Grace & Lucy’s Web Log

We’ve received a lot of questions about the interior of the future fuchster abode - so here we go:

1st Floor (house faces south; house entrance is on the west side)

When you walk in, the living room is to the right (south) and the dining room is to the left (north). Here’s the living room and a shot of the view from the front porch:

To the left of the main entrance is the dining room - and past the dining room (north side of the house) is a sunroom with a strange liitle fountain (that we’re told actually works):

And on the east side of the house, beyond the dining room is the kitchen:

Moving up to the second floor are several rooms (we haven’t decided what to do with each one yet). The first picture is the view from the second floor landing looking down to a mid-level landing between the first and second floors:

Here’s the second floor guest bathroom (or what we think will be the guest bathroom) as well as two pictures of the bathroom that we think we’ll use for the girls:

Here’s the southest bedroom on the 2nd floor:

Here’s another 2nd floor room. This one is on the southwest side of the house:

Somehow we didn’t take pictures of two additional rooms on the second floor - nor did we take a picture (somehow) of the deck off the back of the house.

Moving up to the third floor, it’s essentially a loft with a bedroom separated from the space by some French doors:

And here’s the 3rd floor bathroom:

Overall, not the best photos (but you’ve come to expect that if you’re a frequent visitor to this site). Hope to have more soon.

Well - the Fuchster clan is finally getting close to entering the wonderful world of homeownership. We just completed our inspection, and things are looking good. We took lots of picutures - here’s a few to give you a general impression; we’ll post more soon.

Here’s the front and side:

Another one, zoomed out a bit:

Here’s a view of the backyard with a feature that is currently causing some debate:

And here’s a view of the backyard (from the 3rd floor) - the buidling in the picture is the garage:

So it turns out that our new midwestern home is a fairly active bald eagle nesting area in the winter - so adding birdwatching to our growing list of hobbies (like attending RV shows - another story for another posting), we trekked out to the great river road over the weekend to see some eagles…and we actually did (shockingly).

Somewhat curious about this bald eagle population, we learned how their numbers increased over the past 30 years. Habitat management? Apparently not. According to the Fish and Wildlife service, the answer is discountinuing the use of DDT and making killing a bald eagle a felony conviction - and if you work for the Fish & Wildlife service and find yourself having to explain this to a crowd, it’s imperative that you use your best “tough guy” voice and point menancingly in the air when you say “DDT & A Felony Conviction.”

We now wonder if this is a universal principle for saving all endangered species…save the whales? Stop using DDT and a felony convication. Wow! It works. We might be onto something…

The girls had never seen an eagle before and here’s the first thing we saw when driving into a State park - kind of set their expectations way too high for eagle viewing:

Anyone thinking we actually were able to take a picture of one is giving us way too much credit for being even somewhat competent photographers. So unfortunately, all we have are pictures of the girls on one of the locks that helps control the flow of the mighty Mississippi:

The locks attract tons of seagulls so Grace and Lucy think they actually saw hundreds of eagles today:

This is the closest we could come to getting an eagle picture (besides the big inflatable one):

Looks like Luce is officially a “kid” having turned 2 on Jan. 8. We’re still sorting through Christmas photos but here’s some video of her. She hasn’t taken up smoking but she certainly blows out candles like a smoker (who would’ve thought that blowing out 2 candles could be a 10 minute ordeal?)

Time 00:00: Lucy looks at the ice cream cupcakes with some skeptism

Time 00:15: Lucy successfully blows out the first candle and works on the second one

Time 08:30 After trying to blow out the second candle for a little over 8 minutes, Lucy finally asks for help

Time 09:59 Lucy gets a little help from her mom and the second candle experiences its final flicker

So here’s our annual photo that generally requires us to wait on some long line only to watch the girls be timid at best or terrified at worst…but somehow everything this year worked out just fine. Merry Christmas.

Talk about setting the bar a little too high, this past weekend gave the fuchster clan an opportunity to sample what was billed as the “best” of Missouri.

To avoid any kind of profound disappointment, all you had to do was focus on the “Missouri” part, and suddenly the denture display with only 31 teeth, an over-representation of the “king” of beers in the food court, and the cow with only one udder seemed…ok. In fact, couldn’t have been any better.

The cow-milking display drew a lot of interest from the girls but (unsurprisingly) not the “hands-on” part of the activity. However, Grace did loudly share with everyone exactly what she thought the udder looked like:

The girls were much more comfortable around the pretend animals (our “no pets” mantra seems to be working) as seen here at the fake sheep display.

And anytime an activity uses glue and glitter, the girls are happy:

And despite not being a Missouri company, Home Depot did sponsor the “best of Missouri” toobox making display. Grace was so proficient with a hammer that she’s already asked about doing some minor repairs around the house (ah the joys of renting…)

No fall/harvest themed event could be complete without using it as an opportunity to make a lame attempt at taking some Christmas card-quality photos - and as expected, we had a total of 0 winners.

Since the world needs to stop for Grace and Lucy anytime something flies overhead (planes, helicopters, birds, debris) we thought a little hands-on time with airplanes might be interesting. So the girls invited their Taiwanese friend Kimmy and made a day of it at Scott Air Force Base (a place their dad knows a thing or two about).

Here’s Grace trying to do a little Vanna White move to highlight the plane behind her:

We still think the glasses make her look like she’s about 10 years old.

After some initial shyness, Grace, Lucy & Kimmy warmed up to each other:

It was strange: Kimmy doesn’t speak English yet, and Grace and Lucy (as far as we know) don’t speak Mandarin, but the three of them kept chatting it up -so perhaps Mandarin and English aren’t that different after all…

And here’s a random photo of Lucy trying to climb a lighting pole in a park near our house:

Taking after multiple relatives on both sides of the family, Grace now wears glasses. She’s been pretty good about wearing them - the biggest problem for us is that we think we looks a lot older than she actually is - which makes us expect more of her than she’s actually ready for - like taking over some of the driving duties on long car trips.

After a long absence, fuchster.com is back. Instead of getting too wordy - we’re going to jump right in with the photos. A few quick milestones, however - Grace got glasses in August (we’ll have photos of her in a future post), Lucy speaks in complete sentences and also poops on the potty, also as of August - unsurprisingly, we’re more excited about the latter rather than the former.

Life, by the way, is a tad bit easier since leaving NYC - fewer people, less congestion but still plenty of things to keep life interesting…like camping. Took our first trip in late July - and the girls loved it (and we perhaps took the best photo we’ve ever taken - here it is):

More than blowing bubbles, Grace also likes to rub it in her bangs:

We went camping near the Meramec River - in a town that won best drinking water a few years ago. Although when you see the folks floating in the river, your first thought generally isn’t “mmm…I bet that water tastes delicious.” It was good to be by a river though since Lucy clearly inherited her sweat glands from her dad:

Here are our promotional photos for a future “Camp MO” advertising campaign:

A few more signs of our transition out of NYC:

1) Unlike our NYC apartments, our St. Louis place isn’t a former brothel - so the thought of taking a bath isn’t as disgusting as it used to be:

2) Outdoor sprinklers and playgrounds aren’t occupied by 500 of our closest friends (although Lucy doesn’t seem too thrilled about something):

To wrap up the post, we couldn’t move here without getting involved in a few St. Louis traditions - like Grant’s Farm (owned by Anheuser-Busch). And, as we expected, our girls are terrified of animals (dogs and goats in particular):

And, for good measure, here’s a close-up of Lucy:

Ever wonder why it’s so hard to tell the difference between people from Gary, Indiana and those from Southern California? We think we found the answer - the Indiana dunes.

Yes, this is actually Indiana - we’ll be sure to take pictures of a ski slope if we ever visit Florida, and of course, if we ever make it to Scandanavia, we’ll only take pictures of dark-skinned people (so none of us will make any of our shots - well, at least not Lucy and Lara).

Good rule of thumb: Factory on the water, try not to stick your face in (but the feet? Who cares?).

Swimming near factory run-off apparently brings families closer:

Hanging out with family (Grace & Luce’s Aunt Mary) always brings out the comparisons: “oh she has your nose, teeth etc…” Here we make another common family comparison:

To really create a confusing geographical experience, the Dunes offer a variety of hiking trails and full service campgrounds (ah yes, Memorial Day, time for so many of our compatriots to cram all of the comforts of home in an RV, drive to some park for 3 days and call it “camping”):

Unfortunately for the campground residents, the Fuchster clan found a kind of fixed zip line contraption that we decided to monopolize for about 1/2 hour. Here’s Grace showing the kind of upper body strength that makes her Dad jealous:

Grace and Lucy’s Aunt Mary can’t resist providing her nieces with a teaching moment. Here she is demonstrating the pre-swing, swing and the dismount (notice how nicely she feigns bewilderment):

And to the annoyment of everyone else waiting his or her turn, we couldn’t abandon the machine until we all took a turn riding it while attempting to make our funniest faces. Mary took first prize. (Grace has a limited arsenal at the young age of 3 - puffed out cheeks is the height of funny in her world, but she scored a few cuteness points at least):

The girls finished up the weekend with some quality Grandma and Grandpa time. Here’s Grace practicing her choke hold with her Grandma as Aunt Mary smilies oblivously in the background:

Inside Grace and Lucy’s grandparents house, Lucy and her pigmentless body were so happy to get out of the sun that she decided to celebrate through dance:

And we thought we couldn’t wrap up the weekend without at least one posed family shot: