08.26.08
Posted in thoughts at 6:06 pm by Melissa
bbcvcccccccgbbbggggggggggggggggggvgfguuo9ujt6ertgfdffvvcvvvvvvvvgcdx
That was Josiah’s addition to this blog post.
To continue the story still (I’m determined to get caught up!) we finished sheeting the roof and then started shingling. Once again we had amazing helpers including Harold, Lynn, Emma, Walt, Joe, Karl and Avyn.
This is the hole we used to climb up onto the roof. We also used it as a place to tie into with our safety harnesses.
This was one of the moments when we were afraid of a downpour, but it went by us to the north and we were happy!
Lynn and Emma were great at helping with the food, babysitting, shingling, encouraging, and anything else that needed to get done. They were awesome!
As soon as the guys had one side sheeted the girls started with the shingles. I was quite excited to buy a shingling nailer (my first power tool purchase) and to be able to use it. I can’t imagine why anyone would use a hammer! I am not a pioneer!
After a long day shingling Joe and Robert decided to take advantage of the rappelling gear they had on and rappelled off the roof. Our neighbours must really think we’re crazy!
Here is Joe’s first time rappelling.
And Robert’s turn.
As most projects go, we ran out of shingles before we ran out of roof. This is the second delivery.
We finished shingling at about 11:00 on a Tuesday night and watched the northern lights from on top of the roof. They were amazing! If we weren’t so exhausted they would have been even better! We were very glad to be done that stage and were feeling really good when there was a downpour the next day.
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08.25.08
Posted in thoughts at 10:00 pm by Melissa
A few days later, we stood up the roof trusses.
It was harder than expected but we had lots of good help.
Mom doesn’t like this picture. (My 77 year old father climbing around in the truss way off the ground)
Most of the trusses went up smoothly.
Everybody works around here.
We couldn’t finish in one day (it took about a week to get the trusses all up and sheeted) so we tarped a couple times and just mopped the floor a couple times. I think it rained three or four times while the roof was off but there was no damage as the rains were all small.
Fascia boards went on well and we wore harnesses (rappelling gear Robert brought back from his Acappella days) when we were near the edge.
Loren, one of Robert’s friends from BNI even came one day to help.
Here’s Robert living on the edge with a skilsaw.
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Posted in thoughts at 9:33 pm by Melissa
So to continue the story of the house I started a couple months ago….
After our wonderful volunteer work crew helped us to take the roof off the house we still had work to do. Our dads both stayed to help us to sheet the floor and get ready for the crane to come place the walls.
Thanks to Rob Wallace who also came to our rescue! Here is the floor partly sheeted.
Here is Robert sticking his head up through my kitchen ceiling while I prayed for no rain!
The crane came and here is a picture of the first lift. A bit stressful as we weren’t quite sure how everything would work. We had a small crew of skilled guys including our dads, Rob, Dave, and Joe.
Robert had all the upstairs walls framed on the front lawn and ready to lift.
Here’s the crane.
Dad and Dave getting the vapour barrier ready.
We had all the upstairs drywall delivered the same day so the crane could put it upstairs for us to save us many painful trips.
The first wall in place! Scary!
Here is putting the east wall in place. The big window on the left is the master bedroom and the small window will be in the family room at the top of the stairs.
The south wall.
Here is the front of the house. The two small windows are in one kid bedroom and the other window is in the other kid bedroom.
Here is the view the neighbours across the street had of our house. I think we should have sold tickets, lawn chairs, and lemonade to pay for the project!
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Posted in thoughts at 3:24 pm by Melissa
Josiah is still the sweetest little boy the world. He is very big now and likes to call himself “big boy”. He’s starting to put together a few words at a time in a sentence (like yelling “Go Riders” every time he heard the crowd cheer for the Olympics. He loves his cousin Linaya, but sometimes treats her more like a sister and fights over toys. He runs everywhere he goes, and is starting to get better at it. It takes practice and his record so far is 5 fat lips from crashing in 8 days. He has to find out everything the hard way.
I am very thankful for my strong healthy boy. After my post about him going to the hospital with seizures he had two more about 3 weeks later. That made 4 in a month so they did a lot more tests and kept him in the hospital for a few days. They had to rule out things like meningitis and epilepsy with blood tests, nasal swabs, a lumbar puncture and an EEG of his brain. He was a little grouchy at the IV during that stay, but otherwise did quite well. The results we got were the best possible scenario. They concluded the same thing as they did during the first episode. He has febrile seizures. The pediatric neurologist was a very nice guy who visited us and reassured us a lot. He said that the seizures don’t hurt Josiah or cause any long term effects and that he will grow out of them sometime around age 3-5 years. It was very nice to be able to rule out so many serious problems and to know he’ll grow out of this. Thanks to everyone for your prayers and support during that stressful time.
Josiah has only had one seizure since then and it was definitely with a fever. We follow up with the neurologist at the end of September. The only problem with the last seizure was that it happened a few hours before he was booked for one more little tear duct surgery so that was cancelled. They hope to re-schedule us soon.
Josiah had surgery on both tear ducts just before he turned one. They put him under general anesthetic and fed a tiny tube down each tear duct to open them up. His right eye has been perfect ever since, but his left tear duct is still blocked and he gets frequent eye infections. The next procedure they are planning is to put a tube through the tear duct and leave it there for a few months. This has the best chance of keeping it open. Hopefully they can do that soon and I’ll quit annoying Josiah by rubbing his eye all the time.
The last update for our family is that we are expecting a baby sometime around Feb 11. I am now 16 weeks pregnant which means I’ve been throwing up almost every day for the last 11 weeks. A few weeks ago my doctor decided to take me off work so I am home a lot now and can’t get much done during the day without making myself sick. This week seems a little better so I am hopeful that maybe I’ll have a life again someday! I had an early ultrasound and everything looked good. As long as the baby is healthy I can recover later.
We have had a busy summer working on the house, camping with my family, playing with little friends in Saskatoon, and visiting with Uncle Stephen for a week. I’ll try to add pics of some of those adventures later.
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Posted in thoughts at 2:56 pm by Melissa
I will try to do a catch up blog, but how well I do depends on how long Josiah and Linaya decide to nap. It is not that we have had such a boring life that I have nothing to blog, but that life has been so overwhelming lately that I don’t know where to start. Due to popular demand I’ll start with pictures of the house. The story does not end with the roof coming off (or we would have got very wet).
As of today we have the upstairs walls up, roof in place, shingled, put windows in, and have almost completed the retrofit (superinsulating) the rest of the house down to the footings of the house.
Okay. I can’t figure out how to put pictures in right now, so I’m going to post this anyway, type some more, and get pictures up when Robert has time to help me.
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