No snow....boohoo

My hopes were raised and dashed twice in the last two days.  I was told there would be snow.  The "pineapple express" or something like that was bringing a front with snow, and it got blown away!!  Yesterday morning, I sat snuggled in my blanket watching the snow-filled clouds come rolling over the mesa, unfurl their load, and get blown away before any snow could even land on the ground.  Really, I think the snow just blew sideways.  Then another bank of clouds would drop over, only to dissipate in the wind. 

I was really hoping for a snow day even more than the snow, though I do know we could use the moisture.  It's just so tough when you make a day and a half of progress and then have to go back to the other work and can't finish what you were doing on the weekend. 

And what we "were doing on the weekend" was working on the basement.  We got most of the northern wall in the basement done, plus we framed two doors, and we even got one of them hung.  This being the primary achievement among others, like rotating the tires on my car, replacing the plastic "shield" under the engine block, and catching the kittens and playing with them. And this past week we got the lights installed in the TV room downstairs, which means we have a working light switch for coming and going (major convenience factor). 

If I had a snow day (and my hubby, too), I think we would have built and framed the door from the TV room into the mechanical room and hung it.  That would mean we could do some other rearranging and start cleaning up even more of the dust!  Guess it'll have to wait because there isn't any more snow in our forecast for a while!

A long, long weekend

In addition to all our other blessings for which we are so grateful, waking up late on Friday and knowing it's still not Saturday yet was wonderful!  We enjoyed some laziness this extra long weekend, but we also got cracking downstairs.  After finishing the last bit of work to secure the stove pipe and chimney, we fired up the wood stove for the first (and second) time on Thanksgiving.  And without a minute to lose, we got started on the walls.  It sure looks pretty down there with the wood up. 

a little more work to do around the windows and along the ceiling is all....

(temporarily the guest room is the TV room)

Thomas spent a good part of Friday playing with the electrical system.  I should've taken a picture of it, too, but he made all the wires look nice and pretty.  I worked on some pantry shelf sliders while he was doing that, as well as cleaning up the garden window behind the sink and prepping it for tile.  The backer board is installed, so next up is tile! 

Plus there was plenty of TV / movie watching, sleeping in, birthday partying for David, and working on a puzzle of fall leaves...

The Big Push!

Thomas and I were thrilled to host a big family function in the new house.  Back when I lived in the Columbine House, we laughed about how hosting a party is a much needed excuse to do a thorough house cleaning.  It was the same for us last week, though not just cleaning.  Sure, we swept and mopped the floor, but we also pulled the coffee table out of storage, plus an extra chair.  We pulled furniture over from the trailer, as well as some more of those items we kept reaching for but remembered were across the property.  It just keeps feeling more and more like a home, and when better to feel that way than when all the family is sitting around the table and telling stories or playing games.

Kudos to Mom and Pop for loaning me their camera, since I'd forgotten ours at work.

(the triumph of a little sister and big sister leaving those dominoes alone long enough)

Happy Thanksgiving to all!  How much we have to be thankful for this year!!

They Arrived!!

After a lot of eye rolling and huffiness on my part, our furniture was delivered yesterday!  Supposedly they got our number wrong and couldn't reach us to schedule the delivery.  It seems that once they got our number, they still didn't know how to use it.  But when it is all said and done, I made it home five minutes before the truck arrived yesterday and managed to move everything out of the way to make room for them (why didn't Tom and I do this Sunday night?).

this beauty was the easiest delivery, as we preferred to assemble it ourselves because we weren't sure if we'd need to cut it down because of the window; it's hecho en mexico and really lovely.

The cardboard in the window is only temporary.

It's great not to be sleeping on the floor anymore!!

(yes - that is the penguin blanket I got for Christmas 28 years ago - it is covering the lovely gray comforter with yellow daisies embroidered on it)

much more difficult to get in the house was the table - even coming in through the sliding door, they still had to take off two legs.  In a couple days I will get a picture of it with the leaf and eleven people sitting around it.  It's a nice stout table, and yes, Tom and I both sat at the heads of the table for dinner last night.  He thought we needed the leaf in but I thought eight feet away from each other was plenty far.

 Hooray and thanks to family and friends who helped with the table!  It is great, and I can't wait for all the meals shared around it with family and friends alike!

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like...

Our HOME!  ( If you thought "Christmas", take a moment to pause and let Thanksgiving happen first. "/)

Tom just told me that it still doesn't quite feel real - doesn't quite feel like our home.  We just keep chiseling away at out punch list.  Sometimes it is tough - there aren't any daylight hours when we're both home from work and the weekends are too short!  But it is so exciting to see things take shape...

the guest room floor that we finished last week - 

soon to become temporary TV room until the basement is finished

we got the tile back splash up in our bathroom -
I still need to grout it
(it matches the top of our shower)

we've been working a while on this piece -
after pouring the pedestal, we tiled the floor and then the wall row by row -
we installed the wood stove on Sunday, but ran out of daylight to secure the stove pipe to the exterior chimney - pretty cute!

the last pieces of tile went in around the edge of the shelf and stairwell

The progress is pretty cool.  There are lots of other things happening - Tom installed a dimmer for the dining table light, the ceiling fan in the guest room, the heater and thermostat in the guest room, and a number of other little things.  I have slowly been bringing over more things from the trailer.  There is still much to move, but there are fewer and fewer things we reach for and think - ah shucks, still in the trailer.

We also took a break from house work for future garage work - crazy, I know!  We went and salvaged a trailer full of lumber from some buildings knocked down at Philmont.  Tom thinks we scored enough to build the carport/workshop/coop - so I guess we have something to do next summer. 

Our First Big Snow

After much hemming and hawing, we quickly dashed to Denver and back for some shopping on Friday and Saturday.  Those odds and ends of things we knew we could find quickly in Denver, plus a bigger piece of furniture we couldn't find around here, were the reason we went.  The Habitat Re-Stores up there really are treasure troves for us, as people around here know how to use something up before getting rid of it.  With a full little Ranger, we set sail for home on the front edge of a big storm.  When we had to stop, we noticed the temperature drop, and the snow would catch back up to us.  Sunday morning, we awoke to a winter wonderland...  (my dad requested pictures)

We had a pleasant 6 inches or so.  It seems Cimarron got a few more inches and the mountains got at least double.  The declaration that we weren't going anywhere was one I enjoyed (no 4WD, and the truck was still loaded down with a piece of furniture we hadn't unloaded in the chill and darkness of night, and our highway is the last to be plowed).  It meant a bit of scurrying for me in the morning, as I quickly made phone calls to church folks to cancel a class, etc.

We were able to finish unloading the truck.  This beauty slid in through the sliding door, and we got it wiped down and set up...

We were looking for just such a piece of furniture, and ta da - it was waiting for us at the Re-Store for less than a fifth of what I'd seen for a smaller unit at the furniture store.  It already has a plant on top! We did take an unanticipated break to take care of a frozen water valve at the trailer, but good fortune was with us again when Pop arrived with his backhoe to dig up the frozen ground so we could cap the line!  Then we got back to it and set the tile for underneath the wood stove.  We figure it'll take a few more days to do row by row up the wall behind the wood stove, and then we'll ready to install it! 

Lesson No. 2

Don't expect to get as much sleep as the time between going to bed and when the alarm will go off.

Parents probably learn this one much differently when they bring home a newborn and go through the feeding and crying and wet diaper sleep cycles.  Jumping in to the sleep routine without this buffer may leave an unsuspecting night owl a little groggy when the alarm never gets to go off.

I had so much fun with the kids during my week of sitting on babies, but I cannot say I had so much sleep.  The four year old managed to sleep in his own bed all night.  "All night" is just a relative term, and it usually ended around 6:30 am.  Sweet as could be, he would pad into wake me to tell me he was "hungwy" - even on Saturday!  At 6:30 am!

With his little brother after the little one got to go to a fire station and get his own fire hat...

House pics

The house continues to be a work in progress.  After only a week in the house, I was gone for over a week, and I am still playing catch up...

Pics from the house the first week in it - note: I argued the plants all needed to get moved in because the trailer would be too cold to keep them alive.  Tom argued the trailer was too cold for watching TV, even though it is not to be a permanent feature of the living room.  So the plants and TV made the move and quickly filled in the empty spaces.  

Then, in the first week, I had a day off for Columbus Day, so I finished painting the mud porch and hung a coat rack and moved in a shoe bench.  More recently we built a shelf under the cabinets to hold recycling, kitchen things, root veggies, etc.

A week ago I helped Thomas finish the work on the chimney, which he started while I was gone.  We also finished planing the wood for the stair shelves, which he's also gotten halfway done while I was gone.

The other task he started on in my absence and finished in the last couple weeks is the guest room walls.  He textured, and then I painted.  I still want to hit the windows, closet, and loft with yellow.

Lesson No.1

I had the privilege to spend a week in Portland last week.  Radio silence on the blog, as I was not really privy to "free time".  It was a fun week of seeing family, but most importantly, watching five cousins for a week while their parents got their first trip together sans children in twelve years! 

The week was - awesome...an eye-opener...exhausting...mucho fun...enlightening...rainy...busy...
I did learn much.  It has been a long, long time since I have done an overnight with kids on my own, let alone five.  They were terrific and super helpful.  With an early-bird little boy and a night owl big sister, there aren't many hours when all five were asleep, so I am looking forward to catching up this weekend...maybe.

SO - LESSON NO.1 - there seems to be a children's gripe about Mom or Dad saying "maybe" when they really mean "no."  I get it now, from the other perspective.  When you're busy and in the flow of the day, a child asks, "If we ______, then we can get two pieces of candy."  I know that doesn't look like a question; it is really only part question, mostly assertion of how it is going to be.  When she comes asking for the two pieces of candy I never said they could have (not even a "maybe"), there is a huge pouty sigh.  Several times over there are questions of "can we ___?" for which I just don't have an answer.  I have no crystal ball to tell me if the weather will be right, or if the little brothers will be awake from their nap, or if all the chores will be done on time, or...  So many life circumstances that I can't predict; therefore, I cannot say "yes" for certain.  If I do, they will remind me over and over again, leaving me to wonder if I can turn ten minutes into thirty or infuse them with a full night's sleep if they stay up late.  When time has run out or the weather has turned to rain, I'm not a liar when the "but you said we could ____" comes out if I only said "we'll see". 

More lessons to come, maybe.

IT HAPPENED!!!

As of October 9, 2014, we are IN THE NEW HOUSE!!! 

Our new bed arrived yesterday morning.  Of course it would be rainy and muddy, but Thomas got that  cleaned up.  The rain and mud didn't and haven't let up, so I made several trips in the truck through the mud to bring over food and toiletries from the trailer - and a spoon for my cereal.  Thomas and I set the bed up last night and pulled out the new sheets and bedding.  He thinks the little pillows are pretty frivolous, but couldn't fathom the four extra king-size decorative pillow shams.  Too many pillows for his taste...

We still enjoyed pizza and Bones in the trailer before we went back to work on the house.  And then we had to go back to shower, since I hadn't brought over the shampoo.  The back and forth will continue for a bit, I'm sure, as we empty out the fridge and move over the other dresser.  We'll also need to do something about this mud in a hurry.

BUT it was great to wake up in the house this morning.  When we went to bed, it was 67 in our room and raining outside.  We left the ceiling fan on low and the bathroom window open (still venting the subtle smell of the floor wax).  And when we woke up, it was raining again and still 67 in our room - 65 on the thermostat by the sliding door.  I enjoyed a bowl of cereal at the table (instead of standing at the counter).  AWESOME!!!

So if you can't reach us by phone, it's because that hasn't moved over yet either....

Thank Goodness for the Rummage Sale; aka Oops...I Did It Again

Once again I owe great thanks to Mom and Pop for coming to my rescue.  I needed to be in Springer around 9:45-10 am this morning, so I slept in a little and went for a walk up the road.  It's been a long while since I got in a good-for-me walk, as I usually come home and change into work clothes to chip away at another project.  I slipped on my sweats and enjoyed an overcast morning, greeting the neighbors horses and taking in the views. 

I timed it just right, so I would get home with enough time to shower and grab the recycling to drop off in Springer, too.  When I got back to the trailer, I was surprised when the know didn't turn.  I didn't bring keys or phone or anything, and I wasn't going to lock the door behind me.  Stunned, I walked around the trailer, confirming what I already knew - the only open window has a swamp cooler hanging out of it, and I am not strong enough to pull it out by myself.  Shucks!

I double-checked to make sure there was no spare key in the car, and upon not finding one, decided to jog to Mom and Pop's.  I let my mind wander - what if they're gone for a doctor's appointment, what if they ran into town to the store; they don't have Sofia on Wednesdays, so they could be anywhere!  What would I do if they aren't home, which neighbor could help me take down the swamp cooler - there's plants sitting on it inside the window, I don't even have a phone to call anyone....could I wander around Miami for a day and nobody would notice?  I could hang out at the firehouse, and there's a phone there....Uh-oh - Pop's truck isn't in front of the garage!  Maybe he's at the firehouse; I'll check there real fast.  Not there either; maybe Mom's home and he's at the water tower.  Please be there, please be there, please be...HIS TRUCK IS IN THE BACK!!

I am sure they were as surprised to see me as I was relieved to see them.  Sofia was there, as the woman who watches her on Wednesdays hits the Cimarron Rummage Sale as soon as it opens, which was today.  Thank goodness, or they really could have been anywhere.  But they were home and my heroes, and Pop even offered me a ride home to make sure the key worked.  I returned the favor and helped load chairs from the school for the firehouse into his trailer later that morning in Cimarron.  Easy work compared to wandering around town for a day!  Hopefully there is only one more night of sleep in the trailer.  Moral of the story is to get him a key to the new house and maybe even hide one somewhere on the property!

There is clean laundry again!

And now there are two loads in the basket waiting to be folded!

Thursday night I got home ready to work on the house only to find a large bag of roasted chiles waiting to be peeled.  A happy belly all year long is the result of buying chile at the end of the summer and filling freezer with little ziploc bags of ready to eat goodness.  However, we nearly missed out because we couldn't really bring home chiles to freeze without a freezer.

Last week we got the floor waxed and then sort of polished - enough to move in the freezer anyway.  So having brought home the chile, Thomas got things ready to move in the freezer.  We got it in and running and then peeled the night away!

He had already put in his 40 hours for the week, so Friday he hung drywall in the mudroom, as well as a lot of other work.  Next up - the cabinets, shelving, or other layout for the mudroom walls!  I had come up with a plan, was encouraged to revise it using the leftover kitchen cabinets, was also told we would just get more at Habitat, and then had sour grapes when none of these plans were accepted.  Ah well...after a good night's rest and some time to mull over the options (primary parameter being that it needed to be completed the next morning, which meant materials in hand), Thomas and I devised an acceptable plan for both of us.

Saturday we cleaned up and hung the cabinets right off the bat.  This was to Tom's liking, so he wouldn't have to texture the area behind them.  While he textured the spot behind the washing machine, I mixed paint - using some of the yellow from the house, I added some of my craft paint to warm it up a little - more complimentary with the floor.  I was able to paint the wall behind the washer and dryer, so he could install them on Sunday while I was at youth group.  Plus, this morning I was able to paint the north and west walls before work, which he textured Sunday, too.

There's still the ceiling and east wall to paint, but it is looking good!  And it sure is nice to have clean socks and undies!

high tide!

Cimarron made the news with its flooding Sunday, but things are drying out here.  As much as we need the rain, floods like this often leave the water downstream and the destruction behind.  And as I suspected, a number of folks slept right through it.  Reports range from 5 to 10 inches in five hours - that's a lot of rain!

Here are the pictures I took Tuesday on my way to work of the olona on the south side of the highway.  It feeds water into Miami Lake through a large culvert under the highway. 

The actual culvert is further down the road by the bushes, but this picture shows both the debris caught in the barb wire fence, as well as how high the road is compared to the ground on the south side.  The water actually comes from the far end of the picture, so the debris shows how far the water shot past the culvert.

Closer to the culvert, you can see the valley a little better to the west.

This picture looking east shows all the debris left behind.  It was dark when we found ourselves in the water, but using the odometer, I would guess it was around 500 yards, and Tom thought it was two feet deep at its deepest - that is just a lot of water barreling down the little path!  From all accounts it sounds like it was running over the highway for at least an hour.  And the lake is looking pretty full!

It'll all change in a week!

Progress and change come quick...sometimes.

 The closet I worked on Saturday - the cedar planking along the bottom makes it smell so nice.  And now it is ready for clothes and all sorts of other storage bins.

My floor!  I take a little pride in the pattern, though Pop told me it wasn't random enough.  I told him that's why it is a "pattern".  These were tiles we picked up with the ones for the bathroom - cheap and easy to install.  But I admit that it took longer than Tom thought it would.  I guess I am just slow and messy, which makes me even more slow, which makes me want to hurry, which makes me messier....ah the vicious circle!
(from this angle where a cupboard will be, the chest freezer will be to my left along the north wall, and the shop sink, dryer, and washer will be across the far/south wall)

Tom conceded to my request for gray grout, which meant exchanging the white for it when he was near a Home Depot.  He finished this over the weekend, which looks really good with the floor, too.  It's ready for bathing, though we still need to pick out a shower curtain.

Already since these pictures, the mudroom floor has been waxed a couple times and is ready for buffing.  Tom got the flashing screwed down, and the seams are sprayfoamed.  We've got a few sheets of drywall to throw up and texture and paint, and then there's the plumbing to install.  By next Sunday it will hopefully be full of appliances once again!

A Few Screws Loose

I must admit that on September 8th, I accidentally hit one of the resident kittens.  She is not from Felix's lineage, the original cat that arrived in the fall of 2011 and is the only remaining cat at our place.  In light of the life span of our kittens, it shouldn't be surprising that Dulce, who showed up with her brother Kevin in August from out of the blue, would land under my tires.  I panicked, of course.  I saw her flop to the edge of the garden, and then I pulled the car back around, ran inside, and called Tom to apologize.  It was my first day of RE classes, an eleven hour day for me, and I was beside myself.

It doesn't help that the day before on our way to church, I confessed to Tom about killing all these spiders at the hall when I set up for our classes, plus the flies that found a garbage can full of food left at the hall, and the crazy birds that sit in the road and fly up into my grill driving to work.  I told him it reminded me of that rhyme about an old lady who swallowed a spider - she swallowed a spider to catch it - and a bird to catch that.  I cracked a poorly timed joke that the cats better watch out because the cat was swallowed next to catch the bird.  Yes - poor timing to crack a joke like that 24 hours before hitting Dulce.

The cat lived.  Tom couldn't find any protruding bones when he got home, and Kevin was protecting her.  She gets around just fine now, putting weight on it sometimes and other times going "tripod".  Tom thinks she'll be okay - as was mentioned above, her life expectancy isn't that great anyway with hungry owls and hawks in the neighborhood, or whatever else it is that gets our kittens.  And just when I think things are going to be okay, I have to wonder now if she isn't brain-damaged, too.  The mud porch is gone, which was a place of great shade and protection.  The kittens found a break in the skirt of the trailer and are now hanging out under it.  For some reason Dulce has no problem getting in, but forgets how to get back out.  She scratches and whines under the steps at the front door for help to get out, so Tom or I have to walk down to the break in the skirting and meow for her, so she can get out.  Ridiculous!

Rolling with the Punches

It's said that the only true constant is change...maybe so...my plans don't always last for too long.

I didn't get out to the house to work this morning, but that's okay.  I know it's Monday, a paid-job work day, but school is back in session, along with my late Mondays.  So I figured I would get a coat of wax down on the mudroom floor in the morning, so when Tom gets home tonight, he could apply a second layer.  At least that was the plan at six last night when we called it quits for the weekend.  I also planned to take pictures to add to a post, but that was the "original" plan.  

We had an overly productive weekend - a trip to Albuquerque for work on Friday meant that we resupplied at Costco, got a bunch of things for the house - including a new lawn mower for Tom, and picked up a pump for Pop.  We cruised in just shy of ten at night, unloaded, and crashed.  Saturday we got busy: Tom worked on waxing the guest bath floor, mowed the weeds, started grouting the tub tile, and I installed our "closet system". After lunch Tom kept up with his projects and I started laying linoleum tile in the mud porch.  Work, work, work until almost seven - all the whole tile pieces were glued down, and my hands, legs, and feet stuck to everything.  Sunday, Tom cut tile for me for the edges in the mud porch, Pop brought the tractor over to help Tom attach the mud porch to the house, I finished the floor and some major clean-up, and Tom finished grouting the tile - plus he got the fixtures installed for the bathroom!  Boy are we getting CLOSE!!!!

So last night we were winding down - bellies full of pizza and peaches'n'ice cream. Both showered and ready for bed, we were less than an hour or two from deep sleep.  Then Tom's work phone rang, and the night melted into a wet mess.  We delivered sandbags to Cimarron, where a heavy storm in the hills and town were causing flooding.  After dropping off a bundle of bags, we headed to Raton for more.  In the rain it seemed all our movements were blurred and slow, but by the grace of God, we made it there and back and eventually home without incident.  Right away we hit major water across the highway just west of Miami Lake, and I hope I can take pictures tomorrow of the barbed wire fence full of debris where the water flooded over.  Around Cimarron there are more signs of water in places it usually isn't.  The community really came together and helped each other, though I wondered how many people in town slept through it and didn't even know what was happening out in the dark, wet night. 

So after getting home at 3:20 am - plans changed.  I didn't get the floor waxed.  So what?  The yard was too muddy to go out and take pictures, so those will just have to wait.  Big deal!  It's felt like five o'clock all day...and now it finally is.  Hopefully my plans to go home in a couple hours and go to bed early won't change!

Two Full Weekends!

Conveniently, I excused myself from a work-related training on September 6th because "we're pouring concrete that day".  Plans for the pour were revised from day to day, but despite the rain of the week and despite the mud, we did pour concrete.  Thomas and I prepped for the footer/stem wall for the mud porch to sit on.  Plans changed more times than I can remember, but ultimately we dug down and laid a row of ICF blocks.  After leveling it and laying all the rebar, Thomas wheeled out the concrete mixer, and we poured and poured and poured.  The local hardware store delivered the concrete sacks - by the trailer instead of a) on the pallet where they'd be covered in case of rain or even b) by house where we would be using it.  Needless to say, mixing and pouring 37 bags was tiring enough to then add loading them up from the trailer, too.  The hero of the day has to be Pop's cement wheelbarrow, as our's had a flat tire after three bags.  Goodness knows my arms would have been dangling to my ankles if I did it by bucket!

Oh yeah, and also that day, I textured our closet - getting closer...

Sunday I had the good fortune to have company.  After church I helped Tom get the next row of ICF up and braced, but while Fr. Tom and I visited after lunch, Pop and Tom poured a few more bags of cement for the pillars.  My back and shoulders were grateful!

So this week we prepared to move the mudroom.  Like the plans for pouring cement, the plans and theory for moving and reconstructing the mudroom have been numerous.  Ultimately, this is what happened:

I finished my last load of laundry on Wednesday, and that evening the freezer, washer, and dryer were moved out to the shed.  Everything else was put downstairs in the cellar.

We demo-ed the interior wall, so as to ensure that we were not attached to the trailer in any way.  (The mudroom was never actually attached directly.)  We also disconnected the electricity and the plumbing.

 The shelf I built for wine glasses, etc was removed from the window hole and replaced with the original window (look straight though to see the other half of the window still mounted on the outside of the mudroom.

After Thomas and I unscrewed the flashing that covered the gap between the trailer and mudroom, we jacked it up with farm jacks and slid heavy black pipe under it in three places.  Using a long chain and Pop's tractor, our tractor operator slid it away from the trailer.

The trailer and jacks were used to block it off the ground, so that Thomas could attach an axle to the bottom of the mudroom.

And away we roll.  The tractor wheeled the mudroom in a large arc across the property and right up to the house!  And Pop appreciates that the feat was done without cracking any of the walls!

Using the jacks again, pallets were stacked under either side, and heavy metal pipe was laid across the concrete pillars, and the tractor just slid it into place!  All between breakfast and dinner, with a nice lunch break in the middle - thanks, Mom!

We will replace the roof with matching propanel, though we won't change the roof pitch.  Tom and Pop got the wiring done on Sunday before Sofia's third birthday party.  I've got the floor practically prepped for laying linoleum tile.  We will need to attach it to the house and weatherize it, and then hang sheet rock on that interior wall.  Oh yeah, and we need a new window where the other one came out.  Pretty wild how easy they made it look!