New Year, new fun

We all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year. On Christmas Day, my Dad captured a side of Goliath not many get to see. He looks pretty fierce, but actually he was in the middle of a yawn. He is not tough at all, just likes to think he is.

We were able to catch up with lots of family and friends and managed to get some painting done in our family room. This is by far the biggest room in our house and after two days and two gallons of paint, Matt and I were exhausted, but happy that it is finally done. For more than a year, I had a splotch of slate blue paint on the wall to see if we really liked the color. Many people told us that it might make the room too dark, so I finally gave up on the blue and we chose a light stone color. It looks almost white, so that is fine. It is now nice and bright in that room and since it is halfway in the ground, that can only be a good thing. Now I just have an extra gallon of paint hanging around. Luckily, this project went quite well considering neither of us was looking forward to it. The only incident was when I found a fresh drip of paint on the piano.

The news was not so good for what should have been simple oil changes on our cars. Matt had to have all the struts replaced on his car. At least we saved $100 with my work discount. My car was found to need a new air filter. The reason: a mouse had taken up residence in it. They showed me the old filter and told me the mouse was not at home when they pulled it out. What does this mean? We need to sweep out the garage and check a few items like Goliath's bike trailer. It also means that the boy should spend some time with me in the garage while I am cleaning it up. He can find anything if it means it would run from him. Don't get me wrong, I will not let him kill it. I just want it to get scared enough to find another neighborhood. Goliath managed to frighten away a little family of field mice that were living in our compost pile, so he can handle a mouse in his garage. If all else fails, maybe I should print out my Dad's picture above and those teeth should do the trick.