My dad showed up last week packing his Makita saw and cordless drill. He says retirement is for the birds. At 70+ he works FT for the Church Education System and works circles around me on the house. All week he has been helping me build an attic in our garage. It should have been a straightforward job, but the support beams are all out of wack: not straight, weird angles, unevenly spaced, crooked, etc. Dad’s got it dialed in, though and it’s turning out great. Mom has been helping Shannon with the kids. It’s been wonderful having them around and helping so much!! Dad gave me the day off yesterday to go to the beach. He had lunch with the guy over IT for all 7 Claremont Colleges. They worked together at BYU-Hawaii.

These are the painters: Nelson and Nelson. A common theme we hear from people down here (including Nelson) is that they can’t wait to move to Oregon. Nelson plans on retiring in 3 years and buying 10 acres in Oregon and buying a franchise. Therein lies the problem: everyone down here is moving up north making Oregon crowded and expensive, just like California…with rain. The Nelson’s were entertaining to work with. We didn’t hear the end of how they had “worked 35 days straight” and how they’ve done “7 jobs in the last week”, how he gave “all his money to women who didn’t deserve it”, etc.

Dude did a bang up job on the travertine tile in the bathrooms. Home Depot dropped the tile off, emphasis on DROPPED. They opened six boxes and all six had damaged tiles. After initially saying we could go pick up replacements and then return the bad ones, they said that they would deliver replacements and pick up the rejects. The hardwoods start going in today. We move in one week from Tuesday!

I had to fly to Ft Lauderdale with work for a couple days this week. Long trip for a day and a half meeting. Some friends came down from Portland to keep Shannon company. They had lots of fun. We even converted some hamburger haters into In-N-Out fans!

Grace didn’t waste any time breaking into show business. She got right into a summer musical camp with a new friend and they put on a show. She was counting down the days hours and minutes to High School Musical 2, the follow up to her all time favorite show. It was a big hit.

While the kids and guests watched HSM2, the adults went to the Hip Kitty Jazz Club and Fondue Restaurant. An LDS girl we met at a BBQ last weekend was singing. She is Aimee Nolte of the Aimee Nolte Trio. She will be on the “Singing Bee” next year and is auditioning to be a regular at the Beverly Hilton. She has a beautiful voice and rocks on the keyboards. All four of her kids are named after jazz greats: Miles, Ella, Charlie and Louis.

The painting on the house will be done tomorrow, then its on to the floors. My parents are in town, dad is helping me build an attic in the garage. Lots of usable space that we will NEED.

Hadn’t seen previews or heard anything about this movie, but my wsj reviewer loved it, so we checked it out Friday night. Entertaining show!! Kind of “Princess Bride” meets “Lord of the Rings”. It’s got: Michelle Pfeiffer, Claire Daines, Sienna Miller, Robert DeNiro and Ricky Gervais.

The ceilings in our house have been scraped and painted. The crown molding is in and the wainscoating is up in the bathroom. Base boards are done in the bedrooms and around some of the doors. Pulling some of the old boards revealed TERMITES! Apparently they are very common in the area. They get treated today and tomorrow, then it’s new paint throughout the house. Next week its floors, shutters and finishing up the trim work. We are hoping to move in Sept 5th.

Kids (and parents) are LOVING the pool.

We took possession of our new (to us) home on Thursday. Remodeling began the next day. We are having the ceilings scraped, painting the whole inside, putting in hardwoods, tile, carpet and shutters, Should be ready to move into in a few weeks.

The house in Portland hasn’t sold, yet. We found out that there are over 160 homes in our area in the same price range…lots of inventory. A year ago there were hardly any in that range and our neighbors homes sold in a few days. The company will buy it in late September if it doesn’t sell. The gave us an interest free equity advance to use on the down payment.

On Friday the cousins from No. Cal came down for the weekend. Mom and Dad are going on a cruise while the kids hang out with cousins. We went to Mexican food with the Claremont cousins. Saturday we went to the X-Games at the new Home Depot Center. It was cool. We watched BMX vert first. Saw one of the 3 or 4 people in the world who can do a front flip on a bike try twice then land it on the third. After that was Super Moto, the motorcross that is half pavement and half dirt. Fun to watch, especially the lead change at the very end.