The siding is almost done. Thanks to the amazing help of a laundry list of people. My brother Kevin, my brother-in-law Jay, Uncle Ad, his girls, Ron (the guy who trained me), and a neighbor Paul. Here is a picture of the kid I hired to help who is headed off to Kansas State later this week, his name is Matt, he caught on fast and made the work go much quicker.

Uncle Ad came up a couple days and helped out. He even brought his own babysitters for my kids!

Also, we have lots and lots of critters around our house and acreage. 250 points if you can tell me what this is. Hint: it likes the cool rocks and concrete around my garage and shed.

At the end of last week my brother and his three kids came for a visit. They were going to come this following weekend, but something came up, so it worked out they could come last weekend. Good thing for me too, I put Kevin to work! It was really hot, triple digits every day. We got a ton done and went swimming every chance we got at the pool. Here are some pictures of the activities.

Kevin ripping off siding, unfortunately that is the best picture I got of that. We were trying to work in the shade as much as we could, the sun was a killer.

The kids playing at the pool. Have I mentioned that I love this pool?

Before

In between

After (but still without siding). This actually was work performed with the help of Mindy’s uncle Adrian.

The front of the house after Kevin and I finished with it. We were able to get all the siding on the house off except for the South facing part, which was never really in the shade. I actually just did that side tonight since we had clouds and it was only about 80 outside.

Kevin, Carmen, and helping Hannah. The weekend was great with the fam. Hannah was such a huge help with Carmen, she is a real baby lover. She also helped Mindy out in preparing some meals, she sets a good example for Mia! Rachel seemed to love the outdoors and the animals, although neither really helped with her allergies. Levi was all over the toys, couldn’t get enough of the playdough and the cars. Maybe next visit it won’t be so hot outside and we can do some exploring outside, or maybe a zoo or something. Thanks for coming guys!!!!! Oh and we can’t forget the awesome camping accommodations!!

To continue the story with reference to the blog post title. With all my siding off (except that one side), I was very lucky that Adrian helped me get the house wrap up, because this morning we had 30 mph plus winds and three inches of rain. All the house wrap held!! Of course that small section above the front window we didn’t get wrapped got wet, oh well.

The siding should start going up tomorrow. Hopefully I can post on that again soon.

I sit here trying to get some pictures off my camera to post to the blog, but no luck, so I guess they will have to wait. It is HOT here, has broken 100 the last couple days. (That’s close to 40 for you Celsius folk.) We are thankful for central air, it makes it so nice in the house. In the mornings and late evenings outside it isn’t so bad. A small storm went through last night that cooled it off a bit, I think it got down to 75. We kept the house closed up with the air on though.

The house projects are progressing. We ordering our vinyl siding yesterday and expect it early next week. In the meantime we are trying to get all the windows and soffits scraped and painted. We got some new paint for the girl’s room, and not much else really.

I found out I am much more susceptible to poison ivy than I used to be. I have had it twice before in my life, both times on very small cuts. Well right now I have it all over my lower legs and small spots on the rest of my body, arms, stomach, thighs, etc. It is not fun! We have the ivy in both the front yard and back yard, now that I know to look for it I can avoid it easily. I think our outdoor cat might be rubbing it on my legs? Fortunately no-one else in the house has it.

Yesterday we went to Wichita most of the day. We bought a bunch of clothes for Mindy since she starts teaching next week. It was a great trip. We even had Wendy’s for lunch. I love their chili!

Edited on Wednesday July 23 at 4pm
I got the pictures off my camera finally, turns out the card reader I bought was faulty. Here are two pictures I took of us taking a walk on our road out front, and a third picture of the girls at my work playing around.

My phone does alright on pictures, but so far the videos aren’t so good.

My beekeeping suit. Yep, I got up at 6 am the day after I flew over to Belgium in mid-June so I could go do this. It was all worth it, I got to play cards on the train both to and from Gent.

That post title is for some of our Belgian friends, you know who you are. We have not updated in a long time. My apologies. We are now more settled in so we will be posting more again.

So the cake part is actually relevant. For mom’s birthday, we had a little dessert gathering. I made the cake, but let Mia and Cheyenne decorate it. Sprinkles are the best.

Cheyenne puts sprinkles on the cake.

The finished product. One of the best parts was that we could only light half of the candles. Cheyenne likes to put them in wick side down. This cake was definitely decorated with love!

While daddy was gone for 3 weeks, I resorted to a cartoon every couple of days to give me time to wash dishes/vacuum/pee. Mia has not been interested in the TV until the past 6 months or so. Carmen however, seems very interested in it. This is them watching curious george.

Mia trying on some new clothes from her cousins!

Turns out we have termites. They found them before we closed on the house and put in a system around the house. However, while cleaning out on the sheds, we found these little guys hanging out. We called the termite guy and he is going to put a system in by the shed now as well. Fascinating but destructive little creatures.