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.)

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!

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...

Not much happening...

 Very slow progress. Some siding, and that's pretty much it. East side done and around the back on the North side of the main garage volume.

And then - friends arrived!! Anyone who's read the blog from the beginning knows how much work Chad put in on the west addition! Well, after he and his family moved away in 2019, we've tried to get all of us together once a year, alternating us going up to them and them coming here. This year they were here. This photo from the weekend makes me smile because it reminds me of one from long ago!

From this weekend - a few of our kids and (the younger) two that belong to our friends...

...and thirteen years ago - all four of ours at the time and the (older two) that belong to our friends.

Rinnah is the connecting piece between the two photos - she's the youngest one in the old picture and the oldest in the new one. We're so glad we can still live life with these dear friends!

By the beginning of July

Just like with the first addition, things slow down significantly once Matt's the primary work crew, because he still has his "real" work to do, and our running joke around here is that Matt works a 40 hour...month. :P He really does get more work than that done with his architectural/drafting work, but it's rare that he actually ever gets a classic 40 hour week between diapers, vest treatments for Mira, and the various appointments that he and I are running people to every week. But despite that, we're still getting out and getting little bits done on the garage.

Here's a photo I took from the flat roof where I am helping Matt line up the top edge of the vertical siding panels. He's taking a work call at this moment, I think!

Matt taught Rinnah how to paint the lap siding to get it ready for installation so she could continue this batch while he ran to get Bobbi from work.

And here he trundled her up the hill to show her how the installation of the lap siding is coming on the east side of the garage. I still love how the garage is sunk into the ground on this side, making this side wall really short from the yard side.

And then, exactly twelve years and one day after we lost our surprise baby during Krassimir's adoption, I started bleeding at 11 weeks and 3 days into this pregnancy. While we knew my "advanced maternal age" (ha! I was already considered a "geriatric" pregnancy twelve years ago!) made miscarriage much more likely, the fact that we'd made it past ten weeks meant I thought we were really going to get to keep this happy gift. But the God who is good when he gives and good when he takes away took this little one away from us, too. I'm so far behind in posting that I'm writing this in mid-September, and there's still such sadness there, but like I told a friend who asked, God has been so very present in my life over the last few months that the sadness just can't get into the depths of me because *He* is filling me up.

It's hard to see the detail, but I added another stone to the custom mother's necklace that I had made seven years ago. It has a birthstone for each of my babies, including the one we lost in 2013 (a pearl), and I was able to sneak in another pearl on the bottom for this baby. Every one is precious, no matter how long we get to keep them.

 

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 we 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 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!