ALL BOY!

What a great weekend and Monday we had! We’ve enjoyed the sweetness that comes as God has been at work in our hearts and has given us more than contentment, but love for where He has us in life at this time. What pleasure He brings! And what precious unity He has given us. Praise be to our Father!

We had a very busy weekend! During the past two and a half days we’ve finished in the ceiling of the roof over our porch! Yippee! T has now “finished it in” and only lacks spackling and caulking, and then painting! What a HUGE difference this has made! The ceiling was like a black hole soaking up light. It was a bit of an eye sore up close. Originally the house was tongue and groove wood siding. In the 60’s an addition was added and it, plus the original structure were covered in asbestos shingles. Then in the 80’s the attic was finished in and another addition upstairs was built, the addition part of it was covered in a high grade cardboard. Then, in the 90’s the owner covered the entire structure in vinyl. The jury is still out on whether the vinyl covered or caused the rot…but there was a LOT of it (rot and vinyl)!

This leads me to share a bit of a story…so my sister, K and her soon to be hubby, M, came down for labor day weekend a few years ago. M packed all his tools and he and T were going to work on a project…my pick. So…the front door didn’t open or close very well due to some “old” water damage. I picked reframing the door. It seemed simple enough…they’d just reframe and re-hang the door. Surely a three-day weekend would be more than enough time to complete such a reasonable project. WRONG! They took the door down and pulled off the trim and the wall crumbled…and crumbled…and kept crumbling until they reached a window…half way across my living room wall! Do you have any idea what it’s like to stand in your living room…beside your sofa and realize you’re watching cars drive by and you’re seeing them through what used to be a wall!?!

And that began another project for our family! Since an entire corner and half of the wall had to be reframed, we decided to move the front door from the side to the front of the house…which meant a porch and steps…and now the ramp (that we busted out in the fall) led to a window instead of a door…oh it was a mess for MONTHS! We closed off the doors to the living room and worked when we could. We finished the living room a while back…at least enough to move the furniture back!

We have so many projects going. Sometimes I like that. If I get stressed with one thing, I can move to something else. The only bug with all that is that we don’t have a single room in our home “finished.” There’s something major in every room (be it chicken wire for railing on our steps or busted out window panes).


I think it would be fair to say our current mission is to get the outside of the house finished. That’s why T finishing in the ceiling is such a big deal! He did a GREAT job! I am so proud of him! He created an arch with tongue and groove boards and He trimmed it in perfectly! What a carpenter! I offered to putty the nail holes, but T said he’d really like to finish this one himself. I fully anticipate that we’ll be painting all the trim on the porch, as well as the columns, before the weekend. Hooray!

While T worked his carpentry magic, I dug and dug and dug. And we had the best time! T3 is walking everywhere now. He walks more than he crawls. He and MW had a great time playing in the yard. I am amazed at how all boy he is! (Don’t get me wrong; I am SOO thankful!) He is just such a boy! He LOVES to play in the dirt. He screams when I go to pick him up or carry him inside. Just this morning he spent an hour dumping dirt and roots out of an empty bucket. He “dug” in the yard with a trowel. It will take me days to get all the dirt out from under his nails. Getting back to the point, I dug and dug and dug while he and MW played and played and played. After literally hours of digging, T chained the only two bushes we have in our front yard to his truck (one at a time) and yanked them out! Yea! That’s such a great feeling! And then I felt fear…did we do the right thing? Man that was a big bush! Yikes! Yea, I think we did the right thing. So…there were these monster Yews on either end of our house. They were so tall and the greenery was great for flower arranging, but they were so scraggly and weird…so I dug all around the base of one of them. I sawed through roots that were at least three inches thick. I hatcheted through some of them. T chained that sucker and….YANK! Nothing. Back to digging. We chained her again….YANK! A tiny budge. YANK! Oh! His bumper! I told him I thought it lifted the bumper…yes, it lifted the bumper! Not much. He couldn’t tell at first. Oh well…a full day of digging and we wound up sawing those stinkers down! Then our neighbor brought over his ax and chopped her a little closet to the ground…and then T took the chain saw to them! We’ll be doing some stump grinding as soon as the stump grinder gets returned to Home Depot! Since we couldn’t stump grind, we went ahead and tilled. (I did most of the tilling…with T3 on my back!) It was so fun! And he LOVED it! He was fascinated!

We planted boxwoods across the front of the house. We plan to replace the yews with crepe myrtles. Exciting! Once the boxwoods grow a bit (ok, in like fifteen years) we plan to sculpt them into balls and have two rows of boxwood balls! Beautiful! I’m very excited.

Well…this post has gone on and on. May I say once more that T3 is a boy’s boy! He loves the dirt and the roots and the dirt and did I mention that boy loves playing in the dirt? MW kept herself busy dressing up and driving her car (golf cart riding toy) and motor cycle (three wheeler) around the front yard. Oh…we had friends for dinner Saturday night. Prior to their arrival MW was wearing a beautiful bride dress (dressing up again, of course!). However, something happened between the “prior to” and their arrival…MW greeted our guests in nothing but her undies…and they were on backwards! What could we do but smile and laugh...and groan on the inside! What am I going to do with that girl!?! Modesty obviously must be taught!

And one last thing…this afternoon I went wild and spent my birthday money on a toy…spur of the moment…for MW! We were at Target and we were just playing…killing time really…and we found this toy called a Plasmacar. We had so much fun playing on it! MW hopped on it and went! She could maneuver it! I gave it a spin and it was so fun I didn’t want to get off. I don’t know what snapped inside of me. I don’t think I’ve ever made a spur of the moment purchase like that…oh well. Happy Birthday to me! She rode it and followed me all over Target. We got home and she rode it all over the driveway and then all through the house. (I even rode it all over the house!) So…the funny thing is that it rode a little differently on the driveway. MW was trying to get her bearings and figure it out, but T3 was running around pushing the golf cart…ramming MW! It was hilarious! This is what amazes me…the little man knows how to steer stuff. T3 turns that golf cart and goes wherever his little heart desires. Tonight, that was right into MW. This happened four or five times and I finally had to, in a very firm voice, tell him to stop running into her!