As much as you can ever be done with a remodel, we finished our remodel up the first part of November. It has taken us this long to get most of the little things off the list and start to really enjoy the place. Now that we have settled in a bit, I thought I would start a top ten list of the things I like the most about the remodel. They are in no particular order and will probably not mean much to other but are things that have made the remodel worth the effort.

So what is on the list you ask? Between trying to dress nicely for work and church, I have several slacks that use to get all bunched together and half the time I could never find them in the old closet. With our new closet system we installed, I now have this nifty slacks rack that slides in and out allowing me to select my nearly pressed slacks.

There are many other great things about the house but the two of you that will read this will have to wait for Shanan to post one of her items first. Keep an eye on her blog to see what she finds worthy of her top 10.

Boy has it been a long time!

Since the last time I posted, we are now a few months away from adding a boy to the family, the addition is complete, Blayke walks/runs everywhere, Bailey turned four and I have a new job at Autodesk (Inventor Product Manager). With all those exciting new things, I will not be posting about any of that. Shanan does a great job at blogging about all the good stuff around the house so I will focus on other nerdy things.

I have been on the hunt for a good Bluetooth headset recently as I am trying to retire my old one that I have been using for the last few years. I purchased a Jabra about a week ago from AT&T and have tried to use it several times over the week and had terrible luck with it. On one occasion I had to have a customer call me back on a different phone since I couldn't even hear him well enough to hold a conversation. Tonight Shanan and I took the kids to the mall to play so I headed over  to the AT&T store to see what I could do. To my surprise, AT&T was actually really cool about swapping it out for a different headset (of course the one I wanted was a bit more). I looked at the new Plantronics and Jawbone headset and decided to go with the Plantronics.

The sound is great so far but the thing that I like the most is the little case it comes with that is also the charger. I am always leaving my old headset in the car because I don't want to throw it in my bag and potentially break it. Now I should be able to leave it in my bag at all times which will make it easier for me to use if more often.

Lets just hope the headset is as cool as the case it comes with

Friday afternoon at about 3:00 pm while I was at work I got a quick call from Shanan telling me the cabinet company would be delivering our cabinets a few minutes

I was expecting them in the afternoon but thought I would have  a little more of a head start (like 30 minutes). I jumped in my car and raced to my house to help the two delivery guys put the 16 large boxes in our soon to be kitchen. I spent the better part of the evening un-boxing and trying to figure out how they would all go together.

Yesterday morning our general contractor knocked on the front door at 7:08 am bright eyed and bushy tailed (who uses that saying anymore) ready to install the cabinets. We worked on em all day other than a quick trip to the local burrito joint for a little lunch.  We wrapped up around 7:00 pm with everything in looking amazing I might add.

Take a look for yourself.

Other than that, this last week our tilers tiled our bathroom and new tub. Shanan hasn't seen it in person yet, just pictures but we love it.

Tomorrow they start painting the interior of the house and should start to tile the downstairs end of week or next week. Shanan gets home Friday with the kids to see all the progress we have made over the last few weeks.

Fun Fun!!

And it was alive

As most of you know we are in the middle of a “small” home improvement project adding a little more space for the family. I would have to say it’s been quite the project since we have been involved with a bit of the demolition work. It all started as we removed about a third of our deck for the contractor so get their machines in the back yard to dig for the new foundation. From there we tore down the siding from the back of the house and proceeded to tear out several walls, kitchen, master bathroom, and wire house for speakers and a number of other things. It has taken most of our spare time these days and the other day we realized it has taken a toll on everybody. I realized that our sweat little Blayke is growing up so fast and I hardly know her. I have read few books to her and haven't been involved in her life near as much as I was in Baileys at that age. I have done a lot of reflecting this week and have realized I need to work really hard to not let this project overshadow our family life and the great relationship I have with Shanan and our extremely cute little girls. Shanan and I have taken several breaks lately to get the girls out of the crazy house and let them unwind. Here are a few fun pics we took over the weekend at the mall playground.

We still have a lot to do on the house so it isn't all fun and games yet. Last night we started to remove the hardwood floor downstairs since it is one of the last remaining items we need to remove during this project. After the kiddies went to bed tonight we continued to tear out the floor. Last night we removed about 1/3 of the floor and another 1/3 tonight. If all goes we should have the rest out tomorrow night. Here are some fun pictures from the last few nights.

At this point we are ready for the project to be over although we still have a bit more to do. I got a call today from Shanan today (not very pleased) telling me that the remodel has been extended another few weeks. That will put us up to the end of October before we have a kitchen, master bath, Baileys bedroom and a few other nice to have things. We haven't wondered why we did this yet,  but we have wondered why we didn't take 2 months off and head to the Bahamas. Shanan leaves this Sunday for over two weeks to get a reprieve while this craziness ensues. I will hold down the fort and do as little as I can – that is still a lot more than I want to do

I still reflect on spending more time with the family and hope we can take more time to just have fun as a family.

I haven't been very good at keeping up with my blog lately so I thought I would post a monthly update to possibly our busiest month of the year.

Where do I even start...

The Remodel

As many of you probably already know, we started construction over a month ago on our house to add a little more room and add a few fun things that I hear we cant live without. It has been a very trying month with all of this going on and I have no idea how Shanan has been able to handle it. We only have a few rooms in the house that haven't been effected yet and with two little ones at home and really only a few rooms in the house that haven't been effected too much. At this point we are without a kitchen, master bathroom, Bailey's room and our family room and bedroom have become the hang out places when we are home. It looks like this will project will go into mid October and I think I will probably send off Shanan and the kids to the East Coast for a few weeks for a reprieve of this all.

Biken

On a fun side of all this I was able to have my biggest bike month since we have been in the North West with a total of a little over 300 miles ridden for the month of August. No the miles weren't to get me out of the crazy house and leave Shanan to fend for herself. I had to be creative to get out this much and was able to get most of these miles in the wee hours of the morning before I went to work. I did do the Portland Century in August which allowed me to get 100 miles in a day so I had 30 days left in the month to get the other 200 miles. It was a great month of riding and despite a short summer I have had a great riding season so far.

August biking report

New Job

I also started a new job this month as I was getting ready for a change after four years as the Inventor Technical Marketing Manager. I really enjoyed my old job and was able to go to some really fun places and present our software at some great events. I decided it is was time to take a little less technical job and took a new job as the Inventor Subscription Product Manager. I will be responsible for certain aspects of the Autodesk Inventor product as well as the subscription program for Inventor. It will be a bit of a change for me since I have always been very technical and this is far less technical job. I will be more involved with the development team and customers to determine what their needs are for future release of Inventor. I will still travel a bit and will more than likely have a trip to Germany in the next few months and head to Japan by the end of the year. I am very excited for the change and a little nervous with such a big change.

Blayke is now ONE

Yep - its already been a year and Blayke celebrated her first birthday. Ok it was actually September 1st but since I don't blog much thought I should add it in here. We had a great birthday cake for Blayke, sang a great birthday song and let her dig into her cake. It was her first time she has had that much sugar and OH MY. After eating her piece of cake, she was bouncing off the wall for about 30 minutes then was out like a light.

As you can see things have been very crazy this summer and if Shanan were to post to her blog you could hear her side of it. I think I have it much easier than she does but we are a happy little family and have had a great summer. We look forward to getting the house finished and being able to nestle down for the winter and just hang out.

Lets hope I can start to blog a little more frequently

It has been a very long time since I have posted although I do have a good reason. Shanan and I decided to add-on to our house a few months ago and we are two weeks into the main project. We no longer have a kitchen, several walls are missing and we are tired of fast food but the show must go on. Due to Microsoft’s new technology (Photosynth) I have taken about 140 pictures that you can easily navigate similar to a 3D model to view our downstairs.

In the next few days I hope to do the same thing upstairs so stay tuned.

As many of you know I love to ride my bike and if weather permits try to find a few hours from my week to get out on the road. It has become a little more difficult over the years to get out as much as I once did but all the same it is one of my pleasures in life. As most of you probably also know, I am also a bit of a tech guy and always like to play with the latest technology.

Today I think I finally locked down the perfect set of biking toys that make riding all that more fun. I have been using my iPod touch when riding although today I purchased a cheep iPod shuffle that lets me dump a few hours of music on it and not worry about breaking it or losing it and I can easily change songs while riding without having to pull it out of my pocket. I took this out for a spin today and loved the little addition.

The other toy I added to my collection earlier this year was a new biking GPS from Garmin that came out earlier this year. I had the older version although it only kept bread crumbs and historical data for each ride. The new one has actual maps and turn by turn direction. Shanan loves it because I don’t have to spend much time planning my rides anymore. I can spend a few minutes to plan my ride and upload it right to my GPS and run out the door. This use to take me over half an hour just to get ready.

Today was almost my perfect riding day where I put some tunes on my new red Shuffle, uploaded a new route and headed out the door. I made a few detours along the way but was able to stay on the main course due to the GPS and have a great ride. I did discover that the GPS looks for the shortest route which is often nice other than when climbing over steep hills. Instead of letting you take less steep roads it just finds the shortest (steepest) route from bottom to top. On my ride today it had me climb a fairly steep, long hill in just a few miles (ouch).  What a great ride it was and even better with a little technology.

Just don’t  ask Shanan about all of my other tech stuff we have around the house that drives her crazy.

I have always looked at fathers day as a day to remember your fathers and probably for the first time in my life have felt that fathers day was actually for me. Yes I have a three year old girl and have had a few fathers days where I was a father but for some reason it started to sink in a little more this year (you all know I am a little slow). I did have time to reflect how great of dad I have and all the things that I have learned from him.

Tonight we had dinner at a friends house and we were asked to think of something that we have learned from our fathers that has meant a lot to us. There are many things that make me appreciate my dad, one that often comes to mind is the ability to fix things. My dad is the handiest man I know. Many years ago he wanted a log house so he built a tractor/skidder from scratch as well as a saw mill to prepare to build one. For the next few summers we spent most of our time on the mountain while our dad personally cut down and skidded trees to build a house. The next year he milled all the trees and the year after he build a large log cabin for us to live in.

Another one of my favorites is that he wanted an airplane. Did he go buy one? Nope, he purchased what was not much more than a fuselage and built the rest. This is not a snap together kit, it required many hours to build and when he got it certified he was told it was the nicest hand built plane they had ever seen – it even made it in a magazine. I could never build a plane or a log cabin or many of the things my dad does although I did learn how to perform simple maintenance on cars and how to fix things like a bikes, household appliances and more from the best out there. This is just one of the many things that I appreciate from my dad.

As a father I have been extremely blessed – I have two beautiful little girls (not so little these days) that mean the world to me and an amazing wife that makes it all possible. As usual Shanan is always trying to find ways to make holidays special for us and today was no different. As many of you know, I love chocolate (another thing I got from my dad) and brownies make for a great Gardiner treat. Only problem around here is that we like the corners and edges so we typically eat them first then resort to the center later. A few months ago I heard about an all corner brownie pan and told Shanan about it. This morning before church, Bailey came in with a few presents for me to unwrap. First one I unwrapped was a “Brownie Mix Bliss” cookbook that Shanan found. It tells you how to make killer brownies from box brownie mix and a few other ingredients. I loved the book but still didn’t know what could be in the bigger box. I opened it and …thats right – the all corner brownie pan! Now I just have to figure out what type of brownie I want from the book and be extra nice to the wife in hopes of a nice warm pan of corners!

I had a great day and it is always nice to think about our great dads as well as getting  a little pampered.

Hope you all had a great fathers day.

Today was a special day for Bailey.

Some of you might remember a previous post where we just finished Baileys fortress and she asked if we could put a trampoline next to it. Apparently it was past time to learn about the value of a dollar. For a few days after,  Shanan and I had several conversations about how we should tackle the growing tendency of wanting more. With the help of Shanan's sister (Nichol), Shanan decided to make a chart that Bailey would place stickers on when she did something around the house. When the chart was filled, she could go to the dollar store and pick out ANYTHING she wanted.

After several weeks of filling out the chart, today was the day she finally filled up the chart and wanted to go get her gift.

We told her I would take her to the dollar store while mom made dinner. Bailey reminded several times on the way to the store (only a few miles away) that she didn't need any help picking out her gift. We get to the store and all I see is this little blond head bouncing from isle to isle hardly stopping long enough to look at what was on the shelves.

After about five minutes of this,  I stop her long enough for a quick picture to document such an achievement and try to slow her down a little. I was told that she wanted play-doh, then a little pony, then a princess crown, then colored clay then a baseball bat and ball. She then dropped everything when she saw some balloons, I had no idea she was so attached to regular balloons. She then saw the golden ticket - large punching balls (large balloons with a rubber band). We quickly headed up to the counter to pay for the item and I was told that I needed to blow up the orange one first then the green one and finally the yellow one when we get in the car (this must be her mothers planning influence). 

The checker had been watching us the entire time and when we approached said "you found the perfect gift hu?" in which Bailey replied "yep". Bailey then went to pay the the cashier with four quarters when she dropped one on the floor. She instantly said "I'm sorry lady" picked it up and finished paying for her balloons.  The cashier and I both had to laugh at such a grown-up comment and we strolled out the door.

So far the punching bag has been a big hit (pun sorta intended) and we look forward to many more trips to the dollar store in hopes of our little ones learning the price of a dollar.