Travis makes the cover of the PRESCRIPT

When Melissa did her lectures this semester, she added in pictures from the family (mostly Sheinah and the puppy) to give the students a break between concepts. She actually borrowed the idea from a talk she went to in which the speaker did this to help people stay awake...it was effective for her so she thought it would work for her students. Some of the pictures she used were ones that Travis has taken of Duluth of the past three years.

To make a long story short, the editors for the College of Pharmacy's mini yearbook (called the Prescript) asked if they could put Travis' pictures on the cover since this year was focusing on the first graduating class from Duluth. WOW, what an honor. These are the two pictures they chose to use. The lighthouse is on the cover and the lift bridge is on the back. The lighthouse picture was taken during our first winter here when it got really cold. The lift bridge picture was taken just a few weeks ago on our way to pick up Sheinah. We take a scenic route called Skyline that gives us an amazing view of the harbor every day. On this day, the weather was really odd. It was very humid (hence the fog) but the sun came out and it got warm. The fog just sat over the harbor but it was clear above (on the Skyline road). Travis just stopped in the middle of the road and took this picture from the window of the car. A little photoshop later and this picture is what resulted. GO TRAVIS!!

Kingston Progress

Our remodelling plans for our new home include turning it from a two-story house into what we like to call a "ranch plus." Basically, we want all the essentials on the first floor (including the laundry room) and then the two bedrooms and bathroom upstairs become "bonus." We also don't want Melissa to ever have to go into the basement because it is scary. Seriously, the original home was a two bedroom cabin with a basement with a ceiling that is like 5.5 feet high. At some point in the life of this home they did an addition (of two more bedrooms and two bathrooms). The basement under the addition is wonderful with much higher ceilings. You just have to walk through the scary, low-ceiling, moldy part to get to the good part. :)



The plans include gutting the kitchen and making it bigger, installing hardwood floors, putting in new cabinets (from IKEA of course), a full-sized fridge and full-sized freezer (think restaurant style), a wall-oven and cooktop, and a "peninsula". Now we had quite a discussion about this peninsula. Everyone is probably familiar with an "island" in the center of the kitchen. Apparently a peninsula is a counter top that looks kind of like an island but it is attached to one wall. Who knew that land and kitchens were so closely related?



All of the carpet in the house will ripped out and replaced. The current master bathroom will be turned into a walk-in closet and the other first floor bathroom will become the masterbath. This kind of odd room next to the living room (we don't actually know what to call it, it is just a random room behind the kitchen) will become the new first-floor bathroom slash laundry room. We are replacing all the first floor windows and doors. We are getting a fancy new water heater (called a tankless water heater that supposedly means you never run out of hot water) and a new furnace and air conditioner. This new house is too far from the lake which means we will actually get warm in the summer. Our final, and perhaps most important purchase...a super fancy mosquito zapper! Living in the woods means lots o' skeeters!



The pictures here are of the demolition that Wes (our contractor) and his faithful helpers (Dano and maybe Eric) have accomplished so that the remodel can begin. We think it's sort of cool to have a bathtub in the living room.

NAMA

We try to keep in touch with our parents by using our web cam to talk to them whenever we have time and they are home and Sheinah is awake...clearly, its hard to make all those variables line up. We refer to Melissa's parents as grandma and grandpa and Travis' parents are lala and opa. The story behind the "lala" is not what you think...it's not because Lori is in "lala" land :) It came when Shannon's kids (Travis' sister) were little. Lori wanted to use the spanish word for grandma (abuelita) because the kids already referred to grandpa using the german word (opa) and the german word for grandma (oma) just sounded too much like opa for the kids to tell it apart. Well, the kids had trouble saying abuelita and all they got out was "lala." Hence, Lori became "lala" and now she does get to be in "lala land" when she's with her grandkids.

Anyway, back to the story here. We were about to connect to grandma and were telling Sheinah that we were going to see grandma when all the suddent she says "nama"...just like that...no prompting or anything. And then she starting pointing at the computer screen and saying "nama." While we were waiting for Jackie to fire up here computer, we took advantage of the new word and videotaped Sheinah saying "nama".

Click this link to view the video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3878780087046013042

Sheinah's Alphabet

One of Melissa's coworkers (Adam) lives down the street from us and has a daughter close in age to Sheinah. We take walks over their quite frequently. One day, we were hanging out at their house and got to talking about how well their daughter, Eva, could say her alphabet. They mentioned that they do alphabet flash cards with Eva every day. So, we ran out and bought Sheinah some really cool alphabet flash cards :)

It is absolutely amazing how her language skills just started taking off. We video taped her saying the words from the flash cards that she knows. You'll notice that she still uses her baby-signs for some words (mouse and cat are two examples).

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3143163631843797001&hl=en