Our roof is now done. Here is a picture of the side while the work was still in progress. There are six skylights total.

Here's a view of the front of the room.

Dave worked all summer on this and he did a great job as usual!

Happy Birthday Dad!

It sure was great to be able to get together with some old friends and family a couple of weekends ago. This was the first time in five years we have been together and I must say it felt good! Although Laurie and Jason were not in attendance I was glad that Annalie was able to spend some quality time with aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. I rarely myself get to sit down and have a meaningful conversation with someone but I got in several on this trip. One thing I really appreciated was to see many of my nieces and nephews that I have't seen for some time. I think it's safe to say that everyone that came genuinely had a great time! There were a lot of cameras flashing over the weekend and for good reason! Even little Luke was enjoying himself along with mom and dad. The relatively warm water and sandy beach was certainly a bonus. And let's not forget the crawdads too! What a wonderful place to have a party. My only hope is that we can do again sometime!

Azalea Festival Street Fair....and a second chance!

A couple of weeks ago I ventured down to Brookings with Annalie and Jason to take in the annual Azalea Festival. Laurie was working that day so I was single parenting as best I could. After the parade I decided to walk down the street to the street fair (against my better judgement) and roam around for awhile. Annalie of course was not interested in what people were selling. What interested her was a couple of carnival type attractions. I let her purchase a couple of tickets but it was so crowded and the lines were a bit long that I was forced to have to hang on to Jason the whole time. I'm sure he had no idea why he wasn't allowed to participate. Afterward I was sad and felt guilty for even taking him there in the first place. The next morning I told Laurie what happened and she suggested we all drive back down while it was still early. When we arrived the crowds of the previous day were all gone and the carnival rides weren't even up and running quite yet. We opted to peruse the rows of booths while we waited. This time we were first in line to take in these attractions so there was no waiting which Jason doesn't do very well anyway! The kind man doing the horse rides refused to take our $5.00 when we told him about Jason. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves but I will say that I was thankful to get another chance to let everyone enjoy themselves! This is my favorite picture. Remember to double click on it for a better look! The guy running this slide allowed me to climb up to the top so that I could assist Jason and get him heading back down in the right direction where Laurie was waiting to receive him. This worked flawlessly!

Garden Room Project--The beginning.

Last year we began dreaming and thinking of adding a garden room onto the front of our house. We wanted or needed to do this for several reasons. One reason was due to some questionable building practices there was some water damage and dry rot. Another reason was that we needed a room that could be a secured area from a boy who has autism. Imagine not being able to leave a paper document, book or electronic device on a table for fear it might get ripped up, go sailing across the room, or worse yet...eaten! It is our hope that this room will help to provide a remedy to this problem.

As you probably guessed there is a lot of work involved in any building project and we have chosen to do the bulk of the work ourselves. We simply don't have the resources to hire it done and having to do so would have made it impossible. Fortunately we have some good friends and family who have pitched in to help! My friend Wally Hyde donated a week of his time to help me build the concrete forms and install the rebar grid. What a blessing that was! I should also mention that we enjoyed nearly a month of beautiful weather during the month of December which allowed us to progress as far as we have.





Uncle Marv graciously gave up a weekend to come down and be in charge of the concrete pour. He made it look pretty easy but believe me...I know better! Shoving cement around is hard work and making it look pretty is even harder. That being said Marv did a great job!


Next on the agenda was to remove our bay window which had lost it's seal and was all cloudy on the inside. It made me a little nervous to expose such a large opening in our house but we just run the pellet stove more these days and are heating the neighborhood as well!

Laurie and I removed the bay window ourselves and were hoping not to break it in the process in order to avoid a mess. As it turned out it was kind of like chopping down a big tree. When it started to go it was way too heavy for us so we had no choice but to quickly get out of the way! I nearly put her in the hospital running over her!

This shows the hole we created which I believe is about 7'x 8'ft. I know that there are many places is the country where doing this in the winter would not be advised but thanks a mild winter, some sheeting material and tar paper we are keeping the weather outside for now.

With most of the destruction done it's finally time to do some construction. Our plans called for a 20' 6x10 beam to be installed in our house where the new room will attach. This thing weighs several hundred pounds so we had a boom truck deliver it from the lumber yard. Again I had to rely on some good neighbors to help with getting it into our house and out of the rain.


We hired the man who drew up the plans for us to come over and I helped him place the beam into it's final resting place on the wall. Boy was I glad when that was done especially since the roof didn't fall in during the process! Hopefully we will have some framing pictures soon posted. I'm learning a lot and looking forward to this next phase. Stay tuned!

Christmas Videos

Just when you thought Christmas was over for another year I'm finally getting some pictures posted. Guess I'll just let the pictures do most of the talking here. I will mention that none of us had our makeup on for these shots as you can probably guessed.
Make sure to check out the 2 videos at the end as well.
**One more thing! There are 2 other blogs posted this month as well. You'll have to click on "blog archive" to view them. Thanks for looking.














Jason's rendition of "These are a Few of My Favorite Things"

Annalie talks about the "Littlest Pet Shop" airplane set that she has been wanting for many months

Here comes Santa Claus 2011

We saw Santa Claus a few times this year. Here are two places he visited:


Our local bookstore invited Santa one week. Santa actually had a bag of presents that he distributed. We asked to be able to be seen first as it is so hard for Jason to wait. Jason managed to pull some of his beard hairs out and ripped Santa's hat off. Luckily his hat was not attached to his "hair" on his head or that would have been an unpleasant surprise for the other children...



A week later we went to the Christmas Lights at the Wildlife Safari in Winston (just outside of Roseburg). When Jason started pullng beard hairs again, Santa told us here that he had worked with special needs children. It was a big relief to us to know that he understood and didn't mind his beard being a little less full after we left. We also were the first to see him there that night (and Mrs. Santa!) so there was no line to wait in. At the Wildlife Safari they provide materials for kids to make gingerbread houses. A camera man who was taking footage to promote the program next year actually filmed Annalie making her gingerbread house. Perhaps next year you may see her on television!

We hope you had a wonderful holiday season.

New Hobby.........Geocaching!

Happy New Year!

Prologue:

As Christmas was drawing near, I was trying to come up with a combined present for Dave and the kids. I had seen a family friendly GPS that is specific for geocaching (cache locations are programmed into the device). I had also seen a book at our local bookstore on the hobby. I thought it would be fun to make up a "package" of different items for geocaching. So I bought a leak-proof ammo box (as I knew Dave would want to make and hide his own cache with treasures). I loaded it with: the mentioned book, a log book journal to record all the caches we hope to find, the GPS device, an update kit (as new caches are always being created), some "cache buddies" to attach to items that travel the world (we can follow their progress on the computer) and a starter kit to help make our own cache. What fun it was finding the different items and putting it all in the ammo box for a gift! Dave loves to be outdoors, Jason loves to ride in the jeep, and Annalie is always talking of finding treasures. Geocaching seemed to be a good hobby of choice for our family!

As we are Disney fans, we had also bought a "Duffy" bear for Jason. The story of Duffy is that Minnie Mouse made him for Mickey. Mickey took him on his travels around the world and then Minnie made more Duffy bears for all of their friends. There is a saying "Where will you take your Duffy?" So I thought it would be fun if Duffy came with Jason on our geocaching adventures. You will see him in the pictures.

I'll let Dave finish the rest of this blog...


***4X4 Trailhead Cache***


***Easy to Miss Cache***


***Pyramid Rock Cache***


***Pyramid Mine Cache***


***Flycatcher Springs Cache***

I found a file picture of the little gadget that makes all this possible and I must say it has been fun. It's amazing to me how many of these caches are hidden within a 30 mile radius of our home. I doubt we will live long enough to locate them all but we're sure to have fun trying! I never really needed an excuse to take a drive or a stroll through the woods but now I definitely have one. Thankfully this is something that our whole family can enjoy. Who doesn't like a good treaure hunt!