Kitchen Cabinet Fun

One morning I woke up and decided that we should paint our kitchen cabinets all the same color.  We've been talking about it for awhile, but I haven't really wanted to have white cabinets because they show dirt.  I changed my mind.  This after we'd been discussing how we need to finish our ceiling project.  We did the living room and kitchen last year about this time and we need to do the bedrooms.  But in my mind, in that moment, I decided that we should do the kitchen cabinets first.  One reason being I thought it would be a quick project.  Little did I know that it would require 4 coats of primer and 2 coats of the actual paint!

The fun begins...I've been priming for a day and it's still not over.  There is lots of dry time between coats that I didn't think of when I thought that this project would just take a day or two!

Finally, the project comes to an end 5 days later!  Not the greatest photo, but it shows the end product.  I am excited to have knobs on the doors and drawers.  Hopefully, that will help so we won't have lots of dirt/grease smudges where we open the doors and drawers.  We are still recuperating from the project, but soon we will begin our ceiling project.

Christmas 2009

For Christmas this year, we did a full 24 hours of meals, games and Levine family time.  On Christmas eve, I made Shepherd's Pie. On Christmas morning everyone came up to our house and Mat made bagels for brunch, which we all enjoyed.  (In the above picture from l to r, Mat, Gram, Naomi, Amie, Ron, Mark and Sara.)

Here's a picture of our Christmas tree, note the trendy shape of it!

For Christmas dinner, Mark prepared duck for us.  It was delicious, even for those who weren't quite sure what to expect from it.  (Greasy, is what some of us thought, but it wasn't at all!)  I don't have a picture of the lovely meal to share with you, but take my word for it that is was a beautiful display.

All in all, it was a lovely way to spend Christmas.

Home after a month away!

We were driving the last stretch home to Asheville when it started sleeting in Knoxville.  We had heard from Mat's family that there was a winter storm advisory going on that day, but we weren't worried as we'd done lots of winter driving out West.  As we got about 10 or so miles from the turn-off for Johnson City traffic slowed to a crawl and then stopped.  We forgot about the "other driver aspect".  So we spent 4 hours going 7 miles to get off at an exit.  We passed by many cars that had slid off the road and weaved through jack-knifed trailers to make it at least to a gas station to get an update on the road conditions and found that they had closed I-26.  (We were only 1 and half hours or less from Asheville.)

So we went to some hotels and found out the ones that allowed for pets were full.  We went to the only restaurant at that exit, had some dinner and then slept in the parking lot with a nice street light in our window.  Luckily, we had our down sleeping bags to cozy up in while sitting up in our seats.  We were packed so full that we couldn't recline.  Maddy was a trooper though and just slept.  We woke up in the morning and headed to Mat's parents house because most of Asheville was without power.  We spent the night there enjoying the heat from the fireplace and then went to check on our house the next day.  And lo and behold, the power had just come back on.  Yay!  So we were able to unpack and be home finally.

Going for a walk in the snow out at Mat's parents house.  They were without power for over a week!

Home sweet home.  Now we have to wait for it to warm up and melt all the snow off in the mountains to go ride.

Over 7,500 miles in 1 month, part 3

We headed from California back to Ogden, UT to spend an evening of sushi and comedy with our friends. The next day we headed to Utah Valley and spent a couple of days visiting with Phil's family and mom for a bit on Saturday. We also stopped in and saw my Aunt Carol and Uncle Dennis to thank her for the beautiful quilt she and my mom had made for us.



Then we visited some friends in Salt Lake City.  We were lucky enough to get a tour of the beautifully renovated Marriott Library where I worked for many years.



We also spent a day snowboarding at Snowbird.  We had a beautiful, bluebird day to enjoy some turns on the mountain.



After that we started working our way back home to Asheville.  We were able to meet up with some friends for dinner in Boulder on our way through Colorado.

As always, traveling and seeing new places and old friends is amazing.  But we sure were happy when we got home to our little farmhouse!

Over 7,500 miles in 1 month, part 2

While in the Pacific Northwest, we had amazingly beautiful cool weather. Our friends were kind enough to show us around the Olympic Peninsula. We went mountain biking in the mountains, hiking along the Hoh River Valley and along the coast.  It was awesome.  In the picture above you can see how green it is even at the beginning of winter!



After spending a week there, we went to Portland, Oregon.  Malia's sister and husband live there.  We rode our bikes down to the speedway for the light festival in 20 degree weather.  The ride itself was a lot of fun, the lights were so-so.  Malia's sister and husband bundled their young daughter up and loaded her into their cargo bike...he owns the company metrofiets.  The bikes are sweet.  We checked out the neighborhood's old school that was closed back in the 50s or early 60s and it has since been remodeled into a hotel that had a public bath and restaurants that was open to the neighborhood residents.  I thought it was such an awesome concept!  (Instead of tearing down an old building to build a new one!)

The next day we headed down to Crescent City, CA to check out northern California and the famed Redwood trees.  We took Maddy for a walk in the Prairie Creek State Park.  It was so amazing to walk in the forest with such massive trees.



We also took Maddy to an awesome beach, where they allowed the dogs to roam and play with each other.  It was a great way to stretch Maddy's legs after hanging out in the backseat of the car for SO many miles!

Over 7,500 miles in 1 month, part 1

When we began our trip, we didn't quite realize how many miles we would cover, but in the end we figured it was over 7,500 miles. We thought it might be Roja's third and last cross-country trip, but she proved to be quite the champion car and is still rallying around!

We made it to Richfield in time for a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with my family.  The next day we went for a hike with everyone who wanted to go up a canyon behind Spencer's house.

We also spent some time playing Rock Band with the kids and Mat really honed his rockstar personality!



Then we headed back to Ogden to pick up Maddy from our friends who were willing to watch her.  We all hopped in the car for a leg of the trip took us to Seattle, WA.  We camped in a small state park in Oregon where we were the only people staying for the night!

road trip anticipation...

Tomorrow morning we begin our journey out to Utah for Thanksgiving. We love to travel and this is no exception because this is just the beginning of several weeks of exploring the west. The past several months we've been tossing around many ideas and options. All we know that we are doing, so far, is going to see my family to spend Thanksgiving weekend with them. Then we are heading up to Bend, OR to hopefully do some mountain biking, if the weather cooperates and then on up to Seattle to take advantage of the early snow they are having with some snowboarding adventures. Yay!

Our car is all packed with our bikes inside and a spot for Maddy to lay down and be comfy for the trip across the country.