Wednesday, August 10, 2011

1-9 August, 2011 Cabin Building, Wedding and Grandkids (and Kids)

We seem to have plenty to do around here.  The cabin building is progressing slowly but surely to getting the roof on.  It's a little unconventional in places due to cost considerations but should hold together for a good many years.


We have the timbers laid out on the foundation blocks and built the floor on the timbers.  This is Victor's first time building a cabin so he's pretty excited and learning a lot ... I jut hope the teacher knows what he's doing!


The final floor joist going into place ...


Next we put some bracing boards between the joist to stiffen things up a bit.  Since we're building on timbers instead of a regular foundation I like plenty of bracing to keep the joist from "rolling" or "twisting" over time.


We laid out the rafters and marked them for cutting once we had the floor on.  It's the last time I'll have a large flat and level surface to work on before we put the walls up.  Once they were marked we laid them aside until later.


The two narrow walls up ...


The south wall going up.  The window opening cut and ready for the double pane window.  The window was bought for ten dollars from the Habitat for Humanity store many years ago.  We've had it stored until we needed it.  It measures 72 inches by 36 inches and will make a great addition to the south wall.


The north wall up.  The entry door will be on the right corner.

Susan is charging the battery out of the Uhaul.  Its the same panel we used in Nevada.



A neighbor used a couple of big steel culverts for planters.  They cover them at night and have a large water barrel in each one to help retain heat at night.  It's looking like a good plan.


Our service berries are getting rile now.  The race is between us and the birds to see who gets the most.


We watered the garden last week.  I had stored excess rain water in six of our water barrels and needed to pump them into the main tank.  I used to siphon them in but it takes about 45 minutes per barrel and I didn't want to wait that long so I modified my suction pipe on the gas powered water pump so it would fit in the barrels and ...


Put the pump on the picnic table to get it the right height and pumped the water from the barrels into the main tank.  I also needed the barrels for hauling more water in the truck.  I made two trip to the neighbor's for more water so we used about 700 gallons of water for the garden that day.  I siphon the water from the barrels in the truck into the main tank to be pumped to the garden under pressure.  The last 300 gallons was put in the main tank for use next time.


Susan took advantage of our sunny days to use the solar cooker.


We needed to go to Kalispell on Saturday to take care of a grandson because both parents had to work.  We picked him up and then visited another set of kids/grand kids.


As usual some of the grand kids wanted to show us what they could now do that they couldn't do before.  This is Andrew riding his bike.


Jonathan wanted to show off his large bike because he'd outgrown his other one.


Dad and son.  Scott (the young-un') was just told he couldn't play with the reading light.


It's bedtime now so Scott's getting settled in.


More of the harvest ... raspberries, strawberries and service berries.



More grand kids playing at home here.  I helped their dad put new universal joints on the front axles of his 4X4 pickup which kept us busy for a couple of hours while the kids played.  After that we barbecued some hamburgers for dinner.  A lightning storm moved in which delayed our plans to go fishing for awhile.  The skies cleared up a couple of hours later so we managed to get in a couple of hours at the lake before it got dark.  The fishing was fair.  The three boys, mom and dad and I went fishing.  Mom was in the kayak, the guys were all in our 12 foot boat.  Susan stayed home with Anna. We all caught fish.  Kevin caught the largest and the smallest fish.  The largest was a 24 inch pike and the smallest was a four inch pike.  He looked like a green striped pencil on the end of the line.  I caught one pike that was small enough to slip through the weave on the net. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me to take pictures.


The boys sorting through toys from "Grandma's toy box."

Anna doing some stump sitting.  I wonder what grandma was doing to make her smile for the picture!


I put a broomstick on an old rifle stock for the kids to play with.  They improvised their own "scope" by draping a pair of toy binoculars over the barrel.


While we were waiting for the weather to clear the boys decided that they wanted some boats to play with so we made some from old wood scraps.  This is Jonathan's design.  The sails are plastic cut from a bucket top.  David's is similar but I used a piece of aluminum for his sail (one).  Andrew had a "helicopter" boat and we put a propeller made out of a can bottom on the top of his. Andrew doesn't march to the beat of a different drummer ... he is the drummer.  They had more fun with these than the store bought boats in the toy box.


Our youngest some got married Sunday afternoon at the lake.  This was taken in his final moments of freedom.


His beautiful bride in her final moments of freedom.



The bride and groom and their parents.  I have about two-hundred pictures to go through yet so these are just the early ones.

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