Sunday, April 3, 2011

Desirae's new house.....sort of

 Desirae was ready to redo the siding on her house, so for a couple of weekends we spent time at her house, helping strip the old siding, and then insulating the house, and putting on the new siding. 

 Here are some before pictures


The tear down begins....notice the carport and the basketball hoop...those two would be losing their "life"

Joslyn helped by watching from the front window....

Under the old siding was the original wood shake shingle siding...we left that and insulated over the top.  Here, Doug is getting ready to take down the porch overhang, which he rebuilt as you will see below.



Hard to see here, but there is the new porch over going up...and on the lower left of the house, you see the pink insulation going up.  


Doug is doing the welding on the iron for the porch.  


Beginning to tear down the carport....

Car port is no more.....

 So the house is insulated and now we began wrapping it...


And the new siding is starting to go up....it is a similar color as before, but looks so much nicer...


The finished product....looks great right?  Desirae still needs to paint the new porch cover, but how great does the house look :-)




Chocolate Chip PB Cheesecake


 It has been awhile since I made this, so long in fact, that I had almost forgotten till I saw them on the camera. 

In  my experimenting, I made a Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cheesecake.  I know it sounds rich, and it was, but I was very pleased that it was not as "heavy" as I thought.  It was really good. 


Thursday, March 31, 2011

ABCs of Jody

  1. Age: 39....for now...
  2. Bed size: Queen
  3. Chore you hate: emptying the dishwasher
  4. Dogs: Deogi and Stormy
  5. Essential start to your day: Shower
  6. Favorite color: Blue
  7. Gold or silver: Gold, but white gold
  8. Height:5'5'"
  9. Instruments that you can play: I used to play the flute, now I play the radio
  10. Job title: Academic Department Chair
  11. Kids: nope
  12. Live: Colorado
  13. Mom’s name: Jean
  14. Nicknames: Jody, Jod, sweetie, pumpkin
  15. Overnight hospital stays: never
  16. Pet peeve: Smart people who do dumb things
  17. Quote from a movie: "Big mistake, BIG!" from Pretty Woman or "You saw me when I was invisible" from the Princess Diaries, or "You are just a machine, just a machine" From the Electric Grandmother (3 of the best movies of all time)
  18. Righty or lefty: Righty.
  19. Sibling: one older brother
  20. Time you wake up: several times during the night, but for the morning about 6:30
  21. Underwear:Yes
  22. Vegetables you dislike: This maybe should say, vegetables you like...that would be shorter...but I will say Broccoli and Cauliflower
  23. What makes you run late: checking my email
  24. X-rays: dentist, knee, elbow
  25. Yummy food you make: I make lots of yummy things- I would say desserts
  26. Zoo favorite animal: Big cats, Mountain Lions, Leopards

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday to you...
Happy Birthday to you...
Happy Birthday dear Thoughts from the Ridge Blog
Happy Birthday to you...

That is right, today is the 3rd birthday for our little blog....Hope you have enjoyed it the last three years!

Friday, March 11, 2011

Mert turns 75!

On Saturday March 5, my dad, Mert turned 75 years old/young. We decided to have a small party here at our house. So we had a few friends and family over for dinner. Here is Great Grandpa opening his presents with the help of Caelum (5 years old)


My mom, Jean holding baby Harlow.


Yes this is me sitting with Joslyn
She cracks me up :-)


Having dessert...Mert's favorite Strawberry Shortcake....why I didn't think of eating my cake like a giant Popsicle off my fork like Caelum, I am not sure...he has it down...



Deogi was getting a lot of love this evening....As you can see the tumor has really grown (the picture is hard to get the full aspect of how big it is), and it has affected her hearing in one ear, and she can no longer open her mouth fully...ie she can't pick up a tennis ball anymore, something that is devastating to Deogi as that is still her favorite game. We monitor her daily and try to help manage her pain with meds, but it is heart breaking to see.
Mert however, loves to spoil her and gives her many treats from the table. They are becoming fast friends. LOL

It was a great evening and I am sure my dad has many more birthdays to celebrate!



Surgery for Stormy



We decided it was time to have Stormy spayed....On Tuesday March 1, we took her in around 8 in the morning and picked her up about 3 pm. She was pretty groggy when we picked her up. Here you can see she sorta wants to play, she can't help herself but she just couldn't do it. She ended up leaning against the wall to support herself.







That night she started bleeding through her stitches and we had a big mess all over the floor, so we wrapped her up with an ace bandage for a few days and she did great. She is now back to her old self and as wild as ever.

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Dog Visitors

This morning, I looked out the window of our bathroom and saw this....



A black lab mix and a German Shepard mix. The pipe you see in this bottom picture is where bunnies are known to go and you can see that this dog tried to dig to get to them (sigh, now we have to fix the pipe again...this isn't the first time dogs have done this).

We aren't sure where these dogs belong. We have never seen them before. They are certainly comfortable waiting here. I first noticed them this morning around 8 am, but they are still there as of 1 pm today.....just hanging out... We may have to try to chase them off, but we were hoping some owners would come looking for them soon.

UPDATE: Since these two were still hanging around, we went out to see if they were friendly and if they had a collar on. They did not have a collar, so we called the Sheriff, they sent out a deputy and he picked them up. They were pretty scared, I think someone must have dumped them. So sad, they seemed like nice dogs, if we didn't already have two, I might have kept them....

New Pictures

We had some pictures we wanted to get framed. One was a picture Collage of many pictures that Pauline sent us from her trip here (see below post, she will be here again in July....we are soooo excited to see her again).



The other picture is a puzzle, and all puzzles (for those who have been to our house, and if you haven't visited yet, you should....) go on the wall on Mickey Mouse Drive.....



We had these framed in Longmont, and our friends Kim and Ron picked them up for us and brought them to Brighton where we met them for dinner Friday night. Thanks Kim for stopping in to pick them up....also thanks for not switching Mickey with a fake.... LOL

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Shhhh Stormy is in my meeting

I have a lot of online meetings, and I use my headset and listen and often talk too. Today I was just listening....ok, and I was a little bored. So, I let Stormy try on the headset. Here is she in the meeting....



I think she got bored too.....

This didn't last long, and I went back to my own listening.

Mickey Pancakes

One of my faculty members was in Orlando and picked up a Mickey Pancake mold for me. So I had to try it out, with blueberry pancakes. They were yummy....and I am sure the mold had a lot to do with that ;)

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Somebody say Chocolate????

I haven't really been baking much. As many of you know I was very sick the first part of the year, and am just now back to normal. Well normal for Jody ;-)

If you know Kevin, you know he loves chocolate. So I decided to make a triple chocolate cupcake. It is Chocolate Cupcake, with a ganache filling, and chocolate frosting. I made both regular size cupcakes and mini cupcakes....



Here is Kevin trying out a mini cupcake....enjoy the 'action' shots...





They are very yummy, and very sweet. I am not sure where Kevin is now, probably out somewhere wearing off the sugar....or thinking about coming in for another.....you know Kevin.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Valentine's Day Couple's gift

Looking for that perfect gift for a couple? Look no further. Perpetual Kid has a great item for you:


I am not sure what Tongue Fur is, but if someone has it, I am sure they want to remove it. And best of all this is only $4.99

Monday, February 7, 2011

Magic Wand

I love Think Geek . They have some of the coolest gadgets, and this one is really awesome. I know my Harry Potter friends will agree:

A programmable TV Magic Wand:

check out the video: