Small Town Life

Thursday is walking to the library to meeting Lily on her way home from school and have our cookies and milk before going in to read read read!!!

School Days

Lily is loving school and doing well as far as we can tell. We have realized one big gap in her education at home: math facts memorization! So we are working on flash cards a lot in the evenings. Even so, in every respect it seems that Lily is thriving in the new setting and enjoying her new independence. 

Noelle was not thriving, however, I'm half-day kindergarten. So after 3 weeks we pulled her out. She is now back to her cheerful, energetic, school-work loving self. 

I am so thankful for these different options for my different girls! It is still much quieter at home without Lily all day, but we are enjoying doing preschool/K work and reading time! 

It has still been a great mental burden for me lifted to only be "teaching" the little girls this year. I can enjoy my time with them without worrying about how the more rigorous academic requirements of my big kid are going to get done!

Project Sneak Peeks

Bathroom hardware!!

Cardboard mock up of washer/dryer:

Cardboard tub:

Rodent Skeleton & ancient corncob from the walls (extra insulation?). ;)

Completed Project: Back Deck!!

Most of what we are doing right now is home projects, and folks seem to enjoy those, so here are some details about our latest completed project; the back deck.

I think I'll stick to mostly pictures, with perhaps a few lessons learned sprinkled in.

BEFORE:

Deck LL#1: All projects take a lot longer than you think. We thought this was a quick 1-2 week project. It's been 3+ months. All that needed to be done, was:

Add balusters for child-proofing:

Repair/replace missing steps/deck boards

 and add the missing railing at the top of the stairs, and paint.

It looked so idyllic from the swing set:

What actually happened: 

We had to wait for Archer to get lead-certification to fix the missing railing at the top of the stairs, because the exterior of the house contains lead. 

Replaced rotten boards (just a few more than anticipated), 

lowered the bottom rails so that little bodies cannot fix underneath but we would have a clear path for shoveling (i.e., pushing) snow off, 

After cutting all the balusters I couldn't feel the fingers in my left hand for a while...
pregnancy+repetitive motion = temporary carpal tunnel! 

added a bazillion balusters and 

a child-proof gate. 

 Power-washed, then scrubbed, 

then power-washed to prepare for primer. 

Priming, painting, and learning many things. 

Like primer - even water/latex primer - doesn't come off of skin as well as paint.

And when adding balusters, you should paint the balusters BEFORE installation, and save yourself a lot of brush-work in 3.25in spaces created to prevent arms and legs from getting in between them...

Oh, and tinted primer would have been a better idea.

Little girls enjoy painting things red.

Oh, and really you should wait for your husband to fix those last few holes before trying to paint. The goal is to keep people from falling through the deck, and your impatience caused someone (yourself) to fall through the deck.

But the final product was worth taking the time to fix all your mistakes and do it right. 

  

I was so excited to be done with this project, I immediately started on the next one...