And Then...

 While my husband sealed around the windows and doors,

and put up trim,

 I went around behind him masking and caulking all the trim,

 and then I stained and sealed it.

Tomorrow I will finish sealing the last of the logs and trim along the front of the house, 

and then I can concentrate on sealing more checks.

(Not to mention all the other big projects that are left on the list...sigh.)

***

Just for fun:

This is what you get when you give my second daughter a camera and ask her to try to get a picture of the paintbrush in action.

Not exactly what I had in mind, but artistic, nonetheless!

Reading Record: August

The Last Week

After the borate solution dried, we washed the logs to prep them for staining,

my husband got the staining done on three sides of the house

(he's still working on the front because we had to order more stain),

the log ends were sealed,

we applied sealer over the stain,

I filled in and sealed all of the butt joints,

and for the rest of my life a few more weeks I will be filling in checks (aka cracks) in the logs.

If you don't hear from me for a while, either my fingers are covered in goop and I can't type or I'm curled up in a chair with aching muscles and can't get up...except to go to bed!

The Last Five Weeks

Since July 24 we've been doing a lot of:

trim board removal

(and old nest removal from behind them...birds, bees, yellow jackets, and mice),

paint stripper application,

pressure washing

(aka paint and old finish removal),

sanding,

borating

(application of borate solution using a sprayer...that's borating, right?),

and the never-ending chore of removing old caulking from between the logs.

Wait, did I mention the never-ending chore of removing old caulking from between the logs?

Oh, I did?

Never mind then, I won't mention it again.

W.A.R. Has Been Declared

I've been doing some rearranging around here lately, so I set my Scrabble letter "WELCOME" sign in the laundry room so it wouldn't get lost in the shuffle.  

A few days later I noticed that the "M" had disappeared.

I thought it had just gotten bumped, and that it would turn up in a laundry basket or something.

I held on to my delusions until we found a partially eaten tomato on our kitchen counter...which led to the discovery that the "E" and the "C" were missing from my kitchen "RECIPES" display.

Do the missing letters spell for you what they spell for me?

M_CE

So I bought these: 

The first night I set three traps, and two were...effective, to put it politely.

But I still kept a close eye on that letter "I" in the kitchen (and a baited trap nearby), just in case the intelligent speller had not been caught in a trap already.

Apparently I was watching the "I" too closely, because last night the rest of my "WELCOME" letters disappeared.

(I checked with the humans in the household, just in case someone was playing a joke on me.

They weren't.)

I'm baiting the rest of the traps, and I'm wondering if I should stick with peanut butter for bait, or if maybe I should switch to this:

Think it would work?

For the Love of Eggs: Part 5

The chicken coop, as it was, wasn't quite how we imagined a chicken coop should look.

So after some research my husband built some nest boxes, (which we call the Chicken Hotel),

and he added a few places for the chickens to roost.

This week, after all the time and money we've spent caring for the chickens, they finally started earning their keep!

On Monday, we found three eggs.

Tuesday, we got one more.

So far today, we've found two.

And all but one of them have been found on a shelf in the barn on a pile of plastic bags.

 Silly chickens.

(Glass eggs to plant in the nesting boxes have been added to my shopping list...)

It Has Begun

It has begun.

This school year marks the beginning of my last 13 years of teaching.

Let's pause and let that sink in for a minute.

Yeah.

I only have 13 years left before I retire.

Amazing.

Anyway.  Moving on.

We started our new school year on Monday, and for the first time, all four kids are "officially" in school.

I have two 5th graders, a 4th grader, and a Kindergartner.

All of the books that are scheduled to be read in the first 12 weeks barely fit on the school shelves in the living room,

(although some of these books will carry through the whole year)

(The top two shelves are alphabetized by author, and the bottom row of over-sized books is too.)

and our school cupboard in the kitchen is full of the workbooks and notebooks we use (almost) every day.

(Workbooks are grouped by subject, and notebooks are color-coded according to each child's signature color...which also happen to be their favorite colors.)

Am I organized?  Why, yes, yes I am.

Maybe a little bit too organized?

Maybe.

But I'm OK with that, and so is my family.

It helps keep the chaos under control, and everyone knows where to find what they need.

And if they can't find what they're looking for, I know exactly where to tell them to look!

***
(Can anyone guess what song is now stuck in my head?)