Done digging... for now

Well, I think I am done digging for now. One more load of dirt to take to the landscape yard... I have the main part of the patio dug out to the grass so that I can get the wood chips spread out and we won't have such a dirt pit any more. I hope I have enough wood chips!

I also built a small deck from some of the deck boards so that we had a place to step out of the house and make the transition from the house to the ground a little easier. The way I initially did it the deck ended up being about where it was originally, which is too high, so I have to get Aimee to help me move the 8'x4' deck, dig down where the cement footings go and put it all back. I should have planned it a little better from the beginning. I guess trying to get it all together quickly and not spend a lot of time on a temporary deck isn't a good idea in the long run.

I am hoping to have it redone and the wood chips spread out by the end of the week so it will all be ready for this holiday weekend. Aimee is thinking of inviting some friends over to pick the cherries off the trees since they are getting ready finally. I just have to make sure the back yard is at least a little kid friendly so the parents don't have to be weary of nails or screws or loose boards, etc.

I don't have a problem with Sam being out there with all that stuff cuz I know where it is and watch Sam like a hawk to make sure he doesn't get close to anything harmful. Sam is so laid back and obedient to stay away from what I direct him away from that it is rarely a problem anyways and I hardly ever have to intervene to keep him safe. We are just getting to know our friends from the parenting classes we have been taking and some of them are quite protective of what environment they will put their children in, even with their supervision, so I would rather not give them any misgiving of having their child at our house.

Sleepy arms

Sam has woken up twice in the past week just screaming. It is a particular scream that I think I will recognize now. It took a while the first time to figure out what he was talking about since I usually don't turn the light on at all when I go to check on him at night when he wakes up and needs help getting back to sleep. This blood curdling scream was particularly urgent and at first I couldn't figure out what he was trying to tell me... I don't remember exactly what he was pointing to and signing, but in the dim light I noticed that one arm looked darker than the other.

I got out the flashlight and his right arm was a bright red color, almost purple, had a slight patchy look to it and upon further investigation I found that he had some sleep lines from his shirt dug into the underside of his arm up by the armpit. Conclusion, Sam had his first limb "go to sleep". He had evidently laid on his arm and cut off the circulation and it had built up pressure in his arm. It was probably not a fun state to be woken from; I know I don't appreciate getting woken up when that happens to me.

Anywho... once we let it set for a minute the right color returned, he calmed down and went back to sleep.

It happened a few nights later to a much lesser degree and he was much better at identifying that it was his arm this time. It was much less red this time and took less time for the arm to "wake up" and get him back in bed.

These first experiences into the less pleasant aspects of life must be very alarming to a child. In trying to be calm and identify with him what the issue he is having I think we are teaching him how to work through the unpleasantness and let us know what the problem is so we can help him.

Father's Day weekend

For Father's day weekend, we ended up loading up the trailer with a load of dirt and pulled it up to my parent's house. My Dad has been deliberating about how he was going to go get some dirt to fill in around the retaining wall under the deck and I happened to have a trailer full of dirt. We were going up to go to a wedding of one of Aimee's high school friends and to celebrate Father's Day with my family so it was very convenient. The 100 mile trek with an almost overloaded trailer (and car) ended up taking us 30 minutes longer since it was much more stable to stay below 55mph; the trailer started bouncing and swaying a little more as you went above that.

So for Father's Day, my dad got dirt, 3 loads of dirt; he seemed happy with it. I got rid of almost a yard of dirt that would have cost me $5 to dump locally and Dad got to get his extra dirt while saving on the quantity a little.

I got to move that load of dirt we took up there three times; once to get it out of the way for the wood chips when I piled it by the hot tub, from that pile into the trailer, and then from the trailer into Dad's back yard. I was actually surprised at how much dirt I had moved to make room for the wood chips cuz all that loose dirt I had moved filled up the trailer.

Sam had fun helping with some of the dirt moving, but once Grandma brought out the watering can, he was all into watering all the flowers and pots and trying to refill the can with the hose that wasn't connected. Oh and he found Grandpa's hat and was having fun running around with it on and having everyone else try it on. Oh and at some point Grandma, Aimee and Sam went for a walk and stopped by the duck pond.

digging deeper, with chips

I "donated" the second load of dirt to the local landscape dump, ~ 3 cubic yards in total. When I left, I had thought the trailer wheel was flat, but found it had just sunk into the gravel due tot he weight of the dirt.

Thinking that the patio was sufficiently flat, I decided to get a load of wood chips to put down so that the mud was kept to a minimum until we were able to actually do the patio later this summer. I then tried and eventually succeeded in wrestling the trailer into the back yard with 1.5 yards of wood chips, wet wood chips. The trailer and wood chips probably weighed about a half ton all together and if it wasn't for my uneven grass and backyard, it would have been fine. I had to use the come-along a couple times to get it out of ruts in the grass and by the cherry trees since the weight of the trailer was compacting the ground in areas and the wheel would sink.



I surveyed my digging before putting down the wood chips and found I was not taking enough dirt out to make a slope away from the house, so I had to take down the area outside the door about 3 inches and the area by the hot tub about 6-8 inches. Since the trailer was full, I had to just pile the dirt at the end of the patio. It took about another hour and a half to get the side of the patio the slope I needed, landscape fabric down and the trailer turned around and pushed down the side yard to where I could get it over the area I had prepared for it. Unloading was a little challenging since a yard and a half of wood chips is a lot to put in a 6x8 foot area. I ended up staking some boards at the "house" side to make a barrier to hold the pile back. The pile ended up being about 2 feet deep on average.


It probably would have been easier to just have used the wheelbarrow and like 18 trips, but I got it in my head it would be easier to pull the trailer... oh well. I was spent after I got that unloaded and quit for the night.



When I was taking off my gloves and bandage from my blister, I saw the white ball in the blister wound and thought it weird until I realized it was skin and that my blister had gotten another blister that had ripped open also. It looks a lot worse than what it feels like and doesn't look much different than the previous picture, it just really stings when it gets wet. I plan on taking some time off while this heals and give the patio a break for now. Or at least take a couple days to recuperate a little and look up online how to wrap an open blister so it doesn't get worse while working.

Digging it more

Did some more digging after taking a load to the yard debri place. Got almost to the end of the house toward the back and all the way along the house toward the side yard. Filled up the trailer again but didn't make the 5pm closing time to get it dumped.

It was hot today and the digging went a lot slower. Finished up tonight about 7 since my back was really tired and so was the rest of me... had a great steak and potatoe dinner that helped revitalize me.The ice cream sandwich didn't hurt either.

Digging it

Spent most of the day doing back and forth from Home Depot today. Went this morning to get a new mower blade when I hit a metal stake on the side of the grass and bent the blade. Ended up forgetting the blade the first trip and went back after lunch.

I installed the blade when I got back and started up the mower and instantly know something wasn't right. The mower was vibrating around like crazy like the blade was out of balance. I checked everything out and identified that the drive shaft of the mower got messed up along with the blade. So a new mower is in my immediate future. Probably after I drop of the load of dirt tomorrow morning.

To give me something to do while processing the lawn mower, I pulled the spindles off the rail outside the living room. I gave me some stakes to use for leveling out the patio area where the deck used to be.



The dirt is from the area out where the deck used to be. It is quite uneven and is higher than the dirt by the foundation, which is not good. So I set up the laser level and some stakes, marked a level mark on each stake and identified how far down I would need to go from that mark to get below the crawlspace vents and the dirt at the foundation. It ended up being about 5 inches out at the middle of the deck area by the hot tub.



So I have about a 8x8 foot area outside the back door down to the right grade and will be building a small wood step/platform to put outside the door so it isn't such a large step down. Then I will continue digging out the rest of the area out to the grass and hopefully get a load of wood chips down before the end of the day... so it isn't just open dirt. Although mud shouldn't be an issue for a little while, if you believe the weatherman.

Oh and I got a nasty blister that ripped open while digging... that will be fun tomorrow.

Rainy day tools

Aimee came in to give me my 18V Ryobi drill this morning while I was working in the office. She had found it in the rain out on the hot tub where I had left it when I unscrewed the last bit of deck boards on Monday night. It had been out in the rain for 2 days. I was not happy.

I let if dry out and tried it, and it works! yeah, it didn't get fried. To see if there was any noticeable damage inside the housing, I took it apart and found that there was years of dust and grime buildup in there. Yuk. Should have taken a picture, oh well!!

I proceeded to clean it all out and now I have a cleaner drill to work with. It should stay cooler now that the air ports are not so clogged.

No more extra cabinets

Finished installing the the last 2 cabinets over the freezer tonight. I was thinking it would have been cool if I had more 24" deep cabinets to go over the freezer since it is kinda hard to reach back over it, but this should work just fine. I will have to use them for less frequently used items.

Now to get them painted and the doors hung. Maybe I will finally get to use my never before used paint sprayer; it would make it go by so fast... at least after the prep work of masking everything off.

Head first , the wrong way

After getting home from the Wonderful Ones brunch, I played with Sam while Aimee got Lunch ready. Sam was playing on the slide and I was trying to take some pictures/videos with my phone to get a good one to post. Sam was having a great time and started going up the slide with bare feet and walking his way up to the top and sliding down repeatedly. Aimee came out to watch for a minute so I was kinda playing with my phone and just happened to see Sam as he was climbing to the top of the slide loose his grip on the top and start falling backwards down the slide. Luckily he is flexible enough to put his head between his legs and he mostly slid down the slide that way with me, and my cat like reflexes, getting there to slow his decent and giving him a more graceful landing on the floor.

He must have been getting tired cuz he was playing not just 5 minutes later and got to the top of the slide and was laying on his stomach at the top with his feet down the slide. I just barely caught sight of him out of the corner of my eye as he went head first down the steps of the slide and my cat like reflexes were of no use to keep him from falling to the floor. I picked him up as he was screaming and Aimee came out and calmly told me "It's ok, but he has some blood on his lip and nose." I was very thankful for her calm identification and notification of this information cuz I didn't freak out.

It took a minute to get Sam to quit screaming and get him set down on the counter so I could take a look. I couldn't figure out where the blood had come from at first since it wasn't gushing and looked like it was transfer from somewhere else; he didn't have blood in his mouth or in his nostrils. I dabbed the blood away and found that it was a scrape on his nose and lip, most likely from him hitting it on the stairs on his way down. The stairs have a bit of texture on them, probably to make it less slippery when wet, and evidently make it rough on your face when coming down head first. Today , second pic, he has a bright scab that everyone is noticing and making comment on as Aimee did Library story time and errands this morning.


It was amazing to me that once he calmed down, he wanted right back up on the slide, but we put it away, had lunch, and he got a nap since he was evidently just too tired to manage not falling; I wasn't going to risk it again. It was a good lesson for him and me to learn about how he can get hurt; I won't be so quick to be so trusting of his ability to navigate a toy that may be a little out of his age range in term of safety. I figured it was only a matter of time that he would get hurt on the slide; it is taller than he is by about a foot. I just couldn't justify spending the same amount of money for a smaller slide that was only 2 feet tall so maybe waiting a little longer to get it for him would have been prudent. I felt so bad thinking that he had hurt himself so much worse than he did, I will definitely be more watchful of him in the future.

Wonderful Ones

So Monday, we had a fun time with our Birth to 3 Wonderful Ones class group. They take a week off half way through the 10 week class to allow for the families to do an outside of class get-together. We had planned on going to a local park and having a brunch Monday morning due to napping schedules working out best for that time.



Due to rain, one of the families decided to host at their house which was about 2 miles down the road from us. We had a fun time from 10 - 12 playing with the kids, eating, talking with the other parents and trying to get a good picture of all the kids together. Unfortunately Sam was the one that was screaming during the pictures where all the other kids were just sitting there hanging out; oh and Anika was patting whoever was beside her on the head. Oh well. I got a decent picture of all of them where Sam at least didn't have a screaming look on his face so I guess it was successful. The pictures with the Moms and babies turned out a little better.




There were 6 families there and the kids (Andrew, Caden, Avery, Anika, Sam and Matteo) all had a really fun time playing with all of Avery's toys, which were new to all of them. Sam, and actually everyone, especially liked the blow up blue pony that they could ride and the kitchen set (which I was surprised to find out Adrienne had found at St Vincent for $5 with all the pots, pans, plastic fruits and vegetables).

Memorial Day, Sunday/Monday

After church Sunday, resting a bit and playing with Sam before his nap, Aimee helped me get the cement footings for the old deck moved. We got the footings stacked up in a big pyramid which was kinda fun. Sam got up from his nap before I got the holes filled in and ended up tripping in one that was on the edge by the grass. Luckily he didn't hurt himself and just got back up without much trouble or complaint. So while I was filling up the holes, Aimee and him blew some bubbles; he is getting pretty good at the blowing part.




Later that night, after Sam went to bed, we went out to the garage and started cleaning up a little and getting rid of old boxes and rearranging stuff to make room for constructing and putting up some more wall cabinets. We put together two cabinets and got the wall bracket on the wall for one of them. I couldn't find the molly bolts I had bought before, so I had to wait to get more at HD before getting the second bracket up since it was only crossing one stud. It got late so I had to make the HD run on Monday.

I got the two cabinets we put together Sunday up on Monday afternoon as well as one that I had already put together and was sitting on the freezer. I need to patch a hole in the sheetrock behind the right cabinet so I shouldn't have screwed it to the other ones just yet, but at least I remembered before putting in all the screws to the bracket and wall support.

In the process of hanging the first two, I did figure out that I could attach the two cabinets we built together and hang them at one time by using scraps to space the brackets the right distance to allow for the cabinet sides between them. It ended up being a lot easier to hand all the brackets level with each other with the spacers than hanging a cabinet and using the supplied spacer to position the next bracket, like I did to hang the first cabinets a while ago.

I still need to put polyurethane on the insides to protect against spills, put on doors and paint the outside. I have plans for the last two cabinets to go beside the one above my toolbox; I should be able to fit the last two between there and the furnace ducting, over the freezer.

Then I get to try to make my own cabinets with pressboard and dovetail joints for the shelves. Oh and making drawers for the lower shelves under my workbench. That and finally putting all my stuff in a seemingly organized fashion into the cabinets so I can actually find stuff I need. I am sure I will end up building some organizational things into these shelves to hold specific items, like slots for boxes of nails and screws, pegboard on the inside of the doors to hang tools, etc. I have a several ideas from magazines and a couple books i bought that will hopefully make the most of the limited space I have.