Christmas 2007

Greetings & Salutations Faithful Stapleton Blog Readers!

Well, another Christmas has passed here in the Stapleton household and as usual I am late with my post. This year we changed our schedule quite a bit and for the first time ever in 8 years of marriage, Jess & I spent Christmas morning by ourselves at home.

All in all Christmas went pretty smoothly this year. No big surprises, fights, rogue nuclear weapons, just time with family.

You can see our Christmas Album slideshow in the post below.

Everyone have a safe, happy, & prosperous year.

Just catching up.

Greetings and Salutations Faithful Stapleton Blog Readers

I see my last entry was on July 23rd. Well that was almost 3 ½ freaking months ago what the crap have I been doing? Funny you should ask lets stroll down my recent memory lane so that I can fill everyone in.

Well just after the last Blog entry Jess & I celebrated our 8th anniversary. Then we had a very busy 3 weeks after that. The first week of August I was in Colorado working with a customer. Due to flight times and etc I ended up with a travel day while I was in Colorado. So I went over and visited Pikes Peak and Colorado Springs, then I traveled on to where I was staying in a little town called Limon, CO. There was 1 local restaurant in town the hotel recommended so I ate there and came back and asked the hotel why they would do that to their guests! I was working in the “eastern slope” area of Colorado basically the no man’s land between Colorado Springs and the Nebraska state line. This area of Colorado is about 4200 feet in elevation but is flat as a table! To put this in perspective to the highest point in WV Spruce Knob that is 4863 feet high and is anything but flat. There were more cows then people, so it was an interesting experience. Check out the pictures page for visual aids.

During the week that I was gone Jess’s mom went in for surgery and it became quite a bit more extensive then had been planed. She ended up spending about 3 weeks in the hospital recovering. Jess and I had planned to go on vacation the second full week of August and were going to cancel but Sandy insisted that we go so we did. We spent the week of the August 12th at the beach for a short vacation and came home on Friday. The next week I was in Indianapolis for my company’s Customer Conference, that is always a very tiring experience but the customers do support and enjoy the event. Now keep in mind during this time and travel I still have to keep up with my regular work and customer calls.

The week of my customer conference event Jess started back to school to continue working on her masters in Special Education. She obtained some disturbing news early in the new school year; it looks like we are looking at an extra semester or two so graduation should now be on or about spring 2009. She is working very hard this semester as she always does bringing home A’s left and right. Currently she is taking her first class room course this semester and it looks like she will be going to the Charleston Graduate campus for some courses in the near future. September was a catch up month for me at work and I spent a lot of time bringing some projects to fruition.

October ended up being a very busy month I drove 4300 miles, worked on 3 conversions, and held a customer appreciation event. Jess & I also took on some extra responsibilities at church. Starting on October 7th our church started having 2 services to help ease an overcrowding problem and to help facilitate the continued growth of the church. To help do our part Jess and I now have the pre-schoolers during the first service until February. We thought this would really help as people settle into a new routine at church and additional volunteers can be identified for the time slot.

During this time I have done very little work on the house. I am just tired and it’s mostly done anyway. I still have 13 doors to paint and an entire downstairs worth of trim to fill in the nail holes but everything works so to be honest I really don’t care right now. So that is the end of this report from the Stapleton front I have a lot of travel for the remainder of this quarter and into the next but I will try to do better on my updates.

Before I leave though I wanted to pass along a picture of Jess it appears that the “little voice in her head” manifested itself and she was caught holding it in a picture!

10_31_07

I bet you think our house is about 6000 square feet!

Greetings and Salutations Faithful Stapleton Blog Readers

Well we are still in the home stretch on finishing the house. I took this Friday and Monday as a vacation day with the hopes of completing the project but it does not look like that is going to happen. For everyone out there who does not realize it new construction is much much easier than a remodel. I mean at certain points it can take you 2 hours to get a room trimmed out, especially if the room was built in 1962 and is about as square as an igloo. Speaking of 1962 the wood from back then sucks! It took me almost 4 hours on Friday to change out my front door and it was only the slab! Once I figured out that the door jam was a well aged, brittle, and somewhat rotten the process went a lot easier. I had to use 2 1/2 inch screws to go through the hinges far enough to find good wood! The door jams will have to be redone but that is a project for another year with the screen door it will do for now, we enter and exit the house via the garage anyway. However all that being said I still have a target date of the end of the month set for completion of the remodel. Hence the title as long as we have been working on the house I bet you think its ginourmous (look it up Webster made it a word this year).

Also this month Jess had some family in from Washington State so we visited with them a little, and unfortunately Jess’s step father’s mother passed away as well. So between the house, family, work, & church we have been swamped. August is looking to be pretty full as well I will be in Colorado, at the beach (beach still to be determined), and Indianapolis all for a week at a time. But hey that’s the fast pace life known as Stapleton.

On July 24th Jess and I will be celebrating our 8th Wedding Anniversary (10 years together), then our birthdays shortly there after. So after 2 houses, 1 rental, the cars going to Graley’s Auto Body 12 times, 2 BA degrees, 4 computers, 2 beds, 3 TV’s, 6 DVD players, 10 jobs, 5 cars, 2 surgery, taking in Petey & Phoebe, and finding a church home were still together so it must be love.

It’s getting late and I am planning a full day of trim tomorrow so I will just leave you with the immortal words of Socrates “I Drank What?”.

Have a good week!