Top 10 from 2006

Another year has passed. We continue to be amazed at how quickly the time passes. While rereading last year’s newsletter we noticed that we ended our newsletter stating that our lives revolved around remodeling our house. This past year has been a year-long extension of that process.

We have had our share of what we would call growing pains. These are pains in life that seem truly unbearable but as soon as you achieve your goal you cease to remember the pain it took you to get there.

We have laughed and cried and argued and debated and compromised. Sometimes our house has been a battle of wills and other times it has been a source of great creativity and problem solving. We have learned so much about ourselves and each other through this process and we are so blessed to have had this experience, even with all of the aches and pains that came with it.
 
We look to the new year with great hope and expectations of what our lives will bring us. We have been blessed with 4 amazing years of marriage. We continue to grow every day and count our blessings. Even when life isn’t what we expect, we are blessed with each other and with wonderful families and friends that are supportive in so many ways.

We would like to take this time to thank you for the contributions you have made to make our lives
richer and more purposeful. We hope that your lives have been touched by us as well.
 
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Cheree and Daniel
 
Our Top 10 lessons learned in 2006

10) In the unlikely event that 3 huge trees fall down in your yard and one lands across your roof, you have 2 options: Either call someone and pay a lot of money to have it removed, or just look at it as another opportunity to use your climbing gear and you don’t even have to drive to the cliffs.

9) If you drive a stick shift and the e-brake doesn’t work, always park it in gear. More specifically, 1st gear or reverse, as Cheree learned on 3 different occasions. Any other gear will just hold the car still long enough for you to go inside blissfully ignorant of what’s about to happen. First time the fence fell, second time the fence got pushed down the hill, and the third time the Pathfinder got in a fight with a tree at the end of the driveway, and the tree won.
 
8) Forget what the package says, self-leveling floor compound does not level itself. Not even close.
 
7) When you climb a mountain it is common knowledge that if you can’t see the summit because of bad weather, you stop climbing because it is too dangerous. What’s not as clearly defined is: what to do if you are on the summit and the snowstorm has moved in below you?

6) If you go to ski school, always fall at least once so they can teach you how to get back up.
 
5) If you are visiting a church you haven’t been to in a year or so, don’t volunteer to carry around your friend’s baby carrier unless you’re prepared to answer a lot of questions.

4) When remodeling, you need, as a minimum, 4 semi-finished-looking, semi-clean areas at all times. A bedroom for sleeping, a sitting area for relaxing in and forgetting about how much of a disaster the rest of the house is, a bathroom for, well, yeah, and a kitchen so you don’t have to eat out all the time. We had only three out of those four for over a year. Eating out is only fun for the first week.

3) If you remove full tile from a bathroom, don’t fill a 34 gallon trash can to the top with the old tile. If you’re weak you’ll never be able to lift the garbage can. If you’re strong, and ignorant, when you do try to dump it into the big can it’s so heavy it will take you with it.
 
2) Ferry rides from one island to another, although quaint and relaxing, are not exactly the most efficient method of travel. 27 miles at 9 miles per hour, you do the math. Suddenly a 6 hour drive home turns into a 12 hour tour.

1) Before you renovate a house, rent Money Pit (Tom Hanks). Every time they say “two weeks” in reference to how long it will be before something is finished, substitute in “two years” if you are doing it yourself.

If you are interested, here are our Top 10 List from Years Past
2003 | 2004 | 2005