentrated on getting Jonathan potty trained.  It took a couple weeks total but he hasn't been in diapers for a few weeks now.  We're just working now on getting him to go in the regular toilet so he can go while he's at his nursery school.  Much easier with only one in diapers.  Hopefully we can train Keiran soon as well. 

We hired portercontracting out of Leominster to do our roof.  They completed the job a couple weeks ago working in probably one of the hottest weeks we had in a long time.   It was in the 90s and really humid.  They came early and left early most days to avoid being in the worst of the sun.  The job was finished in 5 days total.    Chimney looks excellent as does the roof job.  You can see some pictures up on the website.  We'd definetly recommend them.  Wasn't a cheap job but it wasn't an easy one either.  After watching these guys for a few days I'm really glad I wasn't doing it. In the next week or so another contractor will be starting work on our deck which we've been wanting to replace since we moved in to this house.  

Jon and Keiran had their birthday party last weekend.  Grammie, Great Grammie, Uncle Russell, and Mee Mee came to the party and it went well.  Of course they both got tons of new toys and had a great time.  Jon's favorite toy was this garage thing Grammie got for Keiran.  Keiran's favorite thing was this huge matchbox car case Grammie Sam and Grampy sent.  The case came stocked with matchbox cars.  There must've been 80 cars in the case.   Today is Jon's actual birthday so we'll probably have another cake but Jon got most of his presents already.  I think he has one gift left from his Grammie Sam and Grampy he'll get today.  In addition to the toys they got some clothes as well and some bed sheets.  

Work on my office room upstairs is coming along pretty well.  When I had a few days off I stripped all the woodwork and primed it all two coats.  I learned after doing Jon's room originally that stripping to bare wood is the only way the paint will stick.  None of the painted trim in the house was prepped correctly so without prep the new paint just peels off.  I was glad to get all the wood done.  I've got skim coat over most of the walls and and I'm second coating the new ceiling I hung with mud.  Before the skim coat I used a product called Gardz to seal the plaster like I did when I redid the bedroom walls.  This sealer is like using an oil based primer but it's water based and much less smelly.  Without it the skim coat bubbles and pinholes all over the place and you coat a dozen times to get the stuff to cover.  With this one coat of skim and a minor touchup will do it on most walls.  Great stuff but kind of hard to find.  

We all went to the Bolton Fair today over in Lancaster.  Jon had some fun petting all the animals and we had cotton candy and some lunch.  Of course being Jon he decided he wanted to go home about 45 minutes after we got there.  Keiran was in the stroller while we were there and was getting pretty hot so we left after about 2 hours or so.  The fair did have some rides but we didn't stay long enough to go on any.    Most of the rides probably weren't for little kids anyway.  Overall not a bad day but it was very hot which kind of made it hard to stay long.  On the way home we got sundaes from McDonald's (which Jonathan just refers to as the ice cream place).  Keiran was asleep on the way home but happy to wake up when we got home to have ice cream.

Jon and Keiran have both been playing the VSMILE game my Dad and Stepmother bought for Jon a few years ago.  The favorite game seems to be an Elmo game Danielle's sister gave us.   Jon is starting to get the hang of it.  Keiran seems a real natural at it though.  Really loves the thing. 

Since starting school a few months ago Jon has been bringing us home various fun an exciting new viruses.  The latest fun has been a stomach bug which we thought the boys were both done with until they came back down this symptoms on Thursday night.  Nothing like being woken up by puking sounds at 4am in the morning.  It seem so far as if they are having less of a problem with this than they did with the last one but last night Jon was up sick in the middle of the night again.  Keiran only had one "episode" yesterday and seems ok today.  Anyway, this morning we spent 3 hours disinfecting their toys with bleach and soap and then rinsing them well.  Then Danielle swept and mopped up the floor.  We're still doing load after load of laundry making sure all the bed sheets and stuffed toys are clean.  Hopefully this will be over soon, at least this run of it. 

On another subject we contracted with Porter Contracting to do our roof replacement and chimney rebuild.  They'll be taking the chimney down below the roof line and building all new up from there as well as stripping, flashing and replacing the roof.  We made sure they have insurance and called a couple of their reference.  They seem to check out.  Hopefully we'll finally have the roof issues over with.  A shame really.  The roof material is largely in pretty good shape it's just things were done so poorly shingles are falling out here and there and the chimney is in tough shape.  We had a handyman in last year to tar up the chimney and around the stink pipe which bought us some time but now it's time to get things fixed correctly.  We are still taking bids for decks trying to get that squared away as well.  We both wish we'd bought a newer house but not much we can do about it now other than fix things up and look forward to moving eventually.    This place has been quite the money pit, most we paid for except our floor refinish which my Dad and Stepmom paid for.  Summary:

New Boiler:  $5,000
All new plumbing in the house, add bathroom upstairs, redo downstairs bathroom,  all new wiring, new fixures (I did all but plumbing and fan hookup upstars):  $18,000
New Windows:  $4500
New Garage Roof:  My and Joel's labor (Dad + Stepmom paid for Shingles)
Refinish All Floors:   I forget the total now.  It was several thousand.  Dad and Stepmom paid for this.
Re-line Sewer Pipe to the main feed:  approx $5800
Roof and Chimney Repair (Pending):  $8800
Redo walls in Jon's Room and Master Bedroom:  About $1200 (did this ourselves)
New Fridge and Dishwasher:  $1100

There were other things as well that were less expensive like replacing the basement door but I don't remember all of it.  You certainly don't save anything buying an old house unless you can do all the work yourself.  Even then it could be only a break even deal or even a loss.

Final subject of today's overly long post is work.  I've successfully made it over to the enterprise development team at my job.  This move happens this coming week and I'm pretty excited about it.  Been a long road trying to get but  my chance finally came up a couple weeks ago and I decided to take it.  The company so far seems to be doing well weathering the bad economy (knock wood).  Hopefully this was a good move.  At least I didn't have  to change companies to change positions and this is more a development position and less support / development like I was doing prior. That's all for now. 

Today was Jon's first day of Nursery School.  We were both very worried about him adjusting but he did very well today.  Danielle dropped him off in the morning and he let her leave without crying.  His teacher says he painted, played in the sandbox and even played a bit with some of the other kids.  He had his snack and then we picked him up.  When we arrived he was playing in the sandbox and hardly noticed we got there.  Hopefully he continues to do well there.  We're very proud of him.  I posted some new pictures to the website and snapfish today.