I know, I am slacking. I said at the inception of this blog that I would try to keep it up. This spring and summer has been quite the ride. To begin with I finally got up enough courage and exhaustion to cut back to one job. This was probably a good thing. I have been putting in a ton of hours just at the one. We have been going like gangbusters to keep up. On top of that, my colleague and mentor Sean is now out on paternity leave.
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I have been keeping busy on the home front as well. On March 17th we added another puppy into our midst. Pepper is a high energy attention whore who keeps us from sitting still for long.
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After many years of feeling guilty for ripping down her old (and extremely dangerous) deck, I was finally able to participate in building Mom B a new one. Between Jas hitting his head on the joists and me falling into footings it was fairly comical yet we still managed to do a pretty good job. The inspector had issues with only a few things and we are still working on getting them fixed. I think we have addressed most of the problems so far so the end is in sight. The best part however is that Mom is happy with it. Also it was good practice for me to eventually build my own.
We also made the trip down to Oklahoma this summer to help Jas and Michele move. It was nice to get away for a few days. Next time though I am not moving anything. Overall I think the move went pretty well.
The next highlight of our summer was the addition of a fence to our backyard. After several weeks of planning and acquiring permits and basic putzing around, we finally got started on the project. Shortly after beginning, the weather turned foul and rainy. This delayed our construction a little but as of last Saturday we are pretty much done. We did have to send a gate back to be re sized but the hole it left in its absence was patched temporarily and Bandit and Pepper have been able to run free for a bit each night (photos coming soon). We have also planted a few trees to eventually shade our back yard. We had two maples donated from Mom B and three oaks from Mom and Dad G. Now we get to start plotting and planning our landscaping. The deck will be waiting until next spring due to the unexpected cost of the fence. As of now we are debating building a set of temporary stairs to hold us over in the meantime.
Now as we are nearing fall I am regretting not getting out on the motorcycle a bit more but I am happy with all that we did get done. Work on the inside of the house will swing back into high gear once the weather turns and all the festivals and other extra curricular activities are done. With that said I will get back to slacking. I hope everyone is well and I also hope to see you all soon. Carry on.
