Sunshine and sweat

Once school starts, mentally I think it should start to feel like fall.  But it's still summer.  And still pretty hot.  And it makes me want to hibernate inside in the air conditioning. 

Sometimes Perrin really wants to help, and he really can't, so thankfully he's easily distracted with ice cubes in a bowl while I'm hot dipping fruit.

Forms for footings... the foundation guys are slow workers.  😝

I'm king of the mountain!

I am in the middle of a different quilting project, and I have another quilting project in the queue, so I had absolutely no business starting a block from the 'High Fantasy Quilt Blocks' pattern I just got.  But Gandalf.  😁

Finally some concrete!  We missed the pour.  Every time I think that surely some big progress will be happening and we go out to check, nothing does.  Then when we don't go out until evening, we miss it. 

I specifically told the kids to avoid this puddle of cement.... Mr. Buster slipped and fell right into it. 

 Next step, basement walls. 

 

We went out to Iowa the Saturday before Labor Day.  Bob came down with his annual Labor Day Weekend Sinus Infection so he opted to stay home.  We ate lunch and played at a park with a really cool playground.

Then we went on a hike.

 

 The girls remembered Black Hawk Spring; Perrin wasn't super sure about the cold water at first but he ended up soaked. 

They found a frog.  Poor frog.

Then we went back to Jake and Rachel's for toys.

And a birthday party!

It was a good time as usual. 
A couple of the girls got it in their heads that they wanted to sleep in the tent in our yard.  I did not want to sleep in the tent, nor did I want any part of the set up or tear down.  (I know, I know, such a spoil sport.) Lucky for them, Bob was willing so they camped in the back yard Sunday night.  Mr. Perrin was soooo excited about the tent. 

As were these three...  :)  

Cecily and I planned to sleep in our beds, and then at 10pm Bob called from the tent that Perrin wanted to come inside.  I went to get him and he was waiting at the tent door with his blankie and his wolfy, "I all done camping!"  I'm not sure they slept all that well (the ground is very dry and haaarrrrdd) and they were up at the crack of dawn but they said they had fun.  And they packed everything up and put it away without me, so... 😊
The Brakers came to visit our dirt piles. 

They brought snacks.  

We had supper at Bob's parents' and Bob showed the kids how to trick a funnel spider to come out.  😨

Perrin was busily crashing his equipment while we talked to the foundation guy about basement window height.  The 'worker mans' were amused by his sound effects.

We have a house full of toys and they choose to play with kleenex boxes.  

I took the girls + Lynelle to a band competition, and we stopped to see Matt's attic renovation progress.  It's so much brighter already without the red carpet and dark paneling.

Once a band kid, always a band kid... it was fun to watch Eureka perform and our old Band director judging.  

We found Kenna (and Betty). 😊

Miri was there too- she spent her time crawling around and not whispering. 😝 

Cecily wanted to play a game with just her friends the night before, so I suffered through played a game of Clue with the younger girls and Perrin.  It works better if everyone can read well. 😬 

So the dishwasher.  One night it started making an awful grinding noise.  Huzzah.  I have no idea what a service call costs these days, and I didn't want to find out.  It was making terrible noises once before (a few years ago) and the repair guy found a piece of plastic floating around where there shouldn't be plastic.  I decided to go hunting.... with my nitrile gloves because, eww, and Cadence's owl headlamp.  Perrin was my moral support.  Ha.  Actually, he told me more than once that 'Maybe you should call someone.'  I unscrewed all the things that can be unscrewed from the inside, and cleaned out a lot of nasty gunk, but didn't find any obvious flotsam.  But, it stopped making the noise, so I'm happy!

And then I was so busy putting it back together that I forgot to pick up the girls from school.  Oooops.  😜

It was a lovely day for a picnic on the porch. :) 

Still working on putting up basement wall forms.  They are not the fastest crew... hopefully that means they are doing a really quality job.  Hopefully.

I took the kids to the farm to pick apples for applesauce.  

And they did some exploring. They really wanted to see the toilet from the famous 'Pig on the Potty' picture.  *ahem*  Surely they had better things to do back in the olden days.... hehe. 

That toilet is no longer that clean, nor is the rest of the building after 30+ years of pigs.  haha.  Perrin was not impressed with the 'icky potty' nor the spiderwebs and dirt.  Dad's sold a lot of the equipment so the rooms seem empty.  And also much smaller than in my memories.  I have a very clear memory of watching my Grandpa fish between these slats with a magnet on a wire for a missing wrench.  😋 

They played in the haymow for a while, then the older three talked Grandpa into climbing the grain leg with them.  It's just under 110 feet tall. 

I have never been up it.  I inherited Grandpa Schlipf's fear of heights and nope. nope. nope.  I watched them climb up but then I had to go in the house until they came down. 😜

Kacie's family shower was that evening over at Lori's, so given the choice between staying at the farm with Grandpa or coming with me- 'I want to talk to Kacie about trekking to base camp, but I don't want to sit with old people and watch her open presents.'  Haha.  I had fun at the shower, they had fun with Grandpa.  :) 
Bob is very long suffering. A pair of pocket doors popped up for sale online and they were the right size for our new house.  Sooooo.... we drove an hour and a half to get them.  I'm excited.  They came with all the hardware and tracks which is great, because they aren't plastic.  The guy who was selling them is flipping a house that looks to be in pretty rough shape (it didn't have power so we were inspecting the doors by flashlight) and he said he didn't know they were there until he started opening walls up.  Probably why they are still in decent condition!  I will have to refinish them... yikes... but that will be a fun adventure, right? 😉 

We cleaned them up in the front yard the next morning... I'm sure the neighbors talk about us. 

Saturday afternoon we went to the Cat Centennial celebration.  It was very hot and there were a lot of people there.  Perrin and Miri loved and didn't want to leave the sandbox.  They had activities for kids, and history displays and antique tractors.  The lines were really long though, so we stayed in the kids tent and then went through the snack tent.

They were handing out bottled water, plus each person got four snacks and a soda.  Guess who got to carry most of it. 😋 On to the equipment demonstration!  We sat pretty far back, which was fine because it wasn't quite as loud and we had a tiny bit of shade.  

It was a pretty cool show.  Perrin was in construction equipment heaven. 

Had to stop back at the sandbox and the RC toys on our way out.

Say cheese!

Sunday evening was the Church Chili Supper and I remembered to prep Perrin that the sandbox was going to be tiny (after the amazing CAT sandbox) and he had to share the toys.  

Kids.  He ate cheese and crackers.

The girls are pretty independent, thankfully, so I only had to keep half an eye on Perrin.  He was pretty excited about the hayrack ride and then he was running around with Abel and Remy 'playing army.'  I don't know if they were playing army too, but he was happy.  
The chili supper singing is my favorite singing of the year, so I'm glad we went even though it was so hot.  Cadence won two of the guessing games (she had to pick just one of the prizes) and Miri guessed how big Greg's pumpkin was.  😜 Since Cadence guessed closest to how much money was in a jar of rice she got to pick coins out of rice.... 

I am tired of sweating.  Summer is my favorite schedule, but it is not my favorite temperatures.  And now we are on my least favorite schedule and my least favorite temperatures and it makes me grouchy.  Anyway.  We are hoping that we will get basement walls this week.  
Blessings.