Our New House!

We finally found a house!! We have a contract on it and had the inspection last weekend. Everything looks great; nothing major to worry about! I took the opportunity to snap lots of pictures of it, so I'll post some now for you all to see!! We are so excited! We settle on April 21st and take possession on the 25th. And we are planning to have the moving company deliver our stuff on the 28th! The house has 4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms, formal living and dining rooms, family room with fireplace, huge master suite with whirlpool tub, enormous screened in porch, very private fenced in back yard, finished basement with rec room and full bath, large garage big enough for 4 cars!! It's in a good school system and close to lots of shopping, but in a private development. So, here are some pictures...

3131 Somerset Trace, Birmingham, Alabama

Here's the back yard and view of the back of the house.

Here is the family room, dining area and kitchen!

This is the foyer. Straight back leads to the family room, to the left is the formal living room, and to the right is the formal dining room.

This is the formal living room. The current owners are using it as an office.

This is the formal dining room.

The kitchen has brand new stainless appliances!

The master bedroom

This is the rec room in the basement. There is also a large storage room and full bathroom in the finished part of the basement.

And this is the fabulous screened porch!!

So, this is our new house! And we invite everyone to visit (probably not all at the same time), as we will have lots of room!

Goin' to the zoo zoo zoo, how about you you you (Part 1)

Last week was the official opening of a new exhibit at the B'ham zoo. A rare albino alligator was shipped in from someplace - Florida, I think. Of course, we were there for this unique experience!

Apparently, this is among the world's rarest creatures. If born wild, this animal would likely have been eaten by another alligator or quickly found by a predator. One thing for sure, it is WEIRD! Check it out...



The place was a bit crowded since it was the first day of the exhibit. We did get in early with our zoo family pass. The public had to wait three hours. Membership has its privileges. Aside from the crowds, the gator didn't seem too well acclimated to its new home. He never moved from the pose you see. He will be at the zoo until the end of July, so maybe we can get eye to eye with it later! Hopefully, we can go with visitors!

It's hard to tell from the picture, but it's about six feet long, which makes it the second largest albino gater in the world!
According to a zoo helper, it's estimated value is $60,000!

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We made a day out of it and saw some stuff we hadn't done at the zoo before. For one, the boys had a lesson in digging for dinosaur bones in a huge sandbox. Here you can see us unearthing a T. rex skull!

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A nearby exhibit is the alligator research station. Out front is a hand pump which the boys got a kick out of. Also, there's an abandoned logging truck - Eliot decided to drive...

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Another treat was to touch, fondle, and in other ways cuddle up with some of nature's warmest and most lovable animals - reptiles! We got to handle pythons and gators. Other things were available that we wouldn't go near! Check out Addison touching the alligator. This baby will grow to be a full size gator some day - at the rate of about a foot per year. The skin of this one was a bit unusual, too. I found it interesting to compare the skin with my own. For the first time I had a real-life Pepsi Challenge to judge the veracity of the countless comparisons I have received over the years that I have "alligator skin". Conclusion: Unfortunately, I can't deny the similarity; I think I need to exfoliate and hydrate... Lubriderm, here I come!

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Sammy always finds a way to make us smile!

TO BE CONTINUED...

eating the pencil

dum de dum dum dum. Ok. Deeeaarr sssaaannta, ok now what do me ask for? Ee uh uh what else COOKIES! Oh yeah yeah yeah lets see uh two dozen coconut macaroons NO NO NO NO NO NO! Maybe pound and a half of delishous ferdylootins oh me getting so hungry crunch crunch me love cookies uh oatmeal cookies me ask for three dozen what the hay FOUR dozen oatmeal cookies. oh me love oatmeal cookies chomp chomp ooh ooh banana cookies or or broom cookies oh me love broom cookies crunch chomp ooh ooh chaclate marshmallow with jelly inside cookies ooh yeah me got to write that down where pencil?
the end
Addison

cookie monster eating the tipewriter

dear santy claus me no care what kind of cookies you bring me you suprise cookie monster okay? oh boy ha me wonder what kind of cookies santy going to bring me ha oh maybe maybeoha raisan cookies gm gm me love they but raisans mmm mmm oh ya ya oh maybe santa bring me forncha forchin cookies with delishous PAPER inside there ya aaaaaaaaaa mmmmmmmmm chachlate cookies mmmmmmm ya ya ya cookies mmm cowabunga aaaaaawwwwaaaaaa aaaaaa me getting so exited when me thing of cookies m ch um mmmmm oh ya santa santa uh where tipewriter
love
adddddisssssonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

going down the slide by addison poffenberger

Weeeeeeeeeee me and elioty were going down the slide. I got 2 strikes today at school. I was just kidding. I got 1 strike today at school.
This is my faforite state new york. strikes are for being good

school and donut party written by addison poffenberger

I love kindergarden. My teacher is mrs duren. Sammy goes to zoo school somtimes on tuesdays and sometimes wendsday. And my school is liberty park. And i had a donut party. I ate a donut. It was super-de-duper-de-duper yummy. And then i had another donut. And then i ate another doughnut. And bity elioty got messy with doughnuts. And eliot and sammy made a boat out of coushins and pillows. And sammy hurt elioty then sammy had a timeout. the end
love
addison

some recent pictures

Here are the Poffenberger boys! They are standing on the boulder in front of the tiger exhibit at the zoo!

This is Addison running to the van after school!

more pics to come soon!

Love,

Joanne

some info

I spent some time discovering some of the ins and outs of the blog, and thought I'd let anyone who is not familiar with them (as I am not!) in on a few tips.
If you want to make a comment to any of the posts, simply click on the word "comments" at the bottom of each post. It should take you to a text box to type whatever you like. I will receive an email anytime someone posts a comment to the blog, so it will be just like email!

Also, I will be changing the links section soon.

I think that as we add more posts to the blog it will seem easier to navigate through. Please let me know if there are better ways to do this and if you have any suggestions.

Thanks,
Joanne

Introduction

We are in the South! We are loving the warm weather and sunshine in Birmingham!

We are still living in our furnished apartment in Liberty Park. We are constantly searching for new listings and waiting to find just the right one! I’m sure it will show up soon! I keep finding new for sale by owner sites, so maybe that will help!

I will try to keep everyone updated as often as I can. We are definitely missing our families and I hope by keeping in touch this way, we won't seem so far away!

Addison is LOVING kindergarten. He has made many friends and told us the other day that he is planning to marry Ivy when he grows up! Yesterday, he had his first soccer game and did great. The weather was a perfect 85 degrees and sunny! He had a great time and the league is very non-competetive and focused on giving the kids time on the field and learning the game.

Sammy has started taking a class at the zoo and we've been having lots of fun. Last week I stayed with him and he had a much better time than the class before. The class is one hour long and focuses on one type of animal each week. Last week they learned about eagles and we took a picture for Grandaddy, since the bald eagle is his favorite animal!

Eliot loves going to the zoo, too! He talks about the geese and the monkeys! There are two geese that live behind our apartment on the lake, and Eliot loves to take walks to see them! He and Sammy have a great time playing together! In fact, this morning as I was trying to figure out how to use this blog, Sammy and Eliot decided it was snack time!! They each got out yogurt and the box of oatmeal, took it to the coffee table and began dipping their spoons alternately in the yogurt and dry oatmeal! So, the top layer of the oatmeal looks like cookie dough now!! I guess I need to keep a closer watch on those two!!

I will try to post more (and bigger) pictures soon, I just wanted to get this up and running so I can let everyone know about it! We're using dial-up and it takes forever to upload the pictures!

We love and miss you tons!

Joanne