Max is very excited to be going to Legoland in a few weeks. To prepare for the vast amounts of Legos he wants to buy, he has been collecting cans and bottles and recycling them after smashing the cans. We generally go once a month after church to the recycling station. Today, we went off schedule because we won’t have any other opportunity before vacation. We got there right after the station re-opened after lunch. We were behind a bunch of other people who all had multiple huge bags of cans and bottles. Being a small station, everyone queues up and goes one at a time. It took us about an hour of waiting for all the gigantic loads to go in front of us. Where other people were loading up multiple 50 gallon trash cans with cans and bottles, Max only filled the bottom 6 inches of the can with his aluminum cans. It was pretty funny. We came out of there with a chit for $4.67, which we then cashed at the local Albertsons. I gotta figure out a way to get my hourly rate up.
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Family Day
In our weekend, in this phase of our lives, Saturday is a full construction day. Thankfully, Sunday is Family Day. Sometimes much of it is spent catching up on other tasks (we hope to regain our full Sabbath in a year +), but we try, TRY, really hard to do something fun with the kids. A couple of weeks ago we went to the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum. This time was extra cool because Max was on a little treasure hunt to find certain exhibits, then draw a quick picture of it. The giant squid, the Chumash baby, etc. It was a nice day.
A whale of a skeleton
Cuddles with Mom
Love Lucy’s face in this one
Glad for Family Day
Swimming Pools
I don’t like wearing wet clothes, but you get wet when climbing a ladder on the roof (to get to the second story roof) in the rain at 6:30 in the morning.
Water Inside
Turn up the sound on your computer to get the full effect. ] The early morning rain brought snow to the local mountains.
Snow Mountains
Snow Mountains
I am thankful that the rain didn’t start until 5:30a. I am thankful that the rain stopped (temporarily) at 9:30a. I am thankful that today is Friday and Toby wasn’t here alone. I am grateful for Austin’s True Value Hardware store being so close.
What a Weekend
April 11-15, 2007 (Thursday – Sunday) It was time to put the roof over the new construction. Greg, Pop and Mark came up on Thursday (I still had to go to my day job) to work on setting up the roof beam and the rafters. One of the big questions had always been How are we going to hoist the 30 foot long, 600 pound paralam up 7 feet into the air? Well that was solved with a mechanical lift (whose maximum weight was 650 pounds. whew!) Thursday was very windy. So windy, that the ladders and other stuff were blown off the roof in the 40 mph gusts.
Pop and Hoist
Mark and the Paralam
Greg aligning the paralam
Thursday — This is what I saw when I drove home from work in the evening. Take a look at the palm trees in the background to see the effects of the wind.
Thursday evening work
Friday — Greg brought Buddy and we continued to put up more rafters. The front of the house is what was mostly worked on.
Friday work
Saturday — Greg decided to bring in the big guns for the rest of the roof. He recruited another of my Dad’s neighbors, Kevin, who is a general contractor specializing in roofs. God does provide. Kevin works almost as fast as Greg and got an amazing amount of work done. Our neighbor Gracie baked a cake for the working crew. The joke was that she was celebrating not having to look at a complete eyesore anymore.
Cake from Gracie
Let them eat cake
Front Roof Line
West side
Sunday — Kevin, Greg, Buddy and Mark were back again. The focus was on the back of the house. We wanted to finish the low roof over the office and get the plywood over the shed roof above the loft. We almost made it. The loft roof is finished and the rafters are in on the low office roof. We didn’t get the office roof plywood on and there is a bit of plywood missing on the east side, but all in all, it was a very productive weekend.
South West corner
North face – front of the house
Our Spring Break in Valencia
A real destination vacation! 🙂 We had our spring break with Yaya and Poppa in Valencia, mostly because Matt went to a conference in San Francisco. We had great times with them, and other friends and family that live out that way.
Bowling with fellow homeschooler Jessica and her sweet kids Justin and Julia.
The joys of Bumper Bowling
Lucy and Julia
The end of that bowling morning was pretty eventful – I locked my keys in the car! Then it began to rain, and I had only a t-shirt on. I had left the windows cracked, and I ran inside the bowling alley to see if they had any kind of tool I could use as a Slim Jim. They gave me a wire clothes hanger and I ran back outside. Jessica was hanging with the kids under the overhang of the building to stay out of the rain. Lucy is now crying, and I realize she’s probably starving. As now I am. I bend the hanger and stick it down in the window, but it just won’t catch the door lock. I’m feeling hunger shakes and a deep sense of dread that I will have to wait 45 minutes for AAA to come! And Lucy cries on. Max is next to me know, and I say, “Buddy, will you pray and ask God to help us get the car unlocked?” He clasps his hands together and bows his head, there in the parking lot and prays urgently for us. I have a revalation on how to bend the hanger a different way. I try the lock that way – and oh-my-stars – it worked! We got in our car, and Jessica in hers, and raced to McDonalds. The rain was now coming down positively sideways! And then, it began to hail! A freak hail storm in Valencia – crazy! What a day. 🙂
Hugs on a turtle in the mall-indoor-playground
Funny faces
Carousel time with Auntie Jan
Our great buds – Danny and Lizzy D’Elia
Tuckered out on the trampoline