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It was another pretty busy weekend for us.  On Saturday morning, Katie dropped Emma off at Grandma Joan’s and then came out to the cabin (where I had been since Friday morning).  Emma spent the day with Grandma, Aunt Jean, Bryson, Jaden and the rest of the Earle gang.  She then spent the night at Judy’s and went back over to Grandma’s on Sunday morning where she spent about half the day with Grandma and Aunt Jean until we came back to pick her up.

Katie and I worked hard on the cabin on Saturday and got the majority of the painting completed inside.  What we didn’t finish on Saturday, we completed on Sunday morning.  We also did a lot of clean up and installed electrical outlets and things like that.  The place is coming along nicely.  Next up is flooring in the kitchen and bathroom and then we’ll be ready to hang cabinets.  The new appliances will be delivered on December 21st so we hope to be ready for them by then.

On Saturday night, Katie and I took advantage of our “alone” time and went out to the Little Creek Casino for dinner.  The food was great!  Once we were finished with dinner, we decided to gamble $20 on Blackjack.  While it was a fun ride, the end result was the casino made an easy $20 off of us.  Oh well, it was fun.  By the time we got back to the cabin, it was about 7:45.  We both fell asleep by 9:00.  We must be getting old because it turns out that the kids stayed up later than we did (at Judy’s).  I’m sure that having worked all day played a part in how tired we were too though.

On Sunday afternoon, Katie headed back, ahead of me, while I went over to help move a Christmas tree in to the community park.  We transplanted it and will be having a Christmas tree lighting on December 2nd.  It should be a great time!!

Here are a couple pictures from the weekend:

There just doe n’t seem to be enough hours in the day.  We have all been very busy lately.  Since we haven’t posted for ahwhile, here are a few of the highlights from the past month.

We went to Remlinger farms with Jessica, Nathan, Ryan, Mom, and Aunt Jean.  Everyone had a great time!  I’ve posted a couple pictures from the event below.  Emma always love going there.  They’ve done a great job of creating a magical place for kids there!

A few weeks ago we took the train down to Portland to visit friends.  It was the first time that we’ve all gone on the train together and it was a lot of fun.  We were all surprised at how fast we got there!  We’ll definitely do that again!

Emma has been sick over the last week.  She had a very high fever (103.8).  We got her to the doctor quickly and they diagnosed an ear infection.  She is on antibiotics for 10 days to clear that up.  It’s really kind of amazing how happy she can be when she’s sick.  She definitely didn’t get that trait from her dad!

Last weekend, Polly and Vic came to town to visit and we had an early Thanksgiving at our house.  Sarah, Dan, Alex and Sydney also came over and we had a “Brown” thanksgiving.  Lots of food and it was all delicious.  Polly and Vic headed back to New Orleans a couple days later.  They will be going to England in early December to spend time with the relatives there.  Polly will go earlier and Vic will meet her there for a couple weeks in December.

We have been working on the cabin.  I can’t wait until we can’t say that anymore.  The sheetrock was completed and the mud/tape/texture was just completed last week.  We spent this weekend priming and painting.  Katie and I spent all day on Saturday painting while Emma played with Grandma at the other cabin.  We were able to prime the entire interior, paint the ceiling white once the primer dried, and today we painted the bathroom and kitchen.  There is still a little more painting to be done in both rooms but that will go quick.  We also wired in all the smoke alarms and installed all the trim for the can lights.  The ceiling is complete!!!

Next week we plan on going up to complete all the painting and will also work on installing outlets and light switches.  That should go relatively quickly.

On the way back from the cabin today we stopped at Lowes and looked around.  By the time we had left, we had purchased all the appliances for the kitchen, a granite countertop for the bathroom and a few other miscellaneous items.  I also can’t wait until we are done spending money.  It’s amazing how expensive everything is!

Well, my fingers are getting sore so I think it’s time to stop typing.  Below are a few pictures from our month of October/early November:

Here are some recent pictures of Mom’s house.  Emma has been sick so we had to keep her home from school.  I decided to take her over to Grandma’s for awhile today so we weren’t couped up for the entire day.  I took a few photos while I was there:

I know it’s been a bit since we’ve posted an update to the website.  Lots of things have been going on around here.  We’ve been busy enough that we have hardly noticed the depressing weather rolling in.  We just aren’t ready for colder days and the wind and rain.  Oh well, I suppose we’ll slowly acclimate.

Mom’s house is nearly done.  I went by yesterday on the way back from the cabin and saw the latest progress.  The garage/shop is pretty much complete.  Everything is painted and mom is moving stuff in.  The kids are all going to have a great time going to Grandma’s indoor playground.  There is plenty of room for all of them.  They can even ride their bike in there!  I imagine we’ll have some fun family get togethers there all winter long.  I’ll try to remember to take some pictures next time we go over there.

We have sheetrock in the cabin!!!!!  It was an exciting weekend out at the lake.  I hired a couple guys to come hang all the sheetrock.  It was all delivered last Tuesday (thanks neighbor Steve for letting them in to deliver the sheetrock).  One guy showed up on Friday and hung the upstairs ceiling sheetrock and then he came back with another guy on Saturday and Sunday to finish up.  While they were hanging the sheetrock, I was out installing some of the deck railings.  Slow but sure I’ll get it all done.

Next weekend we are going to have the HVAC company come out and fire up the furnace for the first time.  We need the heat on before we have the mud/tape/texture completed on the sheetrock.  Once all that is complete, we’ll be working on getting the bathroom done, and then the kitchen.  It’s starting to get exciting!

Here are some photos of the cabin progress:

Well, it’s been a pretty busy few weeks for us.  We have gotten the cabin insulated, have been winterizing the house, and have attended lots of parties and “get togethers”.  We went to the Puyallup fair with mom and had a great time.  There are a couple pictures below from the fair.  Emma was not afraid of anything there.  She ended up going on the smaller rollercoaster 4 times because she liked it so much.  Very brave.

We spent last weekend at the cabin.  Along with doing a few things at our cabin, we also mowed the lawn at mom’s and did a couple other winterizing things.  One of the tasks I had to do was to take down the large cloth umbrellas.  In the past I’ve found that there might be a few bees resting between the folds of the cloth so I decided to open up the umbrellas to make sure they were “clear” of bees before putting them away for the season.  I untied the green umbrella and was about to pull the thick cord.  As I reached down I bumped the cloth folds and one flipped over to reveal a BAT hanging on the cloth.  I’m happy to report that as of Sunday night, I have finally gotten back in to my skin.  I must have jumped back about 10 feet when I saw it.  I’ve never seen a bat up close like that and was NOT expecting to see one there.  The bat didn’t seem interested in moving so I got a long thin board and tapped the cloth which caused the bat to fall to the deck.  I had expected it would fly off but I was wrong.  It just sat on the deck for a few seconds and then started crawling around.  Katie took a video of it slowly going across the deck.  It ended up seeking refuge under the dark cover of the barbeque.  I’m hoping it will leave tonight so we don’t have to worry about finding it in the bbq later.  Click on the picture of the bat (sitting on the deck) below to see the video.  It’s actually pretty interesting.

On a completely separate note, we should be getting the sheetrock delivered on Tuesday and the installers are supposed to come out next weekend to hang it all.  EXCITING!  We passed both the framing/mechanical/plumbing and insulation inspections last week so we are making progress!

We had the cabin insulated last week.  We are hoping to schedule an inspection this week so that we can get the sheetrock going soon.  The goal is to have the sheetrock completed by the end of Sept or so and then we’ll have an insulated, heated cabin to finish over the winter.

We still need to finish the deck but that should go relatively quickly.

Last weekend was the first weekend that we’ve all stayed home together in quite awhile.  We went to the fair with mom on Saturday and had a great time.  The weather was perfect and the crowds weren’t too bad (we went early in the day).  Mom parked at her office and then we gave her a ride down to the fair parking lot.  Emma went on rides, visited the animals and we all had a few “treats” there.  Of course the first thing we had to do was get a scone……..

On Sunday, Katie, Emma and I attended a wedding on one of the cruise ships down at terminal 30 in Seattle.  The cruise was set to leave later in the day and we would have loved to stay on, but they’ve obviously done a good job of making sure there aren’t any stowaways like us on there prior to leaving.  We had to work the next day anyway.  It was a great wedding and I saw people I hadn’t seen in years (from Cobalt).  Anyway, I think Emma enjoyed it too because she was a little upset that we didn’t get to go to Alaska!

Here are a couple pictures of the cabin with insulation:

As the title says, Kathy, Carol and Marcus came out to Seattle to visit.  Some of us had not met Carol and Marcus before so we were very happy to finally meet them.  (talk about long overdue).  Anyway, the three of them came out to visit and I think they had a very nice time.  They had a lot of activities packed in to their visit.  They went out to Poulsbo, spent time with Brian, Marcia and Dan, stayed out at the cabin, and also stayed at Mom’s.  We all really enjoyed visiting with them while they were here.  Luckily I stole all the pictures off of Aunt Jean’s camera so I’ve included a few below.

The visit was capped with a visit to Chuck E Cheese.  All the kids went and I think way too much money was spent on game tokens and pizza.  Everyone had a wonderful time, including many of the adults.  We haven’t been there since Kathy’s last visit so it was a treat.  It’s apparent that Marcus has had some quality time there over the years (I hear they all like to go there) so he was, hands down, the clear winner of total tickets.  I think he had a couple different games that he generated 250 tickets on one turn.

Anyway, we had a wonderful time with them and really hope they come back soon!

We made some significant progress on the cabin last week/weekend.  I went out on Wed evening (took a couple vacation days) and completed most of the caulking inside (for fire protection and insulating).  We also finished the cedar peak over the deck and installed all the Trex deck boards.  We are using Trex decking and will be installing cedar rails so most of the deck will be cedar.

We also passed our framing/mechanical inspection, which is a HUGE relief.  We got the okay to insulate and have been getting bids to get that work completed.  (We don’t want to do that ourselves).  At this rate, we should have sheetrock on the walls by winter.

We also had the heating/cooling company come out and install the heat pump.  Now we just need to schedule them to come out and fire up the system and that will be complete.

Katie and Emma came up on Saturday.  Brent, Tonja and Maddie also came up with their new tent trailer and camped out.  Emma and Maddie played a lot and spent some time in the lake (both planned and unplanned).  The picture below is when they both decided to get in the lake with their clothes on.  They didn’t seem to mind one bit.  On Saturday evening we all went to a neighborhood party where they had tons of ribs, lots of various side dishes and drinks.  It was a great time and gave us the opportunity to meet a few more people.  There is a huge social circle in the neighborhood and it has been great to get to know so many people around there.

We spent another weekend at the lake.  Emma got to bring a friend along for the first time.  Her friend Jena from up the street (at our main house) came out with us and spent the weekend playing.  Her family was headed to Spokane (lots of driving there and back in two days) so we offered to take Jena out to the cabin with us.

Emma and Jena had lots of fun playing with all the toys at the cabin and they also spent quite a bit of time down at the lake.  We went to a friend of our’s house for a party on Saturday night and Emma, Jena and Bella (Emma’s friend that lives out at the lake) all had a great time playing together.  Jena was a little scared of the dogs there but she did pretty well being around them.

I spent some more time working on the cabin.  I tested some of the wiring circuits (I’d hate to cover them up with sheetrock before we know for sure that they were done right), installed some outlets and a few lights so that we can see as it gets dark and also painted more of the trim.

Next week we are planning on working on the deck and we’ll also try to finish the cedar peak above the deck.  We will also be calling for the framing/mechanical inspection and, if all goes well, will proceed with insulation and sheet rock before long.  WE CAN’T WAIT!!

Anyway, everyone has said that photos are the best part of these posts so here are a few of this weekend:

I guess we are little late posting this but we wanted to put a post up about Emma’s birthday.  Emma had a birthday party with some of her friends the day after her birthday.  We had it at our house and had a couple different crafts for the kids to do and also had a waterslide in the backyard (Thanks Brent and Tonja).  The girls got to decorate their own notepads (with foam pieces) and also made foam sun visors.  The theme for the party was “Ladybugs” so the gift bags were made by Katie in the shapes of ladybugs and the “cake” was 35 cupcakes with a giant ladybug on top of all of them (like a cake).  The girls had a great time.  Emma invited a few girls from her class and a couple long time friends.