International Driver's License Poll

So....Steph was trying to decide which of the following photos to use for her new International Drivers License.  We need some input....

Here are the options:

Option 1: Sexy Duck

Option 2: Happy Bulldog

Option 3: I'm Too Sexy For My Pants

Option 4: Pelican Choking on a Fish

Option 5: Monkey Moose

Option 6: Studious Duck (Sny Dog Rules!)

Ok!  Your votes determine the outcome!

Remodeling Finished! ... Sort of

Here's a quick remodel recap for those of you that are as sick of looking at the laundry room as us!

Before

 

  

  

  

After

  

In an effort to arrive in France sometime before the end of the new decade, we have decided to leave the other half of the remodel for a later date.  We really just wanted Cliff to be able to have a crack at drywalling!  Good Luck!  After over a week of the Washer/Dryer collecting sheetrock dust, Steph was psyched to finally be able to have some clean clothes again. 

  

Slew of Plan Options

The question persists...how and when will Ceph and Stam actually get to France???

Now, although this may seem like a simple enough question, turns out that it's actually quite difficult for us to answer! So instead of giving you one solid answer, I'm going to give you some of the possible answers we are trying to choose from.

Here we go:

Plan 1) We leave tomorrow (hope we get on a flight) - pack like mad people, b/c our stuff is scattered everywhere - leave the laundry room that we were doing construction on, in complete chaos - cats travel with us if it's warm enough (if not warm enough there's a whole different slew of options to choose from, including having my folks send them to us when it's warmer) - no sleep for 3 days - high irritation levels from both Ceph and Stam

Plan 2) Leave on Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday (hope we get on a flight) - finish home renovations (parents happy) - pack - cats travel with us if it's warm enough

Plan 3) We permanently move into my parents house in Chicago, only pretending we ever went to France - redo my parents entire house - Ceph begins getting a beer belly b/c she loves drinking beer after doing construction stuff (so cliché, but true)

Plan 4) We sit on our thumbs and twirl for an entire year, then move back to CO

Plan 5) I run for President, so I can have at least one cool story to tell people when we come back

So those are a taste of the first few options of plans...now for the France part. Once we get to France we need to get to the house somehow.

We could:

a) rent a car (cat friendly option, wallet friendly if traveling with cats--not so much if not traveling with cats)--13 hour drive

b) take the train (less cat friendly option, good option without the cats, bad with the cats)--6-8 hour ride

c) take another plane (more cat friendly, less wallet friendly)--1 hour flight

d) walk from Paris to Castex (it should only take us about 6 months to walk down there...I mean it's totally doable...)

This is just a taste of the many options that we are trying to figure out logistically. In other words...we probably won't know when we will go to France until we arrive in France. Who knew it could be so complicated? What plans sound good to you? Can you think of any better plans? If so, let us know!

Playing In The Mud

 

Steph loves mud...So much so that she gets it all over herself.

 

  

Lion is having massive sneezing attacks, so he slept the day away while we played in the basement.  Che decided to keep him company with a little bit of brotherly snuggling.

Remodeling Fun

 

Day 1 - Laundry Room Destruction

(Cliff's Closet is now all over the house and the washer/dryer are officially out of order)

 

Where's the Bosch?  Oh yeah, in Fort Collins with Ben.  Broken bits galore.

 

The usual suspects

 

Steph hooking up the sink, shortly before I foolishly talked Cliff & Monique into taking it back out and letting us remodel the entire room.

 

 Day 2 begins

 

Steph and her new friend, "Cat's Paw"

 

The visa that magically appeared shortly after taking half the room down to studs.

 

Steph doing the end-of-day gorilla dance

 

 

The grand finale move which is aptly dubbed "B.S. eats a burrito"

 

Day 3

Tomorrows forecast: Mud & sanding, with a high chance of a dust storm.

Super Steph's Weightlifting Regimen

Chicago Day 1: We sleep
Chicago Day 2: We noodle around
Chicago Day 3: We noodle around...Steph starts to get fidgety
Chicago Day 4: We noodle around...get hosed by the French Consulate...Verdict is that we're stranded in Chicago for at least two more weeks.  Steph gets really fidgety.
Chicago Day 5: Steph starts harassing Cam about a home workout regimen to fend off the oppressive grey skies that define Chicago in the winter. Steph does a handful of exercises, coaxing Cam into an assortment of crowded living room ab crunches, squats and other nonsense.  Cam rapidly loses interest and goes back to noodling around.  In a fit of motivation, Steph sits down and creates the UBER regimen of home exercises.
Chicago Day 6: Steph crushes day 1 of her new regimen. See pics below

Tomorrow's Chicago forecast for Steph: Cloudy and drizzly rain with a high chance of lactic acid.
Tomorrow's Chicago forecast for Cam: Cloudy and drizzly rain with a high chance of noodling around. 

 

 

Journey Begun...er, Journey on Hold

Hello Family and Friends!




Welcome to Stam and Ceph's travel blog. It's hard to tell where a journey like the one we are on ends and where it begins...but I'm thinking we'll start with our 18 hour car ride through the states of CO, WY, NE, IA and IL with our 2 jungle kitties.







Thanks to modern pharmaceuticals we were able to sedate the cats for the entire trip...it only took 3 doses of sedatives each! Don't worry, that's OK to do...we checked before hand. Effectively, the cats did pretty well on the trip, though we didn't really give them a chance to be bad. It was easy to tell when they were waking up, the meowing would start, their eyes would widen, and the marathon running laps through out the car would begin (somehow the cats always manage to land directly on Cam's nuts every loop they made). Unfortunately, our cats just don't dig traveling. But as many of you know, I have a theory about dealing with things you don't really like...keep trying them until you do like them! It worked for me and tomato soup, so I'm thinking the cats just need more exposure. (That's my theory and I'm sticking to it as long as we have no other choice). :)

Currently we are hanging at my folks house in Naperville, IL. The cats have been getting acquainted with my parents's animals. Che has decided to make sure they all know he's the big cat on campus, while Lion has decided to be Mr. Salty Pants and hiss at everything that walks by. But I think it's just going to take some TIME (key word) for them to get used to a new place and new company surrounding them.

And TIME (key word is key now) is something we will have quite a bit of right now. We just had Cam's visa appt. with the French consulate today, and we didn't even consider the fact that when you apply for a visa you physically give them your passport because the consulate needs to stick the visa to the actual passport. So now the French consulate has Cam's passport and we aren't going anywhere for the moment. They say it will take no less than 2 weeks to process the visa, but they are still searching for the registration-of-our-marriage paperwork that I handed in back in September. Bureaucracy can really be the pits sometimes! So looks like we'll be camping out at my folks for at least another 2 weeks (if not more) before we actually go to France. But it is really nice to hang with my folks, they are so awesome about this whole thing...we couldn't do it without their support.

So the next couple weeks of our journey will entail getting better acquainted with Chicago and Naperville, and catching up on writing, reading, job searches, and each other. And Skyping the hell out of all of you! So get Skype now if you don't have it and look us up...sdwhall@hotmail.com.