The Slippery Slope Begins

A sad day in the Chisholm household.... we caved and accepted a free television from friends.

Forgive us family and friends as we can no longer maintain the role of "this-couple-I-know-who-doesn't-even-have-a-TV" in your lives. However, in our defense, it will only be used for watching DVD movies and stored in our hall closet.

How We Know We Live in Philly: The Curl Test

In the City of Rocky, the actual rule for knowing if you can put certain items out on the curb for trash pick up day contains the following instruction: Grab the bundle, if you can do a bicep curl without having your forearm muscles strained then it is okay to leave with trash. The actual weight amount is no more than 40 lbs.

This is awesome for several reasons:
1. The fact that they use your bicep strength as a test.
2. The fact that they suggest to the public that 40 lbs is a reasonable amount that most people can curl without engaging their forearm muscles.

Now Joshua is curling 280 lbs these days and Laura is coming in strong with 75 lbs, so this rule suits us just fine. But, since we are such community-minded people, we are concerned about the older generation who can only curl 0.7 oz.

Thompson Home Improvement Begins Philly Expansion

Recently Thompson Home Improvement (Laura’s Dad/Frank) of Carlisle, PA has started an expansion from nursing homes to South Philly rowhomes. Here are some of the before and after pictures from our first day of working on the house.

Obviously we are very talented … just look at the improvement that the house suffered in one day! (Notice the ceiling and the walls ... the floors are just trembling with exciting about their near future.)

We found some awesome treasures around the house. Flick-off action doll in the middle and photos of “Vince, Frankie and Baby Andy” which were given to “Carmella” … she decided to store these precious photos behind the baseboards in the dining room.

Joshua learned a valuable lesson from Frank: “No eatty the spackle, Mr. Chisholm!”
South Philly Thompson Home Improvement Crew after a long day of work. Can you guess who the contractor is? Yup, it’s Joshua because he is wearing the official shirt. Just ask Home Depot’s employees.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank Frank/Dad for all of his help, guidance, creativity, tools, the house-warming present (a ladder!), his eternal patience, a dinner at the fancy crepes restaurant, his flexibility and his humor. Man, we would not have even known where to begin on this project without his help. Thank you!

Without his help, the house probably would have ended up like this:

I cannot describe how happy I am that I did not remain employed at the Independence Seaport Museum for the summer.

Although, every so often, I am tempted to go back so that I could have the opportunity to

throw these --->

at him ---->

(In case you are confused.)

Our Immediate Family Includes Our Ice Cream Maker

This past weekend I went down to Baltimore to teach at Getaway Sailing, where I worked for the summer after I graduated from college. It was fun to be out on the water and "talk boats" for eight straight hours for two days in a row. Even though it has made for a 11-day work week, it is strangely refreshing for me ... some times I think that it might be more relaxing than an actual weekend.

I'll be teaching one weekend a month during the summer as a way of getting out on the water. Then in August (after I complete my internship and before school starts), my father and I will embark upon our big sailing adventure. We are going to be sailing a mid-sized boat around the Chesapeake for a full week. We are both totally jazzed about the adventure. Joshua will join us during the weekend, which will be awesome because I will have my two favorite men on board for a sailing trip!

My roommate from college, Heather, was kind enough to put me up in her cute little house in Baltimore for the weekend (again). It is always fun to see Heather; I'm looking forward to a weekend trip to the beach with her and my other college roommates in July.

In updating her about our lives, I mentioned our amazing ice cream maker. I realized that Joshua and I are always talking about the marvels of our ice cream maker. When we got it as a wedding gift from my soccer team in Seattle (Hello, PuddleJumpers!), it was the only gift we debated (for weeks) about returning for something more adult ... like a toaster. Eventually curiosity got the best of us and we tried it out. No joke, this thing makes 2 qts of ice cream in 25 minutes and all you have to do is add milk and sugar (and all the candy pieces you can stand) to the machine and turn it on. It is the greatest invention ever and I probably sing its praises more often than is socially acceptable.

If you are in the area, please stop by our place and we will enjoy some refreshing ice cream together!

The Bank Owns A House Where We Get To Live!

Wednesday morning we had a successful closing for our home purchase. That night we stayed in our new home for the first time. The night consisted of over-the-threshold carrying, champagne, a pizza delivery, sitting out of the roof to look at the stars, and watching the kitty explore our family's new home!

Brian's 30th Birthday Party

When I tell people that my brother just turned 30, I also express some disbelief in the fact. He seems much older! Gosh, with how grown-up Brian has always been, I'd guess that he has been at least 30 years old for the last decade! (When he was younger, he once moaned that in a family of black sheep, he was the white one.)

Kidding aside, he has always been a great older brother -- easily the most dependable and giving person I know. He is able to both keep a secret and secretly cheer for me to be myself ... even if we are opposite sides of the spectrum at times.

Bridgette threw him a BBQ party on Saturday. It went something like this:

A huge cake!

Beer pong!

Babies and Charlie the dog sharing a snack!

Mom and Dad!Presents for Brian's birthday and Bridgette's graduation from her Master's program! (We gave Brian a Tortured Philly Fan tee-shirt and Bridgette a singing bowl.)

---

Sunday morning after mass, we took Mom and Dad to see the outside of our future home. (We have the closing tomorrow!) They were surprised by how nice it looks through the windows. On Sunday night we went over to my cousin David's house to play Wii and have a few drinks, which was super fun.

Yesterday we did nothing but try to fit as much napping on the couch in as possible. We realize that we have a busy few months ahead of us so we tried to rest up and enjoy the lack of activity as much as we could.

Plants ... including catnip!

The incorrigible Shanti has been LOVING the catnip plant given by her grand-owner-humans. I tore off two mid-sized leaves, ripped them up a bit and sprinkled them on Shanti's scratch pad ... now she hardly leaves the scratch pad. She liked the dried catnip that we gave her but the fresh stuff is definitely better.

And, as you can see in the photo, she loves smelling the other flowers very gently before ripping them to shreds.