Insulation

Insulation

Waylon and his dad worked long hours on the house this week. Repaired plumbing in the upstairs and downstairs bathrooms, added boards for support and bracing in the rafters upstairs. They also replaced some wiring throughout parts of the house. Waylon spent hours scraping mud dauber nests, and giblets of nests, from the rafters and inside the walls upstairs and one room downstairs. He and his dad also ran a new drain line to the washer and properly installed the washer. The week was spent getting ready for the contractor to come and spray insulation throughout the house. The open cell foam insulation job was accomplished today, and we are feeling really great about the progress.

Some smaller projects that I worked on this week, when we weren't schooling, were stripping the old paint from one of the doors. Cleaning out the upper kitchen cabinets which had a lot of jars and old canning supplies that were left behind by the previous owner. I also began stripping the kitchen cabinets using a heat gun and scraper. The cabinets are still installed in the kitchen. My plan is to work my way around the kitchen, stripping cabinets and window trim. After finishing the cabinets and trim in the kitchen I'll move into the laundry room to work.

Kitchen Cabinet

Old Canning Jars

From there, hopefully the
weather will have cooled
down a bit, and I can
move upstairs and work
on the bathroom and kids'
rooms.

It has been so hot lately
(last Tuesday it got up to
100 degrees outside)
that I have tried to stay
away from working upstairs.

Kitchen Window

We made some great progress in school this week, and got the kids signed up for 4-H. Julia is taking a photography class which I enjoyed sitting in on, and which I am trying to convince Jonathan to take as well. Jonathan is currently signed up for a vet tech class, which is a five year program --IF he decides to see it through.

Jonathan had the opportunity to give a descriptive speech at his Speech Boot Camp on Thursday. His subject was Owl City (a modern one-man synth-pop band) and I felt that he did a good job presenting the speech. He has improved on his volume, eye contact, and hand movements since the first speech, which was a self introductory speech. Public speaking is not something that he enjoys, but he seems to be trying his best at it. His grade has improved over the weeks. I know that this opportunity has been a blessing for him (even though he doesn't know it).

We finally caught a raccoon and a possum in our live traps this week. We also caught a very fat, large, black, fuzzy cat! Hopefully this will cut down on the amount of cat food we are losing every night to those wild critters.  Since my bark is bigger than my bite, I softened at the last minute and decided to release the possum near the river, FAR, far, away from our home. The coon, well-- he didn't make off so well. Let's just say that Jonathan has been wanting a coon tail for quite a while...
No pictures. Sorry.

Sunset in the pasture

Sunset #2 from our pasture

Crossing the Lake Livingston Bridge- Beautiful Clouds  (snapped last Saturday morning coming home from a visit to mom & dad's)