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Okay, Nate, here are the smaller pictures. Hopefully you will be able to enlarge these and take a closer look.






Ang, I am definitely going to enjoy the resort. We are supposed to get a good storm this weekend, so I've got some library books and made a huge batch of salsa. I can sit out on my patio and enjoy the storm and have some snacks. If it doesn't storm I am going to be extremely disappointed. If anyone living in the area needs tomatoes, PLEASE stop by my house and I would love to give some to you. My two tomato plants seem to be on steroids and I have tomatoes coming out of my ears.


Mom, I have followed the charging instructions for my batteries. Aaron said that the first time he used his they didn't hold a charge for long, but after that they got better. I am hoping that mine get better.

Roof Redo Complete

My roof redo is essentially complete. Aaron still needs to get a piece of brown metal to put around the base of the chimney, but other than that it is all done.


Above is a picture of the house with the old roof, and below is the new roof. What you can't see on the top picture are the missing and curling shingles. Aaron says that the new roof shouldn't give me any trouble for 25 years, so I am going to hold him to that!

I also took the advice of Nate, Aaron and Jo and I bought a Black and Decker edger/trimmer combo. My old gas trimmer was heavy and it leaked fuel and it was a pain to start. The new one is light, electric, and a lot of fun to use. My only complaint is that so far the battery doesn't seem to last very long. I have gone through four batteries and I have only edged my driveway and the sidewalk from the north edge of my yard to the walk that goes to the doorway. Granted, I have a lot of area to edge and I haven't done it for at least 2 years. I have already recovered 6 to 8 inches of driveway that had been overgrown, and I haven't found the edge yet. I'm not sure that will be a good thing once I have to start shoveling snow, but it does look better. I also bought a leaf blower. With all of my sidewalk area and patio to sweep I don't know why I never thought of a leaf blower until Aaron was cleaning up the roof mess and asked if I had one. It makes cleaning so much easier!

More Fun At Work

The kids came to school for the first time yesterday, and we had a great day. At 7:45 p.m. the mother of one of my kindergarteners called me to inform me that she just discovered that her daughter had lice. Yipee! I went straight back to work and did three loads of laundry to clean all of our dress-ups, stuffed animals, and dolls. My head immediately started itching when I heard the news, and it drove me crazy all evening. On the bright side, we were missing three kids today due to lice quarantine and we had a really mellow day!

Roof Redo, Day One

Day one of my roof redo is complete. Aaron brought about a dozen guys over on Saturday morning and they proceeded to rip off my old roof which consisted of a layer of asphalt shingles over a layer of shake shingles. Because my house is so old the base of the roof was not plywood sheets, but 2x6 or 2x8 board which had good sized gaps between them. That meant that they had to add a layer of plywood over the top of the boards in order to make sure the roof is sound.

In the process they removed the ugly old swamp cooler from the roof, hooray! Unfortunately it had a large wasp nest inside and that caused some problems for the guys on the roof. At this very moment my house is surrounded by a swarm of wasps and I am wishing that I had more than one wasp trap. There were a couple of other things on my roof that Aaron couldn't figure out what they were for, and they ended up taking those off. They did accidentally pull out my oven vent tube, but Aaron got that put back together.

Tick was not very happy about the noise on the roof for about the first hour. She was shaking and drooling and at one point she was gasping and heaving so hard I thought she was going to vomit. She is desperately afraid of thunder, and I'm sure that's what she thought the noise was. Eventually she did calm down.

This picture shows my roof with just the new tar paper on it. One of the guys is supposed to come back on Tuesday or Wednesday to put the new shingles on. I only got one shot of the guys on the roof and because of the angle of the sun it didn't turn out well enough to use. I was a little self concious about taking pictures while they were there because every time I set foot out of the house at least half of them just stopped working and stared at me. According to Jolyn, Aaron says that there were several guys who want him to set them up with me. If any of them are active LDS feel free to give them my number!

The guys did a great job of cleaning up, but whoever was in charge of the cooler must have overlooked it when they left. Want a beer? Come on over! Perhaps I should hold the beer hostage until the job is complete?