Ultra-Photo Blog

We're sorry about the loooooong delay in updating the blog, but life has been pretty crazy for all of us lately. Chris is working long days, plus has about 5 freelance projects in the works. Amy is working part-time for an online tutoring service and working on her masters degree via a correspondence course, and we are finding it takes more and more energy to keep up with the mini tornado, who turned 21 months old yesterday!

So here are some pictures for you from the last several weeks. Hope you enjoy them!

The first group of pictures is from a trip we took to Oregon at the end of July. We drove the whopping 14 hours each way, but it was a lot of fun! We got to escape the horrible heat we've had here all summer, and the beaches in Oregon are so clean and beautiful!

We couldn't keep Sage from scaling rocks and hills any chance he got! This kid has feet of leather!

Left to right: Irie, Chivonne, Adam, Azriel, Amy, Sage, Chris

This was the first time we've gotten to spend time with Amy's brother and family that Sage has been able to keep up with his cousins. He had a ball!

Amy made home-made faux-stess cupcakes for Chris's birthday. Man were they complicated, but they tasted fantastic!

Sage helped. :)

Donna and Terry took us to Old Sacramento and boating on the Sacramento River Delta for Chris's birthday. It was great! Here is Sage with 'Amma in Old Sac.

All tuckered out from the exciting weekend and the long drive home.

Stay tuned for pictures from a super-fun trip to Vegas scheduled the weekend after next! Chris will be photoshopping it for four days, and Las Vegas has one of the largest children's museums in the country, so Amy and Sage should have something to do, too! Then the weekend after that...well, we're going somewhere. ;-)

Lots of love!

Chris, Amy & Sage

More of the same...

Here are some more photos for you. Enjoy!

Sage noticed a kitten sitting in his cart and had to go push it around. Just so you know, this scene lasted an entire 2/5 of a second. Good thing I was ready!

Upside down!!!!!!

(Amy took this one)

Just 5 Pictures

Here are 5 photos taken in the past little while - 3 of Sage, 1 of a mountain meadow on an afternoon drive up into the High Country above Bass Lake, and one of one of our kittens (aptly named White Shoulders)

I've been thinking that it's time to create something of a photo gallery for myself - so I'm going to start throwing together some PHP code to make it happen. I'll let you know when I get anywhere.

Update

In the last post, we mentioned that we were going to wait until we had an offer accepted before posting our plans. Seems we should have listened to logic. The land was listed at $91,000 - we offered $80,000, expecting to settle somewhere around $85,000 which was what we had in the budget for the land. The offer also required detailed info on the feasibility and cost of a septic system - we had budgeted $6,000, as originally stated by the seller. The counter offer was $91,000, with no given information about the septic. We did hear from our contractor that the septic options were so limited on that property that an engineered septic would likely be the only feasible option - at a cost of at least $30,000. So with the additional cost of the land + the additional cost of the septic totalling at least $30,000, we just can't make it work.

So that is where we stand - it was certainly a nice dream while it lasted.

Big Big News!

For the last couple of months we have been looking into buying some property and building a very unique type of house. Well, we've found our property, we've found our house, we've gotten pre-approved for a construction loan. And tomorrow we're putting in an offer (cross your fingers)! We were going to wait until we had an offer accepted before posting this, but we couldn't wait...and we've had a couple of desperate pleas for pictures. So here we go:

View of the building pad from the driveway

Looking down the driveway

The building pad from up on the hill, and a peek at our view

Just think: in a few months time you could be sitting on our deck looking at this view! Go make those airline reservations now!

Sun goes down, lights come on in the Central Valley.

We are getting a yurt! This is a custom-designed, wood-paneled, eco-friendly round house. It's built in pieces in Oregon and shipped to us on a semi truck, then we assemble it ourselves (with a little help from friends and family)! The company is Oregon Yurtworks

We're going pretty simple to begin with and getting a single-story, 31-ft diameter yurt. It will have an open-concept kitchen/living/dining room, a bathroom, bedroom, and loft. With the loft it will be about 1000 square feet.

This is what a wood-paneled yurt looks like from the outside:


And a couple interior shots:




Right now we're working on a website for Oregon Yurtworks to help us design our house. It will have all kinds of pictures and plans and details. We'll let you all know when it's up. Until then, wish us luck!

P.S. We realize you've had NO new pictures of Sage in months. We're very sorry about this. We've been very busy. So here are a couple to tide you over and we will post more when we get the chance.

Happy Spring, Everyone!

Lots goin' on with the Sage-Man these past couple months. After taking a very, shall we say, casual attitude toward the idea of walking, he started taking steps at about 15 1/2 months. Now he's all but given up crawling for the unique thrill of perambulation. But you all come here to see pictures, right? Here ya go!

At the beginning of February we had a spot of very nice weather and so we took Sage to Woodward Park in Fresno.

A couple weeks later the weather turned decidedly different!

Sage has gotten quite adept at building towers! And yes, it was him who put that hippo on top.

With cousins Azriel and Irie at the Chaffee Zoo.

Sage started playing peek-a-boo with the shower curtain during his bath last night, so mommy called to daddy to grab his camera and we ended up with a great bathtime photo shoot!

Aaaah! The joys of naked time!