Some News Wichita Way

The first significant snowfall of the winter began on Friday evening, lasted throughout the night and into Saturday morning. Around mid-morning, while it was still snowing, D and I went outside to shovel the driveway and sidewalk. I figured that Desmond would be excited to go crazy in the snow. But not only was he not excited, as soon as he got some snow on his 'ands, he wanted nothing to do with the white stuff. Needless to say, I had to finish the snow removal alone while D watched from inside the house. Here's Desmond...you can see the disgust he feels for snow in his facial expression.
So rather than make a snowman, or some snow angels, D and I went to the library and got some new books. We also went to the motorcycle shop for some parts and to check out the inventory of "vroom vrooms". Of course, the shop didn't have the parts I needed, but there were plenty of four-wheelers for Desmond to tryout. Even though I didn't have the necessary parts, I still spent some time working on the scooter. Here it is torn down for a bit of maintenance. I needed to adjust the valves, replace the fluids and do some suspension and control tweaks so the bike would be set up a little better for me. I'm pretty nervous working on this bike. It's a pretty high performance machine with little tolerance for crappy mechanic-ing. I'm hoping I can to more good than harm...parts for this european steed are pricey.
Check out all the room I have to work...most of the garage is filled floor to ceiling with household extras. We have grown out of our little rental. It's mostly because of this that Jen bought a new (to us) house. There is still a lot of the necessary hoops to jump through before closing, but we should be moving late January. The home still has to pass inspection and...anyway, you know, it's not ours yet, but the wheels are in motion. A photo from the outside:
It's a lot of house for the money, we think, but there's a bit of work to be done. Mostly clean-up...carpets and some painting. It was an older couple's home until the old lady croaked, and the old man hasn't lived there for about a year. It is in the neighborhood that we really enjoy, and gives us some much-needed space. So provided all goes well--nothing falls through, or in--it'll be home in about a month.

Readers of this blog will remember Desmond's summer haircut that I gave him a few months ago. Well, his hair has grown considerably since then, and Jen was adamant about not giving him another buzz, so we took him to a barber. They cater to children as you can see...
Pretty smart really. There were enough distractions, and the gal worked fast enough that before a freak out could erupt, D's new doo was finished. Check it out...

One last photo of D with his new monster truck. Even with X-mas bearing down on us I wanted to buy it for him. I don't know if, before today, Desmond even really knew what a monster truck was when he would ask for one. He knows what trucks are, and he knows what monsters are; likely he heard the two words together somewhere and thought that it sounded pretty radical. Whatever the case, he was excited about monster trucks and I was excited to get on for him to play with. You can see that it makes him very happy...
An affinity for monster trucks might indicate a developmental step backwards--yes, I'm concerned--but D can count to thirteen now, so I'm not too worried overall.