surprise

A Very Memory Christmas for Grandma

~ randyaa ~ Leave a comment

If you’re part of the Masten/Kerber family you’ve probably already seen this note from Rachel but duplicating it here just means more people might see it.

We have something special planned for Grandma this Christmas and we need your help. We are looking for memories that you have of Grandma. It can be a funny memory, a special way she has touched your life, copies of old pictures, reasons why you love and appreciate her or anything you think she will enjoy and cherish. In order for us to complete this project we need to have 10 or more memories from each person in your family. This is much easier than it sounds.  Once we started thinking the memories just kept coming and coming.

While this task definitely deserves some attention, some people might be stressing about it. Don’t over think this task as it can be as easy as reminiscing on the old days. We thought we’d throw up some ideas to get you started.

  • I remember when you 
  • I remember how you used to make us 
  • I’m so thankful for you teaching me
  • I remember the old days when
  • I appreciate the way you helped me
  • I love the way you always
  • It always makes me smile when
  • I like how   always makes you
  • When we were kids I loved when you would take us

As a more specific example:

  • I remember how we would feed the chickens at Grandpa Frankies and …

Obviously your memories don’t have to be limited to this list, but hopefully it’ll get you thinking and give you some ideas.

Remember, Christmas is just around the corner and we can’t finish this little project without your help!

BBQ with Cake

~ randyaa ~ Leave a comment

For my birthday Rachel organized a surprise party by tricking me into a dinner at Dinosaur BBQ.  It was a load of fun and completely unexpected.  It was my first surprise party and I’d call it a success.

To top off the great BBQ dinner at Dinosaur Rachel got everybody together for the Cake concert.  Cake is one of my favorite bands and she had been making excuses for why we weren’t able to go.  When I opened my birthday card at dinner and found 2 tickets for the concert I was ecstatic.  The concert was better than I could imagine.  Cake turns out to be one of those bands that sounds just as good if not better live than on their pre-recorded music.

An awesome birthday thanks to the worlds best wife.

And yes, I know this post is 2 months late.  Sue me.

Surprise!

~ randyaa ~ 1 Comment

My father-in-law George just turned 50 on sunday (August 3rd).  It’s kind of a big deal.  To celebrate the occasion my mother-in-law and the rest of the family had been planning a surprise birthday party for months.  To add to the fun George Jr flew in, unknown to George Sr, from Portland Oregon and stepped out from behind everyone just as dad thought he’d said hello to everyone.  You can just see the rush of emotion in his face as the realization hits him that his son is here.

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As plans do, everything to keep George out of the house fell through so Rachel and I made a last minute ditch effort to fix it.  We managed to get him out of the house for a few hours by bribing him with lunch and a movie (Dark Knight).

Clean Slate

~ randyaa ~ Leave a comment

Ok so… we’ve tried word press before and never kept it up. This was basically because we tried to be retro-active in posting a bunch of stuff about what we had already done and it was overbearing. We’ve tried blogger but to no avail… Hopefully we can get this site going. We’ll use it as a place for people to know what Rachel and I are up to.

For those of you who don’t know Rachel and I bought a house (duplex) 6 months ago or so. Well… we’ve learned some things since then. Quite a lot in fact.

  1. It’s true what they say. You never really are done. when we bought the house we only had a few things in mind. Since then the list has grown daily
  2. No project is really as small or as easy as you think it is.
  3. You dont really have time anymore.
  4. Old houses are full of surprises.
  5. Insurance companies suck.
  6. Water can cause a lot of trouble.

on to that last one for a second and then i’ll end our first post…

A little less than a month ago we had a pipe break in our ceiling. Wow what a pain. It happened while we were both at work and conveniently enough the only day in months that i’ve forgotten my cell phone. Our tenants came home to about 4″ of water in the basement. They went through some hurdles and finally ended up calling the fire department who promptly came and took care of the problem. This does NOT end our problems however. Since then we’ve pretty much not had a dining room. We’ve got a cracked floor joist, drywall and pipes to replace, flooring to put down electric to run etc etc.

Anyway… that’s all for now. Rachel and I are off for dinner and a movie.