Finally...Photos of our new home!

Well, here is our house. Sorry for the delay in picures. We are having an Open House/Beer Tasting/Balloon Festival from a distance watching/Back to School Barry Bash this weekend, so figured now is a good time to post pictures. Hope you enjoy! Feel free to leave a comment if you want!

Livingroom on main floor

Kitchen and deck

Deck looking SE

Deck looking NE

Deck looking West (yes, that is our lawn, at least a third of it. 2.2 acres and about 1.8 acres is lawn. That needs to change!)

Basement area. We painted the whole main basement area with one coat of brown paint. Took a long time! Thank you Rhonda! Also put in about 1400 sq. feet of new carpet. Brown to replace the blue they had.

Jack's room. MESSY! Puffer fish in background (too small to see silly!)

Theater room. Stilll need one more movie poster frame. Will get that tomorrow.

Other side of theater room. Posters up on that side.

Ahh....the main view. 6 foot by 8 foot screen with projector. Our 3rd child. Theater seating comes in Monday and will later build a platform to have stadium seating for our 6 leather seats.

Guestroom and exercise room. Exercise equipment is for looks only. Please don't touch. We don't.

Master bedroom...looking East.

Master Bath/shower (tub is behind me)

Front of house from SW (and Abby!) :)

Front of House from NW

Ahhh....fire. Mmmm...fire... Oh, this is our firepit and then our house off in the distance

Jack and Abby's toyroom (we painted 2 coats of yellow over the grey/blue they had). Abby painted one small area brown. And she got in trouble.

View of open basement area from theater room

Bar. Painted it "merlot" and will retile it in the coming weeks. Four coats of that paint by the way! Door leads to utility room

Abby's Room. Left paint for now.

Swine Flu is returning and the CDC wants to know...Should they save you?

Well, news came out on CNN today that the CDC (Center of Disease Control, Atlanta, GA) is putting a committee together to decide who should get the Swine Flu, er, H1N1 vaccine should it prove to work in the next week or two. Seems like the vaccine will work, but they can't make enough of it, and with school starting back up, people sticking around home after summer vacation, and Midwesterner huddled together to stay warm this "Summer of 70s", they are worried that the virus could spread quickly....and be even more deadly! Don't even get me started on the scare tactics used or the fact that the media finally moving on from Michael Jackson and needs a new "top story", but history shows that diseases can be deadlier the 2nd time around. http://www.homeland1.com/Public-Health/articles/498101-1918-flu-epidemic-worse-second-time-around/ This link shows that the flu epidemic of 1918 was here in Spring but was mild. It got really bad in the fall....right about the time school started up. So, the CDC has to decide who should get the vaccine. Basically, who should live and who should die. Well, I thought I would help them out. Here are my choices....

Healthcare professionals: OK, that's a given. I remember my wife telling me that when pregnant with Jack she would sometimes have to leave the room to throw up. Her patients would always ask and Reagan would say it was morning sickness. Sorry, but if my doc is throwing up when I am getting my physical this fall, I'm out of there. So, give the docs, PAs, nurses, drug reps that sneak around the halls, whoever is there, the vaccine. I want them to be healthy. If they are the only ones to live through the "next epidemic" (or at least whatever is happening during Sweeps month for TV), we could end up with an interesting healthcare plan. Which reminds me....that means no vaccine for health insurers. Sorry if you are one, but if the docs live, you can't. The two of you would fight and kill each other off, thus ending the world.

Teachers/Counselors/School workers: OK, I'm selfish, I want in. Then again I never get a flu shot since I don't believe in them. Then again, I get sick every Christmas. Hmmm.....if you keep on doing what you are doing, you keep on getting what you are getting. I guess I will take the vaccine if offered. Maybe the vaccine could be offered to teachers who produce students with good test scores? A vaccine for performance idea? Sorry...I had to.

From there, its really a crapshoot. I am thinking nutty celebrities should be in the mix along with the people that work for TMZ and Perez Hilton. This apparently is America's only form of entertainment, so we would need them as much as I hate to say it. Don't give it to my KC Royals, they are already sickening. Give it to one newscast team in each local TV area, but base it on whoever has the most accurate forecast. Tell you what, we would have the most accurate weather forecasts ever! With a news team around to report the news, we should probably keep some people to be in the news. That means we need the politicians (seriously...they probably have the vaccine already but haven't told us). Without these people, we wouldn't have any news on fighting, wars, affairs, money laundering, theft, or dinners that cost $500 a plate!

Wow, that's quite a group and I haven't even got to the common people. I am likely pretty close to being out of vaccine, so I would offer the rest up to the lottery system. Open up Powerball to all states for the next few months (you know, before the "Epidemic of 2009 II: This time its personal, I mean, even more personal than last time"). You still win the jackpot if you match all 6 numbers, but now if you match 3 or more, you win the pitiful $7 you normally get for defying the 1 in 360 odds (1 in 787 for 2 numbers plus powerball), but now you also get the vaccine. Considering my Dad has been buying 2 tickets per draw twice a week for 20 years or so now and has hit this winning combo about 6 times, I think this will be a hard enough task for the common person. A side benefit would be the amount of money the lottery would make and give back through schools, public works, etc. Because we all know that when "you play the lottery, you are actually helping yourself and your neighbor through giving". Huh? Anyway, with the remaining vaccines rewarded, the rest of us will have to just hope this 2nd epidemic of 2009 goes like the first one (well, minus the 5000 or so deaths worldwide....don't worry, the U.S has seen 20,000 people die of the regular flu so far in 2009, so 5000 worldwide due to H1N1 is not so bad). All I care about is seeing 2010. My favorite shows "LOST", "24", and "Spiderman 4" start up again then and I would hate for some pig flu to kill me off before the the LOST series finale and those other shows.

With that, I sign off for awhile. With a beer tasting party, er, Open House this weekend and a trip to New York City next week, my summer is closing with a bang. I am already training for school by waking up early and trying to do something school related everyday, but I am nowhere near ready. I hope to still do some blogging in August and maybe even some here and there during the school year. But my new profession has multiple confidentiality laws and rules, so I may just continue to make fun of myself and talk about silly things I do such as nearly knocking myself out twice in 5 minutes with just our vacuum yesterday. And yes, 24 hours later, still a little dizzy from that event. Take care and enjoy more of the cool summer (if you live in the Midwest!).

Love&Prayers,

Ben

3 things to leave you with:

1) Which beer will take home the title as "Best beer according to a sampling of Barry friends, coworkers, and family" this year? 2007's B.O.T.Y (Beer of the Year) was Boulevard Wheat. In 2008, a year focused on darker beers, the award went to Newcastle Brown Ale. I am entering 3 beers this year and we expect as many as 20 beers to vie for the title this year. I might comment below as to what won the August 1st contest. Feel free to leave a comment if you have a beer you think should be entered.

2) OK, I finally watched the wedding video that everyone is talking about. Pretty good. Click here and enjoy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-94JhLEiN0

3) Pictures of the house will be posted in a special blog tonight. I have to figure out how to post lots of pictures, but some of you have emailed me wanting pictures. I finally took some. House is not completly ready yet (may finally be where we want it by 2013), but close. Hopefully, many of you can see it this weekend at the Open House.

Billion Seconds old, Married 7 years, the Royals are horrible.

Wow! Isn't this the greatest shirt ever! I have waited for 3 years to turn 1 Billion Seconds Old.....and I missed it. Stupid anniversary and Royals trip with my brothers distracted me. And what a birthday to miss! All I had to do was to concentrate and party for one second and I was done, but NOOOOO, I missed it and realized it well after my billionth second of life. Ho hum, my 2 Billion second birthday is coming up very soon (31.7 years), so I can party twice as hard on that one.




I know, seems silly to care about turning a billion seconds old, but most people only make it to 2 billion seconds, with a few making it to 3 billion seconds old. I am not sure if anyone ever turned 4 billion seconds old, maybe a tortoise, but probably not a person. But I was distracted with a big week. My wife and I celebrated our 7th anniversary this week, just not on the actual day. I actually agreed to travel with my brothers to KC to watch a Royals/Angels game (Doug's favorite team are the Angels). Instead, it rained hard for hours on end and then rained Rum and Cokes in the bar for hours on end. The next day seemed to be just pounding thunder, but turns out it was just a pounding headache! So, with my very understanding wife waiting patiently at home, I returned to the Des Moines area now a billion seconds old, feeling each and every one of those seconds with my hangover. We grabbed the kids and a nice hotel ($50 on priceline.com!) and enjoyed a night/morning away from home. Kids swam in the pool and Reagan ate out at the Outback (I tried to eat too... I really did...still too soon!). And then we all returned home for a nice day before family and work came back to visit. Wow....what a wife I have!




I suppose at this point, I should dish out some marital advice that I have learned the past 7 years. Many guys reading this might wonder what it was that I did to not get killed by spending my anniversary with my brothers drinking everything but the river in KC. Well, here is what I got:





1. Flowers, but not expensive flowers. Little did I know, mid-July is Hy-Vee's annual rose sale. So every year, Reagan gets tons of roses. She is not huge into flowers, but does like them. Getting flowers cheap, I think, is even something Reagan likes. So....study up and marry (or celebrate) during flower discount days!


2. Laughter. Man, do we laugh. I don't try to use humor to get out of an argument. I learned NOT to do that from Dad. His jokes would usually backfire and the next backfire we would hear was Mom peeling out of the driveway. Awesome...french toast for supper again, thanks Dad! But Reagan and I make each other laugh alot with silly faces, voices, and just plain stupid stuff. If you can't laugh, you can't stay in love. Simple as that.


3. This one is from Doug (yes, the Angel's fan): "Always tell your wife you will be home 15 minutes later than you plan to be. That way, you tend to be home 'early' all the time". I didn't do this early on in marriage, but now I try to. I still screw up, but when I do it right, Reagan always smiles and says "Wow, you're home early!". Bonus points.....


4. Just for fun, bring up this question: "Hon, what if you DID catch me having an affair sometime?" When she answers with this response "Well, I would be mad and hurt and our trust broken. Then I would take you for all you are worth and cut off your manhood, burn it, and spread the ashes in your mistress's beat up Honda civic....or do something in my clinic far more painful" and never once breaks a smile or stops what she is doing, you won't have an affair and will never risk losing that trust. (btw....could she really do something more painful?)


5. Learn from others. We both learned how to be in love from our parents and our siblings. With so many good examples, how could we go wrong. But the trick in this tip is that once you are married and in love, now others are watching you. We try to never forget that our love is partly because of the examples we had and now we could be setting examples for others. Probably why Jack sat up at our basement bar yesterday and said "Done with work Daddy. Long day. Get me a beer please." Maybe also why Abby likes to follow Jack and say "okay" and "yep" all the time and then when Jack's not looking, steal all of his toys.


Well....if Reagan reads this (she always does since I tell her she has too!) and I am around to write another blog, hopefully I will have some more wisdom for you. I am not sure the above is really wisdom, but really marriage doesn't take wisdom anyway. It takes love, laughter, faith, trust, and time....oh, and a whole lot of work. If you can do those "simple" things, than you will not only live to be 2 billion seconds old, you might even be married for 2 billion seconds! (that's 63 years for those who are dying to know!)

Love&Prayers,
Ben


3 Things to leave you with:

1) My big week sort of ends today with another milestone: My Dad is 61 today! Happy birthday Dad! Just 2 more years until you turn 2 Billion seconds old. If you don't plan on living until 95, better party hard when that event comes around. Until then, you rock and Happy birthday!

2) With school getting closer to starting, I have started another blog for our school counseling staff. Here is the website if you want to give it a look: www.carlislecounseling.blogspot.com

3) A big thank you to Larry and Donna King for all of their help with moving furniture and carpet back and forth and fixing some of our "farm items" since I don't have a ton of farm tools yet. If all goes well, I will be mowing and spraying up a storm this weekend. Well, hopefully no storms b/c then I wouldn't be able to mow and spray, but you know what I mean!

Oh...and now anyone can comment since I made some changes to the settings. Enjoy and feel free to post your own marital advice!

Puttin' the Family Back on the Farm

Well, we did it. Yep, it took a long time, but we did it. And boy are we happy. WE GOT INTERNET BACK AT OUR HOUSE!!! Oh, and we moved. But seriously, 2 weeks without Internet, I thought I was in the 1990s. We had some storms come and I was watching the tiny radar in the bottom corner of the TV trying to see if it would hit us. I actually watched CNN for the news! And for the first time in a long time, I watched Sportscenter to hear about sports news!! Glad, I have the internet back and I can shut off the TV and shut out the kids (sorry...did I say that out loud??!). Anyway, enough about the Internet, how about our move!
Well, Reagan and I grew up in the country, my country house was even classified as a farm. This new house is similar to our childhood homes in that it is on a rock road and in a development like Reagan's old house and has lots of flies like my old house. I have killed 37 flies in 4 days WITHOUT a flyswatter. I have used towels, my Grandpa George's jedi hand trick, a brick (not my best idea for indoor fly killing), and teleportation. No clue where those flies got transported to, but it was at least more of a challenge than the towel. One of these days we will either find our fly swatter or buy one. One of these days.....


We moved on June 29th and that was the last day I had Internet in the home before last Friday. I did survive though and got a lot done around the house. As you can see from the Google Earth map above with some points of interest, I truly have been busy. I converted their "burn area" towards the back of our lot into a "fire pit" with some retaining wall brick and rock. I got the rock from an old landscaping area they attempted to make in the middle of their yard. Since it looked horrible, I dug up the river rock and wheelbarrowed it across an acre or two to the firepit. This wheelbarrow had a flat tire mind you and since I used to be a science teacher, I know flat tires create more friction which creates more work. Three showers has been the norm for me in this new house due to the newly created yard work. I also declared all out war against clover. Congress and Senate (Jack and Abby) unanimously approved and a aerial and ground attack was launched. I mowed and sprayed....okay? The spray was sprayed by hand. Yes, 1.8 acres of walking up and down and back and forth spraying the lawn. Very similar to playing golf with me only this time I had a 1 gallon sprayer armed with water, 24D (some lady in a store that I stopped to get some told me it was outlawed....huh??), and a little napalm and volcanic lava for good measure. Results should start coming by the end of this week. Likely will reveal what Congress and Senate estimated....this lawn has no grass and will soon become Iowa's largest desert or beach. Anyway, I would win the war and that is all that matters. I probably should not have stood on my deck last night and shouted "Mission Accomplished" to my cloverfield. Will see how that turns out.


As for the inside, my moving help (THANK YOU KARI, SARA, JANA, ALEX, CRAIG, LARRY, DONNA, TIM, TRUDY, CHRIS, RHONDA, CARRIE, BRIAN AND FAMILY, DISH NETWORK DUDE, and A-1 MOVER GUYS!!!) helped to rip up 1300 sq. foot of carpet that was nearly brand new (something about my wife not liking the color) and send it up to Ankeny to Reagan's brother. Next, Rhonda helped us paint the 1300 sq. foot main room in the basement the next day with one coat. I put 2 coats on the toyroom (Abby put a 3rd coat on...unfortunatley the wrong color and Daddy had to throw her brush in a short bout of anger when he found her happily painting...we all had a good laugh later), and we all chipped in to put 4 coats of "merlot" paint on the bar/basement kitchen. That took most of the week and Home Depot came in and put carpet down a week later. Ummm...editor's note: Home Depot has a 7-day carpet guarantee and we signed up for it and paid "big bucks" for it. Apparently that is 7 business days and does not count the day you order or the day before a Holiday. It also doesn't count the other freaking 8 days that elapse and the two parties you attempted to host without freaking carpet. Home Depot....you can die and Lowes you can crush them. With that said, I am still a stockholder so feel free to also have amazing success. I just will not be your customer anymore. (Hey....I do my boycotts a little different okay!) With all the painting and carpet in place, I have avoided much of those areas anyway and nestled myself in the theater room which has lived up to the the hype. When the doors close, you really do feel like you are in a theater. With a 6 foot by 8 foot screen, I have watched 6 movies in 2 weeks (more than I watched the first 6 months of 2009!). Each and every one has been very enjoyable. Twister was good on the big screen, but Dark Knight still rules.


So, we are finally settling in. We realize we will never see out our back windows of the vehicles as they already have a layer of dust no finger can even penetrate to write anything dirty. We realize that flies, ants, snakes (lots of them!), and weeds come with the territory. We realize our mailbox is literally a 1/2 mile away and that stinks most days. But we also can sit on our deck and watch 4 towns celebrate Fourth of July at the same time. We can see the hot air balloons take flight every night near Indianola (publicity note....the 3rd largest balloon festival in the U.S. will start Aug. 31st in Indianola...our house has a nice view for those interested!!!). And we can eat dinner just a football field away from a herd (or according the neighbors sometimes over a hundred) of deer as the sun prepares to bring another day to a close. Do we miss our old house? Yes. Have we found the house of our dreams and will we be here when our kids go off to collge? Definitely. Life is good in the country. So I guess if you "take the boy out of the country" you can put him back someday. Enjoy the week all and thank you for all the prayers and blessings you have given me and my family over the past year and especially more recently!


Love&Prayers,
Ben


3 Things to leave you with:
1) 4 more lots are still available out here plus 3 homes for sale. Yes, I want you all out here. Plus, once all lots are purchased, the development's road gets paved! BONUS!

2) Recently, a dog-fighting ring was busted when arrests from 5 states. A big portion of that ring was right here in Central Iowa. The Animal Rescue League has taken in 35 of these dogs and needs help caring for them. No, you don't have to take home a pitbull named Crusher....but they could use a donation. Click on this site and make sure to write "help for the dogs" in your "in honor of who" line. Tax deductible!
https://secure3.websiteencryption.com/ARL/aspx/generalcontent.aspx?pid=2&cid=39


3) We are hosting an Open House and Beer Tasting this Friday....you are all invited. If you can't make it, maybe you want to suggest a beer I can submit for the tasting? Needs to be bottled and sold in the Des Moines area. Last year's winner was New Castle Brown Ale. Year 1 winner was Boulevard Wheat Beer.