It's Almost Time..

The tree is up and covered in kid-made, construction paper ornaments, plastic beads and a few lights. We had to aim for a puppy, kitty, toddler-resistant tree. The bottom foot has nothing on it as paper quickly turns to confetti. The animals have, of course, discovered there is an additional drinking fountain under the tree. Our little girl was afraid of the green giant when we first brought it inside but now thinks it is "pitt-tee". The kids are out of school, the youngest boy turned eight on Tuesday and the weather is once again trying to float us away. I walked down to the river at the back of our property this afternoon and it is up at least eight feet since Tuesday.

According to the construction company the cabin area is covered in at least two feet of snow and the new metal roof is working fantastically. So is the new furnace, therefore drywall and interior finishing is coming along nicely. There should be some new pictures of the interior and of the exterior siding posted on the website shortly.

Happy Holidays to all.

Holidays Are Coming...

We have been trying to get ready for the holidays. The kids are getting antsy which translates into general chaos at times. As of yesterday, we are down to six kids with one of the boys leaving for a permanent placement in the guardianship of his uncle. Hopefully, we will be able to maintain some kind of sporadic contact with him so we know how it is working out in his new home. Winter vacation from school will start on Wednesday, the 19th and with that comes an intense effort to thwart cabin fever. One boy will have a birthday on the 18th and another will have his birthday January 2nd so it is a rather busy and expensive time! Tomorrow is tree-getting day. Hopefully, the weather will be mellow enough for us to go to a local farm, ride a draft horse-drawn cart out to the tree-cutting area and pick out our tree. The place we like to go has hot chocolate and candy canes for the kids and the boys are looking forward to going. We will have to experiment with decorating the tree. Between the puppy, the cats and a crafty two year-old, I'm sure some 'rearranging' will occur. We will try to get some pictures up soon.

Stormy Weather

Mother Nature has been wreaking havoc on us the past two days. Pouring rain and strong winds knocked down trees and power lines all over. Luckily, we did not lose power this time. Mom and Dad have delayed their trip south until things calm down. We border the Long Tom River and it rose 11 feet in the past 36 hours. Unfortunately, the builders of our house did some interesting landscaping that is less than functional in our rainy environment. A small lake develops in the front yard during heavy rain and likes to keep growing until it encompasses the sidewalk and tries to flood the garage and the front porch. I spent about two hours today out in the nasty weather digging more trenches in the driveway and front yard to convince the water to flow away and building a makeshift dam out of gravel to keep water out of the garage. It looks like some new french drains are in our future. For some reason, when this house was built, the foundation was set about 3 feet lower in elevation than the drainage ditches out by the road. As we all know, water does not flow uphill.

Things are moving along with our hopeful adoption of one of our kids. Nothing is set in stone but we are hoping there are no major roadblocks in the near future. We'll keep everyone posted.