09.22.08
Posted in thoughts at 12:34 pm by Melissa
Yesterday we enjoyed a beautiful fall day in the park. It was nice and warm, the leaves were changing colors, and we had a picnic. We decided to try some family pictures and the kids were mostly agreeable!
Here is Patience being very cute on the picnic blanket.
Josiah and Linaya running in circles.
Josiah found a big rock and Linaya stole it from him. I think her look makes it very clear about what she thinks of him wanting it back!
Linaya.
My turn!!!
Josiah thinking he’s cute!
Xavier was being a nice big cousin and helping me keep track of Josiah.
Here is Rob, Diane, Xavier, Niles, and Patience. Xavier was still being very big and arranged his family so they could have a nice picture.
We tried a second spot so they wouldn’t have to look into the sun.
Josiah was not in the mood to have his picture taken. Next time we’ll have to get a bigger nap first! The only way he was happy was jumping up and down so this is an action shot.
Here he is almost standing still.
My big boy walking up and down the steps. I’m always amazed at how quickly he figures things out!
Linaya performed well for the camera! What a sweetie!
Xavier and Niles are so big now that they climbed up a tree for me to take their picture! They were very proud of themselves!
After many attempts at trying to get Di’s kids all in one picture we finally did it by trapping them in a tree! No babies were harmed taking this picture. Diane had the camera and I was below Patience just out of the shot. I love this one!
They also performed a very cute kid pile!
Trying to get smiles out of the boys was very tricky. Here is a cute one of Niles.
And Xavier finally smiled and showed off his missing teeth!
A nice pic of Di and Rob.
That was a lot of pictures to post, but very difficult to cut down from the couple hundred we took! I’ll get back to the house with the next post!
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09.12.08
Posted in thoughts at 9:52 pm by Melissa
So the work on the house was not finished when we put the shingles on. (That was basically when I finished working on the house because baby #2 has kept me mostly on the couch!) We hired Brad and his boys Ryan and Brennan to help us for the month of July and got lots of work done! The next stage of the house was to work on the retrofit. This is basically adding a new wall a foot out from the old wall and filling the space with insulation. We should be nice and warm this winter! To do this properly Robert dug down to the foundation of the house and started from there. This is also nice because we were able to add drainage to prevent water from ever entering our basement again. (Yeah!!!)
Josiah’s favorite spot in the world is usually anywhere that he can watch his Daddy working! I hear “Daddy doing? Daddy doing” about 4 million times a day. This picture made it because he is just too cute!
Here is a view of the front of the house with our temporary (we’ll see how temporary) stairs. We needed some way to cross the moat.
The south side of the house was the most fun because the garage was in the way.
Here is Josiah helping his Grandpa in the trenches!
This is the girl description of what I understand all this pipe is for. The plan is that since we live in the cold north the ground that far down never gets hot in the summer. Robert and his Dad plan to hook it up so that water goes through the pipe, gets cooled off, and then the cold water is used as an air conditioner for the house in the summer. If you want a better explanation leave a comment and Robert can get back to you. Here is a pic of black pipe.
This is the framing and insulating for the basement on the front of the house.
Brad trying to hide from the camera on the south side.
It was a very exciting day for me when the guy came to backfill the moat. The excitement was a bit lost when he backed into our renters car 
but we were thankful that he is paying for the repairs. There are some things that you just can’t plan ahead for.
Here is the bridge Robert made for our renter to cross the moat. She has been very understanding through all this!
Josiah found his own bobcat in the mall! He loves anything with wheels, especially if Daddy drives it!
Here he is being Daddy’s helper again. “Hep Dad”. He got out his wagon and followed Robert all around the yard with the wheelbarrow with the same look of determination.
We were blessed in August by Quinton looking for work and hired him to help frame, insulate, and sheet the main floor of the house. This would have been much more difficult for Robert to do on his own. Thanks Quinton!
Yay progress!!!
This is Quinton wearing stilts and walking on the lower wall. Sometimes it feels like we are running a circus!
So this post finishes off the month of August with the sheeting finished! This week Robert has been working on moving the basement windows to the new outside wall. Stay tuned for more pics and updates.
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