Anniversary Action

We celebrated our wedding anniversary the same way EVERYBODY does . . . we dug holes, poured cement, built a fence, painted rails, started a chicken coop, and got a little sunburn :) I like when the whole family works as a team, and we blazed through that project with amazing speed! Our neighbor's family is town visiting. I guess they observed our task's beginning, left to do some errands, and returned to find we'd packed it up for the day. The reaction, "#$@! they're done!" Ha! We bring out the best in people :)





Digging, measuring, cutting, power drilling, shoveling, watering, sawing, painting . . . not bad for a day's work! We just need to get a couple more pieces of "fencing" (a.k.a. our old deck railings. We are good re-purposers :) Seeing the boys work the hand saw still makes me a little nervous, but it's a good thing to know how to do, and they have just a few contact scrapes on their legs as a result, nothing serious.

Gabby is now practically an expert post hole digger . . . I remember the one we used growing up being much bigger than the one we bought at the construction store. It took me a few tries to remember the process of using the thing, but just like riding a bike, it all came back to me :)

The concrete Buck bought was great! You just pour it dry in the hole, add water to the top, let it soak, add some more concrete, then water, and 20 minutes later you have a cemented post! We had to move quickly, but that fence is solid!

We wrapped up our projects about 4:00, because Buck and I did want to try to squeeze in a date night for our anniversary. We decided to start out at Lowe's--oooh ahhh :) We didn't end up buying anything, but put together a pretty solid list for the next morning. Most importantly, we decided to scrap our plans for redoing the bathrooms with the pre-made countertops we'd purchased. A little further inspection revealed they were four inches deeper with a drop-down lip that would make drawer opening impossible. Instead . . . we're using ceramic floor tiles!! Oh, but wait, that update should be shared later.

We happened to receive a special anniversary card in the mail from a certain lady in CA who thought we might enjoy dinner at P.F. Chang's (she was right!). We have a pretty set ordering menu at the Chang's--if we went more often we could say, "The usual," and they'd know what to bring to the table. Well this time we ordered egg rolls and dumplings (no lettuce wraps, what?!) Buck got a sushi roll and I ordered pad Thai chicken. I wanted more vegetables, so we also ordered a side of their Szechuan asparagus . . . it was SOOO delicious. We stopped eating everything else and just mowed on that :)

Of course, we were stuffed, so we asked for a box to take our leftovers all mixed together with the leftovers of the asparagus . . . and left it on the table!!! Ughh. Brennen always gets our P.F. Chang's leftovers for lunch the next day, it's kind of a tradition. He was almost as bummed as I was that I forgot to grab that box!

We were just in such a hurry to get to Trader Joe's to pick up some yogurt and coconut that I guess it escaped my mind. :)

There's a coconut stick product that I like . . . we've discussed this before on the blog . . . when I run out, Buck wants to make sure I'm well stocked for the next time, so "we" (he) buy it in bulk. I laughed when I saw how many were on the shelf, because usually there's just a few. They must have known we were coming. I loaded five in the cart and was ready to go. Buck basically does an arm sweep and half the shelf's contents go cascading into the cart! He says, "We need at least 15." No, we do not :) I think we ended up with 11 . . . I'll consider it my bonus anniversary gift, since we decided this year I got carpet and he got a barn. So I got carpet and coconut and he . . . well, he still just got a barn ;)

The next day, we were up and taking measurements (after breakfast--Buck made breakfast both mornings, I like when he does that :) You can see in the photo below that we used our old Bessie Van as a truck once more to bring home a few tile, chicken coop, and garden fence supplies. It's amazing how returning some things gives you wiggle room to buy other things ;)

Our goal was to finish the gate . . . check! Buck built it from leftover deck wood and then applied the hinge kit we picked up. The kids scooped a little dirt to level out the place it swings open, and we have an official enclosure! Gabby helped me finish painting the new sections and then she moved on to help with the coop building.




I think this chicken coop will be big enough for 800 birds!! But Buck thinks maybe six :) Those ladies will be living in luxury with all the work that's going into this coop--I still don't quite see the finished product in my head, though Buck has tried to explain it to me several times. My brain has trouble comprehending such things!

Graysen switched teams and helped me start the chicken wire process. It basically requires some good leather gloves (thanks Grandpa Leonard!), a TON of staples, and some patience :) Graysen was my landscaping pin installer. He was so fast, I couldn't keep up with the stapler! And it turns out new wood is harder than old, rotted wood, so on a couple of sections I had to hammer in the staples--so that slowed me down a bit too. We got half of it wired and the other crew got started on the coop walls, but then we were hot and turning pink and decided to call it a day!

Unfortunately, we didn't call it early enough because Buck woke up with a nasty headache at 2 a.m. I napped on the couch to keep him company from 3ish to 5ish . . . I'm such good company when I'm asleep :) He was able to call in to work, so he could take his rescue medicine and rest the whole day. I'm sure a day off was a good thing.

This morning he said he slept all night and didn't have even a twinge of a headache. They needed him to fix an issue at work that they couldn't figure out yesterday, so he went in early today. Then he has two days off. It's been a crazy schedule lately! I'm not sure if we'll finish up outside tasks or focus on the bathrooms? Either way, we're getting stuff done as a team!

--Coop Dreams-- :)

Oh No, It's Real!

Sometimes I send the kids funny FB screenshots (since they do not have access to such). This one I sent awhile back because it made me giggle . . . well, when their art masterpiece from classes a couple years back was damaged in the rearranging fray--a unicorn wound up in the kitchen. Gabby added the note, lol :)

The Science of Summer

Well, not too much going on around here lately. Kind of getting back into the normal swing of things until we bust into the next round of renovations and improvements.

I've been doing touch-up paint along the stairs and in the hall. Brennen and I came up with an ingenious way of using saran wrap strips to hold back the carpet on the edges of the stairs to paint the white void behind them without painting the carpet itself. Everything looks much tidier and more finished with the hole fill goop not splattered across the walls. I forgot about a bit in the kitchen, so still need to head back in there for that to really be done.

We tinted the sliding glass door. I honestly think with all this heat protect on the windows, the a/c is working WAY better than it usually would be in 110 degree weather (and we've had what seems to be an ENDLESS amount of that, with next to no moisture). Anything that preserves the life of our basement beast is a-okay in my book :)

Let's see . . . yup, not much going on! The kids' microscope came today. We had an inexpensive one when they were younger, and this is very similar. G$ needs it for pretty  much every page of his new science curriculum (he wanted to start next year's early, because he's so excited :) Currently, we are growing shrimp in a measuring cup in the kitchen, we have scraped skin cells off our palms with a scalpel for observation, and Buck suggested looking at a fly wing--that will be cool!

Hope all is well with all of you!

Gym-iny Crickets!

Yesterday we got our home gym floored and set up! It's currently too hot to use it, but we'll get the a/c unit up and kicking eventually :) This took most of the morning and after that, we chilled. Buck's back was not feeling grand and his meds ran out. He's got another round now, and he can "rest" at work for the next nine days straight (at least no heavy lifting).

So nice that they have a designated space for their karate gear and form practice!

That little strip of carpet is significantly less than the 10 x 10 foot piece we asked to keep from the boys' room, but it's better then nothing :)

Kids in motion, dig it!

Today, we had a full day of normal . . . summer school (day 6!), guitar and piano, karate after that, and then art and ASL lessons, whew!! Buck brought home groceries, so we can eat again, hee hee :) It was a pbj and cereal kind of supper for the Crew this evening. That's okay every once in awhile though, right?

Garage Band

This band of garage cleaners totally rock!! Buck arrived home from his overnighter with a nasty migraine. We were at church, but returned home to try to be quiet :) We decided getting a start on the garage move to the shed would be a good use of our time. The very first task--sweep up the carpet staples, dog food, dirt, and bugs covering the cement floor. What we were about to accomplish required sitting space for the sorting people, and sliding space for the tubs.

You can see how packed the garage currently is (was) . . . it doesn't normally look quite this bad, but it's been the catch-all throughout this process. Normally, the van would be in there taking up that empty space, but it was out baking in the sun to give us room :)

To give you an idea of the task--every single one of those tubs on the shelf, every single one of those tubs on the floor had to be gone through . . . again . . . In the evening, Buck and I went through files. We have stuff from clear back when the kids were born--receipts, bank books, insurance paperwork. After HOURS of sorting (and discovering tons of fun things that we'll keep holding on to--cards, poems, pictures, mementos), we have a burn box of paperwork more than a foot high! The whole house is starting to feel lighter . . . ahhhhhh!!

This guy, of course, needed to find other ways to amuse himself :)

All of this . . . all of this is SCHOOL!!! Oh my goodness, loads and loads of school! Easily a third of everything in the garage . . . possibly more than the seasonal clothing storage . . . and pretty close to the "tubs of memories" storage (unless this number includes the *tubs of children's toys that I'm not ready to give up yet, so bring your babies and small children so I have a reason to keep keeping my kids' baby toys* :). We did some major cleaning out! Of all of those things (even the toys and books, for real). And, I eliminated all the cardboard storage from school; I even cleaned out a diaper box we've been using for storage--it's been a LOOOONG time since we had anybody in diapers. Our trash can was overflowing . . . it was emptied this morning and full again by noon! That does not bode well for the week of "normal" trash that we'll be trying to stuff in there til next Monday :/

My big idea of the day was to give each of the kids a tub of their very own. So far, I've just been mixing all their schoolwork together as I have space. This method worked really well, because they went through everything. They tossed art work that they aren't that jazzed about anymore (trust me, there's tons, they won't miss it!), old workbooks, notebooks filled with scribbles, and eventually filled or partially filled their very own tubs with school binders and keepsakes. All of this was organized in the garage for removal to the barn on the hill. It took us all day just to go through and organize! Buck and I were still working on it at almost midnight and then again today . . .

Buck tried hauling tubs up the hill in a variety of ways. He even went somewhere to get the wheel on his dolly (dollie?) fixed, so that contraption could be of use. But in the end, with his back starting to hurt again, we loaded old Bessie and drove her up the hill (multiple times :) The kids were very entertained to see their parents off-roading up the mini mountain of our yard. I'll admit, it actually was kind of fun ;) Now the barn is filled . . . but not to bursting! There's still room to move around in there, and Buck plans to add some organizational items he brought up from the garage (like garden implement racks, etc.). It was a hot, exhausting task (and one tick had to be removed from Brennen's leg), but we worked our tails off and got it done!!

This was another effort to clear out the garage . . . the closet doors are back on the hinges! We took them off when the kids were younger because they were unnecessary. As much as the kids were in and out of the closets, it just made sense to leave them open. It also made their rooms feel bigger, especially the girls' with that giant bed. You had to shimmy around the stairs with one closet door open and the other closed, work your way into the gap, open the other door to access whatever it was you braved the journey for in the first place, and then reverse the process to get out again!

Now the only shimmying necessary, is in and out of my poor finger's bandaid. I full on squished it trying to pop those doors back on :/

One of the bonuses of going through garage stuff . . . we find all these things we've saved for "someday." Well, someday is here! Gabby got three pairs of my CA jeans and Caelan snagged a dress I wore in college (pretty much all my clothes have gone to the girls in the past six months). The boys became the proud owners of my geode and a piece of petrified wood my mom gave me (G$'s eyes got huge when he saw these additions to his collection, especially after he got a whole sack of polished rocks from his dad's bonsai tree set-up, which are actually the only things left from that set-up :) But BY FAR, the best discovery of the day . . . this old Star Wars light sabre battle toy. They played it for HOURS, I'm not even kidding! HOURS yesterday and today they put batteries in it, lol! They didn't even know it made sounds and flashed lights. So, it got plenty more play time today :)

So, here's a peek at the work we accomplished! The fridge, freezer, and tools are relocated. All the tubs on the left are Christmas items that USED to be stored in my laundry room. The tubs on the right are things we thought might melt in a 110 degree shed. We still have a few more things to shift around before we can set up the home gym, but this was a HUGE accomplishment for the day!

BUT . . . my absolute light bulb moment, and the idea I am BY FAR the most excited about for today . . . involves the piggies. Graysen built Oreo and Nutterbutter this nice new cardboard house (because they are getting huge and couldn't fit in the paper pigloo he made before). I decided to go a step further . . .

Can you see the piggies' new home?!! With all that Christmas gear cleared out, I was able to open an entire shelf in the laundry room. That shelf happens to fit the guinea pig enclosure perfectly! Here's why this is so exciting to me . . . 1. We have the floor space back; for months either the hedgehog or the pigs have claimed the space next to the sink clear out onto the stripes of the carpet. This isn't a huge room, but it was a huge cage to maneuver around for hand washing, laundry, etc. Look at that open floor space now! 2. They are very skittish creatures, so their sudden movements when someone walks into the room also makes the person walking into the room very skittish :) 3. They somehow manage to get fodder EVERYWHERE--sometimes from kicking it out when they're *running from danger* or dropping it when the kids get them out to hold 100x a day (poor hedgehog), or from cage cleanings, etc. (there are a lot of etc.'s in this story :) The challenge is . . . my vacuum could practically suck the tile off the floor, so that poor rug right there is getting eaten alive, sucked into the roller, and starting to get thread runs . . . because I vacuum this space about 5x per day. No joke. I'm hoping that with the piggies over on the shelf, we'll all be much happier. Hooray for that stroke of brilliance!! :)

Well, that about sums it up. This afternoon Buck hung pictures for me in the hallway, and after some touch-up paint in the bedroom, finished putting up pictures in there too. He tells me tomorrow he's going to try to finish our bathroom project. However, I think we may need a day off. It's his last day off of this crazy cool, long stretch, so we should probably find something fun to do that doesn't involve hurt backs and bleeding fingers, bruises and ticks, I mean those things are all fun and all, but . . . ;) We'll see what tomorrow brings!

Sitting Pretty

And pretty seating :) Yesterday's main project was trying to get our dining surface options back on track. We've been kind of scattered all over the kitchen--on the floor, on the counters, on stools--for meals the last several days. Buck got the final coats on the table, then the kids helped scrub and lightly sand the chairs.

I'm pretty sure these are the same chairs Grandma J surprised us with in our CA kitchen. We had a giant hand-me-down table at the time, but no where to sit. Since we've never had a blonde-wood table, I've long considered painting the blonde-wood chairs (as I mentioned recently). Well, it is done now, and I'm thinking they look pretty cute out there on the lawn like a little flock of birds, or a herd of chairs, or a squash of seals (I made that one up :)









Other activities of the day included going to the library (it had been months; I am not a fan of this particular library and I won't take the kids unless Buck is with me), trying a different hardware store for a sliding glass door handle solution, and picking up a few odds and ends from . . . cover your ears . . . (Walmart) . . . okay, I said it ;)

That was about it. Buck had to work overnight a couple hours from here, so he tried to nap while the kids watched a movie they had picked out at the library. I worked on reading books on Babylon for a story the girls are writing, and the laundry got done. A fairly low key day :)

Summer Reading

When the kids aren't busy helping with household projects or practicing their instruments, they are doing this . . . so many books are flying off of our shelves. It's hard to keep up, but I love it! :)

God Paid Our Water Bill!

Ha :) I shall explain. I was looking at our water bill just now, and it had the usual charges on it. Each bill is combined into two months of water usage. Mine said, "Balance due: $0." Hmm, that's weird. Pretty sure we used water in the past two months. So I went to my *bill pay,* compared the three paper bills we've gotten this year, and they are all accounted for . . . however, there is a $96 credit on the last round's bill that I guess I missed. I didn't have a record of paying $96 dollars anywhere. What is going on?

Well, next to the credit it says, "Deposit Applied." What deposit? I went searching on the water website, and found the user agreement. Apparently four years ago, we agreed to give them a deposit to give us water. Good exchange, in my book! They added a 5% interest per year to whatever that deposit amount was . . . I don't even remember it at this point. We established ourselves as reliable customers over the years, and I guess at the end of that--they paid us back! Well, that happened last month, but I had no idea it happened, so I paid anyway. That means this month I once again have a credit! Woohoo! God paid the water bill :)

In other house happenings . . . the weather was pleasant this morning, so we decided to paint the shed! It went super fast, until we realized we were a few paint brushes short of a crowd. The rolling went quickly--we had plenty of those. The trim painting, whew, seemed to take forever perched at the top of a ladder. Gabby stuck with me all morning, while Buck went in to make lunch. It is not perfect, but it is a shed. A barn. A storage space. And a future chicken coop/garden/berry bush supporter :) And it looks super cute painted in its matching house and deck colors up there on the hill!

I'll post pictures once we get the swingset painted to match. So much painting!

Other than that, we ran over to the hardware store to get a few odds and ends (with our rebates; earned some more too ;). Among these items--a portable air conditioning unit for the garage workout room. This presented a couple of mental challenges, since it needs to be vented . . . we don't have any windows or doors in our garage . . . we thought about cutting a hole in the wall, but the walls are solid cement. So . . . we're going to improvise and expect awesomeness :) No holes--just good old A-family ingenuity, hee hee :)

Sunrise, Sunset

We were up at sunrise (okay, shortly after :) and we worked til well past sunset. First thing in the morning our shed crew arrived . . . one guy . . . to build a shed . . . by himself. I have strongly underestimated the work force they would be sending us to complete our projects. Wow!

The guy drove here from a southern state, took one look at our hill, and just about drove back to where he came from :) We saw him taking pictures of the slope and commenting on our slanting groundspace to whomever he called to share his concerns.

Overall, he was a nice guy, so when the kids asked if they could help him carry stuff up the hill, we agreed. They toted lumber, tools, and whatever else needed hauled up the hill. They easily saved the ONE guy, who had to move an entire shed off of his trailer and up our hill and turn it into a barn, an hour of work time. This meant he was able to finish up and head out at a reasonable hour. It was pretty toasty out, and wet, so I'm sure he was more than happy to head to his hotel and get some clean clothes in the air-conditioning.

Not only a picture of the kids helping the barn builder, but also a glimpse at the decorative deck work Buck and the boys did a week or two ago :)