It's Getting There!

Okay, Dan and Miranda were complaining that they saw no treehouse progress. Here it is, picture by picture. And let me tell you, it took a LOT more time, energy and work than any of us expected!

We got all the supports up. There was a minor issue with the one that didn't take well to torque and needed some repairs. Once the support beams were done, a spiderweb of other supports was put up inside the spokes, and the floor laid down. The floor is like decking.

Once the floor/decking was down, the wall structure was put together and put up. Hard work! And taking pictures in the evening makes for bad lighting! Sorry.

Half the 6 sides will be enclosed, and here you can see that the wall structures are all up. Joshua is making faces at me. Last night we painted all the siding and its being installed right now. More pix of that later.

Here is Marian's self portrait. I think she's so cute and funny!

Tree House update and Marian

The treehouse is coming along nicely. There was an uncomfortable moment when one of the support beams failed miserably and broke, but once that was taken care of, things have continued to progress. As I mentioned, it is 6 sided, and 3 of those sides will be enclosed. 2 of those 3 walls currently are up, although I have no picture of that. The 3 front sides will be deck and still need a fence. Or do I mean a railing?

As it is, the 3 oldest kids climb up the ladder and "help" Grandpa on the floor of the treehouse. So far we are lacking a plan for the roof, although we intend to put in a doggie door and a regular door. Did I mention that we went 6 feet up and the walls are also 6 feet high!??! Its like a mini-house! My dad is doing an amazing job. Much better than I could have even imagined! I've even been up in it. I had to help lift the side frames up, and it was a little scary. I do not like heights. Aparently my children do not have that problem! They are such good helpers.... and thirsty ones!

And now I must mention another non-fear my children possess.... or don't possess. Marian is a famed lizard hunter. She loves bugs of all kinds and goes after anything. Today she found a salamander with a blue tail. I thought that was pretty cool. A few minutes later, my mom came busting through, looking for her camera. Marian had found a snake in the garden and brought it to the porch. It was a little baby snake and he was not happy. He coiled up and opened his mouth and even struck at some toes. The kids thought it was a hoot. Mom and I were a tad concerned till we had the chance to google it and decided it was a garder snake. The little guy managed to squeeze through the deck and got away, much to Marian's disappointment. Here he is before his great escape:

You did What?!!

Yes, it has been an exciting time for us. We aquired some hermit crabs. Not something I'd normally have thought to have as a pet, but my friend Beth asked if we'd like her 3, and I thought they'd be more fun and easier to care for than fish. (Will this be a problem Kirsten?!) They are surprisingly cute and fun! The kids can hold them and they'll pop out of their shells and scrabble around your palm and up your arm. Or off onto the floor. The children aren't very good at holding them yet. I find the little eye-stalks adorable. The little things totally look like Sebastian on The Little Mermaid! I think it is quite fun that the crabs will be all curled up in their shell, and as soon as you put it in your hand, the legs poke out, the eye stalks pop out and suddenly its off and running. It makes me feel special that they like me, really!

So, that was one exciting thing. The other thing is an Oh-Shoot-What-Have-I-Done kind of thing. Some of you know that my parents like real estate. They love to look at houses. Last year we bought a little rental place and its done nicely for us. Since I was back in the area, I did some looking. We have the most fantastic Real Estate agent and it has been very interesting to see him work. Anyway, I looked at a house today, put in an offer and it was accepted. Did I want to do that?! Hopefully it will be as self supporeting as the first one.

Tree House Day!

Joshua has been planning HIS tree house since we got here. My parents kept planning to build one, but the plans kept getting more and more complicated. I would have done a nice simple one, only a few feet off the ground. Uncle Dan and Mom wanted something a little more exciting. Dan and Miranda came to town this weekend and the thing actually got started on! They designed a hexagonal shape that will wrap around the tree completely. They wanted it to only be attached to the tree, and wanted it nice and high. They chose 2 trees close together and plan to add a swinging bridge to the second tree, and a walkway of some kind that will extend over the fence, since both trees are on the other side of the fence from the house.

It was a nasty hot and muggy day. The kids were sweaty headed and red cheeked from it, but they wouldn't come in the house. They had to "help" as much as possible. Here is what our fun looked like.....

Here the kids are helping Grandpa unload the truck. They think it is such fun to play in the truck.

I think this was the first arm they built. There were 6 of these, extending like spokes around the tree. That's going to be the support system, and the floor will go on top. Right now, only the 6 spokes are finished. And it did take most of the day! Marian was being a helper here. Actually she just liked to climb the ladder.

Joshua is sulking because he got in trouble for jumping on the wood. And I think he thought he would get to do more things. He said it was "boring", but he didn't leave!

Here Dan and my parents are measuring out the distance for the last supports. The sky was grumbling and we wanted to be done before it exploded. Just as a fun fact, we did get lots of thunder and lightning and a whole 3 inches of rain last night!

So, the tree house is begun, and we'll see how long we take to finish it. Since we'll only be here another 4 weeks, I hope its not that long!

The Great Tadpole Rescue

In early June, Joshua wanted to catch tadpoles in the pond. I told him it was too late, all the tadpoles had grown into frogs. A few days later, I was looking in the fountain and to my surprise, hundreds of teeny tiny tadpoles were flitting around. Now, the fountain is not normally home to little animals. Usually it cascades water and small things don't do well in it. However, my parents had left for a trip and the kids had disconnected the pump and the frogs apparently discovered this.

Now we had a colony of cute baby frogs swimming around. Whoo-hoo! Science in action. I thought we could give them a month to grow up and move out. Unfortunately, when we got back from the reunion, Dad was concerned that the frogs were still reproducing, and worried that he'd never get his fountain back. It was looking pretty green and fuzzy by then.

Dad decided it was time to give the tadpoles the boot. The kids were excited about helping. We caught almost all of them. There were a few casualties, but I think we got them all. Millions of little tadpoles were scooped up into 2 buckets for relocation to the pond. It took several hours to get them all. Marian was very good at spotting the ones that were hiding. Delaney just wanted to drink the nasty water. Oh, and you can see the van getting cleaned out in the background. (Score for me, I cleaned, vaccummed and washed the carpet!)

So, here is how we passed the morning!