"Final" Door pix

So, the doors are in. We haven't gotten a bill yet, so it great!!! We still need to finish the inside (welcome back home Dad, want to help me with some drywall?), but the huge amount of natural light that is now in that room is great!


Here's the guys that put it in ... our friend Dan is the one on the right.

Working outside. It was a bit drizzly, so they used the tarp to keep dry.

The "finished" doors inside (oh, by the way, the locks won't be here until the 15th!).

And from outside.

And some flowers that I walked by on the way to take the pix.

For now the doors are only windows since they're a pain to open with nothing to grab onto. I wrapped a cinder block with a towel to hold them shut in case of wind. We're already enjoying our new addition!!

Getting caught up on Pix ...

Okay, so I say getting caught up, but almost by the time I am caught up, I'll be behind because the door is going in today, so I'll probably take some more pix of that. Oh well, maybe a better term is "nearly" caught up.

Here's Emma and Timmy playing cornhole. Thanks to Jim and Laurie for giving us the beanbags and a giftcertificate to home depot to get the materials. It's a fun game! Basically it's a lot like horse shoes, just with bean bags and no permanent stakes in the yard on which to impale children.

Here's Cyndie and the sailboat racing team. The guy in the back is our friend Jack, the skipper.

Here are some pix of the cousins (minus sick Timmy) on our trip to six parks. The first was the Dragon's Lair ...

Then at Emma's school.

Then a little picnic area near our house ...

Then a little neighborhood park between our house and my parent's.

Then the big elementary school in town ...

and finally the "other" elementary school in town.

Now some pix of the construction project. Here's the dining room minus the beautiful knotty pine paneling.

Here's the outside minus the vinyl siding.

And with the "wound" covered up. It's raining today, so the guys are going to use the tarp as a tent to keep dry.

Here's us at Culver's celebrating the end of summer!

And here's Emma with her new teacher, Mrs. Hintz, at the Hotdog Cookout.

So there you have it. we're all caught up.

Behold the Conquering Hero!

So Cyndie had her last night of sailing tonight. She walked into the house a couple of minutes ago and told me the good news ... team "Second Wind" (the name of Jack's boat) won the season trophy for their division of the Wednesday evening races. Yeah Cyndie, Jack, Joan, (and others).

Cyndie had a really good time learning a bit about sailing (and also getting a break once a week from whiny kids). Unfortunately it's hard to sail when it's dark, so the sailing season is drawing to an end.

Edging Ever Closer ...

to school. Last night was the Woods Hotdog Cookout*. This marks just another line along the way in the progression to school starting next Tuesday. We went in the school, hung out in Emma's classroom for 5 or 10 minutes looking around. On our way back out we saw Emma's teacher who was very friendly and knew Emma and talked to her and complimented her on her hair. We also saw several of Emma's friends from school. We had our hotdogs with Hannah, who was one of Emma's better friends, and saw several of the families from our neighborhood that we've gotten to know. Emma also got to pick up her school supplies which we had ordered through the school as a fundraiser kind of thing. She was very excited about those. They came in a cardboard box thing with a handle kind of like a suitcase.

*This is a misnomer since the only outdoor activity that took place was going out to play on the playground. The rest of the time we were inside the school.

After that we went home and Emma wanted to unpack the school supplies and look at them all. It's fun how little things like that really make her excited ... just paper and folders and pencils and stickers with her name on them. We talked to Hannah's mom a bit and I think the feeling of excitement/nervousness is pretty common in many of the first graders. Emma was very hyper/excited/nervous and didn't end up falling asleep until around 10p. She's a real thinker/worrier who will stay awake pondering things in the dark ... I think she did a lot of that last night.

Today Cole (1st grade) and Olivia (3rd grade) are over to play. They live a couple doors down the street. Tomorrow Emma's good friend Olivia from her class is coming over. Things are moving ever onward!

Zones ... part deux.

Okay, here's part two of the "Zone Visit" post. There are some that are out of order here because I'm working from pictures from Jim's camera and ours, so bear with me ...

Maddi, Caitlyn, and Emma putting on a show in the basement.


Caitlyn and Tim in the rocks at the Covenant Harbor playground.

Ems going off the slide at Covenant Harbor.

The girls waiting very patiently to take a ride on the pontoon boat at Covenant Harbor.

On the ride.

Maddi doing one of the fun things at the water park.

A partial overview of the water park.

The Zone fam.

Maddi staring down the chickens at Farmer Katie's.

And she made a friend.

The kids welcoming Maddi and Caitlyn to WI.

The guys rocking out to Guitar Hero.

Timmy being Timmy.

More boat ride.

Eating at Culvers.

Tim at the water park.

Emma discovered that her head band matched her swim suit!

More water park.

So that's it! I hope you enjoyed today's edition of "catch up with some pictures".

Wrapping up some pictures ...

I'm trying to get out some various picture sets I've promised, so here are some random ones ...


Here's Anna Holte, Emma's good friend, getting baptized at the lake.

Emma and Timmy trying to play Guitar Hero!

Cyndie and the kids with Lee during his visit.

Making a slip and slide with Lee and the kids.

A little water aerobatics with Emma.

Cold?

As in "burrrrr", not "achooo".

It's been pretty cold the last four or five nights. Down into the fifties. It is 10:21 am as I write this and, granted the windows are open, I'm cold sitting here in my shorts and t-shirt with sweatshirt over the top and slippers on. Weather.com says it's 76, but with the wind, it's definitely chillier than that! I'm not sure when the weather starts to get colder around here, but we've definitely seen the days start to cool off. There are no more high 80s with humidity days ... at least there really haven't been for the last several weeks. It has actually been very pleasant . I think we've only run our air conditioner* two or three days out of the last three weeks.

*Bad news on the AC front. We actually discovered this when Lee was here ... actually he discovered it ... but the pan that sits under our coolant coils is leaking. We're going around and around with Peck and Weiss, with whom we have our AC and heater coverage plan, about how to deal with it. It looks like it could be as little as $100 or so dollars (replace the pan) up to $2800 (replace the AC)! The problem is two fold. First, the coils/pan were installed right on top of the heater cavity where the flames and heat and everything is. Over time, this melted the plastic condenser pan under the coils causing the leak. The complication is that the AC is old enough ... 1994 ... that the manufacturer is not going to support parts for it after 2010. Peck and Weiss is looking to see if they can find just a pan to replace that, which would be our ideal situation!

So Cyndie and the kids are at MOPS this morning and I'm pounding out the code. The excitement for last night was a trip to the library and then to Culver's for ice cream. This all came as part of playing school ... which Emma has really been excited about lately. The trip was a "field trip" and I (the teacher) even made her have a signed permission slip to go!

That's it for now.