Hanging out to dry

I was able to pull Bryce away from the fence for a few hours to install a post for my clothesline. I bought it last year, its a retractable clothesline with 5 lines. I was thinking about being "green" and wanted to save energy by not using my dryer quite as much, but last summer we couldn't figure out where to put it. As you all know, I had a baby this year. I figured out that it costs somewhere between $2000 and $3000 to diaper a baby in disposable diapers. I also wanted to avoid adding to the landfills with disposable diapers so I convinced Bryce that we were going to give cloth diapers a try (he was totally willing!). We were very spoiled when Bryce's Grandma and Aunt went together and bought us 6 weeks of a diaper service. We added to it and had the diaper service for about 10 weeks. The diaper service dropped off clean cloth diapers and all we had to do was put the dirty ones on the porch once a week and they were magically replaced with clean ones! It was so easy and awesome.

But then we did our budget again and decided that since we had been given many cloth diapers at our baby showers we could easily learn to wash them ourselves. So we cancelled the service and I started doing diapers myself this week. (For anyone who is interested the service costs about $80 a month, this is pretty similar to the cost of disposable diapers so if you were going to do that anyway and you have a diaper service in your area you could choose that instead for the same cost!) In reading about care of your cloth diapers they suggest hanging them to dry, because it saves energy and the sun helps to bleach them out. So Bryce put in my line and it has been working great. It's so fun to go outside and be in the warm air hanging up the diapers. Plus they look so cute on the line!

I remember reading this poem about clotheslines a long time ago and I just found it again today:

The Clothesline Said So Much

A clothesline was a news forecast

To neighbors passing by.

There were no secrets you could keep

When clothes were hung to dry.

It also was a friendly link

For neighbors always knew

If company had stopped on by

To spend a night or two.

For then you'd see the fancy sheets

And towels on the line;

You'd see the company table clothes

With intricate design.

The line announced a baby's birth

To folks who lived inside

As brand new infant clothes were hung

So carefully with pride.

The ages of the children could

So readily be known

By watching how the sizes changed

You'd know how much they'd grown.

It also told when illness struck,

As extra sheets were hung;

Then nightclothes, and a bathrobe, too,

Haphazardly were strung.

It said, "Gone on vacation now"

When lines hung limp and bare.

It told, "We're back!" when full lines sagged

With not an inch to spare.

New folks in town were scorned upon

If wash was dingy gray,

As neighbors raised their brows,

And looked disgustedly away.

But clotheslines now are of the past

For dryers make work less.

Now what goes on inside a home

Is anybody's guess.

I really miss that way of life.

It was a friendly sign

When neighbors knew each other best

By what hung on the line!

Author: Marilyn K. Walker

What did you do this weekend? Worked on the fence...

So we continue to work away on the fence. This is becoming the summer of the fence. I'm pretty sure that is most of what we will remember about 2010, Bryce building the fence. He even dreams about it, poor guy. Bryce had to dig out the cement from all the corners but decided to dig new holes so that he didn't have to remove the cement from every post. He dug holes that were somewhere around 4 feet deep, filled them with gravel, and then would get the gravel wet and pack it down. Apparently this is one of the best ways to build a fence, at least it's a little easier than mixing and pouring cement.

Oh look, here's Keely helping with the building of the fence. At least this is as close as I've come all summer, I'm outside while Bryce is working on the fence. I am finishing up the last classes of my Master's degree, this is the first time in my life I have had school in the summer. Summer is a terrible time for school work. Dietrich is there in his bouncy chair being as helpful as can be!

Here are the set posts! I cannot believe how hard Bryce had to work to finish this part of the fence. He heads out right after work and doesn't stop until it's nearly dark. He literally falls asleep while talking to me.
Check out that pile of cement in the dog kennel just from the corner posts. It would have been a pain to remove all the cement from the previous fence.
Taking a break with Thisbe. Oh yeah, talk about fun, not having a fenced back yard and two dogs! Whoo-hoo, the joy, the long walks the dogs need and the short cables they are on while outside. Today Thisbe begged me to let her just lay in the lawn, "see mom, I don't have to go in, I promise I'll lay right here and be good..."
The fence is starting to go up! It's beautiful!

Bryce actually has this entire section done now. It covers up the space where we park the old yellow truck, I'm sure our neighbors appreciate that! Only three sides to go...

Not our house

Last year our awesome friends Shawna and Bob came over just to help us paint the living room and kitchen. A couple weekends ago Mom, Paul and I decided to take a little road trip to Helena to visit Shawna. While there we decided it was time for Shawna to paint her living room, so we helped her pick out paint and got busy. Our first paint choice was not good, but we were successful with paint number two. So although this isn't home improvement for our house, it's still some fun home improvement that we did for a friend!

Here are the before pictures:

Busy removing screws from the wall while Dietrich played on the floor:
Here I am working on the accent color:
Go Shawna!
Finished up and taking a break with Dietrich:
And the after pictures! Beautiful!


Then of course we had to take Dietrich to visit Carroll College while in Helena. Here he is with my brick, it's hard to read but it's right by his knee:


It was fun to do some home improvement on someone else's house, and it was great to have the opportunity to pay Shawna back for the help she gave us last year. Now back to the fence...

I won something!

I just won a carpet cleaning! How great is that? Especially with these sadly stained carpets and a baby that I would like to put on the floor once in a while. They are going to clean two rooms...and try to sell me a vacuum cleaner I am sure, but I can't afford the vacuum cleaner, I can't afford to pay them to clean the two rooms! So this is great!

Unfortunately today we have also encountered THREE cavities in my mouth. This is actually pretty normal for me, I used to have a cavity every time I went to the dentist, no matter what I did, brush, floss, rinse, still cavities. But it's been a while (probably because all my teeth are filled now) so I'm pretty bummed about it. In fact, one of the cavities is actually a cracked filling that needs replaced. As if getting cavities filled isn't bad enough, it will also cost us around $240, and remember that expensive fence project? Yeah...

So as long as I'm making appointments I call to make Dietrich's two month well-baby check. He turned two months last week on the 9th. The Dr. can't get us in until July 9th. So really, this will be a three month check. Not that it really matters but I feel silly for not making the appointment sooner, and what if there was something wrong with him that we don't know about and we will have to wait a another whole month!

Then my mom sent me an e-mail about sad things regarding horses...horses that we don't ride anymore that I wish I wanted to ride but I don't. And she wants to sell them, and I should let her, but it's still very sad....

So enough of my complaining. It's a beautiful day and Bryce will be home soon and I did win that free carpet cleaning...

Everyone pushes a falling fence...

And this fence has been falling for a while. Last year we came home from vacation to find it lying in the yard, every time the wind blows we have to tack up a few pieces, and a few weeks ago after thinking we survived a windstorm, the next day the neighbor had very nicely propped the pieces that fell in his yard back in ours. We have been planning for months for this BIG project. Probably one of the biggest and so far the most expensive projects we have done to our house. But the summer weather is supposedly here, or maybe it's just on it's way, and we are ready for this project. So here are the BEFORE pictures!

The double gate in the back, we can't open it because we have it all propped up. This was actually laying in the yard when we bought the place:

Here is what the neighbors see. When we moved in they had a permanent piece of wood propping the fence up and out of their yard. We fixed it up last year so that they could take that out:
This is the best side of the fence, look, only one t-post keeping things in place.
Over here is what we found in our yard after vacation last year. Note the t-posts!
Look at all that wood holding things in place:
We had to really work on this part to keep it from falling down and letting the dogs out into the neighborhood.
Now the fence is GONE! And it looks pretty weird, kinda nice actually. But tying the dogs up every time they need to go out is not so nice. The wood was delivered earlier this week and I suspect that Bryce will start setting posts this weekend. It is going to be a busy month trying to finish this huge project. I'm not terribly helpful now, but I will keep Bryce supplied with water and beer! (I make the same promises to anyone who shows up to help...)

Growing Grass

You may remember this post over a year ago discussing our sad little yard. We worked on it last year, but it's still in bad shape. Bryce has been working hard at improving the lawn this year. He has aerated and thatched and seeded and fertilized and drug sprinklers all over the place. Somewhere along the line I wrote about how we have a sprinkler system, but we could only find a few heads in the yard, and the neighbor said that 5 or 6 years ago there was a leak, and the previous owners turned off the system and never turned it back on. Well, we were finally brave enough to give it a try. Bryce had to replace the big piece coming off the main water because it had a big crack in it. He is only trying to make the front yard work for the time being, and last night he turned it on for the first time. We had 5 sprinkler heads pop up and work! He found the other sprinklers by digging in the big puddles that formed in the yard and he thinks that he has found them all. Today he is buying new sprinkler heads and we are hoping that the big leak was not in the front yard. It will be nice to at least have the system working out front!

The Church that we attend has a community garden and this year they decided to take out more lawn to expand the garden, which means we were able to get new sod to fill in the "wading pool" in the back yard. It looks so amazing! The yard looks WAY bigger and the dogs are far less muddy when they come in on a wet day. Here is Thisbe helping Bryce put the sod in, only two days after Dietrich was born.

We have also started to give Thisbe pills that are supposed to help neutralize her "business" so that we won't have huge burn spots all over the backyard. It may take a while but the yard is starting to come along. Now if I could just find some time to buy and plant some flowers, trees, bushes...

Here He Is!

Clearly I have been away from the blogging world for a while. And if you read my blog you probably know it's because our little one arrived! Dietrich Allan joined Our House on April 9th 2010. He was 9 lbs 2.5 ounces and he came to the world pretty quickly, only 8 hours of labor.

We have been spending this last month figuring out how to take care of our little baby. He is a very good boy, he sleeps well and he's very happy. He is a mellow baby and we try to be mellow parents (try being the key word here!). He has recently decided that he likes his bouncy vibrating chair which is why I am finally able to write a blog post. We have experienced so much in this past month, learning about cloth diapers and diaper services (what a great gift!). Nursing, a clogged milk duct (mommy nearly died), circumcision, sleeping arrangements, and lots of visitors. As well as learning how to grocery shop and how to get out of the house and do stuff. Still working on that one.

Now that I have convinced Dietrich that the bouncy vibrating chair is a fun place to be perhaps I will be able to update this blog a little more often! Of course you know that Bryce could not spend a week off of work at home without doing some sort of project :)