Fall is in the air

I think Fall may be my favorite time of year. The crispness in the air, the smell of the leaves changing and the generally pleasant weather really heighten my senses and put me in a decent mood. One of my favorite things about fall is the chance to sit around a roaring bonfire under the dark sky of a chilly Friday or Saturday night with friends. Friday night was one of those nights. The rainy and wet Friday cleared up just in time for us to get a fire going at the engagement party we went to for our friends Dave and Dana. There is just something about a fire that I love and I am really glad that we were able to get together with old friends and banter over the glowing flames of the burning pieces of really expensive high grade lumber. (Jeff - one of the hosts - works in a cabinet shop and brings home loads of cut off pieces of furniture grade oak, maple, poplar and other types of wood that I just cringe seeing in the fire!) Fridays discussion including the normal political and social topics before quickly turning to more entertaining things that don't need to be discussed in a family setting like this! Good times.

The rest of the weekend was fairly unevently for me. Nicole worked most of the day on Saturday at her new job so I spent the day indoors with the kids trying to stay busy. After dinner we made a trip to Menards after I got a wild hair up my a#$ to install a large television antenna so I could watch the football game on a clear screen instead of having to distinguish between snow and and actuall players on a fuzzy screen!

Side story...
For those of you who do not know - we may be one of the only families you know that does not have some sort of enhanced T.V. like cable, Dish Network or Direct TV. Believe it or not - this was a conscious decision we made when we moved into our new house back in 2003. Nicole was pregnant and we knew that we would be busy working on the house and raising the kids so we decided not to have anything hooked up at the new house. So far it has been pretty decent but I think we both miss the days of laying around on the weekends watching endless hours of HGTV, Discovery Channel and TLC.

Anyway, I bought an antenna with intentions of installing it in the attic of the garage then running the wire down to my panel in the basement to split the signal to 3 TV's we currently have hooked up in the house. (When we built the house I ran several hundred feet of cat 5 networking cable and RG6 coax cable so that we would be "wired" for anything. Unfortunately I did not run a wire from the panel up to the attic for a dish or an antenna so this complicated things a little for me.) After climbing into the garage attic I realized that this would not be the best place for the antenna because it was supposed to be aimed directly at the "tower farm" over in Shoreview and the rest of the house would be directly in the path from the garage attic. Instead I climbed up to the attic over the main house and began installing the antenna. This was around 9 or 10 at night. Next began the frustrating part of the job involving Nicole and I going back and forth over the telephone while I tried in vain to orient the antenna into the position giving the best picture on as many of our 10 possible channels as I could. This went on for at least an hour. Just when I got one channel to look perfect the rest would go to hell - very frustrating to say the least. Nicole was quickly losing her patience so around midnight I gave up and called it good. We now have reception on most of the channels that looks acceptable so we can enjoy the pluthera of network programming available without having to manipulate "rabbit ears" to get get a better picture! Who knows, maybe someday we will get up to speed and get that flat panel plasma screen T.V. with digital HD cable so we can sit as a family and enjoy such classics as "Design on a Dime", "Monster Garage" or "Weekend Warriors" but until then we will have to live with "Late Night with Conan O'Brian" and "Antiques Roadshow" on our smallish 27" picture tube T.V. The way I see it by the time we pull the trigger on something more exciting the prices should have come down to levels that normal people can afford without having to max out the credit card or remortgage the house!

This week also marks the beginning of a new daycare for the girls. The girls love going to Ann's house but with her having a full load of kids we had little flexibility to rearrange anything in our weekly schedule. Since Nicole's new job requires her to work most Fridays so we were forced to make arrangements for care for the girls on Fridays. While checking some options she stumbled on what we hope will be an ideal solution right around the block from our house. It was an extremely difficult decision but in the end we decided to make a switch. The new daycare is in our school district (Ann's daycare was not so we would have had to deal with that eventually), has 2 adults caring for the kids, has a few girls the same ages as our girls and is a block and a half from our house with all the kids being from the neibhborhood. The price was extremely attractive as well so that definitely helped push the decision. Finding someone to care for your kids is not something to be taken lightly but after meeting with the new provider and seeing her and the kids in action we agreed that our firls will be in great hands and should be very comfortable with the new place.

Happy Tuesday!