Wednesday, May 22, 2013

May Mania

The May madness continues over here in Kelly land.  We are run off of our feet, exhausted at the end of the day and way overbooked.  But there is just so much fun stuff to do and cool people to see that we can't help ourselves!

Let me see, since I last wrote, we went out to Virginia for a weekend in the country, had Auntie Alice come for a visit, Maman took Hank out to LA for a weekend visit with Chanel and family, we bought a new house and were visited by cousin John McGarry along with his wife Karna and their son Karl, all in town from Istanbul.

Yes, we bought a new house.  Back in January, when we had not yet started a search in earnest but were playing around Zillow, Matt came across a house with a large lot smack dab in the middle of the neighborhood we thought we wanted to be in when the time came.  Just for fun, we thought, let's go see it.

We spent about 2 hours wandering around this old house trying to imagine ourselves there.  There were lots of easy ways to NOT to imagine ourselves there.  The house was built at the turn of the last century and has been renovated repeatedly and terribly many time since.  The exterior is awful.  The entrance had been moved around to the side of the building.  Lots had been sold off around the house so that you had to drive by two small tear-downs essentially in your front yard when you entered from the original driveway. The layout was bizarre, some of the rooms are huge and elegant while others were charmless.  The third floor has not been touched since 1901 when it was inhabited by the servants of Downtown Abbey.  It wouldn't surprise me if we found the skeleton of O'Brian up there one day.  The kitchen has a drop ceiling, the roof needs to be replaced, the bathrooms are crumbling, there is no basement.  I could go on and on.

Anyway, Matt and I are suckers for a fixer upper and seemed like we had found just the one.  In spite of the work to be done we could see great potential in the old house, and the lot was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.  An acre of land in a neighborhood walking distance to Matt's work, 2 Metro stops and lots of shopping/restaurants, not to mention the good public elementary school and amazing park across the street. And so we bought it. Apparently we were the only people crazy enough to put in a bid, even though the house has seen 300 tours since it came on the market.  It will take about a year to 18 months to get the house into shape so we have time to enjoy our city-living for a while yet.

If you want to take a look at 4700 Davidson Drive, click here.

All of our recent family visits have been great. We have now seen all 4 aunties in the past 4 months!  Looking forward to getting in some grandparent visits this summer!



"I am not amused."


Country fun - nothing like throwing rocks! 




Gus in music class - he loves it!




Hayes, Uncle Grant and Hank at Pinkberry in LA...


Men at work.


Mailloux butt. Kelly butt. 

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Model Children

Let us wash away the memories of the tonsil debacle with the following intermezzo of beautiful images. A visual palette cleanser, if you will...
















Just tell me those aren't some fine looking boys!