Mulch!

Long on our list of outdoor to-do projects was to replace the increasingly spotty mulch in the front yard.




Yesterday we rented the trusty Home Depot truck and went and got a yard of gorilla hair. Dana & I started early today about 8:30 clearing the old stuff out.




The kids sadly spent most of the beautiful late fall day inside, but we coaxed them out to help spread some of the new mulch.




And here's the final result:




We also blew out the leaves and pruned the bushes.

Oh and strung up the trusty Kirkland Christmas garland!





And I rearranged the garden shed to pack away the mower and summertime stuff, and put the sleds and shovels up front.

Election Night fun

Instead of watching what would end up being an historic electoral upset, we did something fun.

Alex's Cub Scout pack built pop sickle stick and hot glue buildings, to see who could make the strongest structure.

First Alex collected a couple of new Webelos achievements :



Alex opted for a very straightforward, very sturdy design, building a triangular tower of flat sticks




Alex's held up extremely well.








It ended up supporting 175 pounds, before the glue joints gave, and the structure slid apart under the weight.




And then, of course, this happened:

Ali & Mom's Birthday

We spent the weekend in Utah to celebrate Ali's birthday, along with the Aunties and Grandpa Gene.

Our chauffeurs for the weekend. This may be Uncle Eric's VW Cabriolet's last stand. It is up for sale.



The aunties



Epsilon made a new BFF in Grandpa Gene






We didn't really celebrate what would have been Mom's 65th birthday. But I'm also glad that nobody seemed to brood over it too much either. We are slowly adjusting to life without Mom. It's not what any of us planned or expected, but life does go on.

We did have a very nice seafood dinner (yes, seafood in Utah) on Saturday with the family to celebrate Ali's birthday.

Then we had to catch a 6:30 am flight home. Alas, that was the compromise for getting super cheap airfares for the weekend.

When Bad things happen to Good houses

So... we've known since we bought our house that the back door leaked a little. And it was obvious there was a little water damage. I'd been kidding myself for some time that it wasn't really that bad. But I knew I had to at least patch up the weather stripping this fall, so I decided to take the one door off to have a little look-see




As I took the door off and pulled up ever so gently on the threshold, a whole big 4"-5" chunk of "everything" basically came off in my hands.

Turns out it's rotten down to the rim joist. :-(




So yeah, that's the foundation wall down there at the bottom, and what's left of the subfloor, and what would have been the bottom of the jack stud and the end of the sill plate. At least there's no sign of water down below the rim joist. But because the rim joist is a microlam beam (think plywood) the top 4-6 inches are just dust now, as the water penetrated the laminate and glue layers.

I haven't quite recovered from the shock and not sure what I'm going to do. For the moment I've patched up the gaping hole as best I can with some scrap lumber and a whole mess of caulk.




But now I'm left knowing that there's nothing underneath that patch but open air.

We had a quote from Renewal by Anderson for installing a new sliding door (not French) and it was north of $6k - and that was assuming that everything below the trim work was "basically sound".

I'm thinking come next Spring, I'll start tearing it apart and rebuild it, maybe tie a new pressure treated 2x12 joist to the rotten one, tear out that chunk of subfloor, etc. and get a new door (Home Depot special?)

The moral of this little story: don't ignore little signs of water penetration!!!!

Cub Scout hike to Coyote Ridge

This evening Alex and I took a hike with our new Cub Scout Webelos den up to Coyote Ridge.

The boys and dads had a very nice time.



The boys look at a jack rabbit



Quick break at the cabin, with Den leader Sean



Checking out some mule deer, who are checking us out too.

Alex was selected to be our medical leader and carried the First Aid kit. Fortunately it was not needed.

I tried to get Genevieve to go, but she declined when she found out it was a Cub Scout hike. Siblings & families were invited, but apparently Genna was not the only one who demurred, so it was just the guys tonight). Dana also stayed home to catch up on some work.

Halloween

Halloween 2016 has arrived, and with it, a ghoulish blog post!

This year, inspired by his cousin's birthday present last month, Alex was a British redcoat. (Thanks to Amazon for a truly dizzying variety of costume options!)

Genevieve was a bat. I even found her $8.95 black flats at Walmart that she *likes*!

Harvest Farm

I took the kids on a Girl Scout troop outing this morning to Harvest Farms in Wellington. It was a fabulous down on the farm morning!

The giant hay bale stack and maze reminded me so much of the stacks of hay bales in my Grandpa Bill's barn hayloft!



The kids enjoyed climbing through a tough obstacle course!




The pig races were a big hit too
















Sno Cones- yum!!













The kids really get along well most of the time. They are, more often than not, each other's best friend and ally. That's not to say they don't still fight and annoy each other - they wouldn't be siblings otherwise - but most of the time the disagreements are only skin deep.