I'm sorry

I know you've now been subjected to not one, but TWO Brian posts in a row about garages and you're all probably dying for a picture/word/comment/update about Everett, so I decided I had to save you.  ;)  I've just been out of the swing of blogging lately (if you couldn't tell).
Not new pictures - they're on facebook, but better than nothing eh?
Stinky face

Serious face

A quick update.
Everett is learning more and more words.  He's also learning to respond to questions.  Like when he was yell/crying at me this morning at 6:30 AM and I tried to snuggle him to great protest so I said "well then what do you want?!?!" and he said "eat!"  Oh.  Right then.  Okay. 
He also knows where the raspberries are in the garden and runs over to them and says "bayow-ees!"  That boy could eat a pound at a time and nearly had a heart attack today at the farmer's market when he spotted some.
He says "wee wee" to mean a park, "eat" when he is hungry,  pants when he sees a dog, and "up" whenever he wants to be held, go upstairs, do downstairs....etc.
He also says: kitty, water, milk, eggs, butter (peanut butter), book, mommy, daddy, (tries to say) Janelle and Christy and various other aunt and uncle names, toys, cookie, cracker, cheese, (see a trend with the food?), ball, kick, beach, pool, side (outside), mote (remote), cow, baby, juice, light, truck, tractor, up up (when daddy's on the garage roof), poo poo, pee, owie, tickle, hat, potty and more than I cannot remember right now.  I shall try to write and add more pictures soon.

Garage Update Part II

Well its been a while but I will try to give a brief recap of my adventures in carpentry since the slab went in.

I was excited at having real progress after the slab cured so I was quick to get it sealed, and then head back to the lumber yard to get the block.  Beth was a big help hauling all of the block for 2 courses and getting it ready for laying.  The actual laying of the block was the one part of the job that I decided was beyond my skill set, so I decided to enlist the help of my out of work - mason - neighbor.  We laid all of the block on Memorial day with me mixing mortar and the neighbor setting it.  The next week and a half was rather uneventful, and pretty much involved a lot of dirty, hard labor which was not much fun at all.  I had to strip the forms (very difficult because I used 3' stakes which got stuck in the clay) and move all of the dirt back into place (by hand because the tractor couldn't get in the tight site.)  After two weekends of shoveling dirt I was ready to say good enough.

That brings me to the much more interesting part of carpentry.  I ordered the wood, and it all arrived the thursday before we were scheduled to go to Kansas.  With Karl's help, I set the sill boards that night.  That was a bit of a pain because I didn't account for the thickness of the sill seal, and the anchor bolts ended up too low.  We made it work, but it was a pain.  The rest of the weekend saw incredible progress with the first wall going up Friday, and the other four Saturday.  On Sunday I finished out the last wall, set the 2nd top plate, had the walls sheated by 4:00 and tursses set by 6 and spent the rest of the night bracing & building outlookers.  The last few days before our trip I managed to get the first row of sheathing on the roof to give it some strength while we were gone.  Since we returned I have finished the sheathing, installed hurricane ties, building wrap, the man door, windows, put a roof over the 4th of July weekend, and I'm currently working on setting soffit pannels.  It's been a lot of work, but it is finally to the point where the wood is protected from the weather so I can relax a bit.  Thats all for now... sorry if you are bored by the details but it's been such an effort to try to work on this project around my job and family life that I thought there should be some sort of record before I just move on and forget all about it. The pic above is Ev. helping sometime before the holiday. I promise the next post won't be project related.

Garage Update

With all of the things going on recently I haven't had any time to blog about the progress of our major project for the summer yet. I'll try to do a quick recap of everything that has happened over the last month.  I offically started the project in the begining of May my clearing out the Rubbermaid shed, and moving Ev's Playplace.  It was a fair bit of work just to get everything out of the way.  The first step in official garage work was to locate the proerty corners so that I could find the garage location.   

Luckily as I work for an engineering firm I was able to enlist the help of one of our surveyors on a worknight.  The finding of the property corners involved re-establishing the block location because all of the property pins on my half of the block had been knocked out the two years ago by sidewalk work.We set up the total station, and re-established the locations based on existing evidence, and what monuments/pins that still existed on the other side of the block.  The next day I was able to borrow the instrument again to put in the corners of our proposed garage.  I decided to set the corners just off the minimum setbacks with a 2" margin for error.  Ordinarily you would leave a bigger cushion, but in my case the yard is really small, and I had access to survey equipment so I decided to set it closer.

The next week it was time to start digging.  I called diggers hotline, waited until the flags showed up, borrowed my father's tractor, started digging... and found the phone line.  As it turns out, I miss-counted the flags, and the phone company was running late on the locate.  O well, our phone is on the cable line anyways.  That week, after getting the topsoil cleared away I had 15 yards of sand delivered.  Here's a pic of Me, Ev and the Tractor before it was spread out on the 21st of May.

Spreading the sand didn't take long with the tractor around, but then the form setting began.  I had plenty of help from Karl and my Father which was essential because whenever I tried to work solo progress was painfully slow.  We managed to go from a pile of sand on Friday after work to completed forms Sunday Evening, and tied the rebar Monday evening.  The slab is decently reinforced, because rebar tying goes quick (after 2 years at bowen lab) and is much cheaper than the extra concrete that would be required for a thicker slab.  Here's a pic of the nearly finished forms on the 23rd.

With Memorial Day Looming, and the prospect of prepared forms, rebar, vapor barrier etc sitting in the rain while all of my help went of vacation, I decided to push ahead and pour that Thursday before the holiday weekend.  On pour day, I enlisted the help of all of my co-workers and family that were free.  We got a bunch of beer and brats to feed people and called the truck.  My boss brought over all of his trowels/tools from his concrete days so I didn't have to buy everything, and everything went fairly smoothly.  The only hiccup was that we ended up with too much concrete.  I calculated what we needed, and then added 10% and well.. we had 10% extra and ended up pouring a bunch of hastily formed replacement sidewalk around the house.  I will have to end the story here for the moment.  I will pick up where I left off later...  Here's a pic of Me, my boss and Carl finishing on pour day.

No pictures

So I hadn't blogged in a while and then I went on vacation.  While my laptop was there and being used, I didn't feel like blogging, so I didn't!  We did tons of fun things in Topeka while visiting auntie Christy (and grandpa!).  Some things we did:
-went to a Kansas City Royals game.  Their stadium is the most kid-friendly I have ever seen!  It had a carousel, fountain area, playground, mini golf, batting cages, and other various activities, plus kid sized (and priced) food!  So cool!  And the home team won!
-went to Gage Park and rode the train.  At the same park, we also went to the Topeka Zoo.  A very cute little zoo, but we couldn't find the hyenas.
-went to an awesome community pool that Everett kind of refused to leave.  He loooooved the kid area and all the slides.  He was a big, brave boy and went down the big kid's slide and a three-person adult slide.
-went to the mall on a thunderstormy morning
-played at the playground at a sonic
-went out to eat too many times!
-saw daddy do the TinMan Triathlon (it was reaaaaaaaaally hot and hilly and his run wasn't fantastic.  bike and swim were good though.  He got in right as it started thunderstorming.)
-bought a Canon EOS Rebel XSi at an awesome price because they are being discontinued and it was the display model at Best Buy.
-got nibbled by, slobbered on, stepped on, climbed on, and hollered at: Sadie
I know we did more, but I'm drawing a blank.  Thanks Christy for being an awesome hostess! (even if that airbed did prevent me from sleeping for a week....)  ;)

Now we're back home and I'm doing the laundry, plus a load of laundry full of new clothes and Ikea bed linens.  Brian fixed the toilet (and broke it!) and then ran off to Madison for a class he is probably qualified to teach.  Everett is super pleased to be home again even though he does miss Christy, Lily, Daisy, and "NO, DEE!"  The garage is still standing (thanks for checking, Karl!), the garden is still growing, the pets are still alive, and Ever and I ate strawberries out of the backyard this afternoon.  I'm super busy with work for the next week or so, so we'll see if I manage to get any pictures uploaded (missing the cable for the new camera so we're having trouble there...)

Trees and Toddler Beds

 As you may notice, I am not doing any garage posts because Brian was going to do them.  I'm sure he'll get on that right away.  I will, however, give you the tree update.  We have a very large silver maple in our front yard that was starting to make us a little uneasy with how much it was overhanging the house and a three-trunked white birch in the back that was directly in the way of our garage plans.  After many phone calls, discussions, and debates, we decided on a company to do it (because they were a whole lot cheaper than the other guy we liked) and they came out today and trimmed up our trees.  Both Brian and I nearly had a heart attack as he was trimming the maple because we kept seeing these big, beautiful limbs falling to the ground.  It does look very nice now though and we'll get used to it.  I didn't take any before shots of the maple, but here are two from when we were looking at buying the house:

and here's some afters:

And the birch I did take before AND afters.  Before:

After:

I know the birch is a little odd looking, but we had to have him take quite a few limbs off that would otherwise hang over the garage and take out an entire trunk that was totally dead and diseased on top.

In other news of the day, I switched Everett's crib over to the toddler bed set up.  As soon as I took down the front panel, he hopped in and snuggled with his blankets and pillow.  That confirmed to me that he was ready for the switch.  I put him up for a nap and checked on him a bit later to find this:

Hooray!  Here's hoping tonight goes just as well.  In other Everett news, he now has two canines on top, if fiercely independent, throws some outstanding temper tantrums, says quite a few words, gives kisses, and is in the process of weaning!  He's now down to nursing only when he wakes up in the morning and we have no plans to stop that unless it starts hurting from lack of milk.  He's such a big boy!!!