Garage work through the end of June

We're grateful this month for Owen's job with a roofing company, because he was able to bring home the trailer with the metal break so we could custom bend the flashing we need to go over the rigid insulation over the foundation wall! Precision bending of 10' long pieces of sheet metal is not something that goes well without the right tool!

That's me* and Matt inside the trailer...

Always fun when Owen's around to help with some of the work. He may still live with us, but we don't usually see him much during the day! (Just hear and smell when he's making Ramen at 1am!)   

Matt's at the south-east corner. That was an interesting corner to cover!

One really exciting thing about getting the metal flashing installed is that we can now 1) backfill! (which not only gets the backfilling done but also means we're working down the big pile of dirt that's been filling the part of the yard where we have our bonfires!) and 2) start putting siding onto the main garage!

First pass at backfilling - still need a good rain to help settle it in.

We designed the back deck to be flush with the ground on the north and east ends - on the north end we're going to let our raspberry bushes migrate closer so Bobbi can wheel out and pick her own berries in the summer, and the east end will be our best wheelchair access into the yard - both by the vegetable garden AND to the east yard where we have bonfires!

Rinnah's getting big enough that she can take my place for holding things. Here she and Matt are putting up the vertical board siding on the west side of the *back* part of the flat-roofed entry. Big progress today!

And here's a view down the north side, which is also over 2/3 of the way done.

*Because I'm writing these posts after the fact and back-dating them (hoping to eventually get caught up enough that I can post in real time again! But not holding my breath on that), I had debated sharing this, but since a large part of the purpose of this blog currently is to provide a bit of family history for us to look back on, and because it's in keeping with the spirit of the blog, here goes - there are actually three of us in that trailer. :) In that photo, I am ten weeks pregnant with a most delightful surprise. We know now that did not get to keep that little one, but on that day I was still joyfully carrying someone who would have been our eleventh child. So much room for more in our hearts!

More siding and the dump trailer

First off, MIRA HAD HER SURGERY!! Fourth time scheduled, but she managed to make it without being hospitalized for illness, and we're past it! So far it seems to have been a VERY good thing.

On the garage front, the past week and a half has again shown a little progress. Owen was able to get his dump trailer from work over here, so we took the opportunity to fill it (which is how we've been getting rid of stuff instead of having to fill a huge dumpster all at once!) It was kind of fun at the end of this day to see that the only photos I had taken were of my boys carrying heavy things. First, we have Ebenezer dragging this big old part of an old swing set...

...and then Matt and Owen carrying what was left of Matt's grandparents' clothes line which had to be taken down to make room for the garage - the plug of concrete buried deep in the ground was HEAVY!! The two men were able to carry it from the side yard to the dumpster, and I was able to grab a photo before helping them lift it up and in.

Then we were back to siding. Matt and I got the east side of the front entry finished, and Owen came up from his room to the sound of the nail gun, and climbed up on the roof to help finish the part above the cantiliever, which let me and Reuben run some errands!

AND, Matt had time to finally start putting some of the old siding back onto the original house as well! 

It's not rapid progress, but every little bit gets us closer to done, and being able to do it by ourselves is WAY more cost effective than paying someone to do it!

A few weeks ago I started reading this blog out loud to the youngest four children, starting at the beginning. One of the reasons I wrote it was to communicate with all of you, but the other big reason I laid out in the beginning was so that *we* would have a record of God's faithfulness to look back on in the future. 

From Psalm 77:12-13 "I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all your work and meditate on your mighty deeds." It's good for us to spend time reflecting on all he has done, big and small!

The youngest three were all born AFTER our first adoption and the big addition, and Evania and Gloria were both too young to remember any time before Bobbi and Mira came home, so although all of this is *their* history, they're not aware of any of it, and I'm excited to share it with them.

I was briefly mentioning this to Gavin one evening, and recounting how the blog is a story, among other things, of God's marvelous provision of what we need to do the work he has set before us, but how sometimes one way he provides is by making things take longer than we think they ought to take. He jumped on that one immediately, recognizing God's design to build patience in us as we wait on him, and we are absolutely seeing that in this building project as well. And part of patience is learning to rejoice in all of the little victories along the way! 

Graduation, family photo, and two pieces of siding

 This was not the most productive week on the garage because Leah's commencement ceremony was this weekend! Congratulations, Leah!!! Not surprisingly, she is going to the University of Minnesota Nursing School this fall, something she is very well suited for. 

Amazingly, we got the whole family to go to her commencement (Owen is almost always not in town over the weekends, and doing "family" stuff is not Bobbi's thing - especially if it's boring! but both of them made it, and Mira's not in the hospital...) so here we all are!

As usual, our standards of what constitutes a "good" family photo are pretty low. "Is everybody present and visible?" is our main criteria for the last 8+ years! 🤣 Smiling? Not so big of a deal. Even looking at the camera? Also not required. Coordinating outfits?? Ha! That was so last decade! So all in all, I'm pretty pleased with this one.

And, because doing something like going out to dinner is complicated enough with our crew (especially since two of them don't eat by mouth!), we decided to just head back home for ice cream sundaes. Grandma can doze in her chair, Krassi can get *out* of his chair, Mira can get back in her crib, Reuben can nap on the couch, and the REST of us who appreciate ice cream all crowded onto the new front porch of the addition!

Even, better, the weekend wasn't a complete wash, as Matt and I had just enough time to get the first piece of vertical siding onto the entry...

...AND to cut and install the second piece! 

So, two done, and I'm not sure I can count how many more to go!

Last bit of news worth noting is that surgery that we're hoping Mira will eventually get to have is scheduled for this coming Tuesday, and she has made it this far without ending up in the hospital again!! We might make it to the surgery date this time!!!

Gutter and front deck

After not getting anything pushed forward on the garage last weekend, *this* weekend was a little more productive. 

You'd think we planned it (but we didn't!) but the depth of the new garage just happens to be EXACTLY the same size as the width of the old garage, so the gutters are the right size to just reuse! Like, to the inch exact! So we this week picked up the better of the two old ones and stuck it up on the new garage! Yay!

Then, on Friday Matt didn't have too much of his regular work to do, so he got a head start on the rest of the front deck. Here you can see all of the boards are in, so the top surface is fully complete. The grate at the back left is for access to our well, as we are still not hooked up to city water, and every once in a while you need to get down in there! The size of the overhang is also deliberately set back from the front edge of the deck so the well truck can get its vertical clearance as well.

Then Saturday as taken up with installing the real deck boards on the steps down the front and wrapping along the side of the entry/mud room until it dies into the garage. We don't yet have the white trim that will finish the risers, but the functional part is now complete.

Back in the hospital

 

I don't have a picture of Mira, but here's her empty bed, because she's back in the hospital AGAIN. Starting right around Christmas, Mira's been just not great. She was in the hospital for a week or so at that point, but not with a clear diagnosis.

She's been set to have a surgical procedure for a salivary gland ligation (basically stopping her from producing as much saliva because she has a hard time managing liquids, and there's always the risk of aspiration, so this would help to mitigate that.) three times now and has been hospitalized within days of when the surgery was supposed to take place. She also has an infected ear tube, so they're going to remove that hardware at the same time. Except, for the third time this year, she's not, because she's hospitalized instead.

As is often the case with Mira, you know something is wrong, but you really don't have any solid idea of what. This time her hands and feet were swollen and she was having trouble keeping her oxygen levels up and she as having some issues with high muscle tone and high heart rates. So the list of questions/possibilities start going through your mind. Pain from her dislocated hips? gall stones? pain from the infected ears? aspiration pneumonia? neurological/seizures?

Thankfully Gillette has a quick-care clinic we can go to that avoids the emergency room and has doctors and nurses who know Mira. They were really booked today, but managed to squeeze us in between other appointments. First stop was to get some blood drawn for labs, then in for a chest x-ray, then back to the room to wait for the doctor. Labs came back indicating some type of infection (but is it in her ears or lungs or...?) x-ray came back looking worse than some, but the radiologist said there was not indication of aspiration or generalized pneumonia (so why is she having trouble keeping her oxygen levels up without the help of oxygen or her bipap machine?) Blood levels related to liver function are quite elevated (not the worst they have ever been, but definitely quite high) which could point to there being issues with the small gall stones that we know she has. However, by this time it was mid-afternoon and there was not time for her to be off her feeds long enough to get in her for an ultrasound before the end of the day, so that is scheduled for tomorrow morning.

So what do you do in the meantime while her respiratory rate is in the 70's (normally in the teens to 20's) and her heart rate is getting up to 170's (normally 50-70) and she is stiff as a board because of her high muscle tone and none of the tricks for rubbing her hand or back or neck are helping her to calm down?

We discussed with two providers (one who has never seen her before because now that she is 19 she on the adult unit and one who has been seeing her since she first came home) and decided that we would start her on an antibiotic (that would cover ears and lungs) and then give her a small dose of oxycodone to see that would help her to calm down, which would lead us to believe that pain is the source of why she is getting so worked up. If that didn't help, then we would move to valium. She got the oxycodone at 4PM and it was not until 6PM that her heart rate dropped below 100 and stayed there. Seems like the oxycodone should have taken effect quicker than that, but maybe not...either way by the time I left at 7PM, she was resting peacefully in bed with her heart rate around 70 and her oxygen levels in the mid-90's and respiratory rate in the 30's. 

Still no solid answers, but it was really nice to see her calm. I spent three hours just holding her on my lap and to start with, she was like a rigid balancing beaming tottering from side to side over my legs. Slowly she began to relax and was able to just lean against my chest and relax.

Back deck and porch lights

Matt had some time to work on Friday this week, so the progress is a little bit more impressive for the week-end review than it has been for the last few weeks!

Coming around the back of the garage you can see the back deck starting to come together. 

He's working his way back toward Bobbi's bedroom windows. The hope is that this is an outdoor space in the shade that Bobbi can use when the weather is nice. We are planning to have the deck flush with grade on two of the three exposed sides, and at one of those edges we're going to slightly relocate a section of our raspberry bushes so Bobbi will be able to go outside and pick her own berries like the rest of us can!

A wire we'd been wondering how we were going to handle ended up falling RIGHT between two boards!

While Matt worked on deck boards, I trundled dirt from the stock pile in the east yard over to the deck edge. We'll need some rain (please!) to get things settled in properly, but a first pass is a good thing. Every little bit helps, right?

We've only been picking up as many deck boards as we can fit in our vehicle, and have to make one more trip before we'll have all that we need, so when Matt ran out of boards, he went up front and got the light fixtures properly installed on the overhang over the main entry! Yay! I'll have to get a photo at night sometime - very warm and inviting.

He also got a little further on  the front deck. Now we're just waiting to order the grate for shoe scraping (and for access to the well pump, which is under the deck! Funny how the depth of the overhang is also contingent on being able to get to that well when needed!)

In the evening when the littles were in bed, Matt and Rinnah and I came back out to make a few more loads of dirt with the wheelbarrow. Here they're standing up on top of the pile pushing dirt down to loosen it because the dirt mound is pretty well packed after sitting there over the winter!

 

front deck

It's amazing what Matt can accomplish in an afternoon! He had a meeting in the morning, but then got home, ate lunch, and got right to work. He started with pulling up the scrap OSB we'd been using all winter as our temporary surface.

Before I left for the afternoon, he'd gotten the perimeter board installed, and had started a few deck boards.

Looking out the new kitchen window...progress is being made.

And when I got home, he'd gotten it all the way across the door, so it's fully functional! The rest will wait a bit as we're getting a removeable grate for part of it, and we haven't even ordered that yet.

 Went inside and found a surprise...Krassimir was ASLEEP on the chair in the dining room! (He loves to climb up with a few toys and sit up there in the afternoons.) But that boy NEVER naps! Still not sure what was up...he's not sick, nothing out of the ordinary in his schedule...must have just been the lovely sunshine shining down on him. :)

Still something sweet about a sleeping baby, even if your "baby" is getting close to 21 years old! 😍