Built a picnic table for the front yard
Early garden harvest has started with radishes.
Spring is starting to show itself in many ways- birds, animals coming out of hibernation, grass sprouting and Abbie wearing sun dresses. Some memories from our 4th week of COVID19 lockdown.
Sunsets
Kelly doing a morning coffee get together with girlfriends ... on zoom
Kevin needed a haircut and not able to go to his barber.
Holly can’t believe her luck - that her peeps are home all the time!
Easter
Hunter is finding animals and bringing them into show everyone. He also brought in a snake too!
We had a birthday dinner for Hunter the evening before and donuts the morning of the 3rd.
This past week we got hammered with snow. We beat a single day snowfall record in Feb that was set in 1917. Since Monday we had over 30 inches fall in our yard... and its March now!
Around the house
Cross country skiing in the Neighborhood
Walking after the storm
Playing
We missed the lunar eclipse last night due to cloud cover, but awoke to a beautiful moonset this morning coming down right behind North Sister.
Christmas eve dinner and Christmas morning
We were also blessed with a white Christmas. It started snowing on Christmas eve and we had a great walk Christmas day.
As we posted recently our dog (Red) of 15 years passed away. We were not planning to get another pet for a while but recently we found out about a family looking to give away their dog due to expecting a fifth child and not having a lot of outdoor space. The dog is one year old and is a Goldendoodle. The minute we met her we fell in love. Being a Goldendoodle means she will hardly shed if at all which is perfect for cuddling and not getting hair everywhere. Her name was Hutch and after having a boy dog for 15 years calling a girl dog a boy name just didn't feel right. If she is a girl we wanted a girly name. So, we decided that we would rename her keeping Hutch as her middle name. After a few days of not knowing what we should call her we decided she was our Christmas dog and we would call her Holly, or Holly Hutch. Holly loves to follow us from room to room laying wherever she can to get loves and enjoys daily walks exploring her new neighborhood. We love that she is a part of our family and look forward to many years with her. Life is just better with a family dog.
Oh and we think their might be some resemblance here:
After finishing the new woodshed about a month ago, I have been busy chopping as we get ready for cooler weather. Figure it will hold over 4 cords if full.
Since we moved into our house a couple of winters ago I have stacked wood on the south side of the house off the garage. When it snows the wood gets wet the last think you want to be doing is clearing snow off when its cold out. I decided I wanted to build a partial open air woodshed to stack the wood in. It would be partially open on the sides to allow airflow to help the wood dry but also covered to keep the majority of the snow off.
In the late summer I slowly started the tedious job of planning out the size, and layout, followed by leveling and squaring the cement deck blocks that would be used as a foundation. Once this was completed I ordered a load of gravel and rented a bobcat to pour in gravel around the bases to level the floor of the shed which would be made of compacted gravel. From here I ordered the wood which showed up last week. I worked at it during the evenings after work and a little on the weekend. All in all it was done in less than a week. A much more reasonable project than the crazy garden project from the spring.
I have learned that the key is not to rush in the beginning and be sure to get the posts squared up right. If this gets messed up you spend a lot of time trying to fix issues later. The picture above shows the posts going in with a few board nailed in to keep them straight and square. I used cedar for the front posts and the cheaper pressure treated posts for the inside back as no-one will really see these once the wood is is and everything is stained.
Here is a couple pictures with walls up as well as the roof rafters installed.
Here is the completed structure including 1x4 face board on the front of the rafters and the roof strapping that will be used for attaching the corrugated roofing. The second photo is the completed structure stained (Messmer's - Oxford brown - same as the stain on portions of our house) I also added a black decorative "T" bar to the middle post. I am thinking I will try to find a couple of similar black "L" brackets for the upper corners to hid the metal braces.
Final shot with the roof added. Now to load in the firewood for winter!
Jennifer and the Gormly cousins came to visit this week. What fun week had!!
The kids got to have many swim days followed by biking riding, ice cream eating, movie watching, staying up late and camping out at Camp Owl (in the backyard). We even got to celebrate the two "sister cousins" August birthdays. It doesn't get better than that!
Fun memories were made and a good time was had by all. Until this next time Gormlys, we love YOU! ❤❤❤
