Just when we thought winter was over...

This is what I woke up to this morning. :(

Eeeeek!

We got our "farm fresh" eggs today. They are all different colors. Some are speckled, some are dark brown, some are light brown, there's even a GREEN one! They even came in generic (no logo) egg cartons. We saved our last egg carton to give to the egg lady for next time. No sense in using a new egg carton every time. Reduce, re-use, recycle! I never thought I'd be the hippie type, but here I am....

These are our eggs...

Speckles!

The crazy green one.

We cooked one to try. It looks just like a grocery store egg. It seemed like it was harder to crack though...

I took a video of Mike trying the egg, it turned out pretty hilarious. I'll try to upload it tomorrow. We decided that it tasted like "egg". Mike got over his fear pretty quick. But I have to say that once the eggs were in the house, I got pretty nervous about eating them. They look so different. I think the egg we tried tasted different from the eggs we normally get from the grocery store, but that was probably just in my head. Also, I don't usually eat the yoke, so that probably had a lot to do with it too.

I'm very excited about our venture into growing and eating more "organically" and cutting out bad preservatives in our diet. I think moving to the "country" is going to be a big change for us, but it will help us to slow down and enjoy each other and our family, and not depend on big chain restaurants, fast food (although we really don't eat out much now), and shopping. We've decided not to subscribe to cable when we move into the new place. It's an unnecessary expense and a lazy trap. (We will have an antenna for local digital channels and we can always stream TV shows from Hulu or something). We're just going to have to occupy ourselves with more productive activities like gardening, crocheting, cooking, walking... Things that are cheap and healthy. I'm feeling really good about this move.

Waterfront Park

After looking at the house today (nothing new to report), I drove a couple miles around to the other side of Medical Lake, to "Waterfront Park". It was SO COOL!! I can totally see us taking the kids there to play. I think Mike's sister and her family would love it. I can't wait for them to come visit. This is the PERFECT picnic place. They're having an Easter Egg Hunt on Easter. I wish we had kids to take... :( You can read more about Waterfront Park on the Medical Lake homepage link in the "my links" bar on the right side of my blog...

Here are the pictures I took of the park today. I had my camera, but forgot to put the memory card back in after my last upload, so these were taken with my phone...


The lake is still mostly frozen...

Sandy beach.

Awesome play structure.

Swings! I can't wait to take Kamron. He and Mikey had a blast on the swings at the park by our apartment last fall.

Covered picnic area. there is also a TON more picnic tables that are not covered and grills to use (not that I would, creepy....). And you can reserve areas for parties and whatnot...

Ah, the conveniences of modern life...

It's Spring!

Time to get the garden started. It has been soooo nice outside lately. The temperature has even got up into the 50's! But we're in Spokane, so it's nowhere close to time to put plants into the ground. Around here, the rule is to wait until the leaves on a tree are the size of a "squirrel's ear" or the snow has melted off the top of Mt. Spokane, or until Mother's Day... That's about 2 months away. Waaaaaah!!!! All I want to do is dig in our new garden, put in our lawn, plant our HOA mandated tree in the front yard and build the fence.... Since we can't do ANY of those things for a few weeks, I stopped by the Wal-Mart in Airway Heights (the nearest shopping to Medical Lake), and picked up some starter stuff. I got a "Jiffy" greenhouse dome with peat pots for starting plants, organic starter potting soil and some seeds. I wanted to get all organic seeds, but I didn't see everything I wanted in "organic". So I picked up a few packs of non-organic, but if I see them available in organic when I find the other veggies I'm looking for, I'll pick them up and start them a little later. Did I say organic?

Here are some pictures of our planting stuff....

I can't wait to have a salad fresh from the garden. We watched a show last weekend about growing "mesclun" a delicate mix of tasty lettuces. It will be so nice to step outside with a pair of scissors and come back in with a salad. I love salad, but it seems every time I buy a bag, I end up throwing half of it away. I'm also really excited about the beets. I need to look up how to turn them into "pickled beets".

My idea for the lavender is to transplant it when it becomes sizeable, into a planter box to put on the railing of the front porch. It will smell so nice and be really relaxing to sit out there with a cup of cofee in the morning, or with some tea before bed. I would really love to grow enough to be able to clip some to being inside. Ahhhh....

Some other veggies I'd like to grow:

• English or japanese cucumbers
• Bell pepper (green, red, yellow)
• Sweet peppers (like they sell at Costco)
• Green beans
• Butternut squash (for ravioli?)
• Roma tomatoes
• Cherry tomatoes (red and yellow/orange)
• Spinach
• Herbs (chives, cilantro, parsley, oregano, thyme, dill)
• Potatoes (fingerling, yukon gold, purple)

Of course, this is all dependant on space. I would like to have a back lawn too.

New Appliances!

We bought appliances for the house today! They won't be delivered until April 4 :( I am soooo excited to see them IN the house and I am actually really looking forward to doing some laundry. Our fridge, dishwasher and clothes washer are all energy star. I don't believe Best Buy carries Energy Star clothes dryers, microwaves, or ranges or that they are even on the market at all. As a bonus for buying Energy Star, Avista (the local electric/gas company) is offering rebates. For the appliances we purchased, we will receive $100 in credit on our account. Yay! I'm really trying to be green wherever we can in our new house. I noticed that the windows are Energy Star and the house is very well insulated. We would like to get a new stand for our TV, and probably new desks for the office. I'm going to yard sale like crazy this spring to find pieces that I can re-use and re-finish. It's a lot better for the environment (and the wallet) than buying new...

Here are pictures I grabbed online of our appliances and links to their information on bestbuy.com...

Refrigerator

Twin-cooling means no odor transfer between freezer and refrigerator. We gave up "water in the door" to save money, but there is a filtered water spout inside and an ice maker and tub in the freezer (it even comes with a handy ice scoop). I'm super excited about the "french door" design. It seems soooo spacious, and there is no bending to get veggies out of the crisper. The bottom freezer is also more efficient since "cold air is heavier than warm air". Samsung also makes some of the most energy efficient models. This one should only cost about $50 a year to operate.

Range

This range is self-cleaning. I know, big deal. But this one is different in that it is "steam" self-cleaning. The lower heating element is hidden and there the bottom is concave (?). To clean, you pour 1-1/4 cups water in the bottom of the oven and press the self clean button. The oven heats up to 350 degrees (as opposed to 700+ on a conventional oven. Hello energy savings!) and steams the yuckies on the inside of the oven. Then, when the cycle is over, you wipe any of the baked on yuckies from the bottom of the oven. Presto! I really had wanted to run a gas line to the kitchen and get a gas range, but it was getting a little costly. Booooo.

Microwave

Just your basic, everyday 950 watt microwave. I believe this is "silver" not "stainless steel". I'm curious how it will look with the stainless range. I guess we shall see....

Dishwasher

I thought this was a pretty basic dishwasher, then Mike told me it was way cooler than the one we have now. The new one has a "sani-rinse" cycle and a hard food disposer. Cool!

Washer

I was really wanting a "steam" washer and dryer, but again, cost prevailed.... These are awesome though. "Vibration Reduction Technology" means it won't sound like a train coming through the house during the spin cycle... Samsung also has a cool "silver care" feature, where the water runs between 2, 99-point-something percent silver plates to kill bacteria or somesuch fancy scientific jibba jabba, when using cold water!.... The yearly operating cost of this machine is around $12 with a natural gas water heater. And with the silver care, we won't have to use hardly any hot water, so maybe less than that...

Dryer

It's a front load dryer... There's a child lock-out.... We also got the pedestals to raise the washer and dryer up so I don't have to break my back to load and unload and they're great storage!

I hope I haven't bored you to death with my appliances. In the next couple days we should have farm fresh eggs to blog about. I was telling my mom last week that I would like to find a farm in Medical Lake that sells fresh eggs, and she told me her co-worker sells them. I've known this lady practically my whole life and did not know this. So my mom ordered 2 dozen! That's a lot of eggs. I can't wait to see/eat them. I will take photos and blog all about my experience. I'm anxious to see Mike's reaction. He is nervous that there might be a real live baby chick in one....We shall see.

New Link

I added a link to the "my links" section to the right. Click on the link to find out everything there is to know about Medical Lake, WA, our soon to be new home...

Gotta love that fresh country air

I went out to the new house today to check out progress. It really doesn't look much different than last week. The trim is done and they've cut the vinyl to size and put a metal trim/border around those areas. The plumbers were there earlier this week, but I don't think they did their stuff since we haven't bought our dishwasher yet. I took some more picture, measurements and wrote down more issues for the builder to fix before move-in.

After I was done at the house I went for a little drive down the "dead end" road behind the house. I took these pictures while driving about a half mile to mile down the road. Some of them are blurry, but the countryside out there is beautiful. I can't wait to go for walks/jogs there.








In the distance, you can see the tower for Fairchild Air Force Base...



Cows! Very blurry cows...


You can see our house in the lower right corner of this picture.

There's a park just a couple blocks away. This is in the other direction towards the highway.


In other news... Today we had a big family get together at the "Golden Corral" so say goodbye and good luck to my cousin, Kenji, who is leaving to join the Air Force next month. Kamron was being his spunky self and I snapped these pictures...

On the road again...

For work yesterday, I had to fly to Billings, MT, work less than 4 hours, then fly back home. My flight left Spokane at 7am and I landed back in Spokane at 10pm. That was a LONG day. I'm not complaining though, I did get paid for the entire day...

Since I'm sure you're tired of reading about our house buying experience, here are some pictures of Billings. Nothing exciting, I took these while driving to the airport on my way home.

What a gorgeous day! Such a breath of fresh air getting away from the snow.

This must be where they get the term "big sky"

It's hard to tell in this picture, but this is a casino. They are EVERYWHERE in Montana.

The downtown area is cute. It reminds me of Boise, ID and Anchorage, AK.

The airport is on top of a huge plateau called "rimrock". It was quite a climb to the top...

The airport is small, but very cute and NOT BUSY at all!

On the plane, I had plenty of time to crochet. I made one and a half dishcloths. I finished the second one today. This was the first time in over a week that I've been relaxed enough to crochet. We've been so busy thinking about the house and meeting with different people, signing our lives away, picking out carpet and appliances....

Moving Right Along

So everything is moving fairly smoothly. We had a bump in the road earlier this week when the Mortgage guy called and told me that we didn't qualify for the USDA Rural Housing Loan (where we wouldn't have to make a down payment or pay Private Mortgage Insurance) because we make too much money. I never thought that I would ever be denied something for making too much money. How ridiculous! Our only option now is to apply for and FHA housing loan (which bears a greatly lower down payment requirement than conventional loans at 3.5%). After a near meltdown (on my part, not Mike's), we spent the latter part of the week coming up with down payment money. We got that all taken care of and now things are back on track again. We picked out carpet on Tuesday and that should be installed on April 2, and the air conditioner was installed sometime this week. I've also been window shopping for appliances all week...

Mike and I went to the house this afternoon. I wanted to measure for window treatments and appliances. We also wanted to check out all the changes. It already looks a lot different. Most of the trim has been installed. It looks a lot more finished and like a real house.

We also got a chance to meet one of the neighbors; the wife on the east side. Her name is Brandy (or Brandi). She was excited to have neighbors. She asked if we had kids and was a little sad that we didn't. Her son, Brandon (8), stepped outside and Brandy told him we were the new neighbors and we didn't have kids. Brandon was back inside as quickly as he had come out. It was actually kind of funny. The neighbors also have 2 dogs, a boxer(?) named Odin and a bull dog(?) named Gidget. Cute dogs, barked like crazy, but they're inside most of the time. The neighbors are also very eager to go in halvsies on a fence. They've been living there almost 2 years and have had a "chicken wire" fence up temporarily until some neighbors moved in. Brandy said that they have been through the house (they often left it unlocked during construction), and she loves the dining room. I told her thats one of the reasons I fell in love with this house.

I took a TON more pictures today. This may seem kind of repetitive, but hopefully, you can see the changes... Tomorrow, I'm taking mom, dad, grandma, Sachi and Kamron to see the house. If there's any more progress, I'll take more pictures.

Brad put up the "SOLD" sign today. Yay!

Front entry. I didn't realize how big the coat closet was before. It's going to be great for our Christmas Eve parties.

Front window. 95" wide. The window treatment for this one is going to cost a fortune. I'll be searching for a deal on this one forever.
I like the tile on the fireplace. Fairly neutral. This should go with just about anything.
Front bedroom.
Back bedroom.
Master bedroom.
Master bathroom. Identical to the main bathroom.
Both bathroom sinks are the same. Pretty standard...
Dining room. I forgot to get a picture of this last week. Its huge! I would like to buy the sideboard that matches our dining room table and maybe a china cabinet.... but that's a ways off.
Kitchen. The sink and garbage disposal will be installed soon and you can see the trim and doors are going up.
Kitchen countertop. I don't think the lighting is right. It is really more beige/tan.
Just a drawer...
Or is it? I love love love having a pull out cutting board. Its one of my favorite things about this apartment. It adds quite a bit of counter space and is a perfect place for making sandwiches.
Lazy Susan. There are two. This is the larger one. I can't stand that the hinge is on the right. Every time I've tried to open it, I go for the wrong side. I think I'll ask the builder if they can change it and the cupboard that is above it.
Small pantry.
Large pantry.
Master closet.
Ceiling texture.
Door to the attic and standard bedroom/hall/closet light fixture.
Cable/Phone box in the garage. This is where the cable and phone comes into the house and splits into the rest of the house. We won't be having land line phones, so we're going to turn the phone jacks into "cat5" jacks to network the whole house. The phone cables are actually "cat5" cables so we won't have to go into the crawlspace and run new cables. Bonus!