Zippin' Good Time!

We had another beautiful weekend and the house is ever closer to being "dried in." The roof is on, the house is mostly wrapped and the first floor windows are in.

Finishing the roof was a little scary because Jeff used roof jacks which are held in place with one screw and there were only three roof jacks which means he was being held up by only THREE little screws! Even he was nervous!

The house will most likely still be wearing nothing but a towel, a.k.a. house wrap, when we move in and stay that way for a while. It will be enough to keep the house dry while we finish the inside so we'll wait till after we've moved in to finish the exterior. Isn't it lovely? I think it looks good with the Sanford and Son theme we have going.

If your wondering about the clothes line with the big nail dangling from it, it's a zip line and a concrete stake. More about that in a second.

Next came the windows. Now it's really starting to look like a house!

Sunday morning, while Jeff was working by himself and waiting for the rest of us to show up, he made the kids a zip line with his repelling gear. As soon as we got there the kids lined up to take turns riding it. One by one, they'd crash to the ground or get dragged across a yard full of rocks, hanging on for dear life only to be thrown off when the ride came to an abrupt halt at the end of the line. A good time was had by all. Once the kids had all the fun they could stand, Jeff put a 2x4 on it so they could sit as they zipped down the line. That turned out to be a little gentler and provided them with hours of pain free fun.

I did get a video of Isaiah who managed to survive the ride on one of his turns.

Bed Head

You know those mornings when you first wake up, look in the mirror and think, "Hmm, not too bad." Then you pick up the mirror and look at the back side of your head and suddenly feel embarrassed hoping the hubby didn't get a look at that matted down, greasy mess! Well, that's about how the house is looking, deceptively good in the front.



Here's the front...not bad. (Ignore the junk on the ground, house building is messy work!)








But now take a peek at the back side. Hopefully that will get done next weekend.









Every time I'd show up to the house Jeff would be up high and hanging over the edges working. It was hard work and very scary at times, but I managed to survive. Jeff? Oh he's fine. Just a little sore from climbing up and down ladders all weekend. No biggie.





Here are some shots from the second floor. The kids are going to have some nice views from up there.























It looks kind of small, and it is kind of small but it will be fine for a few years till we can add on.








That's my mom holding Evelyn who's crying...as usual. She did a lot of that this weekend. I'm not sure if it's because of the new baby or maybe the big skeleton of a house that her daddy always seems to be dangling from is freaking her out. Either way, she been somewhat unpleasant company these last few days.







She did enjoy the little fires and marshmallows we had though. She doesn't actually like to eat the marshmallows, she just holds them.






We did a lot of fun stuff this weekend.


The older kids are always coming up with stuff to do out there like this...









We had a birthday lunch for my dad...












which included cupcakes.














Sophie took a lot of great naps.










We had a weenie/marshmallow roast and hot chocolate around the fire.













We were entertained by watching Jeff repel down the roof to get those last few screws in.









I even got to do a little landscaping amidst the rocks and poison ivy.

All in all, not a bad weekend.

Roof bones

Time is really flying fast around here. Sophie's already one month old! She's starting to plump up a little like she's been eating too many sopapilla's, which by the way, isn't her real name. Jennifer, my own sister, called me after reading the blog to find out if her name is really Sopapilla or Sophia. I could never actually name her Sopapilla because years ago, that same sister made sopapilla's for us and I guess I was sick because shortly after eating them I "lost" them, if you know what I mean. That memory has stuck with me. Anyway, I don't know what any of that has to do with anything so forgive me, I'm not quite myself these days. In fact, I think "I" took a leave of absence and some other women have moved into my body to take over for a while. Like Coma Momma. She lacks energy and personality but is really good at nursing and rocking the baby, all.day.long. If "I" were still here and in charge of rocking the baby, I'd probably be trying to break records in speedrocking...grandma Barbee style. For those of you who didn't know my grandma Barbee, she had a lot of kids who gave her a lot of grand kids and in order to give us all equal rocking time she had to POWER ROCK us...every time she saw us...till we were about FOUR. It was borderline traumatic but now it just makes me laugh! She was the best grandma ever and I really, really miss her.


So which woman is writing this post? I don't know. Possibly the one that's married to Jeff right now...she's a little bit crazy if you ask me. Poor fella.


Maybe we should get things on track before you all start to think I suffer from some sort of multiple personality disorder.




Jeff and my dad have been out at the house all week except for rainy Thursday (they needed a break anyway.) JJ spent a couple of days helping too and I think Eric might be out there today. They've been working on the roof assembly which looks to me like it's turning out great. Hopefully Jeff will have some new pictures for me tonight and I might add them to this post. As of Wednesday, however, this is what the house looked like...




We're getting down to the wire financially and by the time we move in we may have gone over budget a little. I haven't added up our expenses in a while so I'm not sure where we're at right now and we've decided to go ahead with a few things that we we're going to leave out till sometime down the road so we'll see what happens.

Here's something interesting, or odd...We are planning on (meaning we may change our minds) taking down the privacy fence we just put up last spring and using the pickets for horizontal siding on the house. Our neighbors are really going to think we're crazy when they see us doing that because we're also going to dig up a lot of the landscaping I just put in a year ago and we're taking our big metal garage with us. We want to take everything but the grass. No, we're not pack rats, we're frugal.