Top 10 from 2005

The Top 10 Things We Learned in 2005

10) If you ever go on an overnight backpacking trip on any of Hawaii’s ridgelines, do not leave your camera in the car!

9) If you choose to drive up a muddy, steep hill that was last traversed by a bulldozer, it's wonderful to have friends who will spend their Saturday night at TSC buying recovery gear and then bringing it out to you 12 miles past the middle of nowhere.
 
8) When you move somewhere new, find some way to make sure you have more than 2 people to carry ALL of your belongings up 2 narrow flights of stairs in the middle of winter.
 
7) Finding a church family to be a part of is essential to moving to a new city where you do not know anyone.
 
6) Charging your little brother rent for the summer may not make him like you more, but it will teach you both valuable lessons.
 
5) Family members in the medical field do not enjoy phone calls such as “I just had a bicycle wreck, exactly how deep does a cut need to be before you have to have stitches?” (Daniel) or “I just had a ladder collapse out from under me, should I go to the ER?” (Cheree)
 
4) Buying and renovating a new home does indeed create stress, especially if one spouse is creative and the other is practical.
 
3) Daniel’s least favorite phrase of Cheree’s is “Can we tear out this wall?” 
Cheree’s least favorite word of Daniel’s is “No.”
 
2) Eating out for EVERY meal for three months till your kitchen is done is not so great.
 
1) No matter what, at the end of the day, our love and God bind us together as we continue to grow in the ups & downs of our everyday life.

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

Our House In Progress

Life as we know it is pretty chaotic right now. We spend our days working our normal 40 hours a week and our nights & weekends working on our house. We continue to be optimistic that things will get completed sooner or later but this whole project is very time consuming.

We have been working on the house since September and living here since October - we will be glad when it is in a more livable state. Actually I will be elated when we have floors in EVERY room and there is no more dust. I just recently started cooking again, but there is always this fear that we are consuming as much dust as food. It is a miracle that we don't have respiratory problems yet!

Gatlinburg Christmas 2005

We just got back from a 5-day weekend in Gatlinburg, TN. We had a blast with 19 family members all in one cabin! It would have been better except that the water pump went out on Christmas Eve so Christmas day we had to move to another cabin. We can't complain too much though because we did get an upgrade. 

I was told that the best part of trip for the littlest cousins was baking cookies to hang on the Christmas tree. Since I was heading that up, I did not take any pictures!!! I hope someone from our family has pictures of us all baking together! 

We did play pinochle - there are just no pictures to prove it!   

Anyways, I have uploaded a lot of the pictures from our time there. We are looking forward to doing this again in 2 years.  

Life as we know it is pretty chaotic right now. We spend our days working our normal 40 hours a week and our nights working on our house. We continue to be optimistic that things will get completed sooner or later but this whole project is very time consuming.

We have been working on the house for around 5 weeks and actually living in it for 3 - we will be glad when it is in a more liveable state.