It's Finally Time for Christmas!

Well we have the tree up and decorated with presents underneath it, so, it finally feels like Christmas

The week has flown by and with finishing my finals and starting on the long list of household tasks that have been put off while I was too busy with school. It was strange going to bed on Wednesday night and realizing that I didn't have any papers or projects due from now on. Well....at least until school starts back up at the end of January.
Christmas seems like it has come very quickly and leave all to soon. We will be over at Kathryn's parents for Christmas and will see most all of her family between Christmas and New Year's. Christina is going to be spending some time in Utah with the Halls so she may have a white Christmas. I am sure there are other things happening, but I have Sunday afternoon brain where I just want to nap. I hope everyone has a MERRY CHRISTMAS!!
Even Porkchop was forced to be festive.

And a random picture of Christina and her cat Merddryn who will find a lap to sit on no matter what.

Christmas Tree

We braved the weather and made it up to a Christmas tree farm over near Lexington reservoir. The weather wasn't as cold as last year when we had snow falling on us as we were sawing, but this time was wet and cold. Here are some of the pictures of the event. Kathryn is avoiding the camera these days. I think that she is trying to avoid having pictures of when she is pregnant. Or, it could be the fact that she was soaking wet and didn't want to shock anyone with her crazy hair.




Hopefully we will work on decorating it soon. Well, as soon as it dries I guess. I pulled out all of the Christmas ornaments from the attic after we got the behemoth home.
Last night was the ward Christmas party. The primary kids sang a few songs, there was a musical number by a few of the musically talented members, obviously not me, and we had a dinner which included a potluck of appetizers and deserts with the main course--pot roast, mashed potatoes, gravy, and some vegetables. The appetizers were delicious. The main course was reminiscent of my time in Iraq. Enough said.
Well I hope everyone is doing well, and I want to apologize for the lack of photos from the Creche exhibit. They have a policy now of now photographs. Oh well, I guess you can try and picture what it looked like.

And one last picture of the standoff between the two animals who think they are in charge of the house.

LSAT...Again

Well, yesterday was another fun-filled day of sitting in a cramped chair with the desk the size of a sheet of paper taking a 3-hour test that somehow manages to take 6-hours to complete.
Kathryn and I had planned to go cut down a Christmas tree after I got home, but it just didn't happen. Kathryn has been busy helping set up the Creche Exhibit this week and is fighting a little cold that she thinks has something to do with the communal bowl of m&ms they have out for the volunteers to snack on. We will end up going to it sometime this week and I will post pictures when we do.
Finals start this week, and part of me is looking forward to just being done with school. At least for the next month or so.
I'll post up some pictures later this week of the Christmas preparations and the Creche exhibit.

Wood Drive

The Boy Scouts do an annual wood drive as a fund raiser to supply the money which the three troops use throughout the year. We have a unique setup now, originally there were two wards that combined their scout troops to create an older troop (16+) and a younger troop (12-15). Well, now there are 3 wards together with an 11 year old troop (this is what used to be blazers), a 12-13 year troop, and a 14 and up troop. For the past couple of decades the troops have bought oak firewood wholesale and resold it the local area. We end up selling about 50 cords of wood. For those who don't know how much that is: a quarter cord will fill up the back of a small pickup. A big pickup might be able to get half a cord if it is piled up pretty high. We had about 40-50 adults and scouts working for 8 hours to deliver all the wood yesterday. I am a little tired today because most of the scouts either leave in the early afternoon or their energy level dies down to the point that they aren't useful for doing the last few loads. The general idea is to rent a bunch of trailers from uhaul and put plywood sides up on them, then a member who has a landscaping company brings a bobcat (those little scooper/tractor things) and loads up the trailers. 11 scoops equals one cord of wood. Then a couple of adults and a couple of scouts pile into the truck to either dump or stack the firewood. The worst is when you find the customer lives up in the hills and has their woodpile 100 yards away and wants the wood stacked, and they ordered a full cord. The best order is when the customer ordered a full cord and wants it dumped on their driveway. Makes me feel bad for the teenage kids in the family that get to stack it later, but, better them than me. No pictures though. Sorry. It was a very impressive amount of wood.

Kathryn is doing great. She is a little uncomfortable when the little guy decides to start tap-dancing on her groin, but she is a trooper and hanging in there. We are sitting in front of a lovely fire as I am writing this. I hope that everyone is doing well and has a very Happy Thanksgiving!!

Pinnacles

This weekend I went to the Pinnacles with the Boy Scouts. We draw from 3 wards so you would think that we should have a decent turnout--considering we have 20+ boys in just our ward. Well, we only had 5 boys. They all had a great time. Except for the part where they froze on friday night. But, besides that it was a good time. I didn't realize that the Pinnacles was so close to here. Only 2 hours or so. Anyways, I just thought I should post something up. Enjoy the pictures!

Rats!!

I know a picture is worth a thousand words, but I didn't have a chance to grab the camera. I was working away on the laptop--like the diligent student that I am--when lo and behold I see Porkchop trying to eat a roofrat on the patio! I think that he caught it in the woodpile area and it was desperately trying to escape his maw by running for a stack of firewood that we keep on the rear patio to keep it dry.
I was able to rescue the rat, not for the rat's sake but for the dog's digestive happiness, and threw it over the fence to the neighbors. (They are gone for the fall/winter) So, I am sure it will live happily over there until another animal eats it. Or Porkchop gets it again. I just thought that I would share this experience because it was hilarious watching the dog play with his "food." He resembles a pig in some regards so I don't know how he was quick enough to catch the rat, but he was really excited about it. He has now caught more rats than our cats.

Good News and Not so good

As you can see from my last post Kathryn and I are having a boy. Yipee!!! We are both very excited for march. Obviously apprehensive at the same time though. Big life changes. Here are some pictures of the ultrasound from thursday.


I scanned the pictures in so you may have some trouble seeing them. The ultrasound tech was amazed that we couldn't tell what was what as she was moving the sensor all over. I think half of what they see is just what they know should be present not anything they can really "see."

Along with the good news of having a boy, well first let me state FOR THE RECORD that I would be just as happy and excited if we had found out we were having a girl, I heard back about my LSAT score. I will be taking it again in December. Yipee. I had set for myself a certain score that I would accept as a minimum and I didn't quite make that so I am re-taking it.

On Saturday I attended "Little Philmore." It is an SF Area event with 10-12 stakes participating focused on scouting. The YM general president was there and spoke on how important scouting is. I was surprised to a degree at how scouting is literally the activity arm of the Aaronic priesthood and that there is no such thing as an activity that is a YM activity and not a scout activity. A little eye-opener there. I think a lot of people were surprised at how forceful President Beck was stating this principle. We had different sessions depending on your calling. Certain classes for priesthood leaders, age specific classes for younger scouts, cub scouts, etc. It lasted 8 hours and was fun to see different perspectives on how to accomplish scouting.
After having a large storm at the beginning of the week it warmed up to almost summer temperatures. Luckily it started cooling down today so Kathryn and Porkchop could enjoy a comfy fire. I just realized that when I type "comfy" that it passes the spell checker. Weird. There is no way that is an accepted word.

During our fire-time the Blotters stopped by to drop off a plate of cookies. They are delicious. Every Sunday the Blotter children make cookies and drop them off to families. I am pretty impressed with their children. Especially since Greg is their father. I was expecting them to be a little more rambunctious. I guess they are holding it in until their high school years.
Here is a picture of Porkchop showing off his large mouth.

We went to the doctor's office...

And we were told that we are having a boy on March 11th. We are SOOO excited. I will post more when I have time.

An Important Event...

Is happening on Thursday. Thursday is the day we find out whether we are having a boy or a girl. Kathryn says it is definitely a boy, but I remain on the fence. We are SOOO excited to find out though. This has been another busy week for us with school, work, and the daily tasks that make up our lives. The annual firewood drive is happening for the Boy Scouts and as a leader I get to become even more involved with it than last year. Last year my sole contribution was to buy some of the wood, and this year I get to help make the phone calls, stuff envelopes, and generally try to help out. This weekend I was able to convince Kathryn to go camping with me at a place called Lake Francis resort in Dobbins, CA. It is about 200 miles from here and the real test of Kathryn's love was that this was an International Harvester Rally so I wanted to drive my 1973 Scout II. It was a long noisy drive. We did have fun though. Here are some pictures of some of the old "nice" looking scouts and trucks.



The camping site was nice and right next to the bathroom for the pregnant woman. Kathryn said that she had a good time, I brought everything imaginable to make it a fun time. There was a restaurant at the "campground" so Friday night I had prime rib, a salad bar and Kathryn and I shared a shrimp appetizer. Kathryn had the trout, and since we were in the foothills of the Sierras and next to a lake, it was probably pretty fresh. Kathryn finally met some of the people that I go to Hollister with, when I take the truck offroading. She thought everyone was very nice, but I think she was laughing a bit at some of the people's facial hair. There were some REAL mustaches going on. I didn't take any pictures of the people and I am kind of regretting it. I had fun, the Scout made the trip with minimal issues, and Kathryn was gracious enough to not complain about the silliness of it all. Overall it was a great weekend. Here are some more pictures.


There were more that showed up later in the day and some really nice looking ones too. There were a few that were less nice than mine, but mine was DEFINITELY on the low end of the trucks. There were probably 60-70 trucks there.

The week has been great for us, midterms kick off this upcoming week so I will be busy, and next monday (David's birthday) I am supposed to find out my LSAT score.
No new pictures of the pets this week. But we did just make 4 more jars of applesauce.

Messiness

Kathryn's apple crisp Extravaganza.




All 5 of Kathryn's sisters showed up to help out with the 8(?) apple crisps that were made. Of course this was also a result.

Which means I had to siphon out the water, yes it was disgusting and I even threw up a little. I took apart the pipes a bit to try and find out why things weren't moving along, but everything looked clear yet the sinks would continue to back up. Right now the pipes are full of liquid plumber as we are hoping it clears out whatever the problem is. I hope everyone is having a great conference weekend.

-Pete
Just thought that I would add, I finally got the sink unclogged TODAY. 2 days later and a trip to home depot for a longer drain snake. The clogs, yes that is plural, were about 12 ft down the pipes. What a fiasco!

Domestic Times

Well, since we have so many apples that are ripe we have to start doing something with them. So I made a few bottles of applesauce. I didn't add enough lemon juice to keep the apples from changing color from the time they were cut up until when I cooked them up. It was surprising to see how many apples are needed to only make a small amount of applesauce. I think that I could have added quite a bit more water, so the applesauce will be VERY thick the way I made it (and a little chunky). So here are some pictures of Porkchop and applesauce.



I think Kathryn is planning on having a apple crisp-making-extravaganza this afternoon to use up some of the rest of the apples on the tree. Plus we do need to use some of the 25 lbs of oatmeal that we have in the pantry.
The garden is still growing pretty well even though the weather hasn't been cooperating. The Butternut squash are growing in nicely, but the watermelon I think is done. I was really hoping that it would get a bit bigger, but I don't think that it has been warm enough. They are supposed to grow up to 25 lbs. I think ours is closer to 5 lbs.


Now that I don't have to study for the LSAT (at least until I find out the results), I have more time to do other things. Like homework that has been put off. Wonderful. But, things are going pretty well. School is school and is just fine. We find out the sex of the baby in 2 more weeks so Kathryn and I are very excited.

Done with the LSAT...or am I?

FINALLY DONE! After spending from 7:30am to 2:30pm in Santa Cruz taking the LSAT I am done with it.
Maybe.
Hopefully.
Well, actually the deal is that I will find out my score in 3-4 weeks and depending on what I get I will either live with it OR retake it in December. But for now, I am done with it. The worst part of the test this time was the fact that we took it in a auditorium-type classroom. So the desk that you have to use is smaller than a typical 8.5x11" piece of paper. What a pain. But it is over and done with so I can breathe easy for a while. Well, at least I can until the exam that I haven't been preparing for happens. When is that again?...oh yeah, Monday. Great.
Kathryn is doing wonderful. She didn't become sick at all the whole 1st trimester so I think she is in the clear. We find out if it will be a boy a girl on Oct 15th so we are really excited about that. Kathryn's older sister Lindsay is having a girl. I am sure she will help balance out their family of 2 boys. So, it will be 3 vs. 2 in the boy vs. girl games. I will be happy with whatever happens, as long as it has all its fingers and toes, etc. Oh and my dashing good looks if it's a boy, Kathryn's looks if it's a girl. (I mean who can resist a cute little redheaded girl?!)

That's all for now. You may wonder where the pictures are, but they are with my studying time for school. Dead from the LSAT.

Tahoe and Kathryn's Birthday

Bringing out the cake.


Well, it has been a few weeks since our last posting, so, to catch everyone up I thought I would FINALLY write something. First off, school started again. Yipee. With budget cuts to the Cal State University system of close to $600 million, things are a bit different. Luckily I was able to get into the classes that I needed. The first weekend after school started was the Lowe family annual vacation to lake Tahoe. Unfortunately for me I was only able to stay from friday thru monday night. I had to return for my tuesday classes. However, we were able to celebrate Kathryn's birthday and even had a cake.

The last day that I was at Tahoe we went to Emerald bay and I was persuasive enough to get people to swim out to the island. If you know what a swimming "noodle" is then you will be able to picture this better, but, 2 of the girls didn't feel confident enough to swim it by themselves so they floated out on noodles. It made the swim much slower and colder. It was fun though. I wish I had some pictures of everyone after the swim was done. Can you say blue?
Things are going well and Kathryn hasn't been sick and since she is now past the first 12 weeks we hope that she DOESN'T get sick either. Oh, I forgot, since this blog is called the Skeehan Zoo, I should tell you about the latest incident with the critters. Pinkerton had to have a growth removed that developed from a necrotizing (sp?) wound. I hate vet bills. But, he is fine, he just had a bit of a tummy tuck. And last but not least here is a picture of Kathryn catching up on emails.

If you have seen this photo too bad, I didn't feel like finding another one. I hope everyone is doing well.

Newport Beach

Newport Beach was a BLAST! The only thing that drove me crazy was the horrible parking situation. During the week it was tolerable, but the weekend was absolutely horrendous. Kathryn and I were there for my brother Daniel's 30th birthday celebration. His wife Mimi, set the whole thing up so that he would be surprised by most of the family coming down to visit. We went to the beach, socialized and just had a great time.
Luckily for Kathryn and I my bro-in-law (Jeremy) loves photography and is always willing to snap a few pictures for people. So, while Kathryn may have quite a few pictures of each other we never really have many of both of us as a couple. So here are a few.


While we were in southern California for 5-6 days we stayed with Kathryn's grandparents and had a great time catching up with them along with some of Kathryn's cousins.

As you can tell from the picture, while my heart said that I should share my tasty balboa bar with my beautiful wife, my stomach was envious and was not in agreement.


This is a picture of a toy that Dave And Griselda brought back for Porkchop after we watched their boys for a few days. The toy's squeaker gave up the ghost 15 minutes after being introduced to Porkchop and ever since he has been busily destroying it and having a blast while he does it.

I suppose there are many other things that I could write, but I think that I will keep this post short, otherwise I just might blow it off and not finish it at all.

Lathan, Kaelan, and Jeydan, OH MY!

Well, while not as fearsome as lions, tigers, and bears, to someone who doesn't have children (yet) going from 0 to 3 in one weekend was intimidating. In the 4 days that Kathryn and I were looking after the boys we went to 4 different parks, one peach orchard and 1 big family (the Lowe's) dinner. The boys were great. I think the greatest difficulty we had was attempting to understand JJ's dialect of spanglish.

We had a wonderfully busy weekend of playing with the boys and trying to get things done around the house at the same time. I think there is a reason people have children typically one at a time. I feel bad for the people that have twins or triplets as their first experience, I am sure it is exhausting.
Before the boys came over I snapped this picture of Ella (the shy cat we have) trying to hide from the dog downstairs (unsuccessfully I might add).

Heather was out here for a couple of days and visited with us and Christina. We had 4 out of the 5 Skeehan Siblings together for the first time in a long while. Unfortunately no one took a picture. So Dan, don't feel left out. There is no proof it ever happened. Heather was thoroughly amused with Porkchop and now I think she understands why we talk about him so much. Anyways, since I have already included 1 picture of a pet I think that is enough for this post.

Salsa Time!

Well, we finally had a few tomatoes that could help me make some salsa. We planted our onions too close together, as you can see by the small size, but the end product is delicious! The bowl that you see on the counter will probably be gone within 1 day of Christina realizing that it is in the fridge. (I think she would probably shrivel up and die w/o some sort of chip and dip combo.)

Besides making a big bowl of salsa I finally fixed the sink that has been... well I guess the best way to describe it would be to say "wobbly." The piece that allows one to tighten up the faucet to the the sink was a wee bit rusty.

If I wasn't wearing safety glasses, I would have two eyefulls of rusty metal. So, Dad, you might want to think about replacing it when you get back. I used my ingenious skills to make it work for now though.

I took another practice LSAT last night for the course that I am taking, it didn't go as well as I hoped, but that is typical they say as people are trying to do things following Kaplan's method rather than their own. It's a good thing they have a higher score guarantee because unless things change in the next 5 weeks I might be taking advantage of that.

Everything else is going great. Kathryn is busy working and actually had a friend from the ward over while I was at class so she could watch "So you think you can Dance?" with someone who will squeal and giggle with her. (I don't squeal or giggle). Life goes on, and Porkchop wanted me to include a picture showing how difficult it is to be a dog.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.

Hollister

Well, every once in a while I get the chance to go down to Hollister, CA with some other Scout enthusiasts. (That is "Scout" like my old truck, not the scouts that I am going to be in charge of). This was the 4th time that I went down there and I had a fun time camping overnight and AVOIDING the poison oak.


The LSAT course is going along just fine. There is "required" homework, which is the hw you have to complete for Kaplan to back their "better score guarantee," and the "recommended" hw, which is what I try to do as well. It took me probably 4-5 hours per session. But, I am actually enjoying the course. Every time I sit down to either the class or homework I really feel like I have to exercise my brain, unlike some of the classes I have taken where the instructor just wants you to regurgitate your class notes. Kathryn went to SF with her sister and bro-in-law and had fun walking across the golden gate bridge. Hmmmm... what else... the primary lesson we taught today was on "The Lord Blesses Missionaries." Our challenge to the kids was to write a missionary and thank them for their service. So... if you know a missionary... wink-wink... write them a letter.

Porkchop has decided that it is too hot to walk if he doesn't get his walk first thing in the morning. If you try and take him on a walk later in the day he will flop down on every bit of shade and grass and not move. However, he still likes a nap on what was previously the cats' blanket.


ps. for a size comparison, the tires on my Scout are 35 inches tall. About 3 ft.