Sydney

Gary just returned from visiting his sister, Linda + family in Sydney, Australia.

The trip was lots of fun and a great vacation. I posted a bunch of photos to flickr here. Sydney is an amazing city, full of everything (except peanut M & M's and other american brands). Strange things are very expensive, like books. It also doesn't help that the US dollar exchange rate is at a historic low.

The Opera House and Harbour Bridge. This picture is taken from the Botanical Gardens. The harbour cruises also have amazing views of the city.

Here are Gabe + Tabitha, ready for school in their uniforms & holding the Spider Man puzzle we gave them. 3D puzzles... kinda cool.

I also took a couple video clips, but i gotta edit upload them before I post.

laundry with bins!

laundry with bins.JPG
Originally uploaded by Minnaert.

We got some new bins & boxes for the laundry area. I guess we are done with all of the messing around in that area now.

we have more storage capacity now that we know what to do with.
- Gary

Alan's 80th

We celebrated Alan's 80th birthday last weekend at the "Castle" in Ben Lomond. We had a great time, and lots of friends & relatives came to celebrate.

A couple photos from the weekend are below, i put more on flickr.

Sarah, Alan and Kii just before the cake cutting.

The Ben Lomond "Huntley Castle". This place started out as a dream house/castle project by a Scottish immigrant in the 1920s. Its changed ownership several times, with successive owners adding and modifying. Its a little like the Winchester Mystery House, but it fit in very well for the weekend.

Laundry area redone

Here was our big home renovation project we undertook a few weeks ago. I finally got the shelves all installed, so i figured it was time to post it.

Here is what our laundry area started as. Recall that the cabinets above the washer & dryer had fallen a few months ago.

Here we tore everything down to the studs. Everything in the area was half crazy. There were weird bump-outs in the walls, there was missing drywall, all sorts of craziness. Also when the new a/c got installed, they needed to cut a new hole in the ceiling for the air return. The previous owners had redone some stuff and actually covered the air return.

Here we are drying the joint compound after we mud & taped the drywall.

And the finished product. We got all the drywall complete & repainted. New shelves from the Container Store all installed. I don't know if there is a career out there for home renovations out there, but i think we improved a few things with the area. Some mistakes were made along the way, but it is improved in many ways.