We are here at camp. The weather is 70 right now, at 3:00 in the afternoon. We have taken about 40 pictures of the cabin so far. Some of the siding is up and our builder is building the staircase to the loft today. The windows are in. The bathtub is in. The roof should be delivered and put on sometime next week. It has rained a whole whole lot in the past month and the trucks are having a hard time getting up the muddy road to the site, so they might have to hold off delivery on the roof. We are ready to get the house wired, and we brought all the lighting fixtures up this weekend. The septic tank is in. I will post the pictures when we get home, but maybe I can take some right before we leave because more stuff is being done every day.

Our next job will be to go home and order cabinets, sinks, flooring, etc. at Lowe's so it can be picked up in Santa Fe.

Time to go read my magazine on the porch.

4 week weigh-in

Today I weighed myself, and I wasn't supposed to for the last 4 weeks but I cheated quite a bit and did so anyway. As of today, I have lost exactly 5 pounds in 4 weeks. Yay! That means I get to stay on the first phase, which means I don't have to change anything that I'm already doing.

Good but tiring

Well, the first day of school is now under my belt. Only 180 or so more to go. It was tiring as usual. I know in the last post I mentioned that I was pretty emotionless about starting school, and that's true. My first year I was so nervous to set foot in that classroom and have all those eyes staring back at me, and then the second year I was just dreading having to go back, then last year it was nerves again with having to start at a new school, and now it's just become part of the routine. I have caught myself a couple of times not really looking forward to going back to work this year, but then I remember that I like my job, I like the kids, I like the school, and I feel very blessed to have the job that I have. So, no complaints, even if it does mean no more summer.

And, only four more days until another trip to Blue Haven! I'm excited about that too, especially with it being a long weekend. I don't know if I mentioned this already or not...but we are babysitting camp while the caretakers are out of town this weekend, and there's also going to be a youth retreat going on there. Hopefully it's not too much responsibility, because we will need plenty of time to go sit in our unfinished cabin and fantasize about it being finished. It'll be great to be up there again. Maybe we'll be able to take one or two more trips up there after the cabin is finished and before everything is inaccessible for winter.

That's it for now.

More pictures of the cabin...and it actually looks like a cabin now.

Here are the latest pictures of our little cabin in the woods. Our builder sent us these. He said the power pole is up, meaning we should be on the grid as far as electricity goes. This is good because he was having to use a generator for power, and we all know that fuel is not the cheapest thing these days. The first picture is the north side of the house, that faces a neighbor's lot. There is actually not going to be an entrance on this side, it's just open for the builder to get materials through. The opening is where the bedroom will be. On the top inside here is the loft. This is the south part that faces the ridge, with no cabins on this side. On the left there will be a sliding door that will eventually lead out to the deck (depending on if we have enough money to do it, otherwise we'll do it ourselves eventually). We wanted to have one of those big triangular windows underneath the roof but are not getting one for various reasons.
Inside obviously, looking at the loft.
And a further away view of the north side of the cabin (same as picture #1 but further away).
It's going to be cozy but nice to have. I can't wait for it to be finished. I still can't believe this place is ours.

Our roof will be delivered in 8 days, and we chose a warmer finish for the wood than what a lot of cabins out there have. Our siding is pine, and a lot of people decide to just keep it that piney color, but we chose a finish called warm sequoia or something like that. I can't remember. I wish the siding and roof were already finished so I could get pictures of that this weekend, but I guess I'll be leaving that up to Shawn and Emma to get pictures of everything in late September. Thanks in advance Shawn & Emma. :)

In other news, school starts tomorrow. I am pretty emotionless about it...not really sad, or excited, or nervous or anything. It's a different feeling when you are not starting at a new school and when you have a lot of the same students you had the year before. Life is good.

Update

Chad is doing much better today. Thanks for all of your concern. He was actually able to go to work today, but there wasn't much to do so they sent him home after a few hours. Figures.

Today was take-your-wife-to-work day at the hospital Chad works at. Only no one else knew about it, and Chad was the only one who brought his spouse, and he was a patient instead of an employee. Yeah. Late last night Chad started to get really sick, and I was kind of hoping (and not hoping at the same time, for pride reasons) that it was food poisoning from last night's dinner--not one of my best efforts. So I woke up early this morning to run to the store and grab all the essentials--Gatorade, Saltines, 7-Up, you get the idea. I came home to drop off the stuff and went to work. I hated leaving Chad, but there's not much one can do to help an adult when they have a bad stomach bug except to stay out of the way. Well, I got one call from him around 10:00 saying that he hadn't been able to keep anything down of the few sips of Gatorade and 1 1/2 crackers he had eaten. Then, a little over an hour later, Chad calls to tell me that he thinks I'd better come get him and take him to the hospital. Not a great sign when a medical professional admits they need to be taken to the hospital. We get to the ER and they admit him really quickly, and take blood work and an x-ray, and give him a liter of I-V fluids, since by this point he's quite dehydrated. I just feel sorry for the guy, because he hasn't been able to keep anything down but at the same time is extremely thirsty and can't differentiate between hunger and stomach pains, so he's cautious about trying to eat anything at all now. After giving him the I-V fluids, the doctor wrote him a prescription, and 4 hours later, we are home and Chad is asleep. Thankfully the drugs made him drowsy and he's able to get some sleep after being up pretty much all night last night. They said all his blood work was normal, so it is just a bad case of stomach flu. Still, not much fun. He's feeling better now, and hasn't gotten sick in a few hours at this point. So hopefully we are on the downhill of this.

A few miscellaneous pictures

First of all, look what Barbara can do. If you think that's easy then you try it. It's NOT! And in flip-flops to boot.
Second, we have a new pet. I found him (her?) yesterday when I went outside to put my running shoes on.
Friendly, huh? Our pet actually stays out in the yard, and we don't really know where it is ever. In fact, by the time I got back from my run, it had crawled off the porch. I tried to give it a crouton, but it left the crouton behind. I guess it's on a no-carb diet.
By the way, don't forget it's tax-free weekend in Texas. Chad and I both got some new running shoes today at Academy in honor of the occasion (Chad's were 50% off!).

Summer reading and food

This summer was particularly spectacular because I was able to read multiple books during my vacation, and I wasn't hindered by having to go to teacher workshops, teaching summer school, moving, going to summer school, or those other pesky things that tend to get in the way of summer vacation for so many of us teachers. It was actually a vacation. I read four books. They were...

1. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. This book is awesome. I recommend it highly. Hosseini is an exceptional writer and storyteller.
2. The Kite Runner by Hosseini. Same thing. But I liked A Thousand Splendid Suns better. We also got this book on audio from the library, and it was fun to listen to the author read his own words, especially with all those pronunciations.
3. Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins we Tolerate by Jerry Bridges. A must-read for all Christians; I know I could identify with pretty much everything this guy said. It was very convicting. I would love to read this book together in a small group Bible study. It was that good.
4. The Best Life Diet by Bob Greene. I talked about this in another post. I just checked it out from the library, but I'll probably buy it because it has a lot of good recipes in the back. Mostly I like that I don't really have to count calories and it promotes a healthy lifestyle that includes activity and a variety of foods.

I liked all of these books, but obviously for different reasons. I'm not one who really prefers fiction over nonfiction, or vice versa. Just a good book.

And speaking of books...I love cookbooks. I have a whole cabinet of them. I even subscribe to a cooking magazine that I get recipes out of to use. Problem is, it's a lot quicker and easier to get on the internet and go to a website where you can type in the ingredients you have in your pantry or freezer and figure out what's for dinner that night that way. I love looking through my cookbooks, but when it comes time to go to the grocery store I rarely feel like going through every cookbook to find the recipes that sound just right for the next two weeks. Does anyone else have this problem? Better yet, does anyone have a good system of how they use their cookbooks or recipes from magazines they subscribe to? I used to just go through my magazines (the ones I get that have recipes are Southern Living, Real Simple, and Cooking Light) and look at the recipes and think, "Ooh, that sounds good, I'll have to come back and get that later." Which of course I never did. So now as I'm going through the magazine I will actually rip out all the recipes and put them in my recipe keeper, which is a binder that my mom gave me that has different partitions for different types of recipes...main dish, side, you get the idea. That thing is busting with recipes I still have not tried. So they make it that far...I need another system to get me to get them out of there and actually use them.

A few posts ago, I showed you the pickles that Chad made using all those cucumbers from our garden. Well, we opened up a jar, and they are soooo yummy! My favorite ones are the thicker slices; they are still crunchy, and the thin ones have gotten floppy. But the canning worked and now we have pickles to last us a while. I'd give you some, but they are just too good. Sorry.

I hope everyone has a good weekend. I for one will be sleeping late in the morning.

We have a date!

Chad finally got word today that the date for his CPNE will be November 14...in AMARILLO! This is great news...he could have had to go to Wisconsin or Kansas or something. We are excited about the idea of Chad finishing up school soon! If everyone could just start praying now that he passes that'd be great!

Cabin update

I guess the framing of the floor and walls went as planned, because we received this email from our builder today: "Starting on loft tomorrow."

He's a man of few words...which means he gets the job done!

Long post, lots of words, no pictures

Well, I'm officially back at work. It's good, because I'm not the new person this year, and I'm teaching all the same classes this year as I did last year, something that hasn't happened in any previous school year. I actually feel prepared, and that's a great feeling. The first day of school isn't until the 25th, so I have a lot of time to make copies and organize bookshelves and make sure all my cameras work and figure out a way to spend the money that we made from yearbook profit (!) last year. Does anyone remember how when I started at Bradshaw the yearbook was $15,000 in the hole? Yeah, this is definitely a different place. Where people actually buy yearbooks.

I'm sure everyone has been watching the olympics over the past few days. Last night we watched some of the girls' gymnastics competition, and I had a hard time watching the girls from China because they were so skinny. They all looked like they had eating disorders. Or maybe they just haven't hit puberty yet. I know there's a question of whether or not some of them are even old enough to be in the competition. Can't they do carbon dating or something to see how old they are? I mean if we can do it with inanimate objects, surely they can do it with people. Just a thought, scientists.

Speaking of watching things, Chad and I have decided it's time to take the plunge into the 21st century, or step over to the dark side as my mom calls it. Yes, that's right, we have officially signed up to be slaves of satellite television and its just-as-"necessary" twin, DVR. Of course, you can't watch that on any old 19-inch TV, so we got a new TV to go along with it. We ordered it online from the same place I got our camera from a year ago, and the bonus was free shipping, no tax, and cheaper than any of the stores we looked at. Now, I know some of you might be disappointed that we've decided to take this step in our lives, since we've made it almost 5 years of marriage with a little TV and no cable, but I'm sure all that disappointment will vanish when you come to our house and don't have to watch channels that are tinted green while we turn the dial of the antenna. Don't worry Shawn and Emma, it should be up and ready to go for "The Office" season premiere when y'all are here in September.

I didn't get a chance to post any words on the last post (maybe you're grateful for just the pictures), but I wanted to explain a little bit. We got a call last week from Scotty Witt, who founded Camp Blue Haven (he is an amazing person and it is an amazing story if you don't know it...but that's for another time) and also has a cabin in the canyon. He noticed that they had started work on ours, and called to ask if we wanted him to send us the pictures he had taken of it. Um, yes please! It's been wonderful to have this community of people who have been so helpful and welcoming to us since they have found out that we will be their neighbors. Another couple who has a cabin out there noticed that their neighbors were getting rid of a stove/oven and a microwave, both in great shape, and he salvaged them for us and is storing them at his cabin until we have a place to put them! Scotty also sent us a note with the pictures and has apparently named our cabin. The tradition out there is to come up with a cutesy name for your cabin and then make a sign for it and post it at the gate entrance. Plays on words and alliteration are both popular--for example Scotty's cabin is called "Witt's End." Anyway, he deemed ours "Montandon Mountain Mansion," and I like it.

I've started a new diet. I'm telling the world that reads my blog so you can hold me accountable. It's called the Best Life diet, and I started about 2 weeks ago. You've probably heard of it because the guy goes on Oprah quite a bit, although not as much as Dr. Oz. I have lost a little over 3 pounds, but I'm already cheating because you're not supposed to weigh yourself for the first 4 weeks and I'm just too curious. So...be looking for updates on how much weight I have lost, and if I don't say anything about it, don't be bashful to ask. I might need the help. I've also promised myself that I can only buy new clothes after I have lost at least 10 pounds.

Okay, that's about it for today. Talk about a post about nothing. See y'all later.

Progress

Noelle Marie Jones

My sister Erin just gave birth to Noelle today. You can see pictures and her stats on Erin's blog.

Thanks to Josh for keeping us all updated through Erin's blog while she was in the process.

Congratulations Erin, Josh, Kellen and Bonnie! I can't wait to see her in person when I go visit in September.

A few more birthday pictures

Last night we had some friends over after church to eat birthday cake. It was great, because pretty much all the cake was eaten except for just a couple pieces, so now we don't feel obligated to eat all the cake so it doesn't go bad. (Don't think I wouldn't have done it, though.) Barbara used to do the chocolate icing with blue writing so I thought I'd do that this year as well. Chad asked if he was too old for sprinkles, and I said of course not. We did have to go to the numeral candles instead of putting the actual number of candles on the cake. The birthday boy blowing out his candles. Here is what I got Chad for his birthday. No, not the electric drumset; the drum rug underneath. Now, I know what some of you are thinking: "That's just a big piece of flannel," or maybe, "Hey, she stole a baptism blanket from Blue Haven and is using it as a rug. But you're wrong. This rug is actually made to go under a drumset. The drums had been getting no play time since we had our wood floors installed in April (and they will be finished tomorrow, but that's another story that makes me very angry with Home Depot, so I'm not going to tell it right now), and they were sitting out in the garage collecting dust because I was not okay with just putting the drums directly on the wood floor. Also, I'm not a fan of spending a lot of money on something (drums, for example) and then not ever using it. So in order to turn from bad wife into good wife, I gave Chad this rug for his birthday, so now he can play to his heart's content. Although now since the drumset is turned toward the wall, it feels a little like Chad is in time out when he's playing the drums.

New update on cabin

Foundation is poured and finished...just needs to finish drying. Framing will begin tomorrow, with the floors and then the walls being raised on Monday.

We also have a plumber now. I have pledged my firstborn to pay him. Not really, but the plumbing is expensive. We are having a tankless water heater installed so our builder thinks that is part of the more expensive cost.

Next up...choosing a color for the roof and ordering the roof. Want to see our choices? Here they are. We're taking votes if you're interested. Well, more like suggestions. Votes would indicate that the color with the most of them is what we will choose. But please feel free to tell us what roof color you like the best!

Happy Birthday Chad!

Today my favorite person in the world turns 27 years old. I can't believe I have had the privilege of knowing Chad for over 8 years and for being married to him for almost 5. It's hard for me to put into words how blessed I feel that God put us together. Chad has so many wonderful qualities that I can't even list them all here, and I am so glad he is my husband.

Happy 27th birthday Chad! I love you and I hope it's the best one yet.

Pictures from last week

Here are a few pictures from when I went to visit Erin and her family. Kellen is not much into posing for the camera, which is fine with me because I like the candid shots better. Here he is having a conversation with Erin. I can't remember what he was asking her here, but I remember thinking it was funny.
Bonnie is listening to her granny read a book about dinosaurs. Kellen, these next pictures are for you. We have been growing lots of cucumbers in our garden. While I was in Liberty visiting you, Uncle Chad had to figure out something to do with all the cucumbers...

In non-related news, Chad spoke with someone the other day at his school, and she said that they are now reviewing the April applications for clinicals (Chad applied in April), and that he should know his date within a week or so! So pray that we hear soon, and that Chad gets a date that comes fairly quickly so he can pass his CPNE, take his NCLEX and become an RN.

Another cabin update

Is this one of those things that is interesting to me because I am in the middle of it and everyone else is like "Just let us know when the cabin is finished so we can use it"? I know a few of you are interested though, so this is for you. Anyway, here's a new update, and it's a fun one! They are pouring the footings today at 11 and the piers tomorrow morning. Our builder just told us he's ordered the log siding (yikes, I guess that means we're going with the expensive stuff), the lumber for the framing which will be delivered today at one, the electrician is coming at 11:30 today to install the service pole, and he is ordering the windows today. We had to choose a color for the windows. The choices were white, almond, and desert sand. Although I love the brightness and cleanness of white window frames, I am afraid if we got that for the cabin they would stay anything but bright and clean. So, we went with desert sand, which is pretty much what it sounds like--a taupish color. Our builder has good taste and he said he liked that color too. About the exterior of the cabin...we had a discussion while we were at camp about what to put on the outside of the place. Our options were cedar shingle siding which isn't my favorite, and I think it's more expensive than the log, so that was out pretty quickly. Which left us with two options (because we're not Bill Gates and couldn't do real logs): log siding where each piece is a 2x8 piece of wood, rounded into a D (it's real wood) and the flat part goes up against the building so it looks like real logs, and siding sheets, which is about half the cost, but not my cup of tea, and from the buildings that have that at camp, looks like it deteriorates rather quickly from rain. Anyone who has seen the new dining hall renovation exterior has seen what we chose, and you can stain it any color. So I held out for the more expensive exterior that I believe will hold up better over the long run, AND I don't want to spend all this money on building a cabin and cringe every time we drive up to it because I don't like the way it looks outside. So we picked the log siding.

Our builder also said that he talked to our neighbor again about sharing his well, and he said it sounds like it's a done deal. Also mentioned what it was going to cost us, which is significantly less than what we would be spending on drilling our own well if it had come to that.

That's about it for now. In a few weeks, when we go up there, I will take plenty of pictures to show the progress. Sounds like I will actually have a building to photograph!

Building on the brain

It's been a while since I've given a cabin update, mostly because until recently nothing very interesting has been happening with the cabin. I don't know if I mentioned that while we were at camp, we had to make lots of phone calls and drive all over New Mexico to get easements for our power, go to planning and zoning (twice) to get a letter of compliance for the electrical company so they would put up our power poles, go to the NM Environmental Department and listen to a guy talk for an hour and a half about how we can't have a normal septic system and can't drill our own well because the property isn't big enough, and go to the rural 911 place to get assigned an address (they weren't there the first day because they are only open from 8-10 am Monday through Friday, so I went again the next day during that time and they still weren't there, because the guy who does address assigning is also the IT guy for the building and they didn't have a way to page him, and I basically told some random person that I wasn't leaving until someone came to help me, which they finally did. If you think that little story was long, just be glad I spared you the stories that go along with all the other places that I went, namely planning and zoning. But I digress.). Oh yeah, we also drove up to Mora (about an hour away) because that is where the electric co-op is located, to turn in our paperwork and join the co-op. Then another day we drove down to Construction Industries Division in Santa Fe (an hour away in the opposite direction) to apply for our building permit. When we were there, I felt like I was ordering soup from the Soup Nazi. Our contractor had told us to smile a lot and act very humble and ignorant and say really nicely, "Could you look over everything? I'm not sure I did this right," and then pay them their money. Apparently, folks have turned in stuff to CID before and have been denied a permit for kind of silly things because they forgot to cross a t or something. So about a week later we received our permit in the mail, and now it's go-time. Our contractor has cleared our land and begun working, and as soon as the weather dries up a bit he will be pouring the piers for our foundation. We also got our first invoice from him, so this is definitely becoming very real for us. He has instructed us to go to Lowe's or Home Depot to pick out lighting fixtures and ceiling fans, and also to decide what color windows we want. I got the best news today when I called another cabin owner who owns a cabin very close to ours. After one of our neighbors not being interested in sharing their well, and another neighbor saying they wouldn't mind, but it would be really expensive for us because they didn't have a pump installed yet and therefore no electricity going to the well, this guy was my last shot--I asked very nicely if he would be willing to let us share their well, and he said yes. So that is a big load off our minds (plus it will save us a lot of money and we will have running water, always a plus). Also, the well we will be sharing produces 20-25 gal/minute, which the guy said that when the drillers drilled it, they said that was the biggest producing well they had ever drilled in the area.

I had a dream last night that our builder had basically built the cabin in about a week. We showed up, and everything was done, and decorated perfectly. Then I woke up. But hopefully, it won't be too much longer before there is much more progress and we have a cabin!

It's been quite a process so far, making sure everything is done just right, all the paperwork is filled out correctly, and it's still within our budget.

More to come later. Also...we are going up to camp during Labor Day weekend to babysit camp while the caretakers are out of town, so I'll take pictures of the progress then.

Texas: The awesome state?

In case everyone else in the world is not aware, we Texans believe Texas is better than any other state (all the Texans reading this right now are saying collectively, "Well, it IS."). I'm not sure why we think this way, and it might be hard for some Texans to admit this out loud, but most will display their pride, well, proudly. It's something that is ingrained in us from a young age, to see everyone else as somehow inferior because they are not from Texas. I am not making this up. Yesterday, as I was driving home from my mom's house, I saw this billboard on I-20: "The Texas capital building is 15 feet taller than the United States capital building in Washington, D.C. (smaller, more italicized font below it:) Texas. Our Texas." This reminded me of those really stupid bumper stickers that say "My kid can beat up your honor student." Anyway, apparently we now think we're better than the United States of America as a whole on the basis of our capitol being 15 feet taller. Honestly, sometimes I just don't understand thought processes. But if I was doing a master's thesis on sociology, it would be about Texans and our very large self-esteems about our state.

On a partially-related note, tax-free weekend in Texas is August 15-17. That's where you can save a bunch of money on clothes and the like (8.25% in our area. And did I just explain to everyone what tax-free weekend was as if no one had ever heard of it before? Sorry. I really don't think you live under a rock.), although you'd save even more money if you just stayed home and bought nothing. But that's boring. Anyway, I noticed on this site that Texas was the first of any state to implement a tax-free holiday. Just another example of our awesomeness. But then a bunch of other states had to come in and be better than Texas and make their tax-free holidays as many as 17 days. This includes the District of Columbia (you know, the place with the tiny capitol).

Come on, Texas. Time to step it up a notch.