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July 21st, 2011

Guess who’s getting a new roof!

Today the insurance adjuster came by to check out our roof after the massive hail storm last week. It turns out we definitely need a new roof. The test that he does to assess roof damage is to take a 10×10 square and count the number of dings in that square. “Severe” damage is 15 dings… we had 25+. And, that was the side that had some shelter from the tree.

He also found where the hail knocked some holes in the vinyl frame of our sliding glass door downstairs. For a minute I thought we were going to luck out and that our old windows, which really do need to be replaced, just because they’re really old, would be damaged enough to be replaced. But, they really weren’t hurt too bad. The back of the house definitely got the worst of it since the wind was blowing that direction. The roof was only replaced 3 years ago, and the sliding glass door also can’t be more than a few years old.

We also thought our car had managed to get by undamaged because there weren’t any large and obvious dents or cracks. But, over the past week we have found many tiny cracks all over the windshield. We have an appointment for the car to get officially checked out in a few days, so we will find out then the extent of the damage.

The lesson I have learned from all this is do NOT go out in a hail storm. When I saw the severe thunderstorm warning I seriously thought about running out and trying to cover up the garden before the hail got there. At the last minute I decided it wasn’t a smart thing to do. When it did arrive, there was no warm up and no rain – it went straight from clear to huge chunks of ice falling out of the sky. Considering what the hail has done to our roof and to our car, I hate to think what it would have done to my head. Ouch!

Here is a video Tim took during the hailstorm, as well as a video of us assessing the damage after the storm passed. Again, the storm itself did not last long – maybe 15 minutes. But the hail was so huge it didn’t really matter.


 

July 13th, 2011

Hailstorm

This evening we got hit by a severe thunderstorm with significant hail. The hail didn’t fall for very long, but it was definitely the biggest hail I have every experienced in person. The largest hail stones were about 2in in diameter. Our garden was not so lucky as with our last hail storm, but most of it survived. Our zucchini were the worst hit. Here are some pictures and a video to come later.

July 10th, 2011

Eliza Comes to Visit

Yes, we are still alive! Between moving and summer and two busy children I haven’t found the time to update our blog. So, finally, here is an update!

Recently Eliza came to stay with us for a week. Eliza just recently graduated from high school. We did a whole bunch of fun things with her while she was here – including camping at Rocky Mountain National Park, visiting Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, lots of walking around Old Town here in Fort Collins, and a trip to the swimming pool.

And, to show you we weren’t just sitting around the past six months, here is a collection of random cute pictures from the past few months. Our kids are busy and growing as ever.

January 2nd, 2011

Our Epic December Vacation

In December we took an epic trip that spanned more than three weeks and eight states.

First, we went to Redding where we visited my family and we saw Eliza in the Madrigal Dinner. We have some photos from that, but they are all on Tim’s phone. It was so much fun to go back and see the Madrigal Dinner, with my baby sister all grown up!

After a little under a week in Redding, we took a trip up to Seattle/Bainbridge Island where we visited with Garret and Jill Gibbons. It was so much fun to visit! Garrett and Jill have two kids, Dylan (who is a few months younger than Kalyn) and Wesley (who is a few months younger than Garrett, and whose name is also Garrett, although he goes by his middle name). They had lots of fun playing together (most of the time anyway) and we enjoyed visiting beautiful Bainbridge Island and Seattle.

Next we came back and visited with the family for Christmas. We spent a lot of time hanging out and playing with new Christmas presents. We did manage to make one trip to Turtle Bay Museum in Redding, which was a lot of fun for Kalyn.

Partly in an effort to avoid the storms that were spread across the West, we drove down to St George to visit Tim’s family and stopped at Death Valley along the way. Death Valley was great, with some lovely and fascinating views and balmy warm weather (it was in the 60s on the valley floor). We then got to hang out in St George with Tim’s parents and cousin Natalie.

We drove back on New Year’s day. It was great how empty the roads are early New Year’s morning, but we made up for it by being stuck in a huge traffic jam heading through the canyon back into Denver. We think it was probably made up of people heading back into Denver from the ski resorts. Now we are home. It has been a long trip but we feel like it was a huge success!

This video is of a fire demonstration at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle. There are two babies who start crying, and one of them is Garrett. Kalyn actually sat and watched the whole thing, which means it must have been fascinating.

On our last day on Bainbridge Island we drove over to Dungeness Wildlife Reserve and saw the spit there. The best thing was it was raining all morning, but about ten minute before we got there the rain cleared up and we were able to go for a little hike to see the water in the sun.

Living in a hotel can be fun. Here is a sample of what that life was like…

This is Kalyn and the turtle at Turtle Bay museum. Listen for her saying “the turtle is my best friend” right at the end of the video.

As we were packing my mom, Jeanne, and Grandma Honey gathered for an impromptu concert while Kalyn provided accompaniment.

Kalyn LOVED playing in the sand dunes at Death Valley. She was covered in sand by the time we got back to the car.

Here are the photos. There should be captions that tell you more about the photos.

November 10th, 2010

October 2010

Another mass update from our busy house. In October we celebrated Tim’s birthday, celebrated Halloween, and got to enjoy the outdoors some more before it gets too cold. I hope you enjoy these pictures and videos.




October 22nd, 2010

A Few Cute Stories

Kalyn said a lot of adorable things today, so I thought I would share.

After lunch today I was burping Garrett when Kalyn asked if she could help. Her way of helping was to get in his face, look in his eyes, and command, “Burp Baby Garrett!”

We went to a singing/play group this morning at the church (not an official activity, but a get together for the moms and some of the preschool aged kids). Kalyn was getting a little bored so she stood up to the podium and yelled, “Everybody! Everbody stop singing! I need to talk for a minute!”

Tonight we went to a trick or treat at The Farm here in Fort Collins. They had a bunch of wooden booths with doors where the volunteers would open the door and give out candy. She enjoyed interacting with the volunteers even more than getting the candy. She would ask, “What are you?” (They were all dressed up.) Or, she would say, “I’m a butterfly.” Or she might make some observation about their booth, such as “You’re wearing a pumpkin,” or “You’re standing in the grass.” It was a little rainy and cold and crowded, but she had a blast.

October 16th, 2010

Harvest Farm

Last night we went to the Harvest Farm in Wellington. We had a ton of fun, as you can see in all our pictures and videos. Click on the pictures for captions.







October 10th, 2010

A Lefty

A couple weeks ago I noticed that Kalyn was coloring with her left hand. Since then I have been watching carefully to see what hand she uses, and every time she has used her left hand for coloring or eating or any one handed task. So, we are thinking that Kalyn is probably left handed. I cannot remember any of Kalyn’s relatives on either side being left handed, but maybe you can think of someone?

We are excited to find out yet another thing that makes Kalyn special. :) Of course, she would be special to us no matter what.

October 3rd, 2010

An Update

Sorry it’s been so long since our last update! We are still keeping plenty busy here in the Wessman house.

Kalyn has started taking preschool, a 1 hour class three times a week. She loves it! It’s a pretty simple class just for the 2 1/2-3 year olds. They sing songs, read books, paint pictures, and run around in the gym. You can see Kalyn’s first “homework” in the pictures. We made a T-shirt with pictures of all her favorite things on it, which was designed to help her introduce herself to her class.

Lately Kalyn’s favorite thing to do is to dress up and play pretend. She got a ballerina skirt for Christmas last year from Aunt Rebekah that she has worn pretty much non stop for the past couple months. She also enjoys dressing up as a dinosaur, a princess, a butterfly, a bat, a bee, a cat, and whatever else she can imagine. Her default animal, though, is a frog. It’s kind of funny when she gets into trouble for jumping around or being excessively rambunctious (usually involving her baby brother) she becomes a frog. Often she recruits Mommy to dress up with her, which makes for double the fun.

Before her dress up and play phase Kalyn was in love with puzzles for several weeks. She still enjoys puzzles, but for a while that was all she wanted to do, all day long. We are quite impressed with her prowess at puzzles – with a little practice she can put a 48 piece puzzle together all by herself.

Garrett has learned to crawl. He loves to explore! Whenever he sees something interesting he does whatever he can to grab it, which keeps Mommy on her toes.  He is not as speedy as Kalyn, but he makes up for it in grabbiness. The thing that Garrett finds most upsetting, other than getting hurt, is having some interesting thing he has managed to get a hold of taken away from him.

Garrett’s current favorite activity, though, is pulling up to standing on every available person or piece of furniture. While he is intent on climbing up whenever possible, he has not yet learned to get himself down. This means there is a lot of climbing up then crying for Mom or someone to help him get down. This is also is keeping Mom very busy. :)

Kalyn and Garrett are starting to develop a real relationship with each other. Sometimes this takes the form of fighting for possesion of some favorite toy (the weekly free balloon we get at the grocery store is one common item). Sometimes, though, this means giggling as they growl at each other or take turns jumping up and down.

As I am writing this I realized that I have not posted since Garrett learned to crawl, and I don’t think that is a coincidence! I have two awesome children who keep me very busy and I am lucky to be their Mom.

Last weekend Tim and I also got to attend HHC2010 (aka: the calculator conference) which was a lot of fun, and included a tour of NOAA and NIST. We got to see the Denver National Weather Service station, the Space Weather Observatory (where they keep an eye out for solar storms), their science on a sphere demonstration (which is much more interesting than it sounds), some laser thing (which is the only thing I saw where I didn’t understand what was going on), and where they are working on building quantum computers. It was a great trip and I was so glad I got to go. They will be posting a collection of pictures from the conference, which I will be sure to share with you once it is up.

I hope you enjoy this random collection of pictures. We haven’t had as many exciting trips lately now that summer is over, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t as busy as ever!

August 15th, 2010

Summer Living

We haven’t updated for a while, but we’re still keeping busy! Here are a collection of video and pictures wherein we:

  • Have dinner and do a short “hike” to a waterfall in Lory State Park (just outside of Fort Collins).
  • Visit downtown Boulder and play in the water fountains there. (In the video Kalyn gets squirted in the face, poor thing!)
  • Do another short hike in Lory State Park, where Kalyn get very excited about some grasshoppers.
  • Hang out at home together.
  • Visit and work in our garden.

We also just got back from another short camping trip to a local lake, but on that trip we managed to forget about half of what we needed, including the camera (and all our clothes and Mom and Dad’s sleeping bags). So, we only have a few pictures from the cell phone from that one, and I don’t know how to import those yet.

Garrett is getting super busy. He may be the grabbiest baby I have ever seen, and it is difficult to do anything while holding him. Just a minute ago I had to put him down because he kept trying to grab my mouse. He is crawling all over using his army crawl. However, he pushes up on his legs quite a bit so he might actually learn to do a more traditional crawl, as opposed to Kalyn who learned to walk before she stopped doing her army crawl.



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