the-richmonds.net

Is it really really early when you set out to start your day and the Taco Bell you drive past is just closing down for the night?  Is it any indication that my day is starting too early when the girl at the 24-hour McDonald's drive-thru says "have a good night" when she hands me my breakfast sandwiches?

I have probably been noticably absent from Facebook for a while now.... although I have Internet access at most bookfairs I've been running, I don't feel that it is very professional to have it running while at an event.  And with the latest change that Facebook has made to the way it "networks" (I was forced to make some profile setting changes when i logged on last week to put up a status update), I have pretty much decided that less is more as far as Facebook goes.  I don't care to have my every interest, past places of employment and schools turned into additional ways for people that I don't know in real life to find me.  Facebook used to be great for keeping up with people that I wanted to keep up with (that was back before those quizzes and games clogged up the homepage).  I'm not on Facebook to meet new people, even if they have mutual interests, they are friends of friends, or we happened to attend the same school years apart.  I prefer to meet new people in person first, virtually network later.

So going forward, I'm going to be using the-richmonds.net for what I had originally intended it to be used for.  I'm sorry that it won't update to your homepage on Facebook, but you can always subscribe to the RSS to get updates without having to check back here often.

I'll be keeping my Facebook account, but there won't be much in the way of updates or anything on the "info" page (I chose to unlist my interests rather than being linked up).  I will still get any messages sent to me or posted on the wall forwarded to my email.  Speaking of social networking sites that I won't be keeping updated, you can also find me on LinkedIn, which I have always kind of preferred for networking over Facebook (geared more for professionals, and no games!).

I'm done with my rant now. :)

I haven't been active much on the computer lately.  Even the "quick" facebook updates have been few and far between...

The mad bookfair rush that led up to Easter has subsided, leaving me with "normal" 40 to 50 hour work weeks until the beginning of summer.  I have some side job leads coming in that I will be following up on over the next few weeks, and hopefully the supplemental income from that work will help get us through the summer again this year.

Since I hadn't been around much for my family during the last two months (really for the last 6 months if you go back through the Christmas bookfair season), I decided to make some family time.  The four of us spent Easter with the newlywed Britt and Manny in Columbus.  It was our pleasure to be a part of their first holiday entertaining event!  We all visited the Columbus Zoo while we were there.  Although it was cold, everyone had a great time.  The kids have both always loved animals!

We came home from our Easter weekend, packed for a day and then took off for a mini road trip to New York by way of Pennsylvania.  We spent a day at Hershey (touring the chocolate factory),  stopped to visit with Annie at Philadelphia,  spent another day in Easton (and the Crayola factory) before heading up to Albany to spend a few days with Katherine, Josh and Annabelle.  Grandpa Mark drove in to spend a day with us there, too, but we missed Grandma June....

There was a lot of travelling in a one-week time, and there were some moments when we were about ready to cut the trip short, it was all worth it to hear Hannah say in the car, "it was nice for you be with us for the ride, daddy."

I put in a 60 hour week last week, and decided to make the most of the long weekend by being with the family again.  On Saturday, Heather's dad asked if we could set up for a bookfair in Akron for him, so we took the kids (they were entertained by the empty Rubbermaid tubs and some of the children's merchandise).  After the bookfair setup,  we went out to Smithville to have dinner at The Barn.  We went through the shops on the property after dinner, where we got some spices for Heather at The Oak Cupboard and some goodies for the kids at Toyrifix.  We then spent a few minutes walking down by the duck pond before heading for home.

Sunday at church, we were surprised to see Britt and Manny come in with Mammie, Grandpa and Grandma Reel.  They took us out to eat at El Campesino for lunch, and after the kids went down for naps Heather and I spent the rest of the afternoon catching up on housework.  Monday morning came with beautiful sunshine, so we decided to put together a quick geocache list and head south toward Navarre for the day.  I had 23 on the list, we searched for 17 of those and found 16.  One of our most (if not THE most) successful expeditions!  We took a break for lunch at Kremeland, a cute 1950's inspired diner on the main road through Navarre.  Good food at reasonable prices, and good ice cream for dessert!

I haven't been very good about posting pictures up here.  It's been a struggle enough to keep the pictures backed up to our online archive as quickly as we take them off of the camera!  Heather has been doing a great job of posting pictures up to facebook as we go on our adventures, and you can access all (as in "all")  of our pictures on the archive as well.  If you don't have access to the archive or have lost your access information and would like to see our life's photodocumentation, send me a message and I'll take care of setting that up.

I've been in "handyman" mode for a few months now, but we're starting to switch gears and get back into bookfair mode now.  First event is coming up in a week and a half!

I've enjoyed the handyman work I've been doing, even if I haven't been getting paid for all of it.  I've been able to wrap up a lot of small projects around the house that have been needed attended to since we've moved in.  Some simple projects that I had no excuse not to get to are done (smoke alarms offer great peace of mind, and it only took 15 minutes to put up six of them).  We now have a railing on the stairs from the living area to the bedrooms, three new doors (2 on bedrooms, 1 on bathroom, and a fourth door for the playroom still has to be hung).  I spent 14 hours insulating the ceilings, which has cut the furnace operating time by about half (it used to be on for about 50 minutes out of every hour, now it's on for 20 - 30 minutes per hour).  I finally broke down and bought new hardware for the futon so it could be assembled.  I'll probably find the original hardware this week when I wrap up basement organization!

In the basement, seven bookcases have been filled and I'm in the process of trying to sort them by category.  The kitchen cabinets that we bought in Maine have been assembled in the basement and provide wonderful, organized storage on the laundry side of the room.  The desktop computer is set up on the other half with all of the bookshelves, and hopefully that can be organized into a place where we can keep the bills and paperwork so it doesn't clutter up the living area of the house anymore.

After 4 months, it's finally starting to feel settled!  Still no car in the garage yet - got to organize my tools and build some shelves in the back to hold the typical garage stuff so there is room for the car to pull in.  We're really close!

Yesterday after work I brought in a few things from the truck that needed to come in the house, including a long-ago expired insurance card.  I handed the card to Mason when I came in the house and asked him if he could throw it away for me.  He was a little cautious about that since I had never asked him to go near the trash can before (in fact, we usually tell him to get back when he gets close).  I needed to make a quick trip to Home Depot so I had the extra roll of insulation set by the door, along with the gift card and the receipt from the purchase so I could return the insulation.  I went downstairs to the garage to grab a can of Mountain Dew and when I came back up, I couldn't find the gift card and receipt.  I checked all of my pockets, emptied my wallet to make sure I didn't put it in there (I was SURE I had set it on the insulation), went back and checked in the refrigerator, bathroom, and anyplace else I had been since I got home.

It wouldn't have been the first time I had misplaced something and wasted 15 minutes of my life looking for it, but it turns out that this time, it WAS where I had set it - until Mason decided to throw it away!  I guess the Home Depot card neatly wrapped in the receipt looked an awful lot like the old insurance card that I had just asked him to throw out.  He took it upon himself to throw it away while I was down grabbing my soda!

Lesson learned: if I specifically remember setting something somewhere and it's not there anymore, ask Mason, or check the trash.  He fessed up after I showed him what I had been looking for. :-)

If you would please check our Xanga page (there is a link to the right --->), I have posted some information about a ministry I would love for you all to check out!  It has been placed on my heart, and my eyes have been opened to a serious problem.  If you could just spend a few minutes and learn more about Women At Risk, International and pray for this ministry and the women being affected, it would make a huge difference in the lives of others!  Thanks for your time!

I am amazed that it is February… I honestly don’t know where the time is going.  It has been wild since the wedding!  Our Christmas program at church was the day after the wedding… they have them during the regular morning service.  The music this year was unbelievable!  They really do a nice job with the message and the worship!  We always look forward to it, Hannah loves to listen to the music.  We had a lovely Christmas here in Ohio.  It was nice to have Steven and Ashley in town for a few weeks!  We celebrated Christmas at our house with the kids!  They had a great time!  We started the morning by reading the Story of Christ’s birth from Luke.  Then the kids were excited to see if they got any gifts!  They were very patient while they each took turns opening gifts! They seemed very excited with the choices that were made!  We had a lovely dinner at Mammie and Grampy’s house and then started the chaos of opening gifts!  It was a great day!  We enjoyed having both sets of Grandparents sharing the evening with us! 

We stuck around this area long enough to see Steven and Ashley off and Britt and Manny get home from their Honeymoon!  We got to see most of their pictures and hear all the stories!  We are thankful that they made it back safely!

The next morning, we headed to New Hampshire for our Christmas there!  Annie was in from college, and Katherine and her family were able to come in too while we were there!  We had a nice few days together, and Annabelle and Hannah had a blast playing together!  They really get along so well and have a great time being imaginative and creative!  Mason didn’t mind the alone time too much either!  While in NH, Mason turned 2!  We celebrated with dinner at Aloha and then had cake and ice cream at Great Grammy’s house!  He was pretty excited with all the boy toys he received!  He has been playing with too many girly things lately!

New Year’s Eve we headed up to visit with Bob, Kelly and Matthew in Maine for a few days!  The guys were very busy with snow removal, and Hannah and Matthew had a great time together!  It was lovely to visit with them, even though it was a quick trip.  On our way back to NH, we did some geocaching down the coast!  We found several caches even though there was a lot of snow on the ground!  We ended the day at Olive Garden per Hannah’s request.  We were hoping to go to a local dive, but they were all closed because of the “snow storm” that night.  We stayed overnight with the Richmonds again, and headed home the next day.  We found a few more caches on the way home, just to get a few more states under our belt!  We had a good drive home, nothing too eventful.  The big surprise came when we got home.  I walked in the garage and the ceiling was stained and dripping.  Fortunately, it wasn’t burst pipes as we had initially thought.  We had a drip in our tub, and the pipes had frozen and the water leaked over the pipe and out onto the floor.  Our furnace decided to quit working for some reason and the toilet had frozen.  It cracked as we were thawing it, but we were home when it happened.  It could have been worse!  Everything was fixed and is now all up and running properly!  It took a couple of days, but we got it straightened out.  Now Matt has been working on getting all settled around here.  He laid a runner on the stairs of the playroom, it looks very nice and we don’t have to worry about the kids slipping on the wood steps anymore.  He has also replaced the old abused wood doors on the bedrooms and bathroom with new white doors, which lighten up the house a lot!  They look really nice! 

The family headed down to Columbus for Britt’s birthday party with the Cestaris!  We ate at a wonderful Chinese restaurant, Molly Woo’s!  It was fantastic!  We had a great time with everyone and it was lovely to meet their friends who were visiting from Venezuela! 

We came home and did a little geocaching, and then we had a bought of sickness that lasted a week.  The kids and Matt each had a 24-hour bug.  I am thankful that it didn’t last any longer and that I didn’t get it!  

This past week was pretty busy!  Wednesday night we dropped Hannah off at AWANA and headed up to Green for a C.B.G.B (Canalway Band of Geocaching Buckeyes!) event at Panera.  It was great to meet some locals who enjoy this crazy hobby just as we do!  We also received our first Geocoin that we are able to activate, assign a goal and set it out to travel!  We can’t wait for another event to meet more local cachers!

Thursday evening, Mom and I were able to go to Comfy Cozies at church.  We had missed a few months while we were working on wedding stuff.  It was nice to get out and knit and crochet with the other ladies again!  We have missed them! 

Friday night, Mammie and Grampy came over to watch the kids while Matt and I went to Winter Jam in Cleveland!  It was a great Christian music tour with several artists in attendance.  It was our first encounter with two Christian heavy metal bands!  I really didn’t know there was such a thing!  I think we actually enjoyed it, but it sure made me feel old!  We got to Cleveland about an hour before the doors opened.  We were able to pick up a HUGE burrito and chips and guacamole at Chipotle and run to Starbuck’s really quick for something warm to drink while we waited outside!  It was a fun time, Matt and I ate our burrito just in time to get in the doors, but we had to take our chips and dip back to the car.  This worked out great because it gave us a great snack to munch while we were waiting to get out of the parking garage!  We had great seats, and really enjoyed the music and the message!  It was fun to go to a concert again!  It has been a while since I’ve been to a Christian concert!  We had a great evening!  When we came home, Britt and Manny had come in for the weekend!  We visited with them for a few minutes before they left. 

Saturday afternoon we went over to Mom and Dad’s for an afternoon edition of Family Game Night!  Mom was working on IEPs, but Dad even joined us in the game while the kids watched Imagination Movers!  We all headed to El Campesino for dinner, then the guys and kids headed back home and Britt, Mom and I headed to church.  We had a wonderful jewelry party where we learned about a great ministry.  I will put another post  up about that ministry… this one is getting too long! 

Sunday brought ABF and church, then we enjoyed a huge family dinner at Taco Bell!  Grandma and Grandpa Reel joined us and all 10 of us squished into 3 tiny tables!  It was quite a sight! 

Matt has been putting in a few hours a day working with Rick at the warehouse, and I have been here with the kids!  They have been enjoying all their new Christmas toys and games!  Hannah is still learning her verses and doing her AWANA workbook, she really is learning so much.  It is a blessing to see her desire to learn the Word of God! 

Well, I need to close!  Hope you are all enjoying your winter!  Take care, until next time!

Brittannie and Manny began their Happily Ever After on Saturday, December 19th, 2009.   The Wedding was absolutely beautiful!  It was wonderful to see all our Friends and Family gather together to celebrate their special day!  There was a perfect coating of snow on the ground for the day... just as the Bride ordered!  It was absolutely beautiful, and we are so happy for Britt and Manny as they start their new life together as Husband and Wife!

Congratulations!  We Love You Both Tons and we can't wait to see you when you get back!

As the bookfair season here in Ohio wraps up (Tuesday is the last day), I look to the Lord to provide for us through our off-season.  It's been a long and hard last three months, and we've been grateful for the work and God's goodness to provide!

I am looking for work to get me through until March when book fairs will be gearing back up again.  I'd like to use the time to build some references and a local portfolio here in Canton, laying groundwork for my own business doing handyman work.

I'm still in the Cyprexx database and am in the application process with Safeguard, both property preservation contracting companies that work for banks and real estate agencies, usually with foreclosed properties.  This would be a good springboard for my own business, so I'm hoping and praying that I will get some business from those leads!

God has been and will continue to be good to us in all things!  We're faithfully waiting on His provision, and know He will bring us through whatever may come, all for HIS glory!

We have been very busy around these parts!  We are mostly settled now, it took some time since Matt was busy with work!  We all got the sickness that Matt brought home with him, worked through it in a few weeks and hopefully that will be it for the season!  We can hope!

October brought Trunk or Treat at our church, we had the Princess and the Bee this year!  They had a great time collecting all the candy from the folks in the decorated cars!  Hannah especially loved the inflated slide, and the bouce house!  It was held indoors this year because it was supposed to be raining.  Turned out to be really nice, the parents could visit and let the kids run around in the Family Life Center!  It was awesome!  A few weekends after that, I threw Brittannie a SURPRISE Bridal Shower!  She was really shocked!  She had no idea it was coming!  Manny and the other bridesmaids helped out so much, it was a great success!  Britt enjoyed spending the day with her dearest friends and family!  

November was a whirlwind... every weekend it seemed like we had something going on or I was helping Britt with wedding details!  We had Hannah's 4th birthday party the first weekend!  She asked for a pink teddy bear in a pink tutu on her cake.  That would have been a reasonable request, except I was planning to make her cake this year!  I did manage to get it to come out and it was recognizable!  She was excited!  We had my parents, Britt and Manny, and my 2 sets of Grandparents over for dinner and cake!  Hannah was excited to have "guests" for her birthday!  On her actual birthday, Daddy brought home an ice cream cake for her with TinkerBell on it!  She was super excited about that!  She opened her packages from the Richmonds and the Roots that night!  She was glad to have gifts to open on her birthday, as I forgot to hold something back...

The following weekend, Matt planned a getaway for our 7th Wedding Anniversary!  He surprised me with 2 days at Kalahari in Sandusky!  It is the largest indoor waterpark in the US!  We had an absolute blast!  We haven't had that much fun in a long time!  We really felt like teenagers again... even though we didn't know each other when we were that age!  Each slide we rode had a 4 story climb to it!  So we would climb as many as we could bear... then we would take a loop around the lazy river.  Then go up the steps to the slides until we couldn't stand it any longer... then we would do the lazy river again!  It was awesome, but my legs and arms hurt for several days afterward!  We had a great time!  Thanks Honey for working it all out for us to get away! 

Then the wedding stuff was underway!  We had the practice up-do, then we put together place setting stuff!  We enjoyed Thanksgiving by having my Parents and Grandparents over to our house!  Everyone brought things and it made light work for all of us, boy was it delicious!  Last weekend, I went to Columbus for Britt's Bachelorette Party!  It was a great time!  Brenna made reservations at The Melting Pot!  It was wonderful!  We went back to her condo and she opened her gifts, then Brenna and I spent the night!  We played Wii all night, and my arms killed the next day!  I think I spent a little too much energy boxing! haha!  Sunday, Britt and I did some last minute wedding shopping, and enjoyed the day together!  We ended it up meeting Manny for a nice lunch at Skyline!  Thanks Britt for sharing your day with me, it was a great time! 

This weekend the gals have Grandma's Sorority Luncheon, then we are going to pick up Britt's wedding dress!  End it up with the Chapel in Akron's Christmas concert with Jimmy and Marilyn!  Next weekend, we have an ABF Christmas party!  Then Aultman bookfair week will be upon us, and after that is THE WEDDING!!!  We can't wait to witness the marriage of Brittannie and Manny!  They are such a cute couple, great people, and they will have a beautiful wedding!  We love you both so much! 

We'll be ending the year with Christmas at home, hopefully a trip to New England, Mason's 2nd Birthday, and New Years!  I can't believe how fast things are going!  It is all so exciting, but it will be great when it is all past and we can just relax as a family again!   Until next time, Have a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful start to the New Year!  With Love, from our family to yours!