What this old lady does for fun

 So, when your Grandma decides, for her birthday, to give each of her grandchildren a generous monetary gift (so she can have the fun of reading the various thank you notes!), what do you decide to do with it? Well, I can tell you what *I* did! "Hey, Matt - do you think we could hire Korey and Kelley to sheetrock the entry and mudroom??" Oh yeah. But, really, I couldn't think of anything more fun than a pile of sheetrock in the driveway...

...that slowly (well, not that slowly!) turns into sheetrock on the walls and ceilings! We told them the budget we had to work with, and they were able to not only do the mudroom and entry, but also the entire ramp and garage. Matt will still need to do the taping, but they got an incredible amount of work done in a very short amount of time!

Up on stilts to easily get the ceiling over Thunder's stall

Working down the sloping ceiling over the small stall and onto the walls at the back. Notice that the BIG beam (the installation of which is still my favorite moment of the entire construction process!) is still visible. Sadly, it needs to be covered up for fireproofing reasons.

The little access hatch into the storage space above the big garage stall

The ramp (and bike storage on the other side of the half-wall)

And the interior spaces - now have walls! Not just insulation with vapor barrier/plastic stapled over it! That means that even if Matt doesn't have time to tape and mud and paint, we can still put up hooks for coats for the winter! Amazing!

And the view from the kitchen into the front entry. Still definitely under construction, but MUCH more inviting than it was (and I'll be able to get coat hooks up for guests, too, before coat season is in full swing!)

This was such a beautiful gift - thank you to Grandma, and thank you to the God who knows how to bring these little smiles to his children at just the right time.

A little bit more siding

Look. Now there's a little bit more siding on the back (north) side of the garage! If you look *really* closely, you can see Bobbi's cat climbing the shorter ladder on the left! You can also notice that the bathroom addition (just to the right of the garage/entry addition) still only has the wood slats on one band around the windows. We now actually *have* all of the wood to finish the bathroom as well as where we're using it on the mud/entry/ramp portion of the garage addition, but having it and installing it are two different things. Maybe next spring???

Today is also a big day as it marks 25 years of marriage for me and Matt. :) It's been a busy 25 years! As many of you may know, we try to get a photo of our whole family on the Sunday closest to our anniversary, but this year wasn't good for that. First of all, Gloria left for a week of camp this week, so she was not around. Secondly, Bobbi hasn't been coming with us to church at all since February and wouldn't be up to coming just so we can have her in a photo. Thirdly, Owen unexpectedly came home a few weeks ago from a trip to visit two of his friends who are working on a very up-scale ranch in Montana for the summer, and announced he'd gotten a job there himself (work was slow here, and he had his boss's blessing to take a few months off to take the ranch job through the end of October) and he was leaving in six days to start work! So he wasn't here, either. And the Sunday *after* our anniversary we'll still be missing Owen and Bobbi, and *Rinnah* will be gone. We've often had family photos that are missing one of the kids (because they're still in Bulgaria, like this one):

Thirteen year anniversary in 2013 

or because one's in the hospital like in this one:

Bulgarian Christmas party, 2017

or because one just wandered off, like in this one that I posted at Christmas years ago!

Christmas 2018

...but missing THREE children is just not okay. So no photo this year.

It makes the family photo we got back at Leah's graduation that much more special!

And here's another photo we took on her graduation day that is also very precious to me. Two things I want to point out. First of all, Baby was with us in this photo. It is very dear to me to have a family photo that captured that brief window of time when we had eleven. Second of all, this one has a friend in it who you may recognize from construction photos last fall...