Got stone

Ok I know I've been saying it for a while now but I finlay got up some of that stone. That stuff is alot of work. It sure dose look nice though. I hope to finish most of the upper portion this weekend. The deck should also be started some time this week. I hired a local guy to start on this job during the week so I could save a little work on myself. Man the summer goes fast when your this busy. We still hope to be finished by November just before our Flordia vacation.

We had to postpone Vincents baptism until Sept. 7 th after the 10:30 mass. We are having Katie, Maria, And Raksmey as the god parients. I hope to post some more news soon

What a weekend

We are home again and what a weekend. If anything could go wrong it

did on Friday and early Saturday. Friday afternoon we arrived in Talmoon ready to work. I drove to Marcel to Rent a auger attachment for my John Deere 250 skid steer. I needed this to drill the holes for our deck footings. This was supposed to speed up the process by saving me from hand digging these. When we started every thing was going great and me and Leo were drilling holes like mad dogs. When I got a little more then half done a boom & splat occur ed. One of the Hydraulic lines exploded and sprayed the front of the cabin with hydraulic fluid. What a mess. Now I lost all of the hydraulics on my machine so I couldn't even move the tractor plus I had to scrub down all of the cedar siding to get the fluid off of the house. Well I called the rental place and according to the rental agreement the renter is responsible for fixing any blown lines. Great I thought now what the @#$#@@@@! am I supposed to do. Well they told me the John Deere dealer in Grand Rapids could fix the part. So Saturday morning I cruised over to find that the idiot that was supposed to open the place never showed up so they weren't open. Now what was I to do. Well I went to just about every store in Grand Rapids until finally I found a hole in the wall place that could fix the part. THANK GOD!!! Now we have the part we need but by this time half of the day went by already. I also still remembered to get more hydraulic fluid. Well any ways we went back and I repaired the auger and then we actually finished the job. I have posted a small video clip of us drilling a hole. The rest of the weekend went very well. Me and the boys poured all of the concrete footings for the deck and actually had enough concrete. The next day Me and Leo just about finished the Hardy plank siding. Just a little more left to do. Hopefully by the end of August the siding, deck, and stone work will be complete. Other then this We also had some fun on the lake. Me Harry and Leo took out the boat for a midnight Cruz and went swimming out in the middle of the lake at night. this was pretty fun for all of us. We also did some skiing and knee boarding during the day time hours. All in all we ended the weekend on a good note. And look forward to havein next weekend off because Vincent is getting baptised at St. Andrews on Sunday.

Back home again

We have finally returned from our vacation. Man that went fast. We had allot of fun. I got allot of work done as well. I got to try out my new competition water ski and man was it nice. Anna learned how to pull me behind the boat. We also mad a trip up to Bemidgi for a scenic drive and dinner. One of the coolest things we did was made a trip to the lost 40. This is a chunk of land that was missed by the loggers in the 1800 and is now one of the only remaining virgin forests left in the state. The big pines ranged from 300 to 450 years old with trunks starting at 3 to even 4 feet in diameter. These things towered at least 150 to 180 feet in the air. Very cool indeed. We hiked the trail through these trees and couldn't believe that at one time the entire forest was once like this. The boys played in the sand and in the lake all week. Leo shot his BB gun a little. On the way back home we stoped in Baxter and ate Famous Daves and spent our last night at the Holiday Inn water park. The kids didn't know about this so they were very surprised. All in all it was a pretty productive week. I got up some stone, trimmed out all of the windows in the great room and kitchen, hung the doors, installed the washer & druer, finished all plumbing rough ins, had all of the decking delivered, did some more back filling and fixed my mower. We are heading up tonight to spend this weekend starting the deck and laying some mare stone.