Garage

The "big boys" are pouring our garage floor. I told Mike that I was going to put my handprint in the cement. No matter how much I tried to sway him, he wanted nothing to do with it. I said, that's fine, but I'm going to do it.
They have a fancy new tool to smooth the concrete. It looks like work to me.

THat's a l - o - n - g handle. Where are Isaac and Mark when we needed them? Mike was not allowed to let his dogs out.

It's a little tough to park in my garage, but then it doesn't keep the rain out anyway.

Here it is.

I saved the best for last. This is what I think is funny. Mike went out to watch me blotch up the perfect concrete job. This is what he saw on my side of the garage.

Before I knew it, this was on his side of the garage. Guess I scared him. I still laugh about it.

Internet at last

I now have internet at home. However we have a problem. Before my wireless internet usually didn't work unless I was connected to the modem. Now my internet only works wireless (at least that's they tell me). One of those engineer dudes is supposed to come check things out and decide how they are going to get the line from across the street to my house.

I have a landline also and TV. Wow!

The promised pictures

I'm finally posting some pictures. I'm not sure how exciting they are. I hope you aren't too disappointed.

Molly is holding the vacuum so Lance can vacuum above my cupboards. They now have plants up there. Guess I will have to take some pictures. I was going to get up there but Lance didn't want to spend his trip visiting me in the hospital.

This is our 1st nail. Actually Mike used spikes. We will always have to have pictures in these places. That's ok with me. I hate deciding where to arrange pictures. And you get a glimpse at my new couch. You will have to wait to see the whole thing. Suspense!

Here they are pouring the footings for the garage.And this is several days later doing the stem walls.

This is what my garage looks like right now. Pretty fancy.

Another view of the garage. If you notice by the power pole is my power box. It had to get moved from right in front of my house to over there out of the way.

This is my phone line. I think that explains why I don't have phone service in my house.

I made arrangements with the phone company to put the line in for me and to wire my house. Of course this is 2 different jobs for 2 different people to do. The guy comes to do the line outside and asks me where it will go under the house. I tell him that I don't know, that's why I have people from the phone company come do that. He explains to me that he doesn't do that and I will have to pay an electrician to do that. I told him that I had an appt with his company to do it Tues. He says "OH, I guess I should talk to someone and see what is going on". I said, No kiddin.

I am scheduled to have dish tv hooked up to my house on Wed. Right now it is still hooked up to the camper. Imagine that.........indoor tv and phone with internet!!!

We have 3 bedrooms. One is the master bedroom. Another is the guest bedroom with bunk beds and a double bed and a closet full of boxes. The other bedroom is the "box" room. It is completely full of boxes. I have not even sorted through them at all. I'm hoping to get to them maybe this week and just sort them a bit and see what I have. I do have my necessities, but there are some bowls and lids that have not been located yet. And other things that I haven't missed yet.

All in all, things are going very well. I had some boys from the ward till my garden yesterday so I'm hoping to get it planted in the next couple of days. I expect 1 more freeze. I will use walls of water and hope the other plants are still under ground until after the frost.

I hope everyone is well and is getting ready for lots of summer fun.

Checking in

Today's project was to untangle to cords to my blinds in the utility room and work on organizing my "box" room. I started this project a couple of nights ago but failed. Today I was looking for the right equipment. My tool "junk" drawer is still mostly empty and of no help. So I started looking through all my drawers. I found the perfect tool. The little corn cob holders with the spikes on the end. They were just the right size to wiggle in there. One worked so well that I got more and ended up with 3 in there at the same time. Yes, you would have been quite entertained by the whole thing. I did prevail. The cords are untangled. I almost gave up several times, but I couldn't let a couple of knotted up cords get the best of me.



Then the power co. wanted money to move my power line so it wasn't under my garage. I talked to the phone company about moving their line also and maybe putting phone and internet in my house. They say I should have phone Tues. Imagine that internet at home. How fun would that be! And I still have my dish TV in the camper. I arranged to have it moved Wed. (that only took 3 phone calls and 1/2 hr. And..........I got a new cell phone. I feel that I was a busy girl.



Unfortunately everything took longer than expected and I have a visiting teaching appt in 25 min so no pictures today. But I promise they are coming. I plan to even take some more tonight.

What is Grandma doing?

I had Isaac for 2 weeks. He was a great help (or something like that). He certainly was a lot of fun. Then mean people came and took him away on Saturday. Sunday afternoon I came home from church and took a nice long nap. Monday I took another nap. Tues morning I woke up after 11 hrs of sleep. I was still very drowsy, but I think I finally got mostly caught up on my sleep. Isaac wakes up between 6-6:30 every morning. I know I am too old for this toddler stage. Besides that; last time I saw Isaac he was a nice, sweet little guy. Now he has turned into a naughty little 2 yr old. But he learned about ice cream cones and that kept him busy and out of trouble for a few minutes. Mark was a lot of fun too. I got to spend some time with him alone and he didn't scream for the entire time that mom was gone. In fact he did pretty good. He likes ice cream too.

I got a quick reminder course on life with toddlers. Moms can't get anything done. It takes one adult per child and then there are meals to cook and cleaning to do etc. Good job you moms and dads with a bunch of little ones under foot.
No pictures today. Sorry. But I do have an arsenal of pictures for the future. They have been threatening to have my phone line in this week. Wouldn't that be nice!

They poured my footings and stem walls for the garage. Now we need to move the phone and power lines and then get some walls up and maybe a roof also.

My storage unit is empty. That means that everything I own is now at my house but that does not mean that I can find anything. I am getting better.

The dog pen got eliminated with the new house. Mike has been working hard to get a new dog pen built. I am even painting it. The dawgs will think they are pretty uptown. (Maybe they can think that they got a new house with their move also. My garden is next on the list. I hope to get someone to till it this week so I can do some planting the first of next week.

We need to get working on Dad's birthday party. I will be putting more effort into that. I do need someone to type up an invitation to post at the temple and to send out to some family. Any volunteers? The temple will be closed most of July so we need to have it ready to be posted by the middle of June.

Y'All come. This is an open invitation for anyone to come visit us and help ding up a wall or make a spot on the new carpet.

Reinforcements have arrived

I didn't do a very good job of putting these pictures in order but we will do a little jumping around.

Isaac's family came to join him yesterday. They were all very excited. Isaac gave the family a house tour. The garden tub was a rest point.

Lance tried the tub out later in the evening. Molly came in asking for a pair of dry pants for her. She was trying to be an innocent by-stander but Lance was able to splash the whole bathroom also. I warned him to have enough water in there, but he was playing with the jets. (I guess the bathroom floor gets mopped everytime someone uses the tub.)


My helpers were unpacking for me. The Kool-Aid slowed them down. It was very entertaining for them.


Mark has a private bath tub.

Isaac helped decorate Grandpa's b-day cake. Notice the chocolate face. (some of the Oreos were unfit for Grandpa's cake.)

Isaac helping Grandpa assemble his bed.
Isaaac helping to unload the storage unit.

Grandma's new cupboards are lots of fun.

Lance decided to start digging the garage for me. I think he did OK for a morning's work. I will keep you posted on his progress.

So the summary goes like this. We are doing great. Molly helped me get a bunch of stuff put in my kitchen cupboards. We have almost everything out of the storage unit. Mike has worked very hard to get things done. We are really appreciating our reinforcements. And they started work on the garage. Another month of construction, then hopefully I can get back to life as normal (whatever that is). Oh and it was amazing how much quieter the back hoe is when I'm in my house as opposed to the camper.

I'm just dropping in to give a quick "Hi"

I wrote my post and then added the pictures and don't have the time or patience to mess with trying to move the pictures so they can be where they want and I will give a quick commentary. They are most recent to oldest. The pictures of Mark are in Reno. NO he is not with us. Too scary. (I left both boys home asleep. I am at the church enjoying a little quiet time.)

This is my new dining room furniture with lots of boxes to unload. There are a few in the corner that are empty but I need them to bring in stuff fromt he shed.

My living room furniture.

Our bedroom set. Notice where Isaac's bed is! What Isaac wants Isaac gets.

This is what happens when Grandma and Grandpa get too close to Mark.

Bribery doesn't even work. I gave him treats and he still doesn't like me. That's why he stayed home with mom.

This is what Mark doesn't to people he doesn't like. I am keeping my distance from him.

Aren't they cute.

I never guessed that I would have phone and internet in the camper but not in my house. And I am starting to miss them both. The internet is obvious. I have lost contact with many people. I went over on my cell phone minutes with a week left before I got new minutes.

Here are a couple of posts that I would have done.

Nothing like indoor plumbing (Monday May, 4)

We got home from Reno a week ago Sat after nine PM. And we had a sleepy Isaac. We were disappointed to not have water in the house, but decided it was still better to sleep in there than in the camper with Isaac. So we hauled in our bed pads and blankets.

Church isn't until 11 but even though Isaac was up late, he still woke up by 6:30. He was so tired in church. He wouldn't fall asleep, but he spend most of Sacrament Mtg laying on the floor. He fell asleep on the way home from church.

We had power and gas in the house and it was all finished exept for turning on the water and a little trim and touch up work. Jasper had worked on it Fri and Sat and hoped to have it finished. Obviously he didn't quite get done. He came back Mon and turned on our water and finished everything up. The water hadn't been on much more than 1/2 hr when Isaac announced that he needed to go pee pee. Jasper gave the OK on the toilet so Isaac was the first to initiate my new toilet. Since then he has had much practice. There was still air in the line so the toilet was noisy when we flushed it. It scared Isaac enough that he didn't dare flush the toilet for several days.

I knew I would have quite a bit of cleaning up to do but I expected them to do a little more. I had to vacuum all the carpets. They had lots of carpet "fuzz" from the carpet layer. Each room filled up the canister in the vacuum. The contertops looked like a wood shop. I went through lots of 409 and paper towels. And then the linoleum. We didn't dare walk across it w/o shoes. I hate to say that it took a couple of days to get the floors mopped. I just couldn't do everything at once and it sure was nice to have that mess gone.

Wed May 6 Home is where the TPN is

I moved all my TPN supplies into the house Tues. I'm not home w/o them. Then late Wed afternoon Isaac and I went to the shed to get my TPN. We decided that we could bring the TPN fridge into the house. It didn't fit in the trunk as well as I would have liked it to. (I couldn't get Mike's truck because Isaac's car seat is in the car.) I balanced the fridge the best I could. I kept telling myself that I was going to be upset when the fridge falls out and breaks. I couldn't find any rope to tie it in. It wouldn't have been so bad, but I had quite an incline to go up to get from the shed to the house. I was very careful to not spin out and be so smooth and I am so proud to say that the fridge made it safely. It was so nice to have ALL my supplies home. It is my security.

I had to vacuum all the drawers and cabinets to get the sawdust out. Then I wiped all of them down. And Fri morning I finally had all the drawers and cupboards ready for occupancy. Isaac and I were tired and tired of cleaning so we played. We had to do some shopping and went to lunch. Then after nap we went to the library. Grandma got some new books and videos. After almost a week, the other ones were getting a bit old.

Isaac and I have had a great time together. Lance and Molly may not let him stay with us again so we will have to make the most of it while we have him. A couple of nights ago, Isaac was having a hard time going to sleep and Mike and I were both exhausted. Mike brought Isaac's bed in by him and they went to sleep. The next day, Isaac's bed got moved back to his room. Well during the night last night, Isaac woke up and told me that he wanted his bed by Grandpa's bed. He is a stubborn 2 yr old and I was a tired old Grandma. Would you like to guess where Isaac slept? I haven't asked him yet where he plans to sleep tonight.

I have been so busy I haven't even taken many pictures. You haven't missed out on much.

I guess I'd better clarify what is going on with my phone. The phone line got cut after my home was on the lot when they were digging to put in power to it. I have to move the power and phone lines before we can put in the garage. We are anxiously awaiting the building permit for the garage and then will procede with moving the lines and getting me phone again. Hopefully it will happen soon.

I talk to you when I talk to you.

Another Post by Proxy

Grandma is having so much fun spoiling Isaac that she can't make any posts. He got to stay up late a couple of times, and he gets to take baths in big tub.

The house is all cleaned up and ready to be moved into, the jets work really good in the master tub (Grandma learned what happens when you don't put quite enough water in the tub before you turn the jets on. You get bubbles all over the bathroom and you get to mop the floor again.) and the dishwasher even works.

Grandpa doesn't get days off until Saturday, so they will start moving on Monday. Marky, Lance and Molly are going over on Tuesday to retrieve the little monster, I mean Monkey, and help Grandma move in. Oh, the washer and drier got moved in already and are being put to the test. Grandma has done lots of laundry this week to make up for the last 40 days.

Isaac hasn't got to have much fun this week since Grandma has been busy cleaning the new house, so tomorrow is official Grandma and Isaac day. No more working and cleaning, only playing and having fun. They get make Grandpa a b-day cake. Shhh!!! Don't tell Grandpa!

Furniture

Our trip to Reno was 2-fold. We had to deliver our old dining room set to Lance and Molly and we wanted to shop for a replacement for it. RC Willey had a dining room set and living room set that we liked. They will be shipped to us on the 14th. So Monday we can move Mike's Lazy Boy and my washer and drier (Yeah!!) and I will buy a couple of bar stools. Then 1 1/2 weeks later our furniture will be delivered. That's ok. Mike says that the best part is that someone else will have to move it in. Just for the record for any of you who don't know. Our dining room set was about 28 years old and our sofa was about 25 years old. I don't think we are going crazy with our purchases. We are keeping our old beds and pillows. Just updating a few well worn antiques.

YAY

Isaac said to write. Yay. It is move in time!!!!!!!! I have official permission to sleep in MY house tonight. But we are in Reno. We were going home today. We are discussing whether or not Isaac is going home with us today. It would be a done deal if we would take Mark also. But that isn't going to happen until he decides that he likes us even just a little bit.

I'm leery of my internet at home so be prepared if you don't hear from me for a few days.

Jami and I have a competion of each of us going to our homes Monday. I guess I win if sleeping on the floor with little more than a roll of toilet paper in the house. I'm hoping she gets home before my first load of stuff to the house.