Happy New Year to All !!

Happy 2012 to everyone! Hope that all of you made it through the new year's festivities without incident!!

We went to Houghton Lake to ring in the new year with Bev and Gary Clark. We played cards and watched Dick Clark do his annual thing. And wasn't Lady Gaga just great! Makes you want to Gag.

Any way we had a good time and this afternoon visited Dennis and Maria Sullivan in St. Helen before coming back to Wheeler Rd. They are doing well and it was great to see them after so long.

We drove back home from their place in a blizzard! We are getting our first major snow event of the winter. They are calling for ten to fifteen inches of snow depending where you are and strong winds. We had a long drive since the roads were so bad between Roscommon and Kalkaska. Then when we got west of Traverse City it was snowing so hard that I could only drive about twenty miles per hour since you couldn't see through the snow. The best I could do was to keep the truck between the ditches! We finally got back to the house and are going to hunker down here for the night.
I'm going to get some pictures of all the beautiful woodwork Mike did here during the week and I will get the pictures on the blog as soon as I can. (By the way, this is the first blog from the Wheeler Road house since we now have internet service along with our land line)!  (231) 334-7684.

Wishing everyone a healthy and prosperous new year with many good surprises!!

The day after....

Santa was good to all the little children. They all got everything on their wish lists and more! We had a great weekend with Mike and Amy and they were super hosts for the Perzanowski family Christmas. Today we are trying to get the last of our errands done and pick up the van (which needed a new fuel pump). Mike and I are heading back up north tonight if all goes well and Nancy will stay for a couple more days to help with the kids while Laura and Amy go back to work.

Hoping that everyone had a great Christmas.

Merry Christmas Eve

We are in Sterling Heights this morning with Tom. We came down to spend the holidays with the grand kids and their grownups. We have been trying to visit with as many people as we can while down here but our time is limited. We are also picking up some odds and ends for the house that we haven't been able to get in Traverse City.

If we don't get to see you in person we want to wish everyone a Joyous Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Christmas is Coming!!

We were hoping to have our first family Christmas at Wheeler Road but we just weren't fast enough getting all of the work done to get our final inspection. Actually we were hoping for a temporary occupancy before everything was finished but the county makes it too hard to get a temporary occupancy permit. We have been working everyday and we are making progress but now it looks like it will be late in January at best before we are completely done and in.
We have a new phone line into the house and have our phone hooked up so no more walking out to the end of the driveway to make cell phone calls. The new number is 231 334-7684. Call us sometime when you get a chance. we are still enjoying the novelty! (This number is listed as Western Avenue Catering on the Internet so if we get tons of calls for that business we may ask to have the number changed).
We are heading down state on Wednesday to visit the kids and have Christmas at Mike and Amy's house in Romeo. Can't wait to get everyone together and watch Ben turn 7 on Christmas day!!

Here are a few pics...

Our second snow! All of an inch and a half!

Staining and painting, painting and staining!

The camper looks like its wanting to go somewhere. 

Fun with the game camera.

It takes a picture whenever there's movement ahead...

We see lots of deer on the camera but not when we are looking through the windows.

Keep those carrots coming!

Some funny pictures I found while looking for something else.

Jenny and Jessie in Florida a couple of years ago

Some people just can't pass up a Waffle House!

Lovebirds

Mike and Amy before Mike lost part of his fleet. (About forty pounds worth).

12,12,11

December is ticking away so fast.... not enough hours in a day to get as much done as we would want. We are making progress though. With Mike and Tom's help and with our daily tasks we are seeing things coming together. We were hoping to be in before Christmas, but that just won't happen. We are now shooting for some time in January.
We had a great time on Sunday at the Traverse City Opera House for the TC Symphony orchestra's Christmas extravaganza. They put on a fantastic show with Christmas carols and some great singers and music. Afterwords we went with Rick and Melonie Locke to Rick's cousins house for some great appetizers and socializing.
Here are the latest pics from Wheeler Road...

The kitchen is starting to come together.

We have all the film off the windows and the grilles are in.

The hutch side of the kitchen.

Windows in the family room. Can't wait to get that fireplace covered and get a fire roaring!

Today we got over forty degrees and still no snow!

Getting Cold in the North Country!

Winter is marching in with colder temperatures but still no major snow. We have had a few flurries but still no ground cover. I'm counting my blessings since I have enough work to do without having to shovel snow and run a snow blower!

Here are a couple of pictures to show our recent progress...

It's a sure sign of progress when the porta-john is...

LONG GONE!!

We can see through all the windows now since we took the film and stickers off! All the windows are done and the doors will be with one last coat of polyurethane. (We are on the third gallon of Polyurethane!)

All of the interior trim is also finished. This was no small task.

Making Progress at Wheeler Road

Mike came up to help us with the house on Thursday and spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday morning trimming out all of the windows and putting baseboard up throughout the first floor. The house looks so much more finished inside now and we continue to get the doors and windows stained and varnished so that the second floor baseboard can go up. We hope to get everything finished some time in January so we can get our final inspection by the end of January.
Mike put some apples and carrots out behind the house on Friday to see if the deer would come to them. Everything was gone by Sunday morning. He put more carrots out on Sunday and they were gone again this morning. I put some more out today and next time I check I will bring in the memory card from the game camera to see who is visiting the bait pile.
We haven't had any more snow in the last two weeks, but they are calling for some snowfall this Thursday. Last week was a little above normal with temperatures in the forties. This week we are going to get cooler weather and down into the teens at night for Thursday and Friday. At least I haven't had to deal with snow shoveling along with all the work we need to do inside the house.