Well today as a family we decided it was time to make snow angels.  This is actually the first time that Allyssa has made snow angels; for various reasons, temperature being one of the main ones.  While it was still a bit chilly, today actually worked well for the three of us.  The snowbanks here are about 2 ft tall (the ones by the sidewalks anyway).  So Shane helped her on and off of the snowbanks while I took a few pictures.

She was having a great time making several snow angels.  Then Shane and Allyssa walked to Family Dollar, to pick up some treats.  Then this evening she’s been running around the Living Room with her cousin Zach.  Hopefully she’ll sleep well this evening.  Naturally it’s a bit early to tell yet, but we can hope.

Yesterday, Allyssa and I walked to the BP which is across the street from the Family Dollar both of which are about 2-3 blocks from the house.  Of course, Allyssa was just as wrapped up yesterday as she is in these pictures so she didn’t get cold, except perhaps for a bit of chill in her cheeks.  Mom on the other hand was very cold.  The little wind we had still managed to cut directly through my jeans and other exposed parts, like face, ears, fingers… well you get the picture.

I haven’t mentioned SCA things here for a long time, but we haven’t been to an event in a while either.  Shane had agreed to make a lunch for That Moot Thingy XI which was held yesterday.  He spend a good portion of this past week, making homemade sausages, a 13th century sugar cookie, and some macaroni and cheese based on a 13th century poem and 13th century macaroni recipe.

On Friday, he went to the storage units and started looking for our garb.  We know it wasn’t left behind, since everything was moved, but most of it is in one of the two storage units.  Unfortunately, when he looked through totes he wasn’t able to find it.  This is the day before the event and suddenly we apparently don’t have anything to wear.  He was able to find a tote that had some things in which he expected to find the garb but it wasn’t there.  In the tote he did find, there was Allyssa older garb, including her very first garb from when she was only a few months old.  There was also a blue linen shirt/tunic Shane could wear but nothing for me in that tote.  Luckily I was able to give a friend a call and she had something I could borrow.

Oddly enough in that tote we also found our old camera.  I have no idea how it ended up in that tote, but there it was.  Shane ended up being right, it was pack in with other stuff and we would eventually come across it.  Though I do have to say I really like my new camera, so I’ll continue to use the new one.

Okay, the new camera actually arrived on Tuesday, but I’ve been enjoying it.  I’ve taken a number of pictures, and I really like how well it handles lowlight and flash.  I have taken several pictures of Allyssa, and she is quite the camera ham.  She wants her picture taken daily, and she wants to see every one of them as well.  I haven’t seen any yet that I like as well as the ones I took the day the camera arrived.  I’m sure I’ll find new favorites though as time comes.  I’ll have to find a few in portrait rather than landscape orientation so that I can update some picture frames.

I’ve been very pleased with it’s zoom function, and Shane has even tested it’s macro features on some of his HO scale trains.  It focuses well even in macro, shows plenty of detail, and all in all we’re very happy with this camera.

I’m very pleased at how well how easy it is to download from the camera to my computer which runs lubuntu (which is a LXDE variant of Ubuntu Linux).  I just plug in the USB cord to the computer, then the camera, and select PC on the camera.  I hadn’t uploaded from the old camera to my laptop,  mainly because we only had the one USB cord for the camera, and the laptop does have an SD slot if needed.  Since I prefer to run linux, it’s harder to install the windows software that came the camera, but I’m not really likely to have used it, or installed it even if I was using Windows so that’s no loss.

We purhased a 8GB class 6 SDHD card for the camera, and at the 14 MP setting we can take almost 1600 pictures before needing more memory space so I don’t think we’ll fill it up any time soon.  I’m planning on taking pictures off the camera at least monthly and more frequently if needed.  I am not sure we’ll even have 1600 pictures a month, but who knows?

It did not come with any sorta of camera case (our last one had a very basic stretchy case that came with it), so I found one I liked online (okay at ebay since they had the best price) and it’s on order.  What I like about the camera case I ordered is that it has a metal clip as well  as a double zipper.  The thought is that I should be able to carry it from a belt loop and still easily get to the camera when I wish.

Sometime this past summer, our well loved 10.1 MP camera which we purchased when Allyssa was a few weeks old, decided to go missing.  We apparently hadn’t used it in a while, and at some point it went missing.  Well, it was not found in the packing, cleaning, or moving from Karen’s.  Shane has found the camera case, but not the camera so I am under the firm opinion that it’s gone MIA.

So one of the things I wanted this Christmas was a new one.  We talked about getting one to use in a new web venture more on that when we get it up and running.  While both Shane and I would love to be able to purchase a Digital SLR it’s really not within our price range currently.  Instead I started with a price range of what we could afford, and started researching online.  I was really looking at a refurbished Kodak M580 (in purple naturally) it had some good reviews, and all the bad reviews seemed to center mainly around it freezing some of the time, but Kodak put out a firmware upgrade that fixed that–which several reviews mentioned fixed the problem as well.  And the ones that didn’t, were complaining that you while it had on camera selection of where you wanted to upload your photos, ie FB, Flickr, YouTube, etc you had to connect to the computer (and internet) to upload them.  Idiots, naturally you have to have some sort of network connection to upload your pictures.  I see no reason for them to build WiFi into a camera–even if they have built it into a SD card sd (they call it eye-fi).

When I was ready to purchase they didn’t have any refurbished ones remaining at the price I was looking at, so I widened my search a bit.  In the end I found that the Panasonic DMC-FH20 had better reviews both with users and professional reviews.  Both cameras are 14 MP with 8X optical (wide angle) zooms.  But since the Pansonic had better reviews, and they’re within $5 online, I decided that is the one I wanted.

Well I ordered it last night, and now am impatiently awaiting it’s arrival to actually play with it.  I must say, that I did go to play with a FH22 at Best Buy  since the only real difference is that the 22 has a touchscreen whereas the 20 does not.  In the store the FH22 took some nice sharp pictures of little girl (aka Allyssa) with zoom etc.  If it weren’t for the fact the store only carried black and didn’t have any up front (might have had some in the back but I didn’t wait to find out),  I might have come home with one last night.

Naturally with the camera MIA that means it’s SD card is as well.  So when I ordered the camera I also found a good buy on SDHD cards.  I ended up finding a 8GB Class 6 card.  If like me you didn’t know the difference in classes apparently the higher the class the faster it writes/records.  We had been to Office Max prior and they had a Kodak 4GB Class 4 card on sale for $12.99 and this was faster and twice the size for the same price.  Definitely received the better end of the deal ordering it with the camera and free shipping.

Now I am very impatiently awaiting the arrival of my package which is scheduled somewhere between January 6 and January 10th.  As soon as I have it I’ll put it good use, and I perhaps I’ll even remember to post some here….

Well, today was Allyssa’s 3rd birthday.  For me it’s hard to believe that she’s already 3 years old.

Yesterday we had a birthday party for Allyssa at Holland Park.  Allyssa was asked what she’d like for a theme for her party (okay not quite in those terms but she asked), and she chose Thomas.  Not much of a surprise there. While Shane was planning to make a Thomas the Train cake, he ran out of time.

We planned for about 30 people from the RSVPs we had received.  And then the day of the party, we had about half that actually in attendance.  Apparently things came up and some weren’t able to come.  Such is the way life goes.

Allyssa received many gifts and loved them all, she received art supplies and an easel, play dough, bubbles with tons of wands, a collection of polished rocks,  a doll house from grandma, and several Thomas trains among other things.

Today, we just had a quiet family day (well after Shane finished work that is).

Well, we have received good news (even if I’m a few days late posting it to the blog).   We will be closing on the trailer we were looking at on March 1st.  After that the trailer, while in poor condition, will officially be ours.

As I’ve said, it’s definitely not the world’s best trailer.  There is graffiti on the interior walls, mold in a couple of places, the living room carpet is in bad shape, and the vinyl tiles in the entry way and kitchen have come up in some places.  The only appliance in the entire trailer is an older gas stove.  But it is priced as something we could afford.  In fact, doing the math, with the deal we’re going to get on this trailer, even if we put in $6000 in repairs in the first year we would break even with paying rent at $750 a month for a year.  Then we will be benefiting from our upgrades and expenditures rather than just loosing the money in rent.

Our goal though is to try and be as frugal as possible with what we put into this trailer, so that down the road we can have a down payment towards something else.  Since we have to redo flooring, walls, and kitchen cabinets as well as purchase appliances our money won’t go far.

On Friday, we did some looking around.  We have a quote for appliances, and while we aren’t looking at the top of the line, what we’re interested in would cost us $3,000 alone.  A quick estimate on cheap kitchen cabinets is around $3,000 as well.  And that doesn’t include flooring or new walls.   This all means that our money could go very quickly, and since we don’t have it all up front, it could take a while.

One of the things this means is that as we planned, we will have to do the work ourselves.  We will also have to find some alternatives.  Instead of purchasing all the appliances new, we’ll most likely use FreeCycle or Craig’s List.  Originally, we thought about hardwood floors but then realized that since it’s a trailer, it would make more sense to go with laminate.  Neither of want carpet in the house, and luckily laminate is cheaper than carpet anyway.

As for the cost of cabinets, well, we’ve all but decided to go another direction there as well.  Instead of purchasing cabinets, we’re going to make them.  Shane’s brother made cabinets for their mother a number of years ago, that have stood up to four moves.  Therefore Shane is pretty sure he can make cabinets that would work also, “they’re just boxes.”  We will have to purchase a few tools to make them, but according to some quick math it looks like we should be able to make the cabinets for about half the cost of purchasing cabinets.

Once we close on the trailer, we’ll go in and take measurements.  Once we have those measurements, then we’ll plan out the exact layout we want.  We may make a few changes in the layout, but there are some things that are harder to change then others.  It’s not going to make sense to move the furnace, and while we could change the plumbing the less changes we have to make there as well, is probably the better.

Our plan is to redo the kitchen, it will most likely have a brand new layout, or at least a some updates to the layout.  We are also planning what most would consider a massive island.  We’re thinking about  5 x 7 in size,  which includes overhangs on two sides for seating.  Well, with an island that big in a trailer your not going to have room for a table.

Well, Shane has finally received his first paycheck.  (He is only paid twice a month, not every 2 weeks.)  This of course naturally started us thinking of when would we be able to move out of his mother’s.  Part of what we want to be able to do is buy a house in the future when Shane has his teaching position.  To be able to do that, naturally we have to put money aside now, while he is making a good wage from his programming.

So how do you pay rent and put money aside?  Well, you either find the cheapest possible place to rent… or you try to buy a cheap trailer house.  To this end, we believe we have found something that could suit our purposes.  It’s an older trailer house, 1976 or 1977, a 14×70 with 3 bedrooms and 1 3/4 bath.  It’s very rough right now, but at the price we would be able to go in and make improvements before moving in.  Naturally we wouldn’t be able to make all the improvements we want right away, but enough to satisfy our immediate needs.  Then we would be able to move in and plan to make other changes over time.

If this works out not only would we have the space we need (including an office for Shane), we would also be able to put money aside for a down payment for a home in three years when Shane graduates.  Please wish us luck, we can use all the help we can find.