The Goodrums

Although visibility is less than desirable here...

As described, Hank has been undergoing major surgery this summer. Some pictures of the chaos... ahem, progress. :)

The so-called PC had a big birthday "not too long ago" (ummm in about February now) - 150K miles. To celebrate, it got a new accessory via Craigslist:






















A ski rack, which came in quite handy this winter. We're still searching for it's summer accessory - rooftop bike racks.

Our blog has seen some serious neglect over the past few months (err half a year). The pace of life has not slowed much, as we had hoped for 2009. Yet we've had some great experiences - from visitors to travel to life changes. I'll be attempting to update it a bit here.

A couple highlights:

At the end of February, a bunch of friends descended on Denver (yay!). We got to hang out a bit with Kim and Fleetwood (and meet their daughter, Logan) while they were in town for their friend Neil's wedding. That same weekend, Michael's coworker, Beka, along with family and friends came up for a ski weekend in Vail. We got to join them for a day. While the company was great, the skiing left something to be desired...

In early March, we trekked out to Boulder to attend the A&M v. CU basketball game - one of the final games of the season. The Ags prevailed in what was a testy game and went on to March madness.

We also got to attend a regular season Nuggets game at the end of March - and ended up right in the middle of madness between the Nugget's mascot, Rocky, and a Knicks fan. We were three rows in front of all the stands action the entire game. Now the Nuggets are battling out for a spot in the NBA finals. Go Nuggets!

We took trips to OKC to hang out with the Brashares Family in both March and April. There was the road trip in March to celebrate dad's birthday (#60 - though you'd hardly guess). It was a quick trip but it's been great to be able to spend time with family. Plus, it had been almost a year since we were last in OKC so we finally got to see Mom and Dad's new furniture (and painting job). Feeling slightly out of the loop there... We were able to go back for a little longer weekend in April - for the Poor Uncle Billy Fun Run. Documentation of that event at the Brashares Family Blog.

We balanced out our family time with a visit from the Goodrums over Easter. Michael and his dad worked hard on the Jeep. Once Hank has a multi-point fuel injection system, hopefully he will pass the Colorado emissions tests and be back on the road again (after almost 2 years out of commission - and in a cool place at that). As always with vehicles, the jeep project has morphed and now includes rewiring the entire vehicle. Most spare moments of late (even still) find Michael in the garage with the jeep. We also spent a good part of May in D.C. (and surrounding high areas) with the Goodrums.

We've also been through some life transitions with a major decision about graduate school for Michael. Michael attended visit days at both CU Boulder and MIT through March and April and shared the 5-year plan in April on the blog. In the meantime, I've been adjusting to a new job. Although the jobs are very similar, it's been interesting to note the contrasts. I'm appreciating the many blessings of my new role.

Our weather has been wild through the spring and summer. After an uneventful winter with almost no precipitation, April gave us two Saturdays with two and a half feet of snow each (almost 5 feet in total). Really? May, June and July has been rain, rain, rain - with a couple funnel clouds thrown in for good measure.

Thankfully, Memorial Day weekend was one of relative calm. A chance to spend a few days at home and regroup around the house with all the busyness of late. Of course, we couldn't just sit around - we had to run the BolderBoulder for good measure.

In early June, we traveled to Amarillo for Michael's high school reunion. Although I was a bit apprehensive about the event (hanging out with a bunch of people who all know each other but don't know you), we both had a really good time.

The Amarillo trip was followed quickly by a work trip to Vail for me. Michael made it up for the final day and we did a little hiking before heading back to Denver.

Michael spent most of May and June in Hawaii for work. I got to join him during the latter part of his final trip - and we took a little vacation time while we both were there. I actually relaxed during the first part of the week while Michael worked and then we traveled to the Big Island, where we did crazy things like attempt to hike Mauna Kea (but had a good time nonetheless).

We've actually been home for most of July, including the July 4 weekend. Michael has continued to work on the jeep which is oh-so-close to being complete. We're also launching into building a deck - with a goal to complete it before Michael starts school next month (call us crazy!). The Goodrums will be coming in to help us finish out these two big projects - and we'll also have several other fun visitors in the next few weeks.

The fall should be 'relatively' calm - we hope - with Michael transitioning back into school mode. Maybe I'll actually be better about updating the blog when that happens!

If we still have any readers out there, thank for bearing with us through the silence of life chaos lately. Hope you are all doing well!

Today we hopefully remedied the Prism's snow traction problems with new tires. With our luck lately, we probably won't have to wait until fall to test them out!

We have had some quite bizarre weather this weekend. Yesterday we were downtown - and the weather was beautiful: bright, sunny and the temperature was registering 75 degrees on the car. Today it has been quite cold and snowing (blowing snow). Since we have had blowing/drifting snow today, it's a bit difficult to tell exactly how much snow we've gotten - but it's probably somewhere around a foot. 75 one day... 20 and a foot of snow the next!

Today we parked the Saturn on the curb for a while while it was still snowing and the car actually froze to the ground. Quite an interesting phenomenon. I don't know if the picture of the icicle quite does it justice - but the icicle was about a foot tall and probably an inch and a half in diameter. You experience quite the hideous noise when you try to drive away and your car is frozen to the ground. The strange weather occurrences here never cease to amaze me.















Icicle Culprit...
Note: Picture taken after we "freed" the car

My handy husband has redeemed himself after the vehicular misadventures of yesterday. We now have two functional cars - although the Prism needs an oil change in the near future and I'm a bit scared of what that may bring. :)

Ever had one of those days where absolutely nothing goes right? Poor Michael definitely had one yesterday.

First, we have had a number of car issues lately - one of the joys of having older cars. The Prism decided about a week ago that it didn't want to start anymore. We replaced the battery hoping that it would fix the problem, but it still wouldn't start. Several days later it finally decided it was ok again and started. We plan to take it in to a shop to get it diagnosed for peace of mind - since it's not being real consistent right now.

Since the Prism has been somewhat out of commission, we pulled the Saturn out of the garage and started driving it. Last year we drove it pretty much not at all. We put under 4,000 miles on it last year and that includes a cross country drive from Boston to Denver. The last oil change was last February or so. Since we were going to be driving it for a few days, Michael decided to change the oil.

First things first - never compromise safety for convenience.















Michael decided to put the Saturn up on the car ramps to change the oil. Since I was running around the house regrouping, he decided that he didn't want to bother me (for all 2 seconds it would take to help) and tried to put the car up on ramps without a spotter. In doing so, he drove too far up the ramps and went right over the top of them. He then had to jack the car up to get the ramps out from underneath it. Thankfully there wasn't more damage to the car, house or other items in the garage than there was.

Next step: change the oil. What should be a simple task turned into a nightmare. After draining the oil, the oil filter wouldn't come off the car. Michael tried the usual tricks - putting a screwdriver through the filter to use as a handle to turn it, etc. So now a holey filter is stuck on the only was-running car that now has no oil.

How is it that you can have three vehicles and not one of them is drivable.

Today the Prism will be going to the shop to get diagnosed and will hopefully be fully functional by the end of the day. We are going to have to go buy some additional tools for the Saturn to see if we can get the dang oil filter off. Hopefully we won't have to dissemble the entire car to get the filter removed. Some days you just want to push the cars off a cliff. :)

So after a year in Denver, winter trips through mountain passes and a car that is fond of sliding out of the driveway, we finally decided to invest in a pair of snow chains for the tires. Chances are we will never use them (especially in the city - you'd get laughed at), but they say it's better to have them and never use them than to need them and not have them. The Prism now has a nice set of snow chains tucked away in the trunk for a rainy (errr, icy) day as well as jumper cables, which we discovered that we did not have when we needed them a few weeks back. Winter driving...

Not only has the PC (aka the "go cart" or Chevy Prism) been sliding out of the driveway, it's evidently been moonlighting as a criminal.

When we got back from Houston, we had a nice little note from a detective in the Lakewood, CO police department asking us to call him regarding an incident involving one of our vehicles. Michael called him yesterday and was thoroughly quizzed about the black SUV with our cool Colorado license plate number. Thankfully, the Prism is about the polar opposite of a black SUV and we were in Houston (not even in Colorado) on the relevant dates. We did have to check the car to make sure both license plates were still on it and hadn't been stolen. However, all checked out. The witness probably got confused when they reported the license plate number. I just hope our license plate isn't tagged in the law enforcement system now. I keep envisioning Michael calling me from the police station after being dragged in when the license plate sets off some kind of red flag in a random scan.

Man, the PC has been getting a lot of blog time lately. I think it's feeling needy or something!

I'm starting to get used to snow and fewer and fewer things about it are surprising me now. However, from time to time something still catches me off guard.

This morning I went to Pilates class at the gym. It had snowed about 4 inches overnight and I didn't shovel the driveway before I left. I came home, parked the car in the (quite sloped) driveway, said "hi" to our neighbor - who was shoveling his driveway, and went inside. A few minutes later there was a frantic knock on the door. I opened the door to see:















Runaway Car in the middle of the street

The Prism decided to slide out of the driveway. Mind of its own!

We eventually shoveled the driveway and got the car back in. Michael spent 5 minutes pushing on it to make sure it was secure before we left it.

As you may have already gathered, we took a small trip last weekend to pick up our Jeep that has been camped out at my parents in Oklahoma City for the past 3 months. They were gracious enough to provide a home for "Hank" while we were in Boston - as there was no point in taking two cars on a cross country expedition (plus, the 1983 Jeep is not exactly our most reliable vehicle).

We had originally planned to pick the Jeep up on our drive out from Boston to Denver. However, there was a MASSIVE ICE STORM across the entire central U.S. on the weekend we drove from Boston. So that didn't exactly work for us. We have continued to look into going to OKC almost every weekend since early January but the weather continued to not cooperate. Either Oklahoma City or Denver got doused with either snow or ice almost every single weekend for the past six weeks. Finally, mid week last week, I checked the weather forecast and it looked like we had an all clear.

Friday started as a beautiful day - upper forties, lots of sunshine, light breeze (after getting 60 mph winds on Thursday - wow). I called my mom and told her we would be driving to OKC on Saturday morning. I told her I would call her if anything changed.

Well, we got 2 big changes within a couple hours. First, at about 2:00 that afternoon, the sky got a little cloudy. All of the sudden the temperature dropped about 25 degrees in about 30 minutes and it started snowing. Snow was nowhere in the forecast! It was supposed to be 45 degrees and sunny! Isn't winter great?

Then, Michael decided to play bumper cars on the way home from work. Actually, he wasn't the one who made the decision to play... the guy behind him did. Fortunately, the damage to the car was very minimal and Michael (although a bit sore on Friday night) was a-ok.

Thankfully, when we woke up on Saturday morning, we had only gotten about an inch of snow. By the time we made it to the freeway, the snow was clear and we had a nice, smooth drive to OKC. Not much to see on that drive - a whole lot of Kansas. We did get some nice sunsets on the drive there and back.

The drive to OKC took about 10 hours. We went through Grainfield, Kansas (the name is a very accurate description) - home of some fun childhood memories. We also finished listening to the book Wicked on CD. We started the book on our trip from Boston - and, amazingly enough, didn't finish it on our 30 hour drive. We listened to the last hour or two on our drive through Kansas.

We arrived in OKC about dinnertime, went to dinner to celebrate my sister's Christy's admission into PT school and my early birthday and then hung out with my family for a little bit. Sunday morning we got up and drove all the way back to Denver. Only this time it took 13 hours (thanks to gas stops every 150 miles and slower driving speeds - yes, life with a Jeep). At one point, courtesy of a nice headwind and a few hills, the Jeep made it less than 100 miles on its tank of gas (it has a 15 gallon tank). Special!

We finally made it back to Denver about 11pm on Sunday night. Thankfully, Michael had Monday off due to Presidents Day. So he had an extra day to recover. I got to zombie through Monday. It took me a few days to recover.

This weekend, the remainder of the Goodrum family is coming to visit - Mom and Dad G and Jennifer (Michael's younger sister - yes, we have the same name and often have to be referred to by our middle names :). We are so excited about their visit!

Sunday, January 21st. Our first Sunday in our new home. There are boxes everywhere - life is in a state of chaos.

On Saturday, we decided that we needed to take a break from unpacking on Sunday morning and to start trying to find a new church home in Denver (especially since we don't yet have any local friends or neighbors). Saturday afternoon we made a trip over to Panera (a common occurrence that week) since our home internet was still not working and researched a few churches. We decided to start our search with a church about two miles from our house. The service would start at 10:30 a.m.

On Sunday morning, we woke up to 3 inches of snow on the ground with more falling at a fairly rapid rate. We got ready, cleared off the car and started off to church around 10:00 a.m. As we got in the car, I got a text message from one of my college roommates that her sister was in the hospital. I was busy text messaging her back. Michael was busy trying to navigate the very slick roads. About halfway to church (it had taken us about 15 minutes to go one mile), Michael looked at me and asked, "Did you shut the garage door?" I replied, "No. Did you?"

We decided that we better turn around and go check our garage door (especially since we had a ton of stuff still in the garage due to the move). Sure enough, when we arrived back home at 10:30 a.m., our garage was wide open. The perils of distraction...

We debated for a few minutes about whether or not to attempt church again (since we would get there probably 30 minutes late). We decided to give it another try - but when we tried to head up the street we didn't go anywhere. After another 15 minutes of trying to get back in the driveway, we put it in park and decided that the garage incident was God's way of telling us we shouldn't be stubborn and venture out in weather our car can't handle. I guess the fact that every other car on the road was an SUV should have been a hint to start with. Another two inches of snow fell in the next hour. In all likelihood, if we had gone back to church, we probably would not have been able to make it home.

In all we got about a foot of snow that day. Michael worked on the garage in the afternoon and finally cleared out enough space to fit one car in. He decided he would put the Saturn in the garage. What an adventure! We have quite a bit of an incline on our driveway (definitely not as bad as my parents - but still a decent slope) and with all the snow the car wasn't getting any traction. It was sliding all over the place. I was so afraid that it was going to hit the other car in the process. That's just what you want to do - crash your vehicles into each other!

Michael finally got the idea to lay down some of our moving boxes on the driveway to help the car get traction. By the grace of God, we got the car into the garage - and it hasn't moved again since. :) There was lots of burning - clutch and tires - involved. We created some very unique art in the process. Stewie is quite thankful to be safe and warm.















AM Picture of Stewie and "PC"
Stewie had been cleared off for church in this picture.















A couple hours later...















Check out the car!!!
Hello! There's at least a foot of snow on that car. ...And we were freaking out about 2 inches a week before.















Shoveling the driveway
Shoveling the driveway is still fun at the moment. During this snow, I got excited and spent about an hour shoveling the entire driveway and half of the street. That was a lot of snow! Later, I was so sad to find out that my watch fell off somewhere in the snow. On Monday morning, I got up at the crack of dawn and started shoveling the huge pile of snow I had created into our yard (I figured that way when the snow melted I might find my watch somewhere in the yard). Thankfully, I found my watch about halfway through the pile - and before they brought in the front end loader to shovel our street (the piles they created at the end of the street are probably 15 feet high and will be around until June). Boy were my arms sore after that! :)















Unique ways of clearing off the cars
You have to get creative when there's 6 inches of snow on your car (that's already been cleared once that day). Brooms come in handy for more than sweeping out the garage...




















The Stewie "Art"




















My Snow Angel
You can't see it very well - but I was having fun in the snow.

Hi, I'm a PC.















"PC"
(I had to go take a picture of it this afternoon. We didn't have one where you could actually see it, where it wasn't buried in snow. Also, notice the "Super Bowl"s in the background. ...More to come on that one.)

This PC doesn't have a mac buddy. This is the newest member of our vehicle family. All of our cars have names. The "newbie" (1999 Chevy Prism with about 115K miles - this is the same model of car that our friends Kim & Fleetwood fondly called the "go cart") got named "PC" for "Parents Car."

Michael's parents recently bought a condo in Washington, D.C. They weren't sure if they were going to have room for two vehicles in their new place - so they were looking for a temporary home for the Prism. We have been looking to retire the Jeep as a daily drive vehicle, so we happily volunteered to babysit (especially since all the funds we had saved for a new car just got dumped into a new house). Michael's dad dropped the Prism (and a bunch of other stuff) off in Denver in December. He left the car at the airport for us to pick up when we arrived. That turned out to be a major blessing - especially since we weren't able to go through Oklahoma City to pick up the Jeep on the way here (darn weather). We've at least been able to have two cars for the past couple weeks as we've tried to settle in. The Jeep would have come in handy a time or two with the weather though. Someday the weather will cooperate enough for us to go pick "Hank"* up.

Here are a few pictures from picking up the "PC." We had to dig it out of its spot in the parking lot (it took a little pushing to get it out). Denver had quite a few major snows between the time when it was dropped off and when we picked it up. Thankfully we had no problem finding it (we were worried it might just be a big mound somewhere).















PC as we found it in the airport parking lot















Check out the mound of snow in front of the drivers side tire

*Other vehicle names...
The Saturn is Stewie. I grew up driving very big vehicles - Big Blue anyone? (our 12 passanger GMC Rally Van - aka the church van). Other than Big Blue, we had the Red Mullet (red Plymouth Voyager minivan). The Silver Bullet (Honda Odyssey) and the nice Toyota Avalon didn't come along until after I had graduated from high school. When I bought my Saturn, it was my "little car." It got deemed "Stuart Little," then "Stuart," then "Stewie."

I have no idea how Hank the jeep got its name. It's definitely a Hank though.

Here's a picture from our first morning in Denver - when I thought that 2" of snow on your car was a lot. Ha ha ha! How times have changed. :)















You think this is a snow covered car? Just wait... More to come on that count.

So in spite of the few bumps we hit on Tuesday morning, we were able to close on Tuesday afternoon. It is quite a relief to be finished with the sale of the house and move. On Tuesday evening, our friends Kevin and Christy were wonderful and took in my poor homeless self for the evening. We got to enjoy giving candy to the trick or treaters and playing with the 12 cute doggies currently sharing the house (they are fostering a mom and 9 puppies).

On Wednesday morning, I left bright and early and drove 11 hours (700 miles) to Indianapolis, Indiana to visit my grandmother (dad's mom). Thank goodness for books on CD! They helped me maintain sanity on these forever long drives. I arrived in Indianapolis about 7pm and got to hang out with my grandmother.

On Thursday, I had the chance to spend some time with my aunt, uncle and two cousins (Nathan is 3, Janessa is 6 - too much fun!) and grandmother. My little car also had to take a trip to the doctor. Guess that's what happens when you go on a cross country trek in a car with 150,000 miles on it. The power steering had to be rebuilt. So much fun. Thankfully I had already planned for a down day in Indianapolis - so the repair didn't interrupt my trip. ...And boy was I glad to have power steering again on my Friday drive through the "mountains" of the northeast (the roads were really windy in spite of being interstates).

Friday, I drove another 1,000 miles - literally. I left Indiana at 6:30 in the morning and made it through Indiana and Ohio before lunch. It snowed all 300 miles through Pennsylvania. I called my mom freaking out - 'cause I had never driven in snow before (ice but not snow). By the time I reach Connecticut, I thought the drive was never going to end - but I was less than an hour away and it just wasn't worth stopping. I never got sleepy or tired really - just restless and ready to get out of the car after driving 16 hours. I finally arrived at our little hotel home at about 9:30 on Friday night.

We spent Saturday unpacking all the stuff in my car and running errands. Michael had been stuck in the hotel for two weeks with no car so he was itching to go exploring.

We are living in Franklin, MA - which is about 30 miles southwest of Boston. The commuter rail is literally across the street from us - so if we want to go into Boston it's ridiculously easy. We walk across the street and jump on the train. Don't have to worry about driving downtown (very difficult) or finding parking (nearly impossible). The town we live in is so cute. It's a quaint, little, quiet town with cute little houses. We have easy access to everything we need and more. So far people have been really friendly and we are really enjoying it.

You would have laughed at me at the grocery store on Saturday. It wasn't even the Whole Foods (the Whole Foods is only a mile away - Yippee!) - just the regular grocery store - but so much selection, great produce, etc., etc. I'm afraid that I was gawking. I've just been without a good grocery store for so long that I almost forgot what it was like. :)

On Saturday evening, we went into Boston to watch the A&M v. O.U. game with the Boston A&M club. What a disappointment for us! Sigh...

On Sunday, we went to a cute little church about 40 minutes away from us (one way). It was called Crossroads Community Church. It reminded us quite a bit of the church we attended in college. The people were super friendly and very helpful. They actually told us about a fun, young church that's on the next street over from our hotel. We'll probably check it out soon. We'd like to find something a little closer - just so we can actually get involved during our short time here.

P.S. Happy 21st birthday to Christy and Teri on Friday. I can't believe my beautiful little sisters are already 21!















Birthday girls - Teri and Christy

My little Saturn celebrated its 150th birthday today - 150,000 miles and still going strong (and hopefully it will keep plugging away for quite a bit longer).

Summer is always a busy time. We've barely been able to keep pace with ourselves lately - but we've had a good time nonetheless!

Last week our friend, Eric, who recently moved home to Ellisville, Mississippi had a work gig in Jackson and came to stay with us on Thursday and Friday nights. We really enjoyed having him here. He was a big encouragement to us in a down time.

Friday was an off-Friday for Michael. The vehicles finally got their new Rankin County tags. We've lived in Rankin County for 6 months now - so it was about time. Michael also got a second round of vaccinations (follow up to the ones he got prior to leaving for Peru) and mowed the grass in the grueling summer heat (it hits 90 degrees by 9:00 am right now).

On Saturday and Sunday, we traveled down to Lafayette, Louisiana to see my grandmother. Lafayette is only about a 3 1/2 hour drive from Jackson. We enjoy being close to family (the Mississippians will balk at 3 1/2 hours being "close" - but it's the closest family we have!) and getting to see my grandmother and uncles/aunts relatively often. It had been almost 6 months since we were last in Lafayette, so it was definitely time to go for a visit. We enjoyed spending time with my grandmother, helping her with a little yard work, meeting my cousin's new baby - Aiden and seeing the rest of the family too. About 30 minutes out of Jackson, I realized that I had forgotten my camera. I was kicking myself the whole way down there!

I promise that I really will post more pictures from Peru soon. We got a bunch more in the mail from our travel buddies last week - so we're excited to share them. We just need to be home for a night or two... It will happen someday - really!

Check out this clean jeep! It really cleans up well (and so does the driver - he he he)! Hank (i.e. the Jeep) is feeling good after a bath, installation of a new top, and an oil change. Wow! Pampering at its best...















Hank got a bath - quite the rare happening
(Any bets on how long it will stay clean?? ...I'm sure it won't be long at all)

Wow! How time flies... It's been several weeks since we have updated our blog.

The past few weeks have been filled with an assortment of projects around the house. We installed tile around the top of our showers, installed a storm door, organized the garage, christened our lawnmower and more. We are so handy, aren't we? So yes, Michael has been busy working on the house. We're pretty much in, unpacked and organized. Now we can begin the fun of adding new stuff and decorating.

Hank, our Jeep, got a new top yesterday. Happy fun for Hank. The old top had cracked and weathered from sitting out in the sun too long (many, many years of abuse). Thankfully with a new garage this top should last for many many years to come.

Work has been crazy for both of us. I was in Houston the first week of March for work. Ever since it has been busy with projects and the launch of our new work website - which I did a lot of the programming work for (bet you didn't know I was a closet web designer - definitely not by choice). Michael's work has been very busy too. We're busy enough not to get restless though.

I'll have to post pictures from our recent projects soon...

We're planning to fly kites with on friends on Saturday. Whoopee!