The Liesland Cafe

Andrew got a guitar for his last birthday, and all of the kids enjoying playing it and making up songs, even Elliot. Here are some videos of Andrew & Mari making up some songs of their own.


Exploring




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The River




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Come Up With Me




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Snow Days

We had some good weather today, so we decided to take the new bike trailer out for a spin. Since Susan doesn't have a bike yet, we attached the stroller converter, loaded in the kids, and went for our first family walk in the new neighborhood. It was a nice walk followed by a grill-out/hang-out in the backyard. We had a fire in the fire pit and a fire in the grill.

The kids played in their recently completed 'snow house'. We started building it a couple days ago and Susan and the kids finished it today. It is cool, but in the traditional American style I want to build a bigger one next time. They also put together a nice snowman in the back yard, whose name is Andrew Mari Elliot. Both the house and the snowman should last a while, as temps are supposed to be pretty low over the next few days.

Also, someone stole one of my license plates. I guess I have to get my IA plates now.

Mouse-Making

We went to a fun craft event at the Ames Waldorf School this morning. It was about a 45 minute drive up, but definitely worth it. Susan needle-felted a mouse, and Andrew and Mari worked on some needle-felting projects of their own. I assisted and Elliot played with the toy kitchen.

Hopefully we will be able to attend more of their events. It felt great being in a Waldorf classroom again.

Working From Home

Since moving to Des Moines a lot of people have been asking me how work is going. Work is going well. It was a little bit of an adjustment, but I feel like I am starting to get into a little bit of a rhythm. I definitely miss going to an office and interacting with all of my coworkers. I was spending a lot of time in meetings before, which I actually enjoy, and now I am spending a lot of time sitting by myself in front of the computer. The nice part is that I am able to get a lot of work done, and I think/hope that I will get better at using the phone for that personal contact.

Working from home has been great for my home life. I have a very short commute/walk to the basement, which has helped free up time for other things, like hanging out with the fam. I have also been working on Eastern Time, basically from 8-4, which I have enjoyed. I get done in time to run some errands or do something useful before dinner.

Renovation Pics

Here are some pics from our new house:

We did not take any before pictures from our bathroom, but luckily Nate had taken a couple from the inspection. I think you will get the idea.







The closet is not quite as yellow as it looks here. It is more like the color of the cabinet that you see in the foreground.


Also no before pictures of the closet, but here is what it looks like now that we have it out. We still have some flooring and wall work to do, but it definitely helps open up the space.

Des Moines Differences, Part 4, I think

We got a lot of snow last night, and I did not even know that it was supposed to snow. Part of the reason for that may be that I never interact with anyone or anything outside our house, other than KCMP. I think that another reason is that snow is just not as big of a deal here.

I managed to make it to the store this morning and there was plenty of bread and milk.

renovating

I wanted to get up some pics of our bathroom tonight, but the kids took forever to get to sleep, and I was just annoyed. Maybe tomorrow.

Today we took out the closet in our dining room. It was the only closet on the first floor, and we liked it, but we didn't like that it took up a lot of valuable square-footage. The best part is that when they put the closet in they cut out the original hard wood underneath and the wall behind it, so now we have to get that cleaned up. Nice.

Tomorrow I hope that we can get unpacked. We have a lot of boxes in the attic still, and still haven't located the cloth diapers.

It snowed last night. I was supposed to be 1-3 inches, but I think it was more like 8 - no joke. We have a corned lot, which means we have somewhere around 200' of sidewalk. I was thinking that we should think about a snow blower, but I probably need the exercise. Besides, who know what would happen with our semi-gravel driveway.

Got Milk?

Elliot is still having BM issues, so starting January 1 we are dairy free. Andrew, Mari and I can still have dairy, but we are trying not to have any in our house. So far it has been going well. We have gotten fairly lazy with our food choices again and I have enjoyed being a little more intentional with what we are eating.

Hopefully it will help Elliot. He has been on a stool softener for over a year now and it would be nice if we could get him to function normally.

Update

• We had our bathroom re-done. We didn't get many before shots, but the after is much better. Andrew and Mari used to think that our bathroom was disgusting, and they were right. It is much nicer now. We still have a little to do, but the major parts are taken care of.
• Next up we are going to be ripping the closet out of our dining room
• It has been cold here, mostly in the twenties. There was snow on the ground for a while, then most of it melted, and the rest refroze, so now it is just and icy mess. I am requesting either more snow or warmer temperatures, neither of which is forecasted
• I was able to get out for a nice little bike ride today. I rode down to a local natural foods shop to get some ear oil for Elliot.
• Did I mention that Elliot has been crazy? Last night was the first night this year that he did not throw up, but he was still up in the middle of the night. We are not sure what his problem is. He has been great during the day. He has also has a cough. We are now putting Vicks Vaporub on his feet before bed and also giving him his ear drops.
• There has been a request to get up some pictures of our bathroom. They will be coming eventually.
• We still have our Christmas tree up. I guess we can take it down now.
• We have a lot of painting to do. When we bought our last house we were a lot more patient with our home improvement projects. Now we just want to get everything done.