NOT long ago I fell in love,
But unreturned is my affection–
The girl that I’m enamored of
Pays little heed in my direction.

I thought I knew her fairly well:
In fact, I’d had my arm around her;
And so it’s hard to have to tell
How unresponsive I have found her.

For, though she is not frankly rude,
Her manners quite the wrong way rub me:
It seems to me ingratitude
To let me love her–and then snub me!

Though I’m considerate and fond,
She shows no gladness when she spies me–
She gazes off somewhere beyond
And doesn’t even recognize me.

Her eyes, so candid, calm and blue,
Seem asking if I can support her
In the style appropriate to
A lady like her father’s daughter.

Well, if I can’t, then no one can–
And let me add that I intend to:
She’ll never know another man
So fit for her to be a friend to.

Not love me, eh? She better had!
By Jove, I’ll make her love me one day;
For, don’t you see, I am her Dad,
And she is three weeks old today on Sunday!

by Christopher Morley as found in :The Rocking Horse

Chocolate Chip Cookie

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Leprechaun (Born on St. Paddy’s Day)

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Kana

Kana Rahel Shackelford was born on May 5th (Cinco de Mayo). At birth she weighed 6 lbs. and 14 oz. and was 20 inches long.

One of the first things we noticed is that she has quite a dimple in the middle of her chin. She comes by that via both of her grandfathers.

We decided we would give Godiva one more chance in the limelight before Kana comes along.
You may remember this video.

Here is an update on her progress.

We have found that the best way to get her energy out is to “play tennis” with her. She usually gets to play two or three times a day!

So work on our house has been moving along. Amanda painted our bedroom last weekend. In the next few days our kitchen and living room will be painted! Glenn is working on staining our unfinished oak kitchen cabinets. It is fun to start to see things come together!

On other fronts, Amanda is already 34 1/2 weeks pregnant! She has been feeling quite good so far, but last weekend she exerted herself a little too much and was having contractions every 9 minutes! She is cooling it now and has hardly had any contractions this week.

Up until now, we have been calling our baby girl “Kana” after a Japanese friend of ours, but we had not picked a second name up until now. We have settled on “Obama” for a second name. Thanks to President Obama, we received a very handsome first time home buyer’s tax credit. In honor of what he is doing for our country, we have decided to name our daughter after him. Besides, it has a nice ring to it. Kana Obama Shackelford.

It has been really great having Glenn, Amanda’s dad working for us on the house. He helps us know the possibilities and can really make it happen!!

Amanda and I took care of the burn pile this weekend. We are pretty sure that either the previous owners or the people the bank hired when the house foreclosed threw everything into a pile an burned it. Spoons, speakers, binders, clothes etc… lots of plastic and glass.

Washing the walls made a huge difference. There was years worth of nicotine buildup on the walls.

Texture is one of the other issues we are dealing with! It was poorly done so it is going to be difficult to match it. Here is Amanda patching nail holes. Just a dab of putty and then brushing it to match the texture.

Next we will show you the state the bathroom is in.

This week I tilled our garden plot. We put it on the South side of the house so we could look out the windows of the living room or kitchen at it. Then we could spot the deer eating our veggies and sick the dog on them!

Our little sprouts are coming along. We got a lot of heirloom seeds and decided to try to grow a few exotic plants. I am excited that the lemon grass is doing alright so far!

Here is a little spinach plant.

While trying to figure out where to hang the light for our repotted plants, I remembered that we had a smaller crate that Godiva out grew.

And it will protect them from a curious puppy.

Here is an image from the county GIS website. The big white building to the north is our horse barn. The next building is a two car garage. The final building is our house!

The next few pictures are of the house as we found it. First is the faux heat shield that is found to the right after entering the house. It looked like paper maché glued to the wall!

This is the view from the living room through to the kitchen.

And here are two pictures of the kitchen. Today we spent a few hours scraping two layers of wall paper trim off near the ceiling. It had been painted over…

Here is the master bedroom. One shot is from the doorway and the other is standing in the corner looking back.

Here is a picture of what will be Kana’s room. It is similar to the master bedroom just a little more narrow. It also has two windows.

The bathroom is not worth a picture… It is pink with white paint amateurly splattered all about.

Here are a few pictures of a few of the changes we are making.
No more faux heat shield!

No more wall between kitchen and living room!!

Now for the outside, which is the best part. The size of the property is just shy of 2.5 acres.

The house has a nice porch that wraps around two of it’s sides. This is the east side where the front door is.

And here is a picture of the front.

The back.

The barn.

The yard is big with lots of types of trees. There are a number of elm, spruce, and ceder on the property, as well as many lilac bushes. There are also two grape trellises!

and this is what we found.

Last Sunday Amanda and I made Korean BBQ at Daniel and Bethany’s. We brought typical kimchee, dried radish and shrimp kimchee as well as pickled dicon radishes known as “white kimchee”. We froze the meat overnight so that in the morning we could cut it thinly and let it soak in the marinade. We served it with lettuce and rice. It turned out nicely!