Freshly painted

 Matt got some good uninterrupted time with beautiful weather over the weekend, and made huge progress on the garage work! He started with puttying all of the nail holes (that really looked funny!) and then got a fresh coat of paint over everything he'd been working on. Lovely!

Krassi's Rings, part 5

 Being caught up on the garage blogging, here's a little bragging post on Krassimir. He continues to delight me with the creative ways he combines his favorite toys - he reminds me of an architect who has a distinctive style, but boundless creativity. With the limited pallette of "rings" (loosely defined - something with a roughly wrist-sized hole in it - often circular, but not necessarily - sometimes rigid, sometimes not) and triangles and soft animals (whether stuffed animals or squishy plastic), he pulls together endless combinations, changing them up every few days, but always with that same "vocabulary" that makes his style so distinctive.

For your viewing enjoyment, a sampling of the most recent ones. (If you care, they uploaded in reverse order of time, so the ones at the top here are the most recent, and then go back in time to last summer)

Look how pleased he is with me wanting to take a photo! He's so proud of his work.

Upgrading to a BIG stuffed animal! Lucky Snoopy...

Friends at church will save the insides of duct tape or packaging tape, and their kids will decorate the cardboard, and then bring it for Krassi!

Notice there's a ring in the bottom of the ring!

I am continually amazed at the resourcefulness of creativity of this young man!

When Mom's away...

...Dad will play, which at our house involves a tool belt and some noise!

Leah and I and a few friends took 22 kids (including Reuben) on an all day field trip to Lake Superior, leaving Matt home again with no (major) interruptions, and look what he got done!

The east side of the front porch stairs now has the white skirt boards!

And the original house now has its siding reinstalled! He'd gotten the first seven rows or so on first thing in the spring, and then there it sat until yesterday!

And with that, I think I'm finally up to date! After six months of trying to post current progress and fill in the gaps since construction started in earnest last summer, I *think* I'm finally caught up, and perhaps can now spend the time I get to invest on things like this blog on current updates, which means maybe I can stay on top of things better! (? Maybe. We'll see.)

All my babies...and a couple more

 Yesterday I got a most precious gift. ALL TEN of my children were at church with us! It's a rare occurrence to have *everybody* together anywhere. Even at Christmas we're not always guaranteed that no one will be in the hospital! 😁 But somehow, this happened! Our good friend Scotty brought his camera along and we took the opportunity to get some nice pictures of everyone.

And *everyone* everyone. Owen is back from Montana! Earlier than he'd expected. We're super happy to have him back. And he brought back with him Sophie, whom he met while working at the ranch. We're looking forward to getting to know her better, too.

And Bobbi is back with us again - not here because of a picture, but here because she wanted to come along to church for the first time since February.

And Gavin, who's always at church anyway, but it's been such a joy to have him with us at church. That's a beautiful story.

The funny thing is that Matt and I look at this photo, and he said to me, "It doesn't even seem like that many people!" Not a day goes by that he and I aren't so very grateful that God's plan for our family was bigger than ours was! He wanted two. I wanted a "big" family - three kids. Good thing we were both wrong! 

~~~

Ha ha - I was re-reading this and realized I should share this photo, too. Above is the pretty one. THIS one is the one we enlarged and have framed on the wall in the dining room! 😂 

(Matt and I missed the command to make a funny face, which is why we're serenely smiling amidst the fun around us! But *THIS* is our family!)

Garage doors

 The installation ended up getting pushed back a week after one of the installers called in sick, but nevertheless, here we are now with garage doors!

In progress:

only a few panels in...

And finished!!

As the workers left, Matt mentioned how exciting it was to be able to close the garage doors as it had been a long time. The man looked at him kind of funny, thinking, well, that's kind of how construction goes, but what *Matt* was thinking is how it's been YEARS since we've been able to close the garage doors because the old garage (with no foundation) had been slowly sinking into the ground at the southeast corner to the point where it was so out of plumb that it was physically impossible to close the doors!

Good thing we don't put our trust in locks to keep us safe. :) Every single thing that does or does not come our way is in the hands of our God who controls the minutest details. 

But it does look prettier with the doors closed. :)

Exterior landscaping

 Matt and I hate the idea of paying money to remove dirt, so with all of our construction projects, we've found ways to keep our excavation soil on our property. The main way we're doing that on this one is raising the grade in the side/east yard, which prior to the project sloped down from a high ridge on the east side of the yard (with a steep slope down to the street on the east - a wild-growing hillside) gradually toward the garage and down the driveway to the street on the front/south side. Not only will doing this let us keep the soil on site, but it also should reduce the amount of water run-off down the driveway. Bringing the foundation walls up on the north and east of the garage lets us nestle the building itself down into the ground by raising the level of the soil all around it. I love how it looks (makes it not quite so big feeling when we're out in the yard) and I also, as a gardener, love the transitional zone it creates as you leave the driveway and step up to "enter" the garden. But to accomplish that, there's one location where we needed a retaining wall. All of the other retaining walls we've put in around the yard over the years have been done with rock we had on site. This one, because we needed steps for access as this is a main thoroughfare in the yard (to get to the chickens, the veggie garden, the clothesline, the shed), we decided to do with purchased stone.

The stones we purchased were BIG. (The price tag on those was just much prettier than some of the other options!)

And while some of them we were able to cut to size and maneuver into place, those three steps were big. Really Big. Too big for me and Matt and Leah to move. And Owen's still in Montana. And Krassi's got some serious biceps (really, he does!!) but not a lot of bulk (he still weighs under 100 pounds at 21 years old) or real coordination.

But, thankfully, we had help. 😁

As you may have noticed in a handful of pictures since June, Gavin's been around. A lot. 😊 And it's a very good thing. (And he's not coming here to hang out with Owen like he did when he was a kid!) AND, as an added bonus, he's good at lifting heavy things. (If you don't remember, look back at that BIG laminate beam he helped with last fall!)

First we think. (I did a calculation later in the day, and a piece of Kasota stone the size of each one of those steps weighs about 350 pounds.)

Then Leah and I put on our "working hard" faces while Matt and Gavin move the first step off the pile down onto a pallet.

Then we think some more.

And then we* slide it off the pallet and into place.
*We being Gavin and Matt. Leah is supervising while I photograph.

While I was at the Fair...

One of the best parts about being away from home is coming back and discovering what Matt has managed to get done while I was gone (in addition to keeping everyone left behind at home alive and [mostly] happy!)

Yesterday I was at the State Fair ALL day, either dropping kids off for project judging (4H is a big deal in our family), or there myself with a whole crew of other kids from church who are also in our club. I brought Reuben along because he enjoys those sorts of outings (Bobbi has come in past years, but didn't want to this time around) and because he's the hardest one to keep tabs on at home.

This is what happened while I was away:

Trim around the garage door openings! Because the doors are scheduled to be installed later this week! (Garage door installation was another item Matt decided he was not going to do by himself, in particular because the door for Thunder's stall is a pretty hefty door.)

And the white skirt boards at the base of the stairs...on the front side. :) The east facing side isn't done yet. But at least now from the front elevation, it looks very pretty.

 See: not so pretty around the corner yet!