Makeovers, Extreme and Otherwise

Two years ago, as the paint on The Front Porch was still drying, I got hooked on the Extreme Makeover project that was happening not far from our house. Those who were hooked with me will remember that winter as a very very wet one, and the folks watching from behind the barricades were drenched every day while watching the crew slosh around in the mud. I supposed that once the hoopla was over and Ty and his gang had moved on to the next worthy cause, that we would not hear anything again. But anniversaries have a tendency to make us look back, and the AZ Republic did a little update on the Okvath family last week:

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition introduced the nation to Gilbert's Kassandra Okvath, building her family a palatial house and touching many hearts with her battle against cancer.

Two years later, the house is doing just fine. But the real story is Kassandra, now a 10-year-old cancer survivor who has been off heavy medication for about a year and is doing well.

Family members even avoid watching tapes of the television show because she was so sick.

"It's really hard for us to see how Kassandra used to be," mother Nichol Okvath said.

Kassandra has to return to the University Medical Center in Tucson about every three months for scans. But she is being homeschooled and is healthy enough to return to gymnastics. She plans to compete this fall.

You can read the rest of the article here; it sounds like young Kassandra has maintained her sweet spirit and is getting on with the business of growing up. And her dad is figuring out how to maintain the house (a concern that The Mister and I shared):

While the family was given the new house, they also inherited big expenses. Their new house is 5,300 square feet, about triple their former house.

Electric bills have run as high as $623 in summer months and the family is now on a managed payment plan, Okvath said. Taylor Woodrow Homes covered utility costs and property taxes for the first year. First American Title Co. is covering homeowners insurance for the first three years.

"We're keeping up pretty good," Bryan said. "You have to learn how to budget a lot more for the house."

We wish them well.

Another makeover that we recently checked out is The Grain Belt in downtown Gilbert, across the street from Joe's Real BBQ. Most people call it the old Gonzo's Place, or maybe the old Mahogany Run; it's had a few other occupants since then, and we have tried them all with the highest hopes. Those hopes were severely dampened, usually on our first visit, but we wanted to give them time to settle, and usually when they settled, they closed. Not so with this new owner.

The newspaper article describing the restaurant before opening was intriguing. The owners sounded so confident. I think it was well-placed. We found the food to be very tasty, the service very eager (sometimes a bit too eager; perhaps you will remember when Safeway re-opened its newly remodeled store on Val Vista and Elliot and the employees were annoyingly helpful; but they have figured out how to be helpful without overbearing and I think this staff will as well; besides, I'd rather be offered too much iced tea than languish forgotten with an empty glass.), and the prices reasonable.

Check it out.