Around Reading: Koziar's Christmas Village

Up near Bernville, PA, which is about 15 miles northwest of Reading, is Koziar's Christmas Village. The website says it has over a half million Christmas lights. Last year we didn't know that it existed but Billie found out about it and we went there on December 4. Since you couldn't be there with us, here are some pictures. As you will see, there is something for just about everyone.

This was the view from the road. We went close to the time that it opened for the night and traffic was backed up for about a half mile. When we left the traffic waiting to get in was backed up for about four miles.

I'm not sure if this indicates belief in a young Earth or just the fact that dinosaurs liked getting presents, too.

After the dinosaurs died off, Noah gave his wife two of every animal for Christmas (and you thought there were a lot of animals in the twelve days of Christmas!).

These pandas apparently couldn't wait to start repopulating the Earth.

A while after the waters subsided, some of the animals attended the birth of this baby (I think it happened in Texas, since Texans think they are God's gift to the world).

Shortly after his birth, the baby realized that living in Texas is terribly hot and, in a fit of overreaction, decided to move to the North Pole.

I think that the baby grew up to be Santa Claus.

Santa's house is the cause of the Northern Lights.

Once a year, Santa visit's Lissa's Christmas village.

Santa also visits farms in Berks County.

Maybe the farm provides trees for Bill's side-job as a tree salesman.

If Bill is out of mistletoe, I know where you can get some.

Here is a picture of Mom in her younger days...

Maybe she was teaching about Christmas around the world.

Here is a pedal car for dad (it even says "Volunteer"!).

This is to prove we were actually there.

This one seems pretty self explanatory.

Christmas around the House

It was weeks before Christmas and outside our house, some lights and a wreath faced away from the south.

While inside the entryway there were some strings, of red and gold plastic on banisters and things.

The stockings were hung by the gas fireplace with care,

with one by the basement door in case Santa comes through there.

Some caterpillars gathered in the room without TV,

and last but not least, we put up a tree.

House Guest

Now that we have a guest room, we are able to have guests! (Technically, our first house guests were my friend Mary and her boyfriend over the summer. Unfortunately for them, they got to sleep on an air mattress in the basement.) Our friend Emily came to town last weekend for her annual visit (last year we visited her in Philadelphia when she came to town for a wedding). Here are a few pictures from her visit.

No visit to Reading is complete without a trip to the Pagoda!

Thankfully there was a guy hiking who could take our picture in front of picturesque downtown Reading.

From the Pagoda we visited Albright's campus, where Emily made friends with the school's patriarch, Jacob Albright. From the look on his face, I'm not sure he was entirely pleased with the attention.

Emily also made friends with some of the local wildlife, such as this Nittany Lion prowling the Penn State Berks campus before lunch.

Thanks for the visit, Emily. We're already planning to see you next November!

The Indiana Room

We have always planned to have a guest room in our house but after the countless hours of painting in the summer neither of us had much energy to work on it. The fact that our new bed left us with an extra one and a friend from Bloomington was planning a visit gave us the motivation we needed to follow through on our plans. While all of the redecorating took place in the past week, the room has been in the planning stages for much longer. Other than the artwork, almost everything else in the room was bought on sale over the past year or so. Here are some pictures of the newly renovated Indiana Room:

This is where you can sleep when you visit us.

Who needs overhead lights when you can have a floor lamp?

A nice view of the meeting between crimson and cream (or, in terms of Valspar paint colors, Posh Red and Cream in my Coffee)

Billie gave me this clock for Christmas years ago. It is glad to finally have a home.

Autumn in Suburbia

Most of the trees here went from green to brown without much color in between, apparently because of the dry summer. There are some trees, though, that had some color, such as this one in our front yard.


The neighbors' trees are similarly red:


While I appreciate the fall colors, I would also appreciate the leaves falling off of this tree before it gets too cold outside to rake them. Whenever they decide to give up, we have the benefit of being able to rake them into the street to be vacuumed up, which is a lot better than dragging them out to the backyard!

New Bed-ing

When Billie and I lived in Bloomington we used to say that when we had a house the first thing we were going to buy was a king-sized bed. It turns out that we were wrong. (Of course, even the furniture came after a washer, dryer, and refrigerator). Anyhow, in addition to our bed being a bit small (though Billie has gotten a lot better at not taking up 80% of it), none of our bedding matched our new purple, white, and grey color scheme, as you can see in the picture below:

Blue and purple go together in theory...

While we have been picking up king-sized bedding on sale for a while now, we were waiting for the right sale to pick up the bed itself. Last weekend was a semiannual sale at a local furniture store so we decided that the time had come. Our new bed was delivered this morning:

Our bedroom, now with coordinating bedding

Another challenge was finding a headboard that matched the dressers that Billie's parents gave her when she graduated from college. After a lot of searching and comparing a dresser door to cherry furniture that had too much red or not enough red we found this one, which is an excellent color match and is also in a similar style (Billie's dresser has vertical slats on the doors and across the top) as you can see below:

The view of our dressers (note the fall decorations on mine) from Billie's side of the bed.

Our new bed also means that we have another bedding-related issue to address: what do do with our old bed...

Rearranging the Furniture

Since we've been using hand-me-down couches since the beginning of time, Billie and I were both looking forward to having some new furniture. Getting some new furniture for the family room also allowed us to put a few things in the empty living room. Here are some pictures:

Our new recliner, couch, and pillows with the fireplace.

Another view of the recliner and couch.

The matching loveseat. The benefit of buying the same style of everything is that you don't have to worry about it matching!

Here is our old couch in its new living room location. Since we don't have new end tables, this room is still pretty bare feeling.

The old loveseat and chair in the living room. Some day we might put some more things on the walls!

We're back (though we never really left)

Given that our second to last post was on April 4, you may have been surprised by yesterday's Halloween post. If you aren't friends with us on Facebook then you may not know that we bought a house on April 23 and spent most of May, June, and July making some cosmetic changes.

At the end of August we went to Hawaii with Dad and Bonita, Lorien and Dave, and Jessica and Mike. The fall semester started at Albright the day after we got back and we've both been busy with work since then, though we did find some time to attend a few football games, clean up the yard, and rally to restore sanity, which we hope to share some pictures of in the coming weeks.

We are still making changes to the house. We recently bought some new furniture for the living room and we're hoping to have the guest room operational soon. Regardless, we've got lots of space so stop by if you're ever in the area (or looking for an excuse to be in the area - we're still an hour from Philadelphia, two hours from New York, and two and a half hours from Baltimore and Washington, D.C. I hear there are some casinos somewhere, too.)

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! Here is a picture of this year's pumpkins:

Here Comes the Sun

Surprisingly, the snow we received in February melted pretty quickly. The weather in March was pretty drab until the end of the month when the sun finally reappeared. The weather has been in the 60s and 70s for the past few days and today Billie and I went on an Easter walk around Flying Hills. Here are some pictures we took on our walk. Happy Easter!

Yep, this is where we live. We normally see this sign from the freeway on our way home.

Here is what appears to be my favorite view of the area around our apartment (previously documented here, here, here, and here).

At the bottom of the hill we approached the pond, where there were some people feeding the ducks.

We sat down on a bench for a few minutes to enjoy the weather, the company of the geese, and the budding willow trees.

Some ducks stopped by to visit but left soon after finding out that we didn't have any food for them. We also saw a brief duck fight.

Leaving the ducks, we continued down the road.

After walking through the apartments and houses we looped around and came back through the golf course.

Snowpocalypse Now Redux

Up until Saturday I had always thought of 6 inches as a lot of snow. Then we got over 18 inches of snow. We cleared off our cars, the snow plows came through, and by Sunday everything was pretty much back to normal. Normal lasted two days...

Classes at Albright were canceled last night before the first snowflake had fallen and Billie was told that she could work from home. Forecasts varied, with our area placed in the 6-12 inch band on some, the 12-18 inch band on others, and even the 14-20 inch band on one. Still, when we went to bed last night the snow hadn't started here and I thought that the forecasts may have been wrong. This morning when we got up there were about six inches of fresh snow on the ground, with forecasts saying that the worst was yet to come.

Although the snow isn't supposed to stop until sometime tonight we wanted to clear some of the snow off of our cars. When we did there were about 15 inches of fresh snow on them. By the time we had cleared them and shoveled around them a bit there was another inch and a half on top of them. Luckily (I suppose), a weather person in Philadelphia said that the chance of getting three snowfalls of this size in one year (remember, there was a big one in December that we missed because we were on our way to Michigan) is incredibly small and that no matter how old you are this is likely to be the only winter like this in your lifetime. Billie says that means we will always be able to tell stories about "our first winter in Reading." In the meantime, here are some pictures:

Here is the view of the apartment buildings. They plowed a path through the driveway about an hour before this picture was taken.

This is the view down the hill near our apartment (you can see what it normally looks like in the third picture of the "First Snowfall" post).

This is the view the other direction. Billie suggested that we go sledding on the road. Unfortunately, we don't have anything to use as sleds.

This is a view of the freeway through the trees from our apartment complex. You will notice that nobody is driving on it. That is because it is closed.