Paige reading video

Here's a short video of Paige reading Book 5 in the BOB series:

From Jan 2010

Fireplace Dilemma

Here's our fireplace:

It's hard to tell from the picture, but it's very big. We like to burn fires during the winter, but then we have to leave the flue open for several hours (usually overnight) after the fire so it cools down and we don't have smoke in the house. We lose a lot of heat from the room because of this. Also, it's a very big room (about 1,000 square feet) and the room is usually pretty cold as it is. Even with a fire going and out ancient blower working you barely feel any heat coming out.

We decided to get glass doors for 2 reasons. 1. Safety for the kids. 2. So we can close them after a fire and keep some of our heat from escaping up the chimney while the flue is open. However, since it's so large we needed custom doors made which are pretty pricey. We had someone come out yesterday to measure and he told us the blower will be incorporated in the door installation. And since our blower is not very efficient, loud and may konk out at any time, we may not want to have the new doors custom fit with this old blower.

Our choices are now: 1. Purchase a new blower along with new doors. 2. Purchase a fireplace insert instead of new doors and blower. The fireplace insert may be a little more expensive, but in the long run may be the better value.

Here's an example of a fireplace insert:

 It's technically a wood burning stove inside the fireplace. It will produce a lot more heat than a regular fire will (even with a good blower). It will have longer burn times on the wood, and it's better for the environment. However, we will be trading the open look of logs burning, for a smaller door with the fire inside. Plus this door will get extremely hot, so it's a safety issue with the kids too. But it may save on our heating bill because we can have a good fire burning most of the day on only a few logs.

Leave a comment with your vote. Should we go with a fireplace insert, or get a new blower and doors? A new blower will also help us heat up the room, but if we want it to last a long time we have to keep throwing wood on the fire.

Reading and Crawling progress

Brooke is going to be 8 months old this week! So hard to believe. She's been busy trying to learn how to crawl. She's almost got it too:



And Paige is 3 years and 8 months old and is getting pretty good at reading 3 letter words:



Click on the pictures to watch the videos.

Helicopter ride

For the New Year's party at Nama's house this year, Justin's uncle Fritz flew his helicopter over and we got to take a ride. We asked Paige if she wanted to come to the airport to see the helicopter with us, and at first she was excited but then later decided to stay at Nama's house and help her get ready for the party. But we flew over the house, so she at least got to see us up in the sky from the driveway. It was an amazing experience, so much different from what I was expecting. All of a sudden you go from being on the ground to just floating in the air. Luckily there was very little turbulence and it was a very nice and smooth ride!

 

Here's the view from above Nama's house (on left). Paige is in the driveway waving to us!

Oh Christmas Tree

This year we started what will hopefully be a new Christmas tradition. We chopped down our own Christmas tree! Aside from a unusually early snow in October, this was our first real snow of the winter. It was a beautiful day to go pick out a tree. We got to ride on a horse drawn wagon out to the field. After we picked the perfect tree we took turns sawing it down. Then Justin pulled it back to the wagon pickup for our ride back to get it wrapped up. We even made it all the way back to our house without it falling off the car!