Backhoe 101

Mom and Dad saw a construction sale and kept telling us we needed to go look. We bought 2 sticks of 42" culvert; 4 sticks of 12" culvert; and 4 sticks of 10" culvert. So that was not too bad but then we also bought a new piece of equipment for the land... a 1998 Ford 555D 4wheel drive Backhoe. Rod spent several hours this afternoon going back and forth of if we should buy it. The list of things he could do with it is long! So when it finally came down to it we decided to go ahead and buy it and figure we can always sell it at a later time. Here is a picture of him getting the 101 instruction of the basics.

Bull Riding

Tori went on Saturday night to help at the Cheatham County Flood Benefit at Owen Farm. She had a good time riding the mechanical bull. Russell is a guy from her 4H honor club that was running the bull riding machine. Tori was riding on full buck and according to Russell she was the best one that rode that night. I guess all the horseback riding had her prepared to hang on with her legs. She did have a couple of bruises the morning and she skinned her knuckle.

She also had to work the inflatables with 4 boys from juvenile detention. She said they were shocked when she told them they could not cuss around her. They were amazed that "you don't EVER cuss?" To which she replied "NO". Then to add to their frustrations.. she also would not let them smoke and made them put their cigarettes out. I'm sure their community service would have been more fun if they didn't have someone just as strict as their jail warden to work with :-) Tori is such a good teenager!

Happy 18th Birthday Zac!!

Zac officially became an adult on Thursday! It was his 18th birthday. We threw him a small party to help celebrate. The guest list included: Bobbie, Scott, Seth and Wyatt; Joy, Samantha and Dennis; Mom and Dad; Rick; Hayley and Zac; and my family. Tori stayed up very late on Wednesday night to bake him a cake. I don't think Zac had any idea she had planned on making this large of a cake and certainly not in the shape of a deer. I think it turned out great!

Mission

GSY is Tori's youth group - Good Springs Youth. They go on a mission trip each year. This year several of their opportunities fell through because of one thing or another. Their youth pastor then realized that Nashville has had a crisis of its own and their mission was local this year. So they decided to stay here and "Serve Nashville"! Different groups of kids went to the Nashville Rescue Mission, Habitat for Humanity, and the Bethesda Center. Monday my work gave me the day off to do Mission work. Tori and I served together at a location in Ashland City called the Bethesda Center. They are a thrift store that also has food for needy families.

Because they had close to 30 teens volunteering in 3 different locations, Jeremy needed additional adults to take groups to the different places. On Tuesday I decided to take a day off from work to go back for a 2nd day. Tori went all 3 days. By the end of the three days there were 39 different people who served in 4 cities and over 500 hours of service was donated!!!

Sometimes it is hard for my kids to understand how some people struggle. I try to help teach them that they are so fortunate to live in a home where food is plentiful, the bills are paid, and most importantly they have 2 parents that love and care for them.

Here are some pictures from the week at the Bethesda Center - certainly fun was a part of the day.




Look at all the food on the shelves:


Lunch Time


There are pictures of the kids trying on clothes... I will spare you!!!!

Kristyn and Kyles Wedding

On Saturday night we went to Rod's cousin Kristyn's wedding. It was a beautiful wedding with a great reception. Tina was the most excited about it. She took a long time to get ready and had several meltdowns before we left the house. First Tori wanted to wear the shoes Tina wanted (they were Tori's shoes after all). Then she had to change her dress because she didn't have shoes to match. After rolling her hair she didn't think it looked good; the straps were too long on her dress; etc. We finally left the house and they both looked great. Unfortunately we did not get a family picture, but here are some of the kids.

Tori and Tina with their great-grandfather Papa


Waiting on the wedding to start:


I don't have a good picture of the bride and groom.. this was the best I was able to get


Tori with her great-grandmother Maga


Tina with Maga


Tori and Kristyn


Tina, Kristyn, and Tatum (Tina loves Tatum!)

Where oh where could my eggs be????

Tina's egg business has its ups and downs. The ups are when she knows where the eggs are and the downs are when she thinks they are not laying or she can't find the eggs. Rod took the underpinning off from the campers and look what we found.......

(Don't worry, we threw all of these out since we didn't know how old they were)

Cleaning the campers

In case you forgot what "home sweet home" looked like, here is the outside view right before we started the cleanup.


Tina is taking care to wipe everything down. The dust was horrible - the entire time we either had lots of mud or lots of dust!


And it looks good as new!!

Camper for sale

The kid's camper was nice, clean and everything worked on it when I bought it. Even after living in it for 6 months, it did not take us long to get it cleaned up and ready to take pictures. I still had to fix a plumbing redirection I had done to connect the campers to the well and make it through freezing temps. I will be listing it on Craigslist this week.

Paid Days Off aka Vacation and horse poop

My work does not have vacation, holiday, sick days. We have a single bucket of time called 'paid days off'. So last week I requested to be off on Thursday, Friday, Monday and Tuesday. On Monday night I thought about it and I really had several items at work that I felt needed attention and I decided that I should go to work on Tuesday rather than take the day off. Hayley had spent the night and Tori and Tina were going to go to Nashville Shores with her. My plan was to get up early, leave the house at 6:40, take them to Mt. Juliet to Zac and he was going to drive them to Nashville Shores when they open at 10:00. I was going to work until 4:00 and go pick them up after work.

So instead here is how my day went:

Got up on time at 5:15 and took my shower
Got Tori up at 5:45 for her shower
Had all the kids up, ready and loaded into the car at 6:30!! We were AHEAD of schedule
6:35 - arrived at the horse barn to feed the horses and goats... and here is where it all went to heck in a hand basket. The horses were out and the gate was wide open.

So now it is 6:40 in the morning and I am driving all around looking for evidence of where the horses have been (aka looking for poop). We check the boy horse that lives about 1/2 a mile from the house and they were not visiting him, we drove down New Hope Road and found some droppings almost to the golf course. So now we are thinking that sure is green grass over there and I pulled in. Walked up to the club house and asked them if they had seen any horses. You should have seen Tori's truck in the parking lot compared to the golfer's cars... (remember it always has mud all over it and now the tailgate is off, and it was loaded down with trash that needs to go to the dump)

We drive and drive around and around in circles looking. I called Robertson County animal control and Cheatham county animal control. The next step is we headed to Dollar General for poster board to start making signs. At this point it is now about 9:30. While the kids are making their posters I called my vet friend Denise to ask her if she had heard anything and she suggested to call the sheriff's department. So I made a call to them and bingo... a lady named Charlotte Sanders had called in and said she found two lost horses!!!! We were in luck. I called her and asked if they were a dapple gray and a palomino and they were. She was nice enough to get them off of New Hope road and put them into her neighbor's pasture. We went over there (10:00 now) to try to get them and the man with the key to the padlock on the gate was not home.

About 2 hours earlier I had decided I didn't see myself working today anyways :-)

So we went onto Nashville Shores. After 4 hours in the sun we headed back home to try again to find the person with the key. We did and Tori and I walked the horses 1.5 miles from where they were back to the barn with Mom and Tina following behind us to keep traffic from flying past us and spooking the horses. I could not have asked them to behave any better on that trip back. They knew their joy ride was over and were ready to go back home. I don't have a picture but just close your eyes and see Tori and I walking with two horses down New Hope Road....

Double Play!!!!

Last night was one of Tina's last softball games. They lost again (they have not won a game yet) but Tina made a single handed double play! She played 2nd base, caught the pop fly and tagged the girl that ran from first!

And here she is with the game ball!

My Pantry

On one of the many trips to the hardware store Rod bought me some organizers for the pantry. I love them. He tediously put them up with a ton of screws to make sure I could really load them down and they would not fall... Problem is we are tired and are at the point of making mistakes. He should have checked after the 1st screw... yep you guessed it - the screws were to long. I think we will be able to knock the raised part off, wood putty them, and put another coat of paint on the doors.

Oh, those beautiful steps

Rod and Dad worked very hard to get the steps going down from the deck done last week so that we could have them ready for the occupancy letter. On Sunday while moving a load from the container to the house Tori's truck was in my way. So Shelli said "I will move it" but Tori jumped out and said no let me. The last person to drive Tori's truck was Rod so the seat was put back and Tori did not adjust it. She put the truck in reverse to back out of the way. When she thought she was close to the steps she was trying to brake. But since the seat was too far back she didn't think her brakes were working right (they have been losing fluid) so she stomped on them very hard. The problem is she stomped on the wrong pedal.... Luckily she hit the post and not the retaining wall which she could have went flying over! Rod took it pretty well and only cried when Tori wasn't looking. My Dad couldn't even come over to look. He just waited until Rod got them repaired.

The handrail leaning

The broken 4X6 post that was concreted into the ground

Her tailgate was down... it took the full brunt of the impact. Luckily the truck was not hurt other than this. Rod had previosly put a dent in her tailgate from hauling the trailer (another reverse accident when the tailgate was down) So at least now she can stop pointing out where Rod dented the tailgate.

And now the repair starts. Monday morning was a trip to the hardware store for Rod and Tori for a new post and more bags of concrete. He strapped the post to a tree in order to get it setting right in the hole before he started pouring the concrete in.

Rod thinks he is going to use this small hammer to move the post....


So if the small hammer doesn't work, you go to the shed to see what else is available...


And now he moves the post that was not replaced back into alignment...


A few more pics of the work that was done...


And now they are back to close to new...

Tori wrote in the concrete at one of the posts "Compliments of Tori"


and Tina wrote "Tina says STOP"

Worn Out

Moving takes it out of you... This is what Tori was like on Saturday after moving all day..

Visitor

We have had many visitors and on Sunday and Monday we had the same visitor come back. We didn't invite in, but we did all go out to see him both days.



and on Monday

Help

If you have read the blog much you will see a pattern in that we have lots of great friends. These friends have been there during almost all of the process. They have also been a variety of ages. Two weekends ago Tina had two friends over that were helping - Brianna and Jasmine. They helped sweep, clean, etc. Here is a picture of Brianna sweeping, I don't seem to have a picture of Jasmine.. they are twins so it is ok...



My friend Denise and Nicole come over and help. Denise was kind enough to paint and Nicole helped with the cleaning with Tina and her friends.


So fastforward one week and we are in need of a different kind of help. This time we needed help with muscles. Ken, Darrin, and my Dad came over on Saturday for moving day. The goal was to get the "big" stuff into the house and we would be able to move the rest slowly.



Later in the day Bobbie and Scott came up again with their family to help with some of the boxes.


My aunt Carol and uncle John were in over the weekend from Texas. So they came up with my Granny and aunt Sandra. They brought us a yummy lunch that helped us so much because I didn't have to stop and figure out how to feed the help. I was thrilled for them to get to see the house. The last time they were up we had just started the process and the last time Granny and aunt Sandra were up we were still climbing a ladder to get into the house. So it was a big improvement!

Occupancy Letter!!!!!!!

We got it!!!!! I was off from work on Friday. Thursday the electrical inspector finally came and gave us the last piece of paper we needed before the codes inspector would come back out. Mom, Dad, Tori, Tina and I were all home anxiously waiting to hear the dogs barking... and at about 11:30 he finally showed up. He was a "good ole boy" from Adams TN. We were worried for NOTHING. It was a quick walk through and he did not find a single item that was a problem. He stayed for about 45 minutes and I learned "he lives in Adams in a house he bought in 1990 for 15K that is downtown, he bought a corvette that he wife didn't approve of; his mother lives in the Chapmansboro and her taxes are 1/2 of what his is; he went to a hotel up north where they called sulphur water 'well water', etc." My point is he was not worried about anything and just was a talker :-)

So here is our house:

The NORTH Side:


The SOUTH Side:


The EAST Side:


The WEST Side:

Hardwood

On Thursday the last "big" item was complete - the flooring. Now all the flooring is done with the exception of the rec room that we are planning to stain the concrete. We did 3/4" hardwood in the living room, office, our bedroom, and hallway. The downstairs hall and the kids closet was done with lamanat.