Of Snowdrops and Sparks

While in some ways it has been quiet, in others, it has not. we’ve been trying to get the Wendy House more “livable”. Our efforts with siding showed good results in that the snow storm two days ago was hardly felt. 🙂 Less draughts and cold seeping in. Dan’s filling in the roof ends with insulation worked! In this last week we finally got all of the ditches filled in and the step back in place! No more drawbridge to navigate in the dark!!!

We added 500 pounds of gravel in a drainage ditch and then filled and leveled the ground as best we could. Then we moved the large slab of sandstone into place and it only took minor feats of amazing strength to level it.

On the inside, we have been working on the electric wiring. Grandpa Sudar was a very clever and devious man in many ways. Over the years, we have dealt with many of his building oddities. A six inch long Louiseville slugger stub filling in a hole, drywall Not attached to 2×4’s hidden in the wall, and now the electrical work. We’ve been trying to figure out where the wires ran so we could upgrade the romex. We were stumped. So, Dan began to undo the light fixture we are replacing with a ceiling fan. Lo and behold… Grandpa had built itty bitty soffits to carry the wire! We had always wondered why there were 1×2’s on the rafters… now we know!

So, we will be installing the lights by the weekend. We are also upgrading lights in the ‘garage’ part of the Wendy House. Four LED lights from IKEA. They will replace four 100 watt bulbs with bulbs that use about 9 watts and give the same light. 🙂 I love that our electric bill keeps on dropping! Average so far this year is about $50 a month. We’ve moved from incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescents and now to LED bulbs.

Here are some pictures of our latest works:

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Oh what a crazy month!

This month has been crazy. Chaotic. Dizzying. Now, I thought it was a little crazy, because I spent most of the first week at the CASB Winter Conference. This is the big school board association conference held every year at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs. It was a very good, although COLD conference. Average temperature was about 13F outside for most of the week.

I went up on the 4th, as I was presenting at the New Boardmember’s Boot Camp Workshop. 🙂 Five minutes of fame. LOL! Well, it started snowing on Wednesday morning and I was taking a school district vehicle. The VAN. A huge 12 passenger van, which made me feel like a five year old. I nearly needed a step ladder to climb in. Granted, it was nice to have the weight, as I was driving in snow and on ice most of the time.

This was also the first time in almost a year that Dan couldn’t come with me. As it was so cold, he stayed home to keep Brandy from turning into a Pupcicle. We had no one to feed her or dog sit her, so there was no choice but for him to stay.

Thursday was great. I went to my first session about Rural districts and then presented that afternoon. Five minutes on ‘how data is important.’ The rest of the conference was good, and I was very glad to get home on Sunday. Once I got home, we went and picked Morgan up from La Junta. Monday, I spent time with Daniel and Angela. We went shopping in Pueblo and had a great time. I should have gone to a District Accountability meeting, but I didn’t make it.

Tuesday was our board meeting. A long one, but good. Thursday was busy. Two events. A school holiday party and a school district office party. Sort of stacked together, but we managed both. 🙂 Good thing they were next door to each other.

Friday, we drove to Denver. We did a bit of shopping and on Saturday we saw our computer client. Got home late Sunday. The week started out busy. A trip to Pueblo, work for Dan, the holiday program at Gardner on Wednesday, cleaning my parents house and then up to Denver again on Thursday because our computer client was having weird issues. Friday we did shopping and then drove home late.

Saturday was Solstice. Yule. We got up at dawn and enjoyed the sun rise. Then instead of a nice breakfast, we had to check on the school wrestling tournament. Should have been a 10 minute stop. Nope. It wasn’t. At noon, I left to go help my dad stack a cord of firewood. I was done in 90 minutes, and went back to the wrestling tournament. We were there till about 7pm. Afterwards, we grabbed dinner and then collapsed in bed.

We woke up to snow this morning. Today we did odd jobs around the house and tried to relax a bit. Oh, and Dan built a faux satellite transmitter to test his ground station. The rest of the week isn’t looking much calmer.

This is the song that I woke up with on Solstice.