Casa Hanks

One of the things we looked for in a house was a lot big enough to raise a family on. We need a little room for kids to run around (and not too much room because I do not want to mow it).

Casa Hanks

We live in an 'H' house which was built to house workers on the Manhattan project during WWII. 'H' is just the plan/style. So as much as we do not like housing developments and onerous covenants and associations, we do in fact live in tract housing. Just these houses have character. It is one of the things we love about the area. These old houses are amazing if they are kept up well.

We love our backyard. There are a few fun things here. First the strip of garden in the middle is kinda funny. We wanted to move the garden to a different spot, but when we went to plant the spot we wanted to use had too many ants, so we fell back to the spot the previous owners had used. We figure it is there because it gets full sun.

Another fun bit (although you may not see it it the picture) is that the previous owners left us seven or eight bird feeders.

Our Backyard! I had fun making this picture. The distortion is due to the picture covering more than 270° of yard. Please disregard the brown grass we haven't gotten the sprinklers working yet.

Welcome to Emmy's room.

While we were gone one of our friends painted Emily's room. So we thought we would show off her work. We love it, thank you Janay.

Coming into Emmy's room you enter a peaceful forest. It is adorned with the Sun, the Moon, some stars, trees, and lots of little flowers set on rolling hills.

A quiet space to rock the babies. The picture on the wall is from my Grandmother, it is a basket of pink tulips.

This time without the chair. You can see the flowers and the hillsides better here.

The sun rises over the closet

The Moon and the stars watch over the crib

Emily is trying to reach the flowers.

The rocking chair with a blanket from Grandma.

Lines. I threw in this picture just because I liked it. Very geometric.

School festivals

We've had a good time the last week or so. I'll get pictures up at some point, I promise.

The private schools up here do some pretty large fund raisers. They throw all out fairs and festivals.

Last weekend was Sausage fest at the Catholic school. They were packed with people. The carnival section was great, Emmy was old enough to enjoy two of the games. Her favorite part was picking up ducks at a booth as they floated by. The number on the bottom of the duck told you which prize you would get. They gave her little plastic ducks that she would not let go until we got her home and ready for bed.

This weekend was Applooza at the Protestant school. Huge bins of apples, freshly pressed cider, and some fun games. Emmy liked watching the horses that the 4h club brought in. In a few years she will enjoy riding them too.

These are the largest fund raisers they do each year, and we are happy to support the schools.

We really look forward to when Emmy is a year or two older and can be more involved. These things are like heaven to a 3 year old.

Letter to the South Hills ward

Before we moved, Bishop Brammer asked us to write when we got settled in up in Richland. I thought I would include the letter I sent:

It took us a while, but we found a nice little duplex to rent. We love being in a house, and look forward to being in one that we own. We live in what is called an 'ABC house'. Back in the 40's Hanford was chosen as a site for some of the Manhattan project work. As part of that the army corp of engineers came in and moved the city of Richland south by several miles, building everything new. There were about 6 floor plans, from small single houses to two story units, plans a - f. All old housing here is only 60-70 years old dating back to WWII. Another side effect of the army laying out the city is seen in the street names, many/all of the early streets are named after army or government people and places and the order of many of the streets is alphabetical.

Richland is in the high desert and gets about 10 inches of rain annually. I think we have gotten the 10 inches already, some snow, and then some extra already. It is evidently unusually wet this year. Laura does not believe people here when they say it does not rain.

Emily is growing up quickly. She is now about 4 1/2 months old, has her own room, and sleeps through the night. Laura has her on a pretty good schedule, which involves me waking them up from a nap when I get home from work. She can pull herself up into a sitting position now, and almost roll over. We are a bit worried looking forward to when she can walk, we are sure she will skip that and go straight to running and we will never be able to keep up with her. Emily has also developed a cute little laugh.

Laura is beginning to settle into the area up here. The transition is hardest on her, as she has to build up a new support group to help her being removed from friends and family. Each week she goes to a play group that the ward has for young children and is participating in the relief society activities.

I love being up here, work is challenging and interesting, and I get to be with my family two more hours a day. I work for CalTech on the LIGO project. LIGO is trying to directly measure gravity waves. The instrument they have here is incredibly sensitive and has to be to do its job. We can tell when cars go by on the local freeway, when logs go over the dam a few miles away, ... They are working now to double the sensitivity of the system and in a few years will tear everything apart and build a system that is 10 times more sensitive. At this point it will have reached the theoretical limit (quantum noise will limit any improvements) and they will have to account for the movement clouds overhead. Have they observed a gravity wave yet, maybe, there is a tremendous amount of number crunching that needs to be done in filtering out the background noise to be sure.

I have my hands in a lot of different areas at work. There is always more to learn. I work with everything from the physical network connecting systems, to helpdesk, to system admin, ... I stop a few wrungs below CTO. I love my job. Also the physicists meet weekly at lunch to keep themselves up on what is going on in the world of physics. I often sit in on these meetings, and while I cannot follow their math at least I have the exposure to new ideas.

The ward is friendly. It actually is the ward that I attended when I came up here to interview, good thing I helped the bishop set up chairs that day I guess. When we got up here we found an apartment we were interested in after a little looking. So we went to the ward that it was located in. I recognized the bishop, and was going to talk to him, but as soon as sacrament meeting ended the people in front of us started talking to us, and the bishop came up and remembered me. Then a member mentioned that they were looking for someone to rent out a house to, the couple that was in there was moving out in a while. So we liked the house better than the apartment and waited for the couple to move out. There are lots of children and younger couples here, although most of the couples our age already have three or more children, so our situation is a little closer to the youngest couples. The ward building here is one of the oldest non-governmental buildings (maybe the first) in Richland, and so is old enough that you can get lost in it.

The Tri-cities (Richland, Kennewick, and Pasco) are a mix of big and small town. There are about 200,000 people in the area, so it is large enough to support many of the stores and functions we enjoyed in the Covina area. It is still small though. I got my WA license plates in about 10-15 minutes (total). Getting the WA drivers license is more work (getting the right documentation is a pain for that). One thing that we love is that in about a five minute drive you are in the country side.