Kermitt the Blog

Highlights of the Growing Dudley Crew

2010-06-20T21:38:00.007-05:00

Here's a nice collage I got for Mother's Day. I love my boys!

We had a wonderful visit from Nathan & Drew's Pa Mick. It was so exciting to have my dad here to meet Drew for the first time & give a face to 'Pa Mick'. My dad brought his wonderful friend Diane w/ him. We had a wiener roast out back w/ family & friends but I was too busy hosting to get any pictures. I think Diane might have some she might send so they can be in my next post.

This is just a radom picture of Nate walking on the tree I made him out of sidewalk chalk. It got on here accidentally & I didn't know if I could delete it, oops!Drew playing w/ uncle Chaiim while being fed

Morgan, Nathan's favorite cousin

Aunt Rachael, Morgan, & Drew snuggling

Pa Mick reading Nate a bedtime story

The beginings of a playground that Pa Mick bought & dad built!

Drew exploring the State highway culvert piping dad got for tunnel use!

Drew's 9 month pictures but today he's just turned 10 months! Time flies.

Drew showing off for his 9 month pictures enjoy the next few

I think this one is Brandons favorite

Mr 'Moobs'

Nate trying on the 'ring bearer suit Nicole bought him for her wedding

Nate w/ his new glasses. he does wear a patch as well on the right eye to help strengthen his left but he's still getting use to it all.

A random picture brandon took of Drew crashing in his highchair after a meal I suppose.

Indoor & Outdoor Wildlife!

2010-05-10T17:35:00.006-05:00

Here's a few more pictures for your viewing pleasure.

Drew at his best, being a goof!

Nate making some sort of monkey nest for Bob

Mr. Thunderthighs

These next couple pictures are fairly common. When there's food Drew comes running! It looks like Drew managed to make to make Nate spill his milk.

Nate's a classic, 'crying over spilt milk'

Here Nathan is showing off his 'big boy' underwear. We'll see how long it takes to fully be potty trained. Either way it will be too long for me.

Not just teaching how to brush, no, Nate does the job. His adoring younger brother is loving it.

Dryer fun

The boys enjoying a nice day outside & helping daddy mow

Now here are some pictures of our friendly fox family. For a while we thought there were just five babies until Brandon pulled me over to watch as #6 came out to play. At first he thought maybe it was a squirrel the cubs tossing about. It did look a little smaller, maybe a runt???

Babies when younger

mom out hunting

May 10, 2010

2010-05-10T15:06:00.007-05:00

Well...... I'm gonna try here. This is Olivia writing the Blog. I guess Brandon thought no one was interested in it any more so he lost interest. Sorry for those who do follow, the postings are sure to be lacking in humor & 'proper' English.
I will start small since I'm new at this, If nothing more I will at least keep everyone updated w/ pictures. The boys are ever growing, (in more ways than one.)

These first pictures are from aunt Shauna's visit in the begining of April. We went to a model train show. Here's just a few of the models.

This was my favorite

The legos, you can imagine were 'totally cool' for Shauna & Brandon.

Outside there was a train & cars to ride. The front engine looked like it was made from a John Deere Gator. The whole contraption was really nice. Nate sure liked it, he had to ride it more than once of course.

Nana & Drew on the train ride

Here are some pictures from the week b/f. It was Nathan's first Easter to really enjoy & be able to do some egg hunting. He also had fun w/ pop in the four wheeler. I know a few others did too! He got to do two egg hunts this year. We were invited to the Adamski gathering & he got to hunt eggs w/ other kids. The eggs were color coded so each child could find his/her own.

Aunt Pat's backyard

Easter ride at nana's

egg hunt at nana's

"Oh yeah man, this is the life....."

Nate's New Ride

2010-03-27T21:45:00.014-05:00

Well, it's finally over. We closed on the house Friday and the nightmare that is real estate is behind us. Then about 24 hours later, we dove into another far worse nightmare... car dealerships. Yes, we had money for a whole day before blowing the lot of it on a new (used) minivan.

We've really needed one for a while now, but didn't want to buy one while carrying 2 mortgages. When Drew graduated to the big car seat a month ago and pushed his mother's legs into the dashboard of the car, it became apparent that we couldn't wait much longer. So God provided us a buyer for the house and Dodge provided us a minivan. Can you guess which Dodge in this picture has 20,000 miles and which one has 220,000 miles?

When we got home with it, we were pleased to find that it met Nate's approval.

It fits 2 Dudley tots and a Nana with room to spare.

Nate and his neck weasel like the improved view over what they had in the car.

It still has a little over a year's worth of warranty left, and only has a few minor blemishes. We like it an hopefully it will be a good move for us.

Changing gears (no pun intended), what does a normal 2 year old do when he finds his mom's "bustenhalter". Not having a normal 2 year old to test this on, I'm left only with what my 2 year old would do... put it on his head of course!

Drew is mobile and starting to pull himself up on things. No laundry is safe now.

I don't even know what this one is all about...

And finally, no post is complete without a shot of Drew's bare hiney...

We're so proud.... but not as much as him apparently.

2010-03-20T14:50:00.000-05:00

Well, it's been another month between postings again. You'd think I'd learn to do it more often so it wouldn't take me so long to do it every time. Anyway, spring has finally arrived and brought more wildlife to our backyard. Liv saw our little fox again and got a couple shots of him.

Just the other day, the groundhog was back again. He's tough to see in these pics, but he's down there at the corner of the shed.

I swear there must be a woodland creature disco or something in that shed with as much activity as there is around it. I also spotted a big fat skunk too, but luckily he stayed back by the timber. Then, just the other day I got this good shot of a whole family of wasps!

I'm horrible, I know. Other than all the wildlife sightings, the boys are keeping the camera busy with their cuteness and antics.

I don't know what they were watching on the tube, but it must have been good.

Liv started dragging the summer clothes out of storage so of course we had to start trying some new things on Drew.

Nate and Nana took advantage of the last few bits of snow for causing mischief.

I love this one. We had a couple old garters from various weddings lying around. Don't ask why, because I don't know. Anyway, I thought it would be fun to doll the boys up a little. I love the looks of horror on their faces...

Drew chomping on his first carrot...

Who needs teeth?

I think this is Liv's favorite... "shar pei butt"

More new clothes...

Drew discovered that he can get food quicker if he just grabs the spoon out of mom's hands while it's on the way to his mouth.

He's finally starting to get up on all fours.

His crawling is still mostly the army crawl, but he's picking up speed and should be pulling things down on his head in no time.

And finally, Liv was sharpening her photography skills and posed Drew for some glamour shots. There were plenty of good ones, but none can hold a candle to this...

Happy Feet and Baby Hef

2010-02-18T18:35:00.000-06:00

The boys both got some new stuff this week. Drew got a chair for bath time. He really likes it because it makes it so much harder for his big brother to drown him.

Nathan got a new pillow case. He actually got it from Aunt Shauna for his birthday. But he didn't get a pillow until last week, so this was his first chance to use it. Between the tractors on his pillow and Thomas on his comforter, it's a wonder he ever gets to sleep.

Drew has taken responsibility for feeding himself now.

He should be able to look for a part time job within a few weeks.

Great Grandma Dudley stopped by to see the boys last weekend. Nathan was quite excited to see her which surprised me a little. He's usually more shy, but he and Drew were both very happy to see Grandma.

Drew's getting better about sitting up on his own too.

We had the Olympic opening ceremony on the other night. Nathan took the opportunity to practice his dance moves with the performers...

Last weekend, the wind stopped and the sun came out long enough for Nate and Olivia to go play in the snow for a while. So, we put on Nathan's "fat pants"...

...slid on his cool shades...

... and headed out the door.

He also, uh, made a new friend while out there...

Liv also broke out a new article in Drew's wardrobe this week. Meet "baby Hef"...

It's no surprise he's such a hit with the ladies.

Sir Spitsalot

2010-02-05T11:21:00.000-06:00

Here's some more pics of the boys. Drew was being a little exhibitionist at bath time the other night. Look at the tree trunks this kid has for legs.

He's finally getting to where he can prop himself up for a short spell. His balance still needs some work, but he's getting there.

Liv had some coupons for free pics at Sears, so Nate got a couple more 2 year pics.

Nate is in the early stages of potty training. He's usually far too busy to have time to stop and potty. So, Liv is going to start using big boy pants and letting him get a little damp and uncomfortable. Drew, on the other hand, is far more advanced and can't wait to start potty training. He even went so far as to steal some of his big brother's Elmo tightey whiteys.

And finally, this is Drew's latest little quirk. This is what he does when he's supposed to be sleeping...

Where the Wild Things Are

2010-01-17T20:01:00.000-06:00

Not a whole lot going on since my last post, but since I've got some time I thought I'd go ahead and post some pictures from this week. Last Sunday Drew was dedicated at church. All the pictures look pretty much the same, so I'll only post one. He was a perfect gentleman, but his brother had a meltdown moments before we went up. He saw Nana and Pop in the choir and became quite distressed that they would leave the stage without coming down to see him. He had to be rushed out to the hallway to see them and wasn't composed enough to come up on stage with us. He's become more and more attached to his Grandparents since we've moved over here.
Of course, Drew continues to ooze cuteness...

He's gotten to where he can pretty much roll over at will...

He's starting to scoot too, and should be crawling around within the next few weeks. His mother pointed out an interesting fact today. Drew is wearing an old pair of Nate's pj's that Nate was photographed standing in. They may have shrunk a little, but Drew is about as big as Nathan was when he started standing up. Wow.

We had an interesting visitor this Saturday. I was watching cartoons with Nate and just happened to look out the back window. There was this giant raccoon nosing around our little shed behind the house. I wasn't able to run outside guns-a-blazing as Drew and his mother were still sleeping, but I managed to capture things on camera. The little critter circled the shed a few times.
He thought about crawling underneath the floor.

But then decided to climb the front door.

He got his paws over the top edge of the door and managed to shimmy across to the middle.

...and squish himself up and over the top.

I was rather impressed by the little guy's acrobatics. There's nothing in that shed, so I don't really care what kind of critters snoop around in there. Not 30 minutes after all this, I looked out again and saw this little fellow...

It's hard to see, but it's a pretty good sized red fox.

When I spotted him he was standing right in front of the shed, but by the time I got the camera out he had trotted over into the neighbor's horse pasture. I shouldn't be surprised to see wildlife out here, I'm just still getting used to it again after having lived in suburbia for the last 8 years. I can't wait until spring when we can finally get out and start enjoying our little piece of the rock some more.

The Holidays

2010-01-06T17:57:00.027-06:00

Once again, it's been far too long since my last post. We're finally all settled into our new "house". It's far from a house, but it's a temporary exile. We had to list the old house with a realtor this week since it wasn't getting any traffic through it. Breaking even now should be a real challenge. Anyway, things haven't been all bad. We had a rough week or so where I was the only one in the house that wasn't on antibiotics. I hope that doesn't mean I'm the problem. Luckily everyone was mostly healed for the holidays. Drew is growing like crazy. Maybe it's because we let him be responsible for metering his own consumption...

He started eating cereal last week too.

He has taken to it much quicker than Nate did. What a moose. The holidays were good as usual. Aunt Shauna and Uncle Tom were home plus there was lots of unhealthy food. What more could you ask for. This was Nate's second Christmas, but he was able to appreciate this one a lot more than he did last year. He got a butt load of cool stuff at Nana's Christmas morning...

He seemed quite pleased. And now, some random Drew pics...

Sunday was Nate and Nana's birthday, so we had a joint birthday party for them over at Great-Grandma Dudley's. Nate had a wonderful time again, of course. He got to practice his billiards...

He got another butt load of cool stuff...

And of course he got to break all the rules, smashing cake while sitting on the countertops.

Drew had a good time too because he got to shuck his pants and show off his bratwurst legs...

Speaking of bratwurst legs, his mom got a couple good bath time pics of him the other day. It's a good thing legendary old west law-man Wyatt Earp was available to make them decent.

You can tell from the pics that he's getting quite strong. He's rolling himself over pretty regularly these days. He's scooting a little now and I'm sure he'll be crawling in no time.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra

2009-12-20T20:32:00.004-06:00

Here's a video of a Trans-Siberian Orchestra song we did at church this weekend that I did the light show for. The video/audio of this recording don't do it justice. You had to be there. It was awsome. Thank God I didn't screw it up!

Fun With Cardboard Boxes

2009-11-23T23:42:00.000-06:00

Well, it's been over a month since I last posted pictures of the boys. With harvest and trying to sell a house and move, my free time seems to have vanished recently. So, I'm taking one for the team tonight and staying up late to get some new pics out before Aunt Shauna goes into withdrawal. Both boys are doing well and Drew just keeps growing up.
I think he was watching C-Span. He had his 2 month Dr. appointment a while back and he was 2 pounds heavier and an inch taller than Nate was at that age. Keep in mind that he was both shorter and lighter than Nathan at birth. He's just over 3 months now and he's over 16 pounds. That puts him almost 2.5 pounds past Nate at that age. I find myself wishing that Drew was twins just so I would have a counterweight for my other side while I lug him around in his pumpkin seat. It's quite a workout. Here's Nana spending some quality time with the boys in Drew's jungle gym.

Drew expresses his wishes to grow up and be a dirt farmer like Pop...

A few weeks back, Nana and Liv took Nate to some deal they had in Petersburg with people dressed up like Sesame Street characters. When I saw the pictures, I was surprised that Nate wasn't creeped out by old people in bad muppet costumes. Heck, I was pretty creeped out by it...

Here's some nice pics our friend Nicole took of the boys. She always does a great job snapping pictures of them...

For some reason, Liv relishes the chance to take pictures of the boys while they're sleeping.

Yeah it's cute, but there's like 50 shots like this on the camera. I hope she tones it down by the time they're teenagers. Nathan got hold of one of Pop's tractor publications. Here he is trying to select which combine he would like to purchase...

"How do you like my quasi-futuristic clothes, Mr. Powers?"

As I said earlier, we're in the process of moving to the new place. So that means all kinds of moving boxes laying around the house. What do not-quite-2-year-old boys and 32 year old boys both like to do with empty boxes? Why, build forts of course. Here was our first attempt...

The huggies boxes really say "Don't mess with this fortification if you know what's good for you."
We built this one to ambush Aunt Megan one day when she was coming over. There's a video to go with it that I will have to post soon, along with some good Drew videos that need editing. Anyway, here's fort #2...

While he was in there, I just stuck the camera under the door and snapped away. I got lucky and came away with a few gems...

I guess fort #2 was a pants-optional fort. That brings us to tonight and fort #3 which is really more of an L-shaped tunnel.

I swear, I'm never going to buy this kid any more toys. He has more fun with the boxes and packaging than anything! Here he is with a random piece of foam that was laying around.

You all know what's on Nate's Christmas list now!

I Think She Has Something Against Mormons

2009-11-06T23:08:00.002-06:00

I heard about this on the radio today so I looked up the video and it didn't disappoint. Enjoy!

Random Pics

2009-10-18T16:28:00.009-05:00

Here's some random pictures that we took of the boys this week. I don't know why, but Liv seems to get extreme enjoyment out of styling Nathan's hair.

We went over to Nana and Pop's that night and Nate thought he was big stuff because he got to walk Claire around the house.

Liv tried Nate's Halloween costume on this week too. It's a giraffe that she got from her cousin. I doubt we take him trick or treating since he's still a little young to appreciate it fully, but it is a cute getup.

I about died when I saw this one on the camera...

He looks like one of Cousin Eddie's kids or something. Liv managed to get Nate to hold Drew again this week too. Drew seems to be enjoying it.

This next pic was another that killed me when I looked at it...

...Especially when you put this one with it...

Scary, no?

Boys Making Noise

2009-10-10T22:57:00.000-05:00

Olivia took the boys over to the Blakeman's for some playtime earlier this week. The Blakeman boys taught Nate how to play the drums...

I sure hope he didn't get a taste for it. On the way home they swung by the new place and picked up a few baby toys that we had already moved over there. Liv wanted the jungle gym for Drew to chill under. As you can see, Nate still thinks it's his.

Later, we worked on Nathan's Halloween costume. He decided he wanted to be a drunken frat boy this year, so we did our best to accommodate him.But the big news this week is definitely Drew. He's closing in on 8 weeks and really starting to get a personality. He smiles constantly and has even started to talk a little...

I don't like to brag, but me and these boys' momma make pretty dang cute babies. If you need more proof, just look at bath time...

They're so modest, aren't they? I told them this would be on the internet, so they were sure to hide their shame!

Don't Fence Me In (Or Out)

2009-10-05T06:30:00.000-05:00

How do you know when your 21 month old is too big for the baby gate?

2 Hams and It's Not Even Christmas Yet

2009-10-03T15:08:00.009-05:00

There's not much new to report in the Dudley household. The boys are both growing like weeds (big surprise) and hamming it up for the camera. Nathan is the more figurative ham with all his antics. Drew is much more literal with his "hammage" as he continues to pack on the pounds. he was just shy of 12 lbs this week. His mom just loves it. Anyway, in the absence of any real written substance for this post I leave you with some more pics of our 2 hams. Eat your heart out Aunt Shauna.

Chunkzilla

2009-09-23T17:55:00.013-05:00

Drew is huge! More on that in a minute. It's been a while since my last post, but much has been happening. I went back to work this week (yuck), but not before a visit from Aunt Shauna this past weekend. Amongst other things, she helped Nate break in his new monster sandbox I built him over at the new property.

He wasn't long before he lost any inhibitions of getting dirty.

I think he'll really enjoy playing in there once we finally get moved over to the new place.

Later that evening, Grandma and Grandpa had a wiener roast for us and the neighbors. It was pretty fun and we got a chance to meet the people we'll be living next to. I'm not sure who took this picture, but it looked cool so I put it up...

Now, on to Chunkzilla! Drew is just growing like crazy. He's even eclipsing Nathan's staggering growth rate from that time of his life. Drew will be 5 weeks tomorrow and Liv weighed him today. He's sitting at 10lb 13oz. I looked through some of my old postings from when Nate was around that age. Nate was 10lb 8oz at 6 weeks and had a 6oz head start at birth! So basically, Drew has gained 3lb 5oz a week quicker than Nate gained 2lb 10oz. Drew also moved up a diaper size about 3 or 4 weeks sooner than Nate did. At this rate, he should be a pumpkin shaped sumo wrestler by Christmas. He seems very pleased with his progress...

At his 1 month checkup last week, he had grown 1 1/2" to be the same height that Nate was at birth. So it looks like we have a tall skinny one and a less tall, chunky one. The weight advantage may keep Drew safe from any older brother hazing that is bound to happen. Although, Nate is still pretty smitten with him so far...

Guzzle, Spew, Repeat

2009-09-14T13:03:00.015-05:00

It's been a while since my last post, but I have a good excuse. Our computer went kaput after seven years of trouble-free service. So I bid farewell to the trusty old beast and we've finally got our shiny new beast up and running now. We kept the camera snapping while things were broke down and we've got some good pics of the new munchkin. He's doing pretty good, but he still seems to throw up A LOT. He basically guzzles his milk like there's no tomorrow and then his tummy says, "Um yeah, we can't hold all that so you can have it all back for now." Despite all this, he's still gaining weight pretty consistently. Last week he was almost up to 9.5 lbs. His 1 month checkup is this week and I'll be surprised if he's not a 10 pounder by then. I mean, look at the moobs on this kid... These pics are all pretty random.
Here he's showing off his dimples that his mother is oh so proud of.

The boys out for a stroll.

Can you tell which boy is which?

The biggest giveaway is the tub. Here's daddy and his boys.

... and pop with his boys...

And finally, all the boys ready for bed...

Spongebob on Healthcare

2009-08-26T22:14:00.001-05:00

Ever since Nate has been old enough to watch TV, I've been subjected to watching what he watches on many occasions. Some of his shows I find excruciatingly nauseating, such as Dora, Super Why, and Sid the Science Kid. These are supposedly educational so I have no problem with him watching them. I just hate being around when he does because they make we want to gouge my eyes out and cram them in my ears so I can neither see nor hear their inane banter. On the contrary, some of the other shows he watches are actually somewhat entertaining. Sesame Street is always good and we both love watching the trains on Thomas and Friends. But one of my favorite "Nate shows" has got to be Spongebob Squarepants.
It's not educational at all, which is probably why I enjoy it so much. There's quite a bit of humor that adults can appreciate in there. Take today for example. While I was trying to find something to absorb the boy's attention for a few peaceful minutes, we flipped on the tube and there was Spongebob. I got quite a chuckle when I heard the cartoon's take on our health care situation. It came in a short exchange between Spongebob and his buddy Patrick after Patrick fell and "broke his butt". Here's how it went (more or less)...

Bob: Patrick, you should go see a doctor.

Patrick: I can't go to the doctor, my job doesn't provide me with health care insurance.

Bob: What job?

Patrick: Exactly.

Simply amazing. A children's cartoon has a better grasp on health care in America than our own government does. I know, I know. There's a lot more to it than that, but they've managed to capture a sizable portion of the problem in a 10 second conversation between a sponge and a starfish. All this leads me to one obvious conclusion...

Spongebob for president in 2012!!

Mid-week Update

2009-08-25T23:07:00.000-05:00

We've not yet had Drew for a full week, but we're starting to get settled in to our new life. We had a rough day Sunday with a trip to prompt care for Olivia with an infection in the morning. Then Sunday night Drew had his first trip to the ER. He was lethargic and couldn't keep any of his food down. We were a little freaked but they didn't find anything wrong with him. He has been getting progressively better since then, so it was probably a reaction to the antibiotics they gave Liv or a touch of jaundice, or a combination of both. Anyway, everyone seems to be on the mend now. Nathan is slowly learning to be a big brother. Once home, Nate showed a bit more interest than he did in the hospital...

He was still reluctant to touch the newcomer though. Yesterday I managed to get them to take a picture together. I had to restrain both of them to make it happen though...
Then today somehow, Liv actually got him to touch this new little creature.

There has already been a great deal of speculation as to who Drew resembles. He does look somewhat like his brother and people are already pointing out similarities to his parents and grandparents. Yes I see some shared traits, but if I have to pick one person that Drew looks like, I'm going with Don Rickles...

Spooky, huh? I hope he's not as surly as Don!

Hello Drew!

2009-08-22T15:56:00.000-05:00

Andrew Michael Dudley finally arrived on the scene this Thursday, 8-20-09, at 11:42 AM. He was 7 lbs, 8.8 oz and 21 inches long. This makes him a few ounces and about an inch and a half smaller than Nate was. No matter, he's just as cute. I call this picture "I have arrived!"
The little man didn't fuss much once he arrived. The nurses had to agitate him to get him to cry and get his lungs going. So far, he's a very content baby. Looking through Nate's birth pictures, he looked to be whining in most of them. I couldn't find one picture of Drew crying. The other big difference is in the eyes. Nate's seemed to stay closed for all his early pictures. Drew was pretty wide-eyed from the moment he sprang forth. We're trying to decide how much they look like each other. I can't tell. One wrinkly red baby looks the same as the next to me. You be the judge. Here's Drew...

And here's Nate...

We had lots of help at the hospital. Grandma, Aunt Rachel, and Aunt Gloria were all there for the birth.

Pop soon showed up with Nathan. He was largely indifferent with his little bro. He may have been a bit intimidated.

He was much more interested in watching the helicopter take off and watching trains go by out the window.

Besides Nana and Pop, our other visitors included Great Grandma, Megan, and Logan.

It was a tiring couple of days, but we're home now.

Thank you to everyone who helped us this week, we really appreciate it! We'll be posting many more pics soon so stay tuned.

A Goodbye to Grandad Dudley

2009-08-13T22:34:00.004-05:00

For those who don't know yet, my Grandad Dudley passed away last Friday. We laid him to rest Tuesday and I've now finally gotten around to putting my thoughts in writing. I don't have a nifty poem like my sis (http://shauna-and-tom.com/blog/?p=254). My ramblings are more of an unsorted, random bunch of thoughts and feelings. I was a bit surprised at how matter-of-fact I took the whole ordeal. We've known for months that things didn't look good and when he turned down chemo a few weeks ago we knew it was only a matter of time. Perhaps that prepared me or prevented the shock factor. I'm sure that was part of it, but I'm almost alarmed at the strong sense of peace I have. I almost feel guilty for not being more upset. I loved and respected my Grandad as much as anyone. I've been thinking it over and I think I feel this peace in large part because he did as well. I've not been around many dying people, but I couldn't imagine anyone else taking it as well as Grandad did. He was never bitter or angry about his circumstances. On the contrary, I think he was grateful for them. He was not snatched away from us, but was given 3 months warning. He had the time to see all his loved ones again and to feel the love and adoration we all had for him. He believed he was the most blessed man on earth until the moment of his death. He knew he was going to a better place and he knew we would all soon join him there. If he had any fear of dying, he hid it well. I think his peaceful spirit spilled over on those of us who were around for his final weeks. I know it has for me and I thank God for allowing it so that I might be spared the worst of the grief. I still grieve, but it's more a sense of temporary separation than a sense of loss.

The funeral service was as good as one could be. Funerals aren't typically categorized as "good", but Granddad's was as close as one could get. The video tribute that Aunt Karla and Uncle Rob put together was incredible. The message was terrific as well, with excerpts from letters we all wrote Grandad before he passed. I was a bit apprehensive about singing in the choir loft with the rest of the family, as was one of Granddad's last requests. I'm not a gifted singer and I don't like facing crowds, but I figured Grandad had earned this final gift from his family. I've gotten misty eyed 3 times in my adult life. Once was at my wedding when Olivia came through the doors of the church to be my wife. The second was when I saw baby Nathan for the first time after he was born. The third was singing "I'll Fly Away" for my grandad. I was saying to myself, "Why are you crying, you never cry when you're sad." And right then it struck me. I wasn't holding back tears of sorrow. I was sad, but my tears were tears of pride. I was so overcome with how great this man was and how proud I was to be a part of his family that I got a little choked up. It was a bit puzzling at the time, but I'm sure that's what it was.

My biggest regret in all of this is that Grandad never got to meet Drew, our second boy due to arrive next week. I then realize that there will be dozens of great-grandkids that grandad won't meet on this earth. It just happens that Drew's the first. That pacifies me a little and makes me even more thankful for the relationship Grandad had with Nathan. For those that don't know, Nathan's middle name is Wyatt in honor of Grandad Dudley. Grandad was openly touched by this, but it was really our honor to be ones to use the name. Let's face it, one of us grandkids was going to name a kid after Grandad sooner or later. We were just the lucky ones to get to do it! I'm not sure the loss has completely sunk in yet. I imagine it will come in waves... the first time we go to Grandma's house and he's not there... going through harvest without him driving a tractor... Christmas without him... opening the pool next summer for the first time without him. We will miss him differently from season to season, but we will never forget his overwhelming love for his family. We love you Grandad, and we'll see you soon.

Diving In

2009-08-02T18:15:00.005-05:00

Well, it's official...

As of Saturday morning, our house is for sale. We're still not done with it, but we decided to go ahead and at least put it out there while we're finishing things up. We're not doing any advertising though until we're closer to done. After being up only about 32 hours, our sign had already lost 8 of the fliers we put in it. So, that's somewhat comforting. I'm not going to get too excited until we start getting phone calls though. If anyone knows anyone who wants to live in New Berlin, send them my way!

Here's a big thanks to Grandma for helping out Saturday. We painted a whole mountain of trim that I need to start putting up around my windows. We also enjoyed watching Nathan get his hands on a donut.Mmmm, sprinkles.

Bathroom #2 Complete

2009-07-21T20:23:00.009-05:00

The new bathroom is finally done. Washing machine #2 took a dump on us as soon as we moved it in. Awesome. So that's all that's missing from these pics.We got the new one today, but I didn't take any new pics because it's a washing machine. I hope you're not disappointed. Anyway, we're very happy with how it looks. Remember this?
Ewwwww. I can't believe I lived with that for 8 years.

Tile, Grout, and Sweet Corn

2009-07-12T22:18:00.017-05:00

We got the floor in the new bathroom pretty much done this week. I laid the starter strips Monday.

Tuesday evening was a supply run and Wednesday was spent cutting and dry fitting tile. Thursday, me and Pop stuck the tile down. Then on Saturday he and Nana and I grouted everything. I think it turned out pretty good.

We also got the cabinet hung over the washer and dryer.

We're on track to have the washer, dryer, and toilet operational by Tuesday and we should be completely done with the whole project by week's end. Hopefully.

Nathan was in rare form again this week, prompting some impromptu photo shoots. Here he is "experiencing" his applesauce.

Later in the week, he tried to steal the car.

Relax, he only had the house keys. It's a good thing too. He looked like he had had a few too many to be driving...Friday I put the lad to work. He had to help me pick up all the tile spacers in the bathroom.

He did a great job and the best part was that I didn't even have to pay him! The highlight of the week had to be tonight, though. We went to Nana and Pop's for dinner and Nate got his first taste of sweet corn.
He mostly liked sucking the butter off of it, but I think he got a few good bites in too.

Remodeling, Week 3

2009-07-04T21:57:00.001-05:00

We're 3 weeks into bathroom number 2 and I couldn't be happier with our progress. By this time next week, we could possibly be finished. I think that's a rather lofty goal, but we should for sure be done in another 2 weeks. Aunt Shauna stuck around after last weekend and put up the second coat of mud on Monday. Tuesday was coat 3 and Wednesday was sanding day. Sanding is sooooo much easier when you're not doing the ceiling. Thursday was primer and paint coat 1. Friday was coat 2. Here's how it looks...
Nana and Pop came over all day on Saturday to help. We got the ceiling completely done and finished all the electrical stuff up above.Not bad for my first drop ceiling, huh? The big fluorescent light was in the old bathroom and is on it's own switch. The can light to the left is above the turlet and is on the same switch as the vanity lights (seen in the first picture). The can to the right is above the shower and is switched with the fan. We also managed to get the cement board down and snap our lines for the tile.
You can see that we're going with the diagonal tiles again like with the first bathroom. I think it looks better, but we also have some serious square issues again. We're calling the wall with the door square. The opposite wall is about 7' long and it's distance from the square wall varies about 2" from one end to the other. So, hopefully the diagonal tile and the washer and dryer will hide some of that. Here's a shot of the tile with Liv's paint choice. (Ignore the white on the tile, that's drywall mud.)Picture these with white trim between them. Liv and I are both pretty happy with the way the colors look. So, it was a huge day for us. Thanks to Nana and Pop for all their help. We should have the floors done by Thursday or Friday. Then we can start moving things in and finish putting the shower together. There was one little mishap today however...Ow, it's still throbbing.

Week 2 Recap

2009-06-27T21:32:00.007-05:00

After 2 weeks of bathroom remodel #2, we're in pretty good shape. Dad spent a lot of time over here this week helping out. We have the plumbing completely done and leak tested. The only leak we found was a small drip under the shower drain. This should be easily fixed later on, but I decided to leave it for now as we had to concentrate on drywall. Dad and I managed to get the whole room hung in probably 5 or 6 hours. I also managed to have the exact number of sheets I needed. Afterwords, I finished the first coat of mud. I would have done another, but it wouldn't dry quick enough. Aunt Shauna is visiting this weekend, so she might take a crack at the second coat Monday. Here's what it looks like now...

On the downside, we found out that our washing machine is probably toast. When we moved it out of the bathroom there was a huge oil slick under it. Dad looked into it and said it didn't look good. So, we may have to find a cheap washer to stick back in there. We'll use it for like 2 months and then sell the place. Ugh. Oh well. At the pace we're going, I think we can have the drywall and paint done this coming week and be looking at putting in the drop ceiling by next Saturday.

Not Bad for One Week

2009-06-20T21:27:00.000-05:00

Here's our progress for week 1. Demo - complete. Cleanup - 95% done. Framing - Complete. Electrical - 50% done (as much as can be done before the drop ceiling goes in. Plumbing - 30% done. Shower installation - 10% done, but the hardest 10%. We're not as far along as I initially hoped because the extra framing slowed us down. But I'm still very pleased with progress thus far.

By this time next week we should be mudding drywall. One more pic for this week... We brought the old tan dump truck over to load all the bathroom debris into. Of course Nate had to drive, just like he does every other truck he sees. Tell me this doesn't look just like Grandpa Mike at that age...

The Walls Don't Have Ears, but They Might Have Something Else

2009-06-17T21:29:00.002-05:00

After 2 days of working on the bathroom, we've come a respectable distance already. Grandpa and Uncle Logan helped last night. We were able to sweat the new valves into the plumbing and begin demolition. Today I worked on the demo more myself and now we're about 99% done with it. I'm pleased with progress so far. It looks like we will have to do more framing than I first anticipated. There's not a wall in the room that doesn't need some sort of tweak. I'm no carpenter, but the bozos that did this room must have drunk while building it. Anyway, I'm still hopeful to be ready for drywall by early next week.

During the process of tearing out the old walls today, I found this on the floor and was a bit disturbed...

This project is paying dividends already! I can't say for sure where it came from but it had to either come out of one of the walls, from behind the washing machine, or from Logan's pocket last night. Judging by the packaging, I'm guessing this is 1970's vintage at least. I need to go on the antiques roadshow and see what I can get for it!

One last pic for your viewing pleasure. Grandma and Liv gave the boy a haircut last night.

What a handsome little dude. If you put a little suit and tie on him he'd look just like some lounge singer on a record cover. Aunt Shauna, the ball is in your court now (wink).

Remodeling with Oven Mitts

2009-06-15T12:52:00.012-05:00

Things are falling into line with the new property. We are scheduled to close on it this Friday. So, we will be juggling 2 house payments until we are able to sell our house. And we can't really sell our house very easily right now because our downstairs bathroom is both wretchedly ugly and partially non-functional. So my task is to remodel it ASAP starting tonight. We went to Menards yesterday and spent $900 on all sorts of stuff. We got probably 2/3 of what we'll need. Whatever we spend will be small potatoes compared to what we had to drop on the first bathroom/electrical project. This one will be much easier (and hopefully quicker too) than the first one because we are basically putting things back where they are now and not framing up a new room. For the record, here's the "before" pictures...

Notice the vintage 60's gold star panelling and avocado green everywhere. If you look closely in the 2nd pic you'll notice that our faucet knobs have been broken and replaced with vice-grips. Very classy. These pictures don't even do it justice. You can't see the out-of-square vinyl tile on the floor and the shower head that shoots more water sideways than down. Now you see why we didn't think we could sell the place without a little work. We'll be replacing the tub with a corner shower and the vanity will be smaller, but in the same spot. We're going to try and push the washer and dryer back further to gain another 6" of floor space too. The vanity is white as will the trim be as well. Here's what Liv picked out for the tile and paint.

The picture may not do it justice, but the tile is a rusty brown with a hint of grey. The paint looks grey, but has just a hint of green to it. I like it and after the home run Liv hit with the first bathroom, I expect this will look great as well. So, destruction will begin tonight and I hope to have the plumbing and electrical done by the end of this week. Nathan is so excited about all of this that he's wearing oven mitts.

I don't understand the connection either. He just likes wearing oven mitts.

Tiny Dancer

2009-06-07T16:02:00.001-05:00

Liv got a few cute pics of the boy this week.

And I got some great video of him trying to dance before bedtime on Friday...

The socks really complete things.

Man Skill #35

2009-06-06T08:25:00.002-05:00

Uncle Logan teaches Nate man skill #35: using a hydraulic jack...

Oh, We're Movin' On Up

2009-05-31T21:09:00.000-05:00

We did something yesterday that I thought I would never do. We agreed to buy a mobile home. It just so happens that the mobile home is situated on 3 acres not half a mile from grandma and grandpa's house up by Tallula. So, the mobile home wasn't really the target, just part of the deal. Here's the property...

The red box is our ground. The legal description says it's about 813' x 164'. The broken blue line is a creek running through it. This is a closeup of the front part...

The trailer is 16' x 73' and is in very good condition. In fact, we plan on selling our house within the next 6 months and living in the trailer for a year or 2 before building a house. We're planning on putting the house right about where the small barn sits now. The larger shed is in pretty good shape, but it isn't the prettiest. It does have a lot of space, a concrete floor, and even an auto maintenance pit in the floor too. We took some pics while we were there looking the place over.

Last Week in Pictures

2009-05-25T22:15:00.000-05:00

We went to Aunt Shauna's up in Iowa last weekend for her graduation. We had a good time and they actually let Shauna graduate. I got some good pictures too. Since they're a week late and it's late, I'm going to post them with minimal narration...

It wasn't until we got home that I realized that 90% of the pictures on the camera featured Nathan. Oh well, I'm sure no one will complain. Once home, Olivia's flowers were in full bloom. Of course, Nathan had to inspect them.

Captain Cuffs

2009-05-10T14:31:00.004-05:00

Can you guess who's reading a romance novel and who's reading "Captain Cuffs on Patrol"?

2009-05-04T13:52:00.009-05:00

There's no real blog-worthy news to report this week, only a couple cute pics of the boy. He fell asleep on his old man Saturday morning, so I watched Escape From Alcatraz on AMC while serving as a toddler bed.After he woke up, his mother threw Aunt Shauna's Elmer Fudd hat on him. He actually left it on long enough to get his picture taken.
It's still a little big, but it fits better than it did the last time we stuck it on him... It's hard to believe he was ever that small.

One last thing. I saw this on TV last night. It's probably more funny now that Nate doesn't do this much anymore...

2009-04-27T06:45:00.000-05:00

We went to a wedding this weekend up in Joliet. One of my buddies from college, Chunck, was getting hitched. We didn't get a whole lot of pictures, but I had a fun time catching up with some old friends.

Olivia got lots of compliments on how good she looked, so I think she had a pretty good time too. We left the boy with Grandma and Grandpa Dudley, so he had a good weekend too. He got to ride the big blue tractor both Friday and Saturday, so he was in 7th heaven.

Grandpa turned on the GPS and put the boy on the wheel so he thought he was driving. I would have loved to been there to see it.

Here's the boy with Bob and Pop.

Thanks again to Grandma and "Pop" for watching the boy.

How to Build a Bathroom in 101 Simple Steps

2009-04-18T20:42:00.000-05:00

I put the finishing touches on the shelves and got them installed today.

So, with that the bathroom is essentially done except for a few small odds and ends. To mark the occasion, I was going to land a jet on an aircraft carrier beneath a huge "mission accomplished" banner. But, my jet's in the shop this week so I just made a video...

With the bathroom out of the way, I'll have much more time to post stuff about Nathan an his little brother. That's right. We found out this week that Nate's little sibling will be another boy. The early front-runners for his name are Andrew (Drew, not Andy) and Caleb. We're looking for feedback on the names. Tell us what you think of those and offer up any others you like.

As for the kid we already got, here's some highlights from his week. Goldfish in the bathtub.

Rolling the back yard with grandpa, or "Pop" as he is now referred to.

And test driving the bouncy seat for his little bro...

Oh, and he is demonstrating that he can learn from his little miscues. You may need to turn the volume up on this one.

Thank God for Margaret Thatcher

2009-04-12T15:08:00.000-05:00

We finally made the new bathroom presentable this week. We had friends coming over Friday night, so we cleaned it up and put all of Olivia's pretties out.

Our company consisted of my high school friends that were back in town for Easter weekend. We hadn't even met some of their kids yet, so it was good to get everyone back together.
What a flirt.

Saturday was spent working on fancy shelves for the bathroom closets.

It took all day to put them together and get them sanded. If I can get them painted this week and finish up a couple other odd jobs, we'll be calling this big job done.

Saturday also marked Nathan's maiden voyage in the tub.
Hmmm, he seems to have found something hiding behind Margaret Thatcher...

Fun with Laundry

2009-04-05T20:25:00.000-05:00

We didn't make a whole lot of progress on the bathroom this week, but that's ok since the meat of it is finally done. Uncle Logan and Aunt Megan came over Friday and helped. We finished the entry door.

We also trimmed out the access doors in the closet. While we were working outside, Nathan was supervising from on high...
He and Megan had a good time just hanging out.
Yes, he is a boy of many faces. Thanks to Aunt Megan for all the cute snapshots. We also discovered that the boy does a pretty good Marilyn Monroe impersonation.
Oy.

Saturday morning Grandma came and got the boy for the day/overnight. So, I was able to get a lot of stuff done. I finished the closet doors and got a good start on the shelving.
I also got the new lawn mower fired up at last and finally got the tile grout sealed up. Judging from the pictures Grandpa sent me, Nate had a busy day too.
I leave you with our newest game. It's called bury the child in laundry.

2009-03-28T18:01:00.001-05:00

Another week of remodeling in the books and the end is finally in sight. This week we checked off most of the trim and door work...

The entry door still needs to be trimmed out and have the threshold stuck in, but it's mostly done. Grandpa got our accent lights put in Friday too.
Here's some of the screwy trim work I had to do and it shows all of Olivia's colors in one shot too...
Nathan was very helpful too.
Speaking of Nathan, here's what he learned how to do this week.

I'm filling out his Mensa application right now.

Destructive Behavior

2009-03-23T22:24:00.000-05:00

Ok, as promised here's a video of my new favorite sport, demolition ball.

And here's Nathan's version of demolition ball Sunday afternoon...

Demolition Ball?

2009-03-23T07:03:00.000-05:00

What a big week for our bathroom. Uncle Logan and Aunt Megan came over a couple nights early in the week and we grouted the whole room. Then grandpa and grandma came over Thursday and somehow we managed to get the toilet, sink, and shower all working with no leaks!

They came back Saturday and we installed the medicine cabinet and trimmed out the window inside and out.

Not only is the bathroom functional now, but grandma also pretty much cleaned our whole house Saturday. Wow, thanks grams. Saturday evening grandma and grandpa took the boy home and Olivia and I went to Tony's birthday party in St. Louis. We rented this place for a couple hours that had a sport called demolition ball. Just imagine a cross between basketball, lacrosse, and bumper cars. It's my new favorite sport I think! You have 2 teams of 5 all driving bumper cars in a rink about the size of a smaller basketball court. Everyone has a whiffle ball basket and there's a goal on each end. Toss in a whiffle ball and let the fun begin. Liv took a few pictures and some video. I couldn't get the video to load, but I'll keep trying. Stay tuned.

If you ever get the chance to try it, I highly recommend it!

Nathan continues to be a constant source of entertainment. He cracks us up every day doing something new. He's starting to pudge out a little now. Especially after his evening bottle...

Oooh, the mystery closet of forbidden treasures...

Mmmm, burrito...

Nathan's New Wheels

2009-03-15T20:26:00.000-05:00

Every man needs to have a vehicle that matches his personality. We all need wheels that not only get us from A to B, but also make us look good while we do it. This week, I think Nathan found his. He had originally gotten a wagon for his birthday, but we had problems with one of the wheels not wanting to turn. It had hard plastic wheels too, and we were afraid that they wouldn't hold up to the "sidewalks" or heaving chunks of concrete here in New Berlin. So we took it back and exchanged it for a different one this week.

That's right, he's now the proud owner of a genuine Ertl John Deere wagon complete with pneumatic monster truck tires!

He was right in the middle of everything the whole time Uncle Logan and I were trying to put it together.

He absolutely loves this thing. Grandma took him on his maiden voyage in it Saturday, but I got to go cruising with him this afternoon.

What a cool dude. When I wasn't assembling wagons this week, I was assembling the floor in the bathroom. With lots of help from Logan and Grandpa, I managed to get it all stuck down...

I was fairly happy with the results. If you just look at the whole room it looks pretty good, but I know where the problem spots are so I see those. There are some spots where I've got small lips from one tile to the next and a couple of grout lines are a little messed up, but for my first job it's not bad. I spent a couple hours Saturday cleaning out the spaces so we can grout this week. While doing so I found a couple loose tiles. A few squirts of locktite powergrab heavy duty and problem solved. I love that stuff. So the plan for this week is grouting and fixtures. Mark my word, I WILL have a working toilet in there by this time next week!

I leave you with me sneaking up behind Nathan's high chair at dinner...

Oh, My Aching Knees

2009-03-07T21:04:00.000-06:00

Wow, what a busy week flooring. I'm really feeling my age. Even with knee pads on, my knees are just aching after the beating they've taken this week. Grandma and Grandpa came over Tuesday and we finished the cement board.

I did all the cutting and lugging up the stairs while Grandpa screwed the sheets down, so I guess his knees took the beating that night. Uncle Logan came Tuesday and again Wednesday with Aunt Megan in tow. We finished the step and the starter rows on the lower level. Actually, Aunt Megan is on spring break this week so I'm sure she'd love to come work on the bathroom while I'm at work! Grandpa and Grandma were back on Friday. We attached/anchored the turlet flange and set the starter rows on the upper level.

Grandpa was back again Saturday morning. After a smashing breakfast prepared by Aunt Rachel, we were off to a full day of tile cutting.

So I spent the next 8 hours on my knees measuring and dry fitting tiles while Grandpa spent 8 hours hunched over a tile saw. I bet his back feels like my knees. We did manage to use our brains enough to save us some serious grief though. The saw was too messy to use in the house, so we had to do it on the back patio. I thought we'd try to lower the tiles in a bucket on a rope out the window. When the tiles wouldn't fit in the bucket, Grandpa suggested using one of my ratcheting bar clamps on a rope. It worked like a charm. I'd mark the tiles with a sharpie, squeeze them in the clamp, and out the window to my saw operator below. We saved ourselves about 150 trips up and down the steps today, which is probably why we were able to cut every remaining tile for the entire room today! I thought we'd be cutting for a week, no kidding. So now I have stacks of numbered tiles ready to be cemented down next week.

I know what you're thinking, "How does he keep 130 individually numbered tiles straight?" Well, here's how...
This little map is the Rosetta stone of my tile. I know what you're thinking now and yes, I did make more than one copy.

Well, it's Level-er

2009-03-01T15:14:00.000-06:00

With painting complete, we moved on to flooring this week. You may remember the severe out-of-level problem we have in this room. So, before any tile can go down, we had to make an attempt to at least minimize the problem. Step 1, find this thing called "level" and rip some 2x4's to the appropriate thicknesses to produce it... or something close to it.

Step 2, fill the thickest areas with OSB.
Step 3, throw in a couple bags of thinset and strike it off as smoothly as possible.
Step 4, start screwing the cement board down as quickly as possible to hide the ugly attempt at leveling. Step 4 is almost half done now. Although I'm sure it's not fully level, I think we got it good enough for the tile to start this week. Thanks to Uncle Logan for being my cement mixer this week.

This morning, I put Nathan down for his morning nap. It soon became apparent over the monitor that he was in no mood for napping. He wasn't crying or anything, but he sure wasn't sleeping. So, we decided to go ahead and let him out since he clearly wasn't going to go down. Here's what I found when I went in to get him...

Yes, apparently dumb daddy had left the kleenex box too close to the crib for a child with "Dudley arms". He emptied the entire box, not one was left. The more I look at his pictures, the more confused I get. I'm mostly English and French. Liv is some sort of German/Injun. But I swear this kid is a Swede... He's definitely some sort of Bavarian ham or Swedish meatball. Anyway, I leave you with a short video of my boy dancing with a lampshade. Don't ask.

The Chocolate Bathroom

2009-02-22T13:48:00.007-06:00

It's finally here. The new bathroom is finally the chocolate bathroom. The actual color Liv picked out is "cocoa bean", but it's chocolate. Grandpa and I primed it Friday night and I got the first coat done Saturday.

I got the new window installed this week too.

Our tile for the step came in this week as well. This shot shows both of our tiles next to the wall and our trim. The main floor tile is on the right and the step tile is on the left...

We will cut the step down to about 3" strips to line the top and front face of our little step down in the middle of the room. At first I was really disappointed that we had to work around that step, but now I'm thinking it will break the room up a little and give a nice multi level feel that you don't normally associate with bathrooms. We'll see.

I got on my CAD machine at work this week and plotted up the room and tried to find the best way to position our tiles. Here's what I came up with...

I'm hoping to get the floor leveled up and get the cement board down this week. Then I'll probably have a week of tile cutting before I'll be ready to stick any down.

On the Move

2009-02-15T14:01:00.001-06:00

I finally got a new memory card for the camera this week and finally got some good video of Nate toddling around. Enjoy...

He really is getting quite good at walking. We had another pretty good week working on the bathroom. Logan and Grandpa both stopped in to help a couple times and as of last night we have about 95% of the mudding done and about 80% of the sanding too. We did such a good job with the second coat that there were only select locations that needed a third. I did that Saturday and now all that's left is to sand the 3rd coat and dab a 4th coat in a couple little spots. Here's some new pics, but it probably doesn't look that much different from last time.

Olivia couldn't pass up the chance to capture my dusty mug after a day of sanding...

Thank God for goggles and dust masks. If all goes well this week I'll get the sanding finished up, clean up the dusty floor, and have some color slapped on the walls before next week's update.

Oh By the Way...

2009-02-08T11:28:00.002-06:00

Some or most of you may already know this but for those that don't, Olivia and I are expecting another baby in late August or early September. She gave me the green light to make this public knowledge a week or 2 ago, and I kept forgetting to post the news. Since Nate was born on Grandma Dudley's birthday, maybe the next one will show up on Uncle Logan's birthday (September 2).

My New Favorite Tool

2009-02-08T11:21:00.000-06:00

Although it may not look like it, we actually got a lot done with the bathroom this week. Grandpa and Uncle Logan came over Tuesday and we finished hanging drywall about 2 minutes before Nathan's bedtime. I did a little mudding on my own Wed and Thurs, but we finally started mudding in earnest Friday evening when Grandpa came back.

On our 45's we used a tape that was recommended to me called strait-flex. It's kinda like a cloth tape that holds an angle. Ours definitely needs some more mud and serious sanding, but it makes a nice line.

On Saturday, Grandpa and Grandma came back again. Grandma took the boy shopping while Grandpa and I finished the mudding. Up until now, my favorite tool for this project was the sawzall. Now my new favorite tool is the 90 degree inside corner trowel. I am soooo glad we bought one. How else could a lunkhead like me with no mudding experience make perfect corners with one swipe. Man is it sweet. We finished mudding early Saturday afternoon so we went ahead and sanded what we were able to.
I'll have a good bit more sanding to do Monday, with coat 2 soon to follow. After sanding there wasn't much we could do except watch mud dry, so Grandma and I took advantage of 60 degree weather in February and took Nathan for a walk. We should have taken the camera, but we didn't. We happened by the playground at the park and Nathan got his first crack at it. He liked the jungle gym and the slides, but his favorite thing was the swing. He LOVED the swings. He cried when we took him out to go home. We'll take the camera next time.

Kermitt's Halftime Special

2009-02-01T19:00:00.006-06:00

Ok, it's halftime of the big game, the perfect opportunity to throw together this week's post. Everyone's been asking about how Nathan's walking is coming along. It's amazing how one day he's stumbling every 3 or 4 steps, and then the next day he's gone. Friday he managed to walk un-assisted from the couch to the bathroom. Unfortunately, we haven't got a decent memory card for our new camera yet. The current one only allows us to take like 10 or 15 seconds of video before it's full. So, I've not gotten any good walking videos yet. However, the old one still works from time to time and I was able to get this gem of his first fresh chocolate chip cookie. Excuse the weird color from my weird camera.

With some help from the fam this week, we were finally able to clean out the bathroom and make some space for serious drywalling.

We made big progress. We now lack most of one closet and a lot of little stuff. I think another 2 evenings and we'll be ready for mud. Ugh, mud. But now, back to football.

It's Starting to Look Like Something

2009-01-25T17:12:00.013-06:00

It's almost February and the new bathroom is actually starting to look like a room... kinda. With the help of Jonesy and Uncle Logan, we finally got the tub in this week.

As you can see, it's currently being used for insulation storage. The blue is a protective plastic it came in. Jonesy came over again on Thursday and we prepped the room for drywall.

You can't tell much from this picture, but we spent the entire evening shimming the studs so that the wall would be straight. Some places were as much as 3/4" out of line. Luckily, most of the new walls needed no work at all. I'm sure it's because of the highly skilled carpenters that built them! The drywall showed up Friday afternoon and all day Saturday was spent hanging it. Wade and Grandpa were there to help Saturday and for once we got done more than I expected.

I would say I now have 99% of the plumbing and electrical done and about 90% of the insulation too. We've probably got half the drywall up, but most of the rest will be smaller pieces and will take more time. I'm hoping to have it all hung in the next week or so.

Now, the obligatory baby pics...

What a ham. The mere sight of a camera now instantly produces this face.

Progress..... Finally

2009-01-18T10:54:00.012-06:00

When last I left you, I was waiting on the power company to FINALLY show up and switch the power over to our new service. This was the last big hurdle keeping me from continuing with the bathroom project. Logan and dad came and helped me with it Tuesday. We finally got started mid-morning. There were a few hiccups and near misses along the way, but long story short we were totally switched over and running on the new service by 6pm. Amongst other things, we turned this...

into this...

I know it doesn't look like an improvement, but it is. My thanks to Vanna in the first pic. With everything switched over and the old wires removed, I was finally able to gut the rest of the old bathroom.

Knocking down the soffit that was over the old bathtub really opened things up quite a bit.

By Friday, we were able to continue framing things up.
Then Uncle Logan and I had a marathon day yesterday and we were able to complete the framing, plumbing vents, and 99% of the electrical. And there was light...
So it was a big week for us with hopefully another one coming this week. We need to finish a little plumbing, install the tub and finish the rest of the insulation before we'll be ready for drywall. I'm hoping to have all that done by Tuesday and be hanging drywall on Wednesday or Thursday.

Got Milk?

2009-01-18T10:43:00.005-06:00

Step 1: Give baby milk...

Step 2: Allow baby to make mess of himself while drinking milk....

Step 3: Make baby laugh producing instant milk vampire...

Ah-bmmm

2009-01-13T08:50:00.001-06:00

Wow, we're already 2 weeks into the new year and I haven't even posted pics from our trip to Iowa yet. We went up there over New Year's weekend and celebrated both Christmas and New Year's while there. It was a fantastic time. The only thing that would have made it better would be if Nathan had actually slept more than 5 hours each night. Man, that was rough. In exchange for depriving us of sleep, Nate did offer a cute new habit. His favorite book is a little number called "Drummer Hoff". This also happened to be a favorite of Uncle Logan back in the day. I'm rather fond of it myself too. It's so hard to find children's books that teach the basics of field artillery and military hierarchy, but "Drummer Hoff" excels on both fronts. The climax of the book comes as Drummer Hoff fires off the cannon with 2 pages devoted to a single word... KAH-BLOOM. Understandably, this is Nathan's favorite part and while at Shauna's he learned to say the word. Well, kinda. It comes out more like Ah-bmmm, but still very cute. See for yourself.

Ah-bmmm is now how he requests that someone read this book to him. Here's some more random pics from our weekend...

While up there, we also celebrated Nathan's first birthday and Grandma Dudley's 29th. You know what that means... SMASHING BIRTHDAY CAKE. Well, not so much. Turns out my boy is quite a dainty eater. He doesn't like getting too messy while eating.

When we got home that Sunday, we had another small birthday party for family that wasn't with us in Iowa. Once again, Nate wanted little to do with smashing birthday cake.

His mother ended up having to smash it and smear some on his face for him. He wasn't super fond of that.
Nate also got his big red wagon from Great-Grandma and Grandpa Dudley. He was quite taken by it.

In other news, the power company is supposed to be here TODAY to get us switched over to our new service. Grandpa and Uncle Logan are coming over to help us rewire the house today and hopefully be back to normal by this evening. We'll see how it goes.

Nathan's First Year

2009-01-02T21:09:00.003-06:00

A little movie I made for Nate's first birthday...

Because You Demanded It

2008-12-28T08:15:00.000-06:00

Ok, because someone demanded it, here's more pics of the baby. We went over to Grandma Dudley's on Christmas Eve and spent the night there so Grandma could enjoy the boy's first Christmas morning. Grandma made a yummy ham for dinner that night. As it turned out, there was yet another ham on the menu as well...

He had been conducting to the music until I got the camera out. Then it was just posing. He started doing it again towards the end of the video, but my crappy camera started wigging out again. Never fear, a new one is on it's way from Amazon.com. After dinner, we had some pie with whipped cream topping. Nathan had some too. Here's the best shot I could manage with our screwy camera.

I have determined that children are born with a chip in their head that prevents them from sleeping on Christmas Eve. Nathan doesn't even know what Christmas is and he was up all night. It was horrible! His mother and I were totally burned out when we finally got up in the morning. It caught up with the boy eventually, too.Thursday evening it was off to Great-Grandma Dudley's. Great-Grandma got Nate some new alphabet blocks. Unfortunately, he confused them with bullion cubes I think.In other news, I was able to spend most of the day working on the bathroom yesterday. I finished shoring up the new step and did most of the insulation that I can for now.
Now I'm totally at the whim of the power company. I've officially finished all I can do until they get the power switched over. When they do show up, I have to immediately start switching things over to the new box to keep them powered up. I imagine that they'll decide to show up early this week as we're gearing up for a trip to Iowa. Ugh.

Venting and Wiring

2008-12-23T21:44:00.010-06:00

We've had a bit more progress this week. Logan and Megan came over Saturday and after a morning of hanging 15' off the ground from an extension ladder, we had the bath fan vent and plumbing vent through the side of the house and outside.

We only got the sink vent in. We're waiting on further wall building before we get the shower and toilet vents hooked up to this one. Today, my electrician and dad both came over and we finally got the new breaker box mounted and wired up to the new meter box. We are officially ready to switch the power over to the new box as soon as the power company comes and pulls their new wire in from the street. They probably would have done it by now it we hadn't got hit with an ice storm last week. They might get to it before we leave for Iowa next week, but I kinda doubt it. Once they finish that, we'll be scrambling to pull the remaining wires and switch all the circuits to the new box. I started that job this evening.
This is the new box in the basement. That big bundle of wires is the other end of the big bundle pictured in my last posting. So this is basically the whole upstairs wired into the new box. Not bad for my first wiring job, huh? When we get juice to this box, we'll splice the other end of these to the existing ones in the upstairs box. Then we'll pull the downstairs wires and they'll fill up the left half of the box. Once we get that done, this whole electrical ordeal will be OVER and construction can continue.

Creeping Along

2008-12-17T18:58:00.009-06:00

The bathroom progress is starting to slow to a crawl. I've essentially finished most of what I can do until the electrical issues are corrected. Last week I finished installing all of the framing and nailers that I can do for now.

I installed all the outlet boxes and fixtures that I could and wired them up as much as practically possible

I even started shoving some insulation in the closets where access will no longer be an issue. Dad came over last night and we ran all the new wiring down to the basement where the new breaker box will go.

That's 13 strands of romex ready to be run into the old fuse box and be connected to the existing wires in there. The whole bundle goes down right behind the tub.

We also re-routed a couple other wires that were in the way, allowing me to finally put the last piece of new flooring in where the chimney once was.
There's a few more little odds and ends that I will try to wrap up this weekend, but after that I will be at a standstill. I'm waiting for the power company to come pull their new cable through the conduit we buried last week and I still need my electrician to hook that up to my new breaker box. Hopefully we'll get some movement before Christmas, but we'll see. Once that's finished, we can finish ripping out the old bathroom stuff, finish framing, and get all the electrical switched over as well.

Did You Ever Have One of Those Days?

2008-12-09T21:10:00.003-06:00

Did you ever have one of those days? Not one of those days where nothing goes right, but one of those days where you expect everything to go horribly wrong and miraculously everything works out pretty well. Well, I managed to get lucky and have one of the latter today. Today was the day chosen to trench my new electrical service in. This was the first day I could get both dad and Logan to help me so we penciled it in last week. I decided to fork out the big bucks and rent a ride on trencher with a blade for backfilling the trench. It was like $350 to rent it for a whole day so I talked the place into letting me rent it for half a day and take it home the night before. Score one for me. So I got the rental set up last week along with a concrete saw rental so we could remove a chunk of sidewalk we had to go under. So, last week I was already sweating things. We would have to remove the sidewalk, cut 80' of trench, miss all the utilities, lay the conduit, get the electric company to inspect it, backfill the trench, and return the equipment to Springfield all before lunch. So last week I had serious doubts that we would even come close to getting all that done. Then comes yesterday.

Yesterday I look at the weather and see Tuesday's forecast... "100% chance of rain." Great. On the bright side, it warmed up Monday and was supposed to be in the upper 40's Tuesday. Still, it was a less than ideal forecast for being outside and digging all morning. So between our timing restraints, relative ignorance with what we were doing, and the weather outlook, I was getting seriously worried.

I heard rain hitting the window on and off all last night while I slept. I woke up this morning expecting the worst. I literally was so nervous that I was getting stomach pains. I peeked outside and things were wet, but the rain seemed to have tapered to a light sprinkle for the moment. Then I looked at the radar and here's what I saw.Yeah, not a real promising picture. That is until I looked closer.

You can just barely see Springfield in the edge of the u-shaped rain-free area. If you look back at the national picture you can see how long the rain-free path is. As luck would have it, the wind was blowing SW to NE. I began to think that we might just luck out and not get drenched. I must have said the right prayer last night or something, because that's how things ended up working out. It was almost pleasant out there all morning.

So, we started in on things around 7 this morning. Everything went like clockwork. All 3 of us worked pretty much constantly from 7 to 11, but we got everything we needed to done by then. The only things we lacked were the electric company's inspection and a little hand work. I had set my watch alarm to go off when we needed to start loading the trencher back up to get it returned on time. The alarm went off while we were chaining the machine down. We got it back with a whole 15 minutes to spare.

After feeding my weary crew in Springfield we came back, finished up our hand work, and even had time to mount the new meter box to the house. Then the electric company finally showed up about 3. (I called them Friday and they said they would be here around 10 in the morning today.) They usually inspect the conduit before you bury it, but I had a trencher to return to they had to inspect what was left showing. They saw a couple minor things they didn't really like, but said they could work around them.

So all in all, today was a BIG win for the home team. This was probably the toughest thing we'll have to do during this whole project. It should be mostly downhill from here (hopefully). I know somebody was looking out for us today. Even now looking back at this morning, I still can't believe we did everything that we did before lunch. It seems like it should take a whole day. Then if all that wasn't cool enough, I find out that my boss, Uncle Rod, got arrested by the FBI today too! I hope he gets what's coming to him! What a great day all around. I'll close with a big shout out to Log and Pa Dudley. I owe them both BIG after this one. Good thing they work for food.

More Bath Pics

2008-12-07T13:58:00.007-06:00

Not much new to report. Grandpa came over a couple days this week and we framed up some more walls. Here's the wall that will be behind our vanity.

Here's the inside of the big closet.

We've essentially got all the walls built that we can build until the old electrical stuff gets moved. My electrician is coming tomorrow to start on things and I have a trencher reserved to tear up my front yard Tuesday. My goal is to get the electrical upgrade finished by the end of the week. It's a lofty goal on my part because I don't have much control over how much gets done. Our progress relies heavily on other people, most notably the power company. Even if we get the conduit buried and inspected Tuesday, there's no guarantees about when the power company will show up to pull the new cable. We've still got some work to keep us busy for a while though. There's a BUNCH of nailers that have to be put in yet.
These are some that I've finished over the tub. I've still got to do just about everywhere else though. I may even start installing some insulation and maybe even the light fixtures and exhaust fan. All in all, I'm pleased with the way things are progressing. We're not setting any records, but we seem to be making headway and avoiding big mistakes.

I Have Walls!

2008-11-30T12:53:00.015-06:00

The Thanksgiving holiday finally draws to a close and our house was a hive of activity for most of it. We spent Thursday at grandma's for the usual Turkey and whatnot. It was an awesome spread and a great time hanging out with family. Here's Aunt Shauna with her pet monkey, and his pet monkey.

Nathan enjoyed the dog too, provided there was a safe barrier to preserve his personal space.

Friday the family showed up for the first of 2 work days on the new bathroom. After a hearty breakfast of B&G (thanks Liv and grandma), we all started in on our appointed tasks. Since we had 8 people and just 1 bathroom to work on, we had to divide and conquer. Shauna, Megan, and Logan all went out to the garage to tackle the mountain of staining we had to do.

Grandpa went to work trying to get a detailed mapping of our crazy electrical system.

Tom and I started in with the new plumbing.

Liv concentrated mostly on keeping all of us fed while grandma and Nate entertained each other. I believe they came up with some sort of police lineup game.

That and of course some root beer too.

At the end of day one we had finished the 1st coat of staining, mapped the whole house's electrical, glued all the drain pipes in place, and started on the water supply lines. There were no major setbacks and only one minor injury when Uncle Tom took a piece of 2" PVC to the forehead from about 5' up.

Day 2 started much the same as day 1. Shauna and Megan were back on staining detail with help from Olivia this time. Grandpa and Logan picked up where Tom and I left off with the water supplies, and Tom and I started framing in the new ceiling. Grandma gladly took baby duty again and away we went. After lunch we finished up some jobs, juggled around some helpers, and soon had about 5 people framing walls up in the bathroom.

Everything was going fine until a small drip of water was noticed coming through the kitchen ceiling downstairs. After some investigation, we discovered that the new cold water supply line was full of water despite having the valve shut off to it. Somehow during the new supply line installation, the valve had been damaged allowing a tiny trickle of water to seep into the new pipes. It took a couple hours, but the water eventually filled the new pipes up to where we had stopped and began dripping out the unfinished end. So, we had to glue caps on to the open ends to prevent any further leaking. It was an easy fix, but it still baffles me how the valve could start leaking after having been totally fine for the past 2 weeks.

Progress had come to a screeching halt for our little water problem, but after the fix we were back at framing walls. By quitting time we had completed about half of the bathtub surround and half of the adjoining closet.

All in all, it was a VERY productive weekend. We got all the staining done.

We got all the sub-floor plumbing done.

We got the new ceiling in and a good start on the walls. Thanks again to everyone that come over to help. Olivia and I are very grateful to you all!

Finding Comfort in the Pain of Others

2008-11-26T16:59:00.000-06:00

My electrician came over this afternoon and we formulated a master plan for fixing the wiring disaster that is our house. The good news is that we will be upgrading to a 200 amp service, relocating everything to a single breaker box, moving the service underground, and generally making the place safer and more appealing for potential buyers. The bad news is that this little project is going to add around $2000 to the price tag on our bathroom. I'm a bit saddened at this news to say the least. In times like this, you can pout and wallow in the crappiness of your situation. But I prefer to forget my sorrows by reminding myself that I have it a lot better than most people. For one, I have a brain. That may not sound like that comforting of a thought, but many people are born without a brain. Take for instance, this fellow I found on YouTube who decided it would be a good idea to try and jump THROUGH a basketball hoop.

Stupid high schoolers. I sure hope Nathan was born with a brain too.

Cut, Level, Shim, Repeat

2008-11-22T21:08:00.013-06:00

Today I started tackling the problem of the out of level floor in the bathroom. After some extensive work with the 4' level the other day, I got a better idea of just how bad the problem is. In the worst spot, we need to make up almost 1-1/2" over a span of about 40". Just what does that mean? Continue on and the pictures will tell the story. After much cogitating, I decided the best plan of action was to rebuild the area around the step, making it level, and then use it as a guide for the thinset I'll have to use to level up the rest of the floor. Here's what I started with.After removing all the warped, splintered, unsupported, and out of place boards, here's what I was left with. My plan of attack was to cut a big piece of 3/4" OSB to support the toilet and also act as the step. I would attach it flush with the floor on the left side of this picture and level it across the floor joists. It took a good couple hours, but this is what I wound up with. You can't tell from the picture, but the 2x4 under the front of the step is more than 1" taller on the right than the left. Crazy, huh? Here's the back side. Right now, the OSB is only supported on the front edge and the corners. My job now is to do some very tedious shim work to support it on the floor joists. When it comes time to level the rest of the floor, this will serve as my thickness guide for the thinset mortar I'll use to level things up. I also found that the floor below the step is out of level too. It's not as bad or as widespread as above, but I will still need to level about 4' wide all the way over to where the closet starts.

The Destruction Continues

2008-11-21T06:44:00.001-06:00

Logan and dad came over last Saturday and helped me tear up my house some more. We actually started putting some new stuff in too, so that felt good. Logan spent most of his time tearing out the old linoleum floor and underlayment. He pretty much had to do it nail by nail because the stuff just fell apart when you pulled on it. Dad and I re-routed the air vent from it's home next to the old chimney. We took some flexible duct and ran it under the floor to behind where the wall will be.

As an added bonus, we were able to maintain the venting into my office, so the only room losing a vent is our bedroom. After that, dad and I went ahead and started nailing down the bottom plate for some of the walls. I can't believe we're already starting with walls! We need a double bottom plate to account for the thickness of cement board and tile and still leave us with a nailer for the drywall, so we're just nailing the bottom one to the floor. When we come back with walls, we'll have everything laid out for us already.

This is the view standing at the chimney, looking to the north-east. The first part is where the tub will sit and the back part is closet #1. Wednesday I finally tore out the old wall between the two areas and also put in closet #2. This one is directly across from closet #1.

In those last 2 pictures, I'm sure you noticed the extra holes in the floor that are appearing. I cut those for plumbing access. Hopefully, that will be the project for this weekend. I have all the plumbing supplies and my goal is to get all the plumbing dry fit by next week. I probably won't glue anything together yet pending the new electrical service. We might have to move something and it's a lot easier to move unglued pipes. So here's how things look right now from the door...

and from the window...

Another project for this weekend is to figure out what's going to happen with the step down and my out-of-level floor. Here's what I'm looking at with the step down...

The step should be fairly easy to fix, but the level problem scares me. I could probably get away with leaving it as is, but the toilet will be reclining if I do. If I fix it somehow, I have to rectify it with the existing doorway and carpeted hallway which will still be tilted. So, I'm now taking suggestions.

On another totally unrelated note, we started using time-outs on Nathan...

I think we need to get a bigger rock to put on top.
This last pic we took at Aunt Megan's birthday party over at Grandma Dudley's house Sunday. Yeah it's cute, but the funny thing is that he was getting into the drawer where Grandma keeps her secret cash stash. That boy is grinning for a reason.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

2008-11-15T09:13:00.000-06:00

Our bathroom project has been filled with both steady progress and frustrating setbacks over the past couple days. We keep running into things that weren't really anticipated and they are amping up the difficulty level of this endeavour. Thursday I managed to fill in our holes in the floor. There was some tedious saw work to it, but it turned out ok.

After finishing that, I stuck my head into the downstairs bathroom ceiling to refresh my memory on what kind of plumbing work we have ahead of us. It was then that I noticed something that I had never noticed before. Under the upstairs tub, there is about a 2" step down in the floor. Because it's hidden by the tub, I never noticed it before. Upon further inspection, my worst fears were confirmed. The current bathroom floor is about 2" higher than the floor in the unfinished portion. Sooo, option 1 is to build a sub floor and raise the level of the new portion to match the old. However, doing so will cost more, take more time, and reduce my already restricted headroom. Option 2 is to have a step down in the middle of the bathroom. That's what we're leaning towards right now, but I'm still undecided. Logan was trying to tell me that he thought the step down would look kinda cool, but I think he was just trying to make me feel better.

That brings us up to Friday. Dad got an electrician friend of his to come over and look at the rats nest of wires up there. I was originally thinking we could just replace the fuse box and be on our merry way. Ha ha, not so fast. Ron, the electrician, said I need to not only do that but also run a new main all the way to the street and upgrade the service. The only cost estimate I could get out of him was, "It ain't gonna be cheap". So that put a huge black cloud over everything yesterday. I think there's still a lot of the work that dad and I can do ourselves, but I'm probably going to have to hire Ron for some of it.

So after that big bummer, the whole fam showed up again to start the major demo. First off, dad and I had to shut off the water and put some valves in so we could kill the upstairs and leave the downstairs on. I've got copper pipes now, so that required us to sweat a connection to our CPVC. Dad was a bit unsure of himself since he'd not really done it in a long time. But I had the utmost faith in him. Dad can do anything, right? Dad said I actually had faith in Grandad Hagen, because that's where he learned it all. Here's the result...

This shot is looking into the ceiling of the downstairs bathroom, below the upstairs toilet. Dad got it right, first try, no leaks. He was practically dancing a jig, he was so happy with himself. I was pretty happy too since we couldn't turn the water back on until these valves were secure. While we were working on this, Logan and Megan were busy upstairs demolishing the bathroom. It was soon time to take out the tub. I knew this wouldn't be fun. It was sandwiched in on all sides, and I knew it was going to be HEAVY. After about 30 minutes of beating, banging, pushing, pulling, prying, lifting, and swearing we got it to where we could slide the thing around. I was right, it was HEAVY. It had to be every bit of 300 lbs.

We managed to slide the thing down the stairs and out the door. I feel sorry for the poor suckers that had to get that thing UP the stairs. With the major pieces removed, we started hacking up and ripping out all the old plumbing to make space for the new. Here's me in the downstairs bathroom ceiling with a sawzall.

A word to the wise, always make sure you have sufficient fall in your drain pipes or they will retain a funky and chunky black watery discharge that will come out when you remove them. One word, eeewwwww. FYI, that stylish bathroom you see in that pic is our next project. So, by Nathan's bedtime we had reduced our bathroom to this...

Here's the view from above (that's our dryer down there).

And here's the view from below.

Now I can actually walk through here without hurdling over the toilet.

Here's the hole we wrestled tubzilla out of.

As we were finishing up, I confirmed what Olivia had suspected early on. There's a significant slope in the old bathroom floor from one side to the other. I don't know what we're going to have to do there. I felt amazingly good after we were finished. Despite all the setbacks and looming problems, we got a lot accomplished. Thanks again to all my helpers. Big props go out to Logan for bailing the extra water out of my toilet with his bare hands! Thanks to Olivia also for another yummy construction dinner of homemade chicken noodle soup. Nathan had some, but really preferred the crackers.

Our First Construction Owie

2008-11-12T21:54:00.002-06:00

Logan and Megan came over tonight to help with the bathroom a little. The first project was to get all the bricks out of there and make some room to work. We devised a good system where Megan loaded a few bricks up in a 5 gallon bucket and handed them out the window to me, standing on my truck boxes. I would then pass them down to Logan on the ground where he would stack them. Well, after about the 3rd bucket, my crappy window decided to fall. It smashed Megan's ring finger pretty good then broke in half and fell on my arm and neck. Amazingly enough, no blood was shed and the only injury was Megan's finger. Can you tell which one it was? So Megan was done with brick duty, but she didn't let a little sore finger stop her from helping with other stuff later. She's pretty tough. Anyway, Grandpa showed up about this time and was able to help me and Log get the bricks down in 10 or 15 minutes. I was REALLY glad to get that little job done. After that, dad looked over some of the electrical work that needs to happen. Meanwhile, Megan cleaned all the dust, insulation, nails, and other miscellaneous crap up off the floor. Logan and I cut out and installed the sheeting for over the stairway. Here's the before shot... And here's what it looked like after... It looks so much better to just get things cleaned up a little. I went ahead and pulled up some floorboards that were broken and/or insufficiently supported. Incredibly enough, there were only these three spots that need to be replaced. Tomorrow's project will be to rip down some OSB to fill in the floor gaps. After that, I'm not sure. I'll have to think about it some more tomorrow. Thanks to all the fam for coming over to help tonight and thanks to Liv for feeding us all a smashing spaghetti dinner afterwards!

The Point of No Return

2008-11-11T21:22:00.006-06:00

Well, there's no turning back now. I think we're committed...
I finished wrecking out the chimney today and cut a new door to access the lost room. It may not look like much, but it's about 3 times bigger than the other access door in our closet. Eventually, most of that whole wall will come out. I'm trying to keep the bathroom usable for as long as I possibly can before I rip it all out. I also bought a sheet of foam insulation so I can cover the hole up and maintain some of our warm air. Here's what it looks like from the other side.
You can see I built a little bridge to cover up the chimney hole and make for easier access. I can't sheet over the hole until I get the plumbing in underneath, so this was a temporary deal for safety mostly. You'll also notice I took down part of the duct work. The trunk line comes up from the basement immediately to the right of my little bridge. It splits into 3 ducts there. I was able to leave the one into the bathroom and the one into my office connected for now, but the one that ran across to our bedroom is no more. It never put out much anyway, so we won't really miss it. I think tomorrow's project will be to replace some of the floorboards that have gone bad and to cut down the OSB to sheet over the steps.

Let the Destruction Begin

2008-11-09T11:28:00.001-06:00

We finally finished harvest around lunchtime yesterday, so by yesterday afternoon I had begun the bathroom project. First thing on my list, the disappearing chimney trick. Now you see it... Now you don't... In about 2 hours I managed to dismantle it brick by brick. Luckily, the bricks were pretty non-porous and the old mortar was not very well bonded to them. Most of them just pulled right off and were easily cleaned off with a few taps and scrapes from a claw hammer. Amazingly enough, I managed to drop only one brick down the chimney and I still have my hammer too. If you drop something down there just let it go, 'cause man, it's gone... It's probably 15 or 18 feet down to the bottom of that. It does make a handy trash receptacle though. Never underestimate the benefits of having a bottomless pit in your house. That's where I dumped the mortar that came off the bricks. Olivia came upstairs and was like, "There's a bunch of smoke in the basement!" I assured her it was just some leftover dust being kicked out of my disposal chute. I've removed to just below the floor so far. I need to remove another 5 or 6 rows of brick to get down to the downstairs ceiling. Then I should have the room I need to maneuver my plumbing between the two. So now I'm left with piles of well-worn bricks that need to be removed from the room. I've already found a home for them all as Olivia, Megan, and Shauna all need some for various gardening projects. All I need now is some help getting them down. It's a bit cumbersome because they have to be handed out the window to someone standing on my truck toolboxes. Then you have to hand them down to someone on the ground to pile them on the concrete patio. So, it's really a 3 person job. Hmmm, there just so happens to be 3 people that want the bricks. What a coincidence.

15 Years, 2 Months, and 1 Day to Go

2008-11-02T16:26:00.001-06:00

The countdown has officially started for Nathan to get his driver's licence. This boy LOVES being behind the wheel. Liv brought him out to the field again yesterday and we sat him up in the seat of the semi once again as well.

He lives for this now. This 40 ton vehicle is now his new favorite toy. See for yourself...

Here's some more random pics of the boy we've amassed lately.

Thanks to Aunt Megan for her contributions to the montage!

I Pity the Fool

2008-10-29T21:21:00.002-05:00

Liv was having some fun with the boy's hair again after his bath the other day. It seems he has a little Mr. T in him.
Who knew? Unfortunately, a mohawk is insufficient to constitute a full blown Mr. T costume, so he had to go to his playtime at mom's group as a pumpkin instead.

I know what you're thinking, and relax. We're not dropping bills on a Halloween costume for a 10 month old. It was actually a hand-me-down from Olivia's cousin. It's still pretty cute though.

Liv brought the boy out to do some farming again last night. They came to visit me in my truck and hang out for a while.

He's been out 4 or 5 times already, and he seems to really dig the big trucks most. He LOVES to drive them, or at least pretend to.

Nathan's Piano

2008-10-24T21:26:00.002-05:00

With all the rain we had yesterday and today, there wasn't any farming going on and we decided to have Grandma and Grandpa Dudley over for dinner and baby wrestling. After dinner we had to show them Nathan's new hat, a.k.a. his Buzz Lightyear PJ bottoms...
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Cutest... baby... ever. Nate also took the opportunity to roughhouse with grandpa a little.

Later, Liv broke out the new toy we got Nathan when we went garage sale shopping last weekend. It's a little battery powered piano that also has big duplo like blocks that you can build on it with. Nate had never seen it before tonight and I think he really liked it.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the camera running when he did his funniest antics at the piano. His mother was pressing the keys to show him how it works. I guess he had enough instruction because he grabbed her hand and more or less threw it out of his way. All of us busted up when he did it. That alone was worth the $2 we spent on the thing.

More Fun in the Kitchen

2008-10-19T20:41:00.001-05:00

The boy woke up all hot and sweaty from one of his big hairy naps yesterday, so I took the opportunity to style his hair for him...

While momma was cooking some dinner tonight, the boy decided to help me empty the dishwasher. I took a few good videos of him doing so. He's really becoming quite the little jabber box at times. I've started fooling around with some video editing on my computer here and I've spliced the best portions of his videos into one montage. Notice how pleased he is when he realizes that he's being filmed.

At dinner I snapped a few more still shots. Get used to this pose folks because I imagine you'll be seeing it for the next 18 years or so...

Cooking with Nathan

2008-10-18T14:15:00.001-05:00

Liv was working in the kitchen the other day and Nathan decided to, um, help.

Destroying the kitchen is such hard work...

In other news, the warehouse that is my garage grew even more full this week. I managed to heave the tub walls up on top of the squat rack to make room for the 70 2x4's I found on sale this week.

The rest of this weeks purchases included the sink, medicine cabinet, exhaust fan, and new turlet.
Now the only real big purchases we have left to make are the drywall and cement board. There's still A LOT of small stuff that needs to be bought yet, but most of that should be less pricey than what we've got so far. We're still doing good on our budget, but I won't be at ease with it until it's done.

A Change in Plans

2008-10-12T15:23:00.011-05:00

We've been shopping for more bathroom stuff as it comes on sale, and as a result have tweaked our master plan here and there. The biggest change is in the sinks. We realized how expensive faucets and large cabinets are and downsized our sink to a single. Here's the modified layout...

It's largely the same with a few small changes. Other than the vanity being smaller, we also opted for a bi-fold door on the east closet. I also found that there was more headroom than I anticipated, so we were able the shift the tub/shower more to the east and give ourselves a little more open floor space. This discovery also allowed us to purchase the pre-fab walls that went with our new tub. We were planning on tiling the wall inside the tub because we thought the pitched roof line would interfere with the height on the pre-fab walls. They were a little pricey, but it will save us a lot of work in the long run.

Here's what our garage looks like now...

My squat rack has been overtaken by PVC, doors, insulation, and tub walls.

We've also already got the tub, vanity cabinets, light fixtures, faucets, replacement window, and a new entry door.

The door was a steal. I found it in the scratch and dent pile. It was the right size and type but it had a small 2" chip on one corner. We're going to try a little wood putty and some strategic placement of the bad area. I think we can make it work. If not we got a $30 door for $2 so who cares! We went "unfinished" with a lot of our wood stuff...

We got the vanity and all the doors in unfinished oak to save a little money, but also so we can stain them with our trim and have an exact color match. Speaking of color, we also took our tile to town and Liv started working on our color palette. She got some accessories and also narrowed the wall color down.

She's leaning toward the lightest brown on the color swatch there. I think this bathroom will go from being called "Ugly Bathroom #2" to "The Chocolate Bathroom." Mmmm, chocolate. Anyway, she asked for my advice but all I was able to come up with was "We need something halfway dark because our tub, tile, and toilet are all white." I'm a guy so I automatically remove myself from color decisions due to ignorance. The only guys I know that are very color-savvy are those guys on HGTV that are a little light in the loafers. But that's a topic for another post. So since I was little help to Liv with her color questions, she is still looking for feedback on her color choice. Please feel free to comment! If you want to compare the color to the tile, see "Kermitt Turns 100" from 9-25-08 for a picture of the tile.

As it becomes increasingly difficult to park or even walk in my garage, I'm finally starting to grasp the fact that this is really going to happen. We've talked about this project since before we were married and it feels good to finally be working towards it. Gotta go check the Menards flier for this week!

Enter the Dragon

2008-10-11T22:00:00.007-05:00

It's time for some more cute pics of the boy in all his glory. First up is one of him in his PJ's.

I don't really understand these particular PJ's. They say "little dragon" all over them and have pictures of dragons. Is this implying that my son is a little dragon? I've never heard of a 9 month old being referred to as a dragon. Maybe a little orc or something, but not a dragon.

Grandma Dudley got herself a baby seat for her car Friday so today she felt the need to try it out. She kidnapped the boy and brought him out to the field to ride in Grandpa's big truck. So, he had to throw on his John Deere boots and farmin' hat.

Grandma and the boy both had a wonderful time, so I'm told. She said he took a huge nap in the sleeper of Grandpa's semi. I guess a purring diesel engine is the soothing he needs for good sleep. That's my boy. It must have worked good, because he was full of energy when he got home. He scaled the stairs almost like he was crawling on flat ground...

Adventures in Baby Tossing

2008-10-04T21:30:00.004-05:00

For the record, he loves this...

A New Hat for Nathan and a New Floor for Olivia

2008-09-28T22:00:00.001-05:00

We were goofing around with the boy yesterday and found a new hat for him.

I wish we had had that diaper double bagging his behind today. He had the mother of all blowouts while in his high chair. It was one of those "straight to the tub" diapers.

Contrary to what you might think, that wasn't the highlight of our day. Grandma and grandpa Dudley took the boy for us after church so Liv and I could do a little shopping for the bathroom. We picked up our window and some plumbing items that were on sale. We found the tub we wanted as well as a vanity and vanity top. We didn't buy any of that stuff today, but will probably get the tub next week since it's on sale. We also hunted for some floor tile too. Liv saw one she liked that was on sale for 99 cents/sq ft. We looked around some more and found a higher quality tile that she liked even better for only 68 cents/sq ft. So, she didn't even have to talk me into that one. We loaded a couple hundred pounds of the stuff in the old pickup and headed home. Here's what it looks like...

Kermitt Turns 100

2008-09-25T21:41:00.015-05:00

After only about 10 months, this post is now my 100th entry onto Kermitt. Part of me thought I would lose interest and quit after about 2 weeks, but here I am still keeping a semi-regular posting frequency after almost a year. Harvest is just now starting, so my posting is bound to become much more sporadic over the next 6 weeks. That being said, I thought I would take this opportunity to show off my post-harvest/early winter project.

If any of you have ever visited our house and experienced either of the bathrooms, you will agree that they both need some serious updates. It's bathrooms like ours that keep HGTV on the air. Anyway, we saved most of my overtime money from this summer and we've decided to tackle the upstairs bathroom remodel/expansion after harvest is over. If you've never seen our upstairs bathroom, it's basically a short narrow hallway with a bathtub across the end of it. Your knees literally touch the opposite wall when you sit on the throne. And the decorating? Let's just say that 1965 called and they want their wallpaper back. Take a gander...

Yeah, she's a beauty all right. Luckily for us, directly behind the tub is another empty room that is completely un-accessible except for a small 1.5' x 3' door in our bedroom closet. Here's what we're looking at.

The L-shaped spot where "existing bath" sits is actually where the tub is in the first picture. The stairs climb from north to south, so the portion exposed in this space is actually the sloping ceiling above them. The small break in the SE wall is the access hole in our closet. There's also a full size window labeled in the north wall. The roof line is a standard A-frame with the peak running north-south down the center of the room. The pink area represents the area that is roughly 6.5' tall or more, or the usable portion of the room as far as I'm concerned. It's roughly 7' wide by 10.5' long. Here's a picture looking north from the closet access hole.

Here's a shot looking south from the window.

The tub is on the other side of that corner and you can see the stairs to the left of that. Notice the old chimney right in the middle of everything. Luckily I had my thinking cap on when I had the roof replaced about 5 years ago. I had my contractor vent everything that was using the chimney out the side of the house and knock both of my decrepit chimneys down to below the roof line. The chimney will be right in the middle of the new room, so now I just have to remove some more bricks down to below the floor and cover it up.

So here's the master plan... totally gut the old bathroom and turn it into a hallway leading into the new bathroom. We are wanting it to look something like this.

It may look like we're not using all available space in there, but remember that the roof line restricts headroom in more than half of the room. We're planning on knocking out the wall behind the existing tub, creating access to the space. The new toilet will sit where the existing tub is. The tub/shower had to sit as close to the middle of the room as possible to maximize head room and avoid having to stoop while showering. The opposite wall will be really long so we're opting for a long 5' or 6' vanity with 2 sinks. We've kept all the fixtures close together to minimize our plumbing needs. The closets will have to conform to the roof line, making the floors of them deeper than the upper shelves will be. Both closets will have access doors into the unfinished portions behind them, making more "attic" storage. In fact, the east closet access door will make a secret passage linking up with the access door in our closet. I always wanted a house with a secret passage!

I've been constantly reworking the plans for this room in my mind for weeks. With the help of a buddy at work (thanks J!), I've got a pretty good idea of what's going to have to happen and what materials I'm going to need. Here's the first job...

This is a shot above the stairs. You can see the tiny access door in the lower left corner. The first project is to make sense of this rat's nest of wires. This panel is actually an old fuse box. I'm going to replace it with a breaker box and re-route any wiring that will be in the way of the new room. I'm also going to put sheeting down over the stairs to make access into the rest of the attic easier. Hopefully in "phase 1" we can fix stuff like this...
I believe this decrepit splice is part of the main service wire that feeds the whole house. Yeah, needs a little work. So there's the master plan for now. Like I said, this project won't start until after harvest. We've already started buying some materials as they go on sale. I imagine I won't be able to use my garage after a month of stocking up. We're looking at a budget of $3000 to $5000. We will get nice stuff to put in there, but our primary focus is resale value. We'll get stuff that is reasonably priced and would look good to potential buyers. My goal is to have the whole project finished by the end of the year. That may be a bit ambitious, but having to go downstairs to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night should keep me motivated. I'll keep you updated on our progress once construction starts.

Score One for Dad

2008-09-23T21:52:00.002-05:00

Ever since Nate was born, I've always been amazed at how well Olivia handles him. When it comes to the boy, she's better at everything than me. She's better at feeding him, comforting him, entertaining him, changing him, bathing him, everything. Finally, tonight I found something that I can do better than her. We both tried this and my facial hair got a much bigger response than her smooth face. Score one for Daddyo!

Grandma Was Right

2008-09-19T06:14:00.000-05:00

Grandma said that the boy would be doing this sooner or later. I guess she was right.

Finally, Some Boating Pics

2008-09-18T06:24:00.010-05:00

Tom and Megan sent me some pics of the boy at Logan's birthday party and I'm finally getting around to posting them.

Tie your hair up mom, it's in my face...

Mmmm, sunblock...

He looked like a blue pumpkin in his life vest.

Inspecting the boat windshield...

Learning to negotiate stairways for the first time...

Chasing that baby at the end of the hallway...

Sigh, I wish I was boating.

SNL - Palin and Clinton

2008-09-16T06:34:00.003-05:00

Here's a clip from Saturday Night Live from last weekend. It's pretty funny and I can't believe how much Tina Faye looks like Palin. Enjoy!

Fall Is Coming

2008-09-11T06:25:00.000-05:00

It's getting cooler in the evenings and we had to break out some of Nate's fall clothes for our evening walk a few days back. He looked very elfish to me in his new threads so I had to take some pics...

My New Favorite Invention

2008-09-05T21:04:00.006-05:00

Liv found a new "toy" for the boy this week at Wally World. Actually, I think it's more for her and I.

Hopefully this will keep him contained enough that Liv can get more done around the house. He has required constant supervision since he started crawling and his mother is pulling her hair out.

We haven't tried it out for more than a couple minutes so far, but I love it already. I call it Lil' Leavenworth. During the short amount of time he's been in it, he hasn't touched a toy. He's spent all his time grappling with the sides searching for an escape route. Here's what our hardened criminal thinks of the whole arrangement...
It's too bad his orange jumpsuit doesn't fit anymore! (see "Inmate Number 62704" from 4-23-08)

Happy Labor Day

2008-09-01T20:11:00.000-05:00

Labor day weekend is finally drawing to a close and I feel like I need a vacation. We had a pretty busy weekend, but it was all very fun. Aunt Shauna and Uncle Tom were home for a visit as well as Nate's Grandma Painter. Saturday we all got together at the Morning Star so S & T could meet Linda for the first time. After lunch there, we headed over to the McLaughlin's for Uncle Logan's 21st birthday bash. While there, Nathan got to take his first boat ride out on Lake Petersburg. I didn't have the camera with me, but Megan and Tom both took some great pictures with their phones. If they e-mail them to me I will post the good ones up here for all to see. (hint, hint Megan & Tom). After all the excitement, the boy was spent...

Sunday, after church, we went over to Great Grandma and Grandpa Adamski's to celebrate Grandpa Bill's 80th birthday. At the ripe old age of 80 I think he could work most 40 year olds under the table. Happy birthday Grandpa Bill! We also got to see Grandma Painter again along with the rest of the Adamski clan. We couldn't stay too long though, because we had to get home for another bbq at our house. It was just the Dudley's at our place and after some killer bratwurst, we played some games and pitted the boy against his pet monkey in a chicken fight...

Monday morning it was off to Grandma Dudley's for more food and games. We had a huge and delicious spread for breakfast. Those of us that didn't fall asleep afterwards played games and messed with Nate. Here he ponders the mysterious disappearing aunt...

Early Monday afternoon, Shauna and Tom left for Iowa again and we headed home ourselves (with a short stop at Great Grandma Dudley's pool of course). So, long story short, we expect the boy to sleep well tonight. He'd better because I reckon both of his parents will be so sacked out that they won't notice if he starts whining.

Adventures in Over-exposure

2008-08-28T05:55:00.001-05:00