I have shingles - and (oddly) I like it!

The garage is now at the "shingled" stage - thanks to John and Margaret Dyck, Bob Goud, Adam Jocelyn and Bob Starky (who were all here for bits and pieces of it) - oh and to Mel Jacobs who loaned me his air nailer.

I used to think that air nailers were sissy - I have helped shingle a lot of roofs and thought the traditional pouch full of roofing nails was the way to go - but I am sold on the air nailer now! We did each side of this roof in less than 2 hours (visiting included) - that is what a good crew can do - I think we are going to turn pro now ("pro" at what I am not exactly sure but....)

For your viewing pleasure - a couple of pictures courtesy of my eldest daughter.... and - yes for all you people like me who would wonder this - the lines are almost perfectly straight! (just so you know!) :)


PS. I am now accepting applications for the "Windows and doors" team and the "Siding crew". Any takers?

A roof over our heads

So the continuing garage saga..... continues. In fact, these pictures are a few days behind but they will give you an idea of where we are at in the process.......


The funny thing is that the garage is so huge that you can't even see the house anymore!!! :) Actually, that has turned out to be a cool thing too - now when we sit on the patio (which is in between the garage and the house) it is way more private. No one looking in over the fence - gawking into the backyard. It is like our own little world back there (a world with one big honking garage in the middle of it!!!!) :)

Finally

Well - a lot has been happening in our lives, but you would not know it from this blog. In fact, I am proud of you for having the gumption to keep checking back here - I would have given up on us long ago. However, I have posted several new things - so keep scrolling down. Not a lot of description - I will simply let the pictures speak for themselves. I hope you enjoy it.... because we enjoyed most - but not all of it! :)

Even more Garage stuff

The garage is moving forward. Since I know that Roberta (in particular) has been just dying for some new pictures, here are "concrete day", "Framing Day" and "Day before trusses go on if it is not a monsoon out there tomorrow" pictures. Enjoy! :)

Camp roof

For the past 7 weekends we have been working at Clearview Christian Camp putting a new metal roof on the old mess hall. For those of you who may be interested - here is the finished project. Looks good - all things considered, hey? :)

Megan's Not so Excellent Adventure

Megan had her appendix removed last week. It was hard on her, but way worse on her parents!!! :( I will spare you the details, but write if you want to know more. (By the way, she is up and about and doing great now. Just got done kicking me in a game of "Disney Scene it") :)

We are so thankful that she is doing better... we can't even begin to explain it.

Here she is with her sister and just some of the stuff that her friends, family and church family gave to her while she was in the hospital


Stitches - which are now out! :)

Track and Field

We did not get a lot of pictures, but here are some from Katie's track and field day at school.... She finished first in the 100 meter dash, but we do not have pictures of that ( so maybe just draw one of your own - k?) :)

Megan's birthday

Megan turned 10 not so long ago - if you could not be with us, here are some pictures to make you feel like you were here! :)

And now for something completely different...

I was going to post this picture anyway - long before Roberta complained about the plethora of "enthralling" garage postings (I think she was being sarcastic about the "enthralling" part - it is so hard to tell) - so here is a new picture of the girls for you......... (with no garage work in sight).......
It was "Would you still be my friend if I dressed like this?" day at school. So that is how they went.

So - would you be?

PS. "Enthralling" garage pics coming soon - concrete should be in by the end of the week. I may even post a video of it!!!!!! :)

For Sale

One slightly used back fence. Most boards 89% straight. 4 x4s with some rot. Approximately 30 yrs old. Removed to make more room for garage. Please see big pile at Estevan Garbage dump. :)

Please fill out the appropriate forms

Forms for my garage pad are starting to go up - topsoil is gone - gravel is coming tomorrow (maybe) - we are a little further down the road! Woo hoo!!!! :)

I have no boundaries!!!!

Well - the yard has no boundaries anymore at least. We took out the fence today and we marked out where the pad for the garage is going. Have a look! :)

Wow!

I just got the phone call that every man hopes to hear one day.....

"Tim, this is the lumberyard, your garage roof trusses are in."

I mean..... I have imagined this day for a long long time, but I had no idea it would be like this (sniff, sniff). I just feel so ..... warm inside! :)


Ok - enough silliness (well - that is not likely, but it sounded promising didn't it?) - I am one step closer to having a garage. And the dude at the yard said something else that made me smile - "running account" - as in I can go pick stuff up and not pay for it - woo hoo!!! (Ok - technically I have to pay for it at some point - I realize that - but having a "running account" at a lumberyard is somewhat like letting a 4 yr old loose in "Toys R Us") :)


I am tearing the yard apart as we speak - pics soon! :)

PERMIT me to introduce..... (Garage Part 2) TKP

Everyone here has been telling me, "Get your building permit early - it can be really tough to get", so I have been worrying about it. Finally, I went and got the form and, sure enough, it was confusing!

Questions like, "What will the height of the building be, above grade level, at the mid-point between the ridge and the eve?" Hmmm - well the wall is 10 feet, the mid-point of the truss is another 2 feet above that but I have no idea how thick the pad will end up being! And how do you measure grade level - off of the ground around it or off of the fill gravel that surrounds it????? They also wanted the cost of the building - is that exact figures or round numbers???? Who knows??? Lots of fun stuff like that). So Sari and I basically filled it in as best we could and I thought, "Well - if we did it wrong he will call us - hopefully we have it in a week or two".

I took the form to city hall - he looked at it - asked where the windows were going to go - figured out the cost of permit and said, "You are good to go!" It took 3 minutes and he barely looked at anything!!! Now it is a straight-forward little garage, but I worried and worried and I had the permit in hand in less time than it took to enter my PIN code for my card to pay for it. :)

I just hope that he is that hard to deal with through the entire inspection process.

Let's get ready to...... Build a garage!!!! (TKP)

It is finally happening! After years of waiting ... after years of having 3409869038690 tools and no place to store them.... after too many oil changes on the vehicles out in the snowbanks in the middle of January when it is 40 below... after talking myself out of it b/c it was too expensive ..... this is the year I build a garage (28 x 24 with 10 foot walls)!!!!!

I know that is not a big deal to a lot of people - but it is a huge thing to me! I already have two project cars that I could work on. Too many times already (for Sari's liking) I have filled the house with sawdust as I built something in the small work room that I had in the basement. I am really looking forward to having space to tear things apart and leave them until I come back (right now - working outside - all the parts and tools have to be put away every night). I am even looking forward to simply having a place to goof around and to call my own (Sari and the kids are going to get a SMALL portion in which to store their stuff - but it is going to be SMALL - I am being careful here - you know the old saying "Give 'em an inch....). :)

So I am really looking forward to it and I am blogging the progress. This is an effort to....
1. Track the progress for posterity reasons - so I can look back and say "Oh remember that!"

2. Inspire you to show up and hammer some nails with me. Since I am doing this myself (with a lot of help from my friends) this is your open invitation. Wanna help? Come on down.

We started tearing things out of the yard - cleaning up and moving stuff - stage one - the other day - so I thought I would take some "Before Pics" - so here they are....... grab your hammer! :)

Such a pretty boy!!! (TKP)

Ya know - I never saw Justin's looks when I looked at Caden - ever - until this past weekend. I guess he just had to dress more like his dad so that I could see it. :)

We can fix that too.....

So I am not sure whether this entry is one of joy or sadness.... I will let you decide.

Over the last week, our less than two year old dryer has been making "granking" sounds (similar to the sounds that Sara makes when she has discovered that she has gone shopping but forgot her credit card at home) :) So we did the only logical thing we could do (logical if you read these posts very often), we tore it apart!!!!

We had that dryer spread all over the laundry room - top off - back off - drum out - everything. Start the motor - runs for 8 seconds and seizes up solid. Turn it by hand - start it - 8 seconds - dead! Just as I was about to declare that a bearing in the motor had piled up and started hauling the machine parts outside - I heard a "tick" when I turned the motor. Upon closer inspection, I saw that a draw string from a hoodie (a "Bunny hug" for you old timers) was wrapped around the motor shaft. I carefully unwound it - and "tada" - we reassembled (most of) the parts of the dryer and it is back in business. Did 5 loads today, no problem! Saved us several hundred dollars!!!!

And the best part: Sari and I did this together without fighting (much). :) That is a huge step forward!! Normally we both want to be the boss (we are both "first children" after all) and we would likely almost kill one another (Ask about putting together the "TV armoire" in our living room sometime - that was..... interesting!)

The other story has to do with my motorcycle. I got it out last week and it would not start. After 5 days, several battery re-charges, a new siphon pump to get the old stinky gas out of the thing (I learned not to siphon gas with my mouth anymore since the last time I sucked gas down my throat and it came out my nose - my nose bled a lot and I could smell gas for a week) - drained the carburetors five or six times and away it went.

So here is the quesiton: Are we cursed b/c all of our stuff is falling apart around us, or blessed b/c we have been able to fix them ourselves - and not kill one another in the process? (See other gripping stories on this blog about repairing water coolers and ovens and vacuums and......)

Happy or sad - you decide for me.

I have made my choice!

Easter Bunny Surprise

Well I took back the blog from Tim just in time to tell you that hard boiled eggs are incredibly technical things to produce..don't laugh and if you do them all the time then don't read this because you will think I am a dork. I looked up how to on the internet and was that more info than I needed or what. I even read about the science of how it all works because some guy in Wisconsin blogged about it....well the short part of this story is that we had perfect hard boiled eggs.....perfect i tell you. You will have to go to Dauphin to try them because that is where we left them. Even this happy one which one of the girl made. In case you actually read this far the real reason for this entry is to say that the Easter bunny brought the first visit of Joel's girlfriend to the Muller home...you just think for a bit about how that might go. Maybe you are recalling the first time you visited the Muller home. It was a good time..for us at least we think it was and she might even like us enough to keep us...I know we laughed an awful lot...not at her... like some new inlaws...sorry Tim but you do make us giggle. Well that is all for now and just thought I would wrestle the blog away from my man long enough to be sure that history was marked with this new arrival to the Muller home.
Sara

Please answer yes or no to the following....

After my "Why are the Canadian Blood Service people picking on Monkeys?" rant from a few months ago (see blog below) - I went and gave blood today and was again struck by an odd question.

I am sitting there as the nurse goes through all these really personal questions (just use your imagination for this part) and then in the middle of it she asks, "Have you ever given blood in Quebec?" I just about laughed at her! Lets see, HIV questions, intimacy questions, drug use questions - Quebec questions!

I am almost certain now that they are just making up random questions that have nothing to do with giving blood just so that you have something to do while you are waiting for your turn on the bed. So, in order to help you prepare for your next visit to the blood donor's clinic, please answer the following questions.....


1. If green is my favorite colour, why do I not like Kiwi juice?

2. The gold key on my key ring - the one that I have not used for anything in more than 10 years - what is it for?

3. Why have I not taken that key off of my key ring?

4. If Julia Roberts and Lyle Lovett had stayed together, would their babies be cute - like her or not so much - like him?

5. If a monkey drove a car from Estevan to Weyburn against a 90 km/h wind, then threw a canoe in the river and paddled back to Rafferty Dam - would he then be allowed to give blood?

and finally....

6. Seriously, people still pay to see the Rolling Stones? Discuss.

If you can answer these questions, you too are eligible to be a Canadian blood donor. Congratulations! :)

An Offer you Can't Refuse - TKP

I was..... I mean THE KIDS were... really looking forward to going to the new VeggieTales movie "The Pirates who don't do Anything" so we took them to see it this afternoon and it was SO FUNNY! :)


Take your kids - find someone else's kids to take - just go by yourself and sit near someone else's kids if you need an excuse (but not too near - you will not want to be arrested for stalking someone - not at a VeggieTales movie) - but if you want some good, clean, funny fun - go see it.


In fact, I will pay for you to go see it. You go, send me the bill and I will send you a cheque.* No kidding! It was that good!


"Captain Weather Channel" - that was FUNNY! :)


* Note: Free movie offer available in every Canadian Province. Must show proof that you actually know who I am and that you really went to the movie (this offer is not good for internet surfing people who have been searching for days looking for a free VeggieTales movie ticket.... could happen). Participants must enjoy being somewhat immature and silly - and must prefer "Larry the Cucumber" over "Bob the Tomato" - but "Mr. Lunt" over all (the yellow gourd on the left in the picture above) :) Bob is a bit of a sissy!


Skill testing question may apply - such as "Can you sing the entire 'Pirates who don't do Anything' theme song?" or "Can you sing 'You're my cheeseburger'?" (May substitute any three other "Silly songs by Larry" if dressed as a giant cucumber while singing). Enjoy! :)