Day 258 - 261

Cold....

This is about all I can say about the last few days. We carry wood and pellets and keep the fires burning. Hats, mittens, slippers and layers. When will Spring be here?

Day 251 - 257

Christmas...

This week we did not really work on the house. We were baking cookies, playing and getting ready for Christmas. Also much to cold and snowy to work. Christmas all over Nebraska and the surrounding states has been canceled.



Happy Anniversary to my parents. They have been married 40 years today. :D Love you.

Day 255

Merry Christmas!

Early this morning, I got up to put some more wood on the fire. And of course, while I was up, I insanely thought it would be a good time to use the restroom. It is never a fun thing to walk through the unheated landing room on the way to the restroom but this morning I had another surprise. It was snowing in the doorway. Or at least that is what my only half awake self thought. But I told myself, no this can't be happening. Just go back to bed.

But later that day I found that I was right.


Here is a picture of the snow that was falling inside my house. Wow is it cold! We got about 3 or 4 times more than this before it actually stopped snowing in the hallway.

Day 250

Today is a day of working on Christmas gifts. We are so far behind this year. But hopefully we will be able to get things finished soon.

Day 249

Today Jonathan and Dad ran the wire to the lights in the tower room, our bedroom and the kids' bedroom. YAY! now we have more light... Mom and Dad also brought up some really thick cardboard, that was they used to make some "doors." These were put up in the kitchen and at the top of the stairs in the landing room. They should hold in a lot more of the heat than the blankets we had up did.

Day 248

Mom and Dad came up to celebrate Christmas with us. :D The kids are so excited. Time to open presents and play with Grandpa and Grandma. What could be better.

Our gift this year was a brand new refrigerator. :D Thanks Mom and Dad.

Day 244

The great news is that Jonathan's timer seems to work just super. We are able to keep the temperature down to about 40 degrees in the basement. And this of course means that we are able to use less pellets/corn/money.



Here is a picture of the timer that Jonathan made.

Day 243

Today is Alyson and Savannah's birthday party. The kids are so excited to see all of their cousins. And I of course can't wait to hold that new little nephew of mine. So there won't be much work done today as we will be making a trip to G.I.


It turns out that Alyson was sick. So Jason's family wasn't able to come. :( Feel better Aly. You might see me in the picture, but that is because baby Eli needed to be in his big sister's picture too. Happy Birthday Savannah!

When we got home Jonathan hooked up the timer on the corn burner. Hopefully this will work for us.

Day 242

Today Jonathan is working on making a timer to control our corn burning stove. He is hoping that we will be able to burn less corn by just putting it up on a timer. So he got out all electronic parts and got busy. By the end of the day he had it mostly ready. But the final tests and hooking it up would have to wait until tomorrow.

Day 241

Guess what, :D This afternoon I took my gloves and sweater off. I am even considering taking off my hat. Wow! I must be feeling warm.

Tonight we are going to sit by the fire. It is much warmer in here right now and we are really enjoying the near 70 degree temperatures. This is much better than waking up to 40's in the living room. :) I guess it being 10 degrees warmer outside makes a huge difference in here... or maybe Howl just knows that we have the insulation sitting in the next room ready to stick up in the ceiling to keep the heat in. ;)

Days 237 - 240

Snowing, blowing, freezing....

Here is the tree in front of our house. It is hard to tell how much snow is there. But believe me depending on where I walk, it can go over my knee in the drifts. But it does make it look so pretty outside.

Wow we are really not liking this. We have gotten a foot of snow, winds and blizzard conditions blowing that snow around and temperatures below 0. When you do not have a furnace in your house this is not something you want to feel. We are attempting to keep the corn burning stove going in the basement (to keep the pipes from freezing). But the problem is that it wants to keep it too warm. Now this sounds like a silly problem. But it is bad when it is 60 degrees in the part of the house that we aren't living in and colder in the parts that we are. Plus it goes through so much corn and pellets, we are watching our money burn.

Upstairs on second floor I am baking or attempting to use the oven as much as I can, just to get the heat that it produces. We have been closing off any part of the house that we arent' using, stuffing insulation everywhere we can. We have even considered all just sleeping on the floor in front of the fire and closing off the bedrooms. (I have been doing this with Jonathan's and mine during the day anyway. Just to save that heat.)

We are loving the layers, hats and gloves. :)

Days 234 to 236

There is a huge winter storm coming our way. I am so not looking forward to that. We tried to bring some more wood inside and stack it in the dining room down on first floor. We will be wanting the dry wood before the week is out.

The girls had a sleepover birthday party this weekend. So we headed into Lincoln to do a bit of shopping. Zeb has been looking forward to being an "only" child again, even if it is only for a day. It is hard to believe that it is almost Christmas. Time has really gone by quickly. We moved some of the things around in the tower room on second floor so we could put up our tree. I am a little late with this. But it is tough with things still packed and having three rooms pushed into one. But we think this is going to work out.

Day 233

Time to buy some corn for the corn burner. The kids and I went over to the elevator and bought a bag of corn. I hope it lasts a couple of days. Mom and Dad are planning on coming down sometime with the truck to get a whole load of corn but until the make it down, we will buy a few bags at a time.

Ella and I cleaned out the corn. Wow was that cold. And then we dumped it into the hopper. We got to keep these fires burning.

Day 232

Happy Birthday Uncle LeRoy! And Yay! My nephew was born. I can't wait to meet you Eli!

Mostly today we hauled some more wood. It is starting to get really cold here in Nebraska. I will be hoping for a really warm winter with the wish of money and time to continue to buy and put in insulation. As it gets dark so soon now we don't feel much like working.

This evening we tried out our new popcorn popper and watched a movie all cuddled up on the couch. Thanks for the popper and the yummy corn Grandpa and Grandma Montoya. :D


Here is the wood pile down in the dining room on 1st floor. We are planning on keeping a couple of days worth of wood in the dining room. So if it is really cold/snowy/wet we won't have to go outside or use wet wood.

Day 231

Today was yet another day of organizing. I don't know if I will ever be finished with this job. By the time I get all of the boxes put where I want them, hopefully we will have another room finished and I will be moving things to it.

But today, it was the east half of the parlor that I worked on. Most of the stuff in that room has been put into better piles. All of the electronics/computer/office stuff is in one corner. I do still need more shelves. But at least things are in the right areas.


Here is the electronic/computer/office corner. Things are coming out of boxes and being put on shelves. :D

Day 230

Today I reorganized the dining room. Of course by doing this I messed up the craft area that I worked on this weekend. But it is going to start being cold and wintery later this week. So we are starting to bring a large portion of the wood pile into the dining room. I want to have a bunch stacked up there it keep it dry when it starts snowing. I am also hoping to bring wood up from the ground and replace the wood on the back porch.

I figure the more boxes I organize or unpack the better things are going to be down on first floor. But there is still a lot of stuff to move around. And it is disappointing that the room I had looking pretty nice after the weekend got all packed full again. Somehow I don't think we have enough shelves for everything. I don't know how this can be possible as everything was on a shelf at the other house.

Day 228 - 229

The weekend...
Jonathan was working in the basement most of the weekend. He was organizing and setting up his tools, while working with the corn burner. I spend most of the time moving and opening boxes on the first floor. I am trying to get most of our stuff organized or unpacked so that we can actually use it. We are going to be keeping a bunch of stuff on shelves down on the first floor. If it is all out and organized we will be able to go down there and get a game, toy or project whenever we might want it, and yet not try to cram everything onto second floor. The weather has been warm the last couple of days so it hasn't been bad working down there without much heat. The kids have been excited that it is easier to get to their stuff.

Day 227

Today my main goal was to clean the corn so that we will be able to add that to the pellets and burn it in the corn burner. It took a bit of fiddling around, but I think I have it all worked out. I am hoping that the next load of corn does not have as much chaff in it. We are hoping to get the corn burner set this weekend so that it doesn't keep it too warm in the basement. This might sound funny as heat would be a good thing. But we want to use as little corn as possible, as we mostly just want it to keep the pipes from freezing. Of course any heat that makes its way up to 2nd floor would be just fine with us as well.

Day 226

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Today we are going to go over to Deseray and Jeremy's house for Thanksgiving. I can't wait. We'll tell you all about it when we get back. :D

I hope all of you had a great Thanksgiving. We had a great time with Deseray, Jeremy and Axel. We got to see their new house. (It is pretty nice...I just wish it was a bit closer.) We spent some time talking, we played a few games, and of course we eat some good food. It was so good to spend the day with them. I can't wait to do it again. :D

Day 225

Today is more of a getting ready for Thanksgiving rather than working on the house. Maybe by this weekend we will be getting a bit of work done on the house.

Day 223 - 224

Well, we haven't really done much work on the house the last couple of days. It has just been the normal, carrying wood and school and such. I have continued my sorting of boxes down on first floor a bit.

Day 221 - 222

Mom and Dad came over for the weekend. Jonathan and I continued to put insulation up in the ceiling in the 2nd floor landing room. We were hoping to get some of the wiring done in that room this weekend. But the plans were changed. Jonathan and Dad went down into the basement to see about the giant corn burning stove. We had been hoping to sell this and get something else for heat in the basement. But we haven't had luck finding someone who wanted to buy it. So Mom and Dad thought if we could get the thing working, maybe we should just use it. So they worked on the stove it bit, getting a chimney pipe out the window and making sure everything was working. We fired it up, and it started heating the basement as well as the first floor. The bad news it that it seems to be using more corn/pellets then we want to. To keep it burning without smoking we have to keep it warmer in there then we want too. But we are planning on playing with the settings to see if we can get it to work more like we want to.

Jonathan also got the blower hooked up and working on our wood stove. This seems to help keep the second floor a bit warmer. While he was working on the wood stove, Mom, Dad and I went up to third floor. We got plastic on all of the windows up there. We also put some insulation in the cracks and gaps between second and third floor. Hopefully this will keep more of the heat on second floor.

Day 219

Well, I called to have our dumpster picked up. The sad thing is that it isn't full. But with it being cold and snowy here, we just aren't carrying much stuff outside. So it is better to send it back less then full instead of continuing to pay for it waiting for a warmer day. Thought today is a pretty nice and sunny day.

I am back to organizing the first floor in hopes of finding some things that were hidden away in the many boxes down there. And the other good thing about that, is that we will be able to find and use any of our stuff that we won't be bringing up to second floor.

Day 218

I continued my moving things around down on first floor. It is such a huge mess of boxes that I don't even like to think about it. But I guess I am making some progress. I haven't gotten to the opening and getting things out stage, I am still finding and putting like items in the same areas.

The last few days, we have been a bit cold. But this is to be expected, with no furnace, but our wood stove. Most of the walls do not have insulation in them, and the windows are no where near sealing or keeping out much of the cold air. We do have plastic on all of the windows on second floor. And now that we have been working on three of the six rooms, at least those three have insulation in the walls. We do need to get the drywall up in two of those three rooms. I am sure that this would also help to keep us a bit warmer. But that is not something I can do right now. So I started with some little things. In addition to the plastic on the windows, I hung up some extra quilts on the windows in the tower room. We did buy the fabric and the batting that I will use to make the drapes. But I just haven't had the time to get that started yet. And then there is the hole in the floor where we have been running wiring and pipes. It is so cold over there. All of the cold air from down on first floor is being brought up through this hole. So I took apart some of our cardboard boxes and made a removable cover for this hole and laid a piece of insulation over that. WOW! It is hard to believe the difference that these two things can cause. It is much warmer in here. I do still want to put plastic all around that column that we are running the pipe and wire through. But I am happy with what I did today.

Once I get some of the things moved away from the windows down on first floor I want to also cover these with plastic, as well as the ones up on third floor.

Day 217

Instead of going up to third floor to cause more destruction, I decided that I needed to start organizing the mess down on first floor. We have gotten out all of the things that we have to have and taken them up to second floor. But there are still many things that it would be nice if we would be able to use them when we want too. Right now there is no way to find anything in all of those boxes. So it is off to the "underworld" or first floor, to see if I can start moving things around into a more organized way.

Day 216

Today is cold and snowy. First the kids wanted to play in the snow. And now we are sitting in front of the fire snuggled up in blankets, watching a movie. :)

Day 215

Today we worked on the landing room some more. I was working on getting some of the lathe nailed to the walls. (This is so that when we put the drywall up, the woodwork will fit correctly.) And Jonathan was nailing the outlet boxes in place.

We also started to put insulation in the ceiling. We want to try and stay warm this winter. It is starting to get cold already. BRRR.


Very odd angle on this picture. But you can see some insulation in the wall and in the ceiling here. We still need to finish it, but I can imagine that it will be warmer in there.

Day 214

Today we finished getting the plaster and nails off of the walls and ceiling in the landing room. There wasn't much left. But there is a lot of going up and down ladders.

Then we went into Lincoln to buy the lights for the landing room. We are going to be putting up a ceiling fan in the middle of the room and a light in the area near all of the doors. I am always excited when we get to the point of buying things like this. But know that we still have all of the drywall to put up before we can actually put the lights up.

Day 213

Today I was feeling very tired. So mostly we took a day off. We need to rest up for the weekend's work.

Day 212

We worked a bit more on the third floor. But still have a bunch to go. We had cub scouts this evening. So it was a slow day, workwise.

Day 211

The kids and I were working up on third floor again today. The weather has been pretty warm. And I really would like to fill the dumpster a bit more before we send it back. And of course, it would also be nice to get all of the plaster and insulation out of the third floor so we won't continually be making a mess as we carry it through second floor. We have most of the plaster and lathe off of the walls on the landing room on third floor. That means that there is really only one room left to work on. Then we will have to start on the ceiling. That will be the really messy part.


This is the 3rd floor landing room. There is still some lathe on the top part of the walls. For me to get that down, I need to carry up a ladder. But we are still using them on 2nd floor. I hate carrying things up and down the stairs. So I will do all of the low work first. When there isn't anymore I guess I will have to bring up the ladder.

Day 210

The kids and I started carrying some more buckets of plaster down from third floor. I had almost decided that we just wouldn't be able to get this done before I want to send the dumpster back. But I just don't like to give up. The kids have been wonderful helpers. I know that I wouldn't be able to do it without their help.

Thank you Zeb, Ella and Melinda! You are all of my angel helpers.

Day 209

There are just so many things for me to do during the day, I just don't even know where to start. So today, I mostly tried to think about just what I thought I might be able to do. And then I decided to start knocking a bit of plaster down on third floor. Whenever you don't know what to do, just find a wall and start hitting it with a sledge hammer. ;) This bit of direction will work for a while longer. But hopefully sooner or later we will have knocked down all of the plaster. Well, it might be later, as we haven't even started down on first floor.

Day 208

Well this morning we worked just a bit in the landing room on second floor. We finished taking down the last bit of plaster on the stair wall. And I also worked on getting some of the nails out so that everything will be ready to put the drywall up.

Then in the afternoon, we headed back to Hickman for the last and final load. We had the kids' space dome to bring and just a few misc. things. But YAY, everything is out of the old house. And the best news yet, is that LuCinda might be able to just buy the house, instead of the rent to own agreement that we had worked out. That would be so wonderful. :)

Day 207

Today we are off to Hickman to take down the kids' playground and try to bring the rest of our stuff over to the new house. It is kind of a shame to waste this wonderful weekend, on hauling things instead of working....what am I saying, it is too bad we aren't spending the warm and sunny weekend playing and having fun. But it will be good to just have all of our stuff here and not have to worry about any of that.

Day 206

We are back home now. It looks like the weekend will be really nice. Hopefully we will be able to get a lot done. But we are taking a rest for the day and mostly working on school.

Day 205

Rose Marie's funeral...

This is the third funeral in 4 weeks. It has been a really sad month.

Day 204

Today we are going to do a bit of organizing. But then the kids and I are going to head over to my parents' house for my cousin's funeral. :(

Day 203

Today I carried in the insulation. The kids and I made a couple of trip over to the old house. We worked on getting the rest of our stuff out of the garage and the back yard. Hopefully this weekend we will be able to get the rest of the stuff out of the shed and take down the playground. So we are hoping for good weather and nothing else unexpected.

Day 202

Today was a mostly restful day. I worked on organizing the kitchen.

Day 201

Due to all of the things that have been going on in the last couple of weeks. Jonathan's back wasn't doing so good today. He spent most of the time in bed trying to give his back a rest.

The kids and I cut up a bunch of wood for the stove and carried it down to the tower room. Then I started knocking down the plaster and lathe on third floor. We still have the dumpster for another week. And I want to get it as full as I can before we send it back. And there is another good thing about doing this, if we get all of the 3rd floor cleaned out, there will be less dust and mess for us. We might even be able to start finishing some of that floor.

Day 200

Happy Halloween!

The kids are exciting about going Trick or Treating tonight. But before this we went into Lincoln. We needed to get some more insulation and do a bit of shopping. :) We have not been seeing any more bats. This is a HUGE YYYYAAAAYYYY! Now we can work on getting a bit more of this finished. We kind of took it easy today and ate some pizza at the buffet. It was a nice day.


Then this evening we all went out trick or treating. Jonathan usually stays home to pass out the candy. But we don't even have a porch light, or a working doorbell. And there is no where for him to sit down on first floor. It is still a maze of boxes and bookshelves. So he decided to go out walking with us. It was very different then in our old neighborhood. There were no children. Back in Hickman there were swarms of children. But here we didn't seen any but one other small child out walking. At one of the houses we stopped at we heard that they had 8 trick or treater's (3 of them being ours). Wow. I guess my bag of 80 candy bars would have gone far. Usually we need two or three of those bags. But the kids were very excited and came home with the pumpkins full of goodies. Plus we got to meet some of our new neighbors.

Day 195 - 199

This week we will not really be working on the house. Jonathan and I are in charge of the Cub Scout Halloween carnival again this year. So we will be working on getting everything ready for the carnival this week. Wow, if it isn't one thing it's another. I do know that I will be happy when this week is over and we can kind of sit back and decide what we would like to do. :) We are making up 9 carnival stations. And preparing for around 300 children. Have you ever wished it would snow and they would cancel Halloween? Hmm, I wonder if that would work. ;) We are having a cake walk, a guessing game, a coffin dig, a bat tree toss (and no we aren't using our real bats, just the rubber kind), a bone/tombstone toss, balloon popping, face painting, witch hat ring toss, and a scary maze. We were going to do a scary campground. But it turned out to be too wet and cold outside for that.

Happy Halloween!

Well, we had a good turnout. There were just over 270 children. It was a busy night. Now we are ready for a bit of rest and relaxation. :)

Day 189 - 194

This was the week of the bats. As you might have read we have discovered that our home is also the home of bats. We had a nightly visit from one of them for four days. And it was not the same one. Jonathan was able to get rid of them each night. The last of these fun visits was in the morning. Up till now the children did not know that we had a bat problem. They had all been happily sleeping when the bats came to visit. But the morning visit pretty much worried all of us. Melinda decided that we must live in a haunted house.

Well of course we decided that we had to do something about this. I mean we wouldn't mind bats flying around outside eating the bugs. But we didn't want them flying around our heads and all.

So on Friday I took the kids over to Mom and Dad's house again. We thought it would be better if they were not around as we didn't know what we would find. And we got yet another dumpster. Saturday and Sunday we tore apart the 2nd floor landing room. This is where we thought the bats were coming in. We got all of the plaster and lathe off of the walls and ceiling. We also were able to cover up the holes (from the inside). Next spring we will work on fixing the holes from the outside. And we got most of the exterior wall insulated. Hopefully this will all help the bat problem. After the weekend we were very tired. But we half filled the dumpster and now one more wall of the house is insulated. YAY! :D


This is the part of the ceiling that the bats are coming in from. They are getting into the house from a hole in the wall and a hole in the box gutter. Then they come up from the joist in the ceiling. Then as you can see they can just get in.


This is another reason we had to send the kids to my parents'. All of the rest of the furniture is shoved into their bedroom.


Now we have all of the woodwork taken off and safe down in the basement. This part takes so much time.


No more plaster and lathe.


Now there is insulation in the north/exterior wall. We do still need to get the wiring in this room.

Saturday was another sad day for me. My friend, Myrta, died. We are all really going to miss her. :(

Day 188

Today has been a busy, creepy day. I start out tired from our bat fun of last night and still a bit jumpy about that as I know there is likely still a bat in the house somewhere. Zeb throwing his paper airplane about made me jump off of the couch. Then there were the bugs. I was trying to bring in a load of things that we had left in the van yesterday, there were all sorts of tiny bugs by the front door. Then by the edge of the porch, hundreds of lady bugs. And by the 2nd floor bathroom a swarm of bees (and in the 2nd floor bathroom as well). I was almost hoping the bats would be back to eat the bugs, almost.

Just a little while ago, as the kids were getting ready for bed, we noticed Merlin looking towards the ceiling. Not a good sign. Then we hear the bat noises again.

Right now Jonathan is stuffing insulation in some possible BAT entry places. Hopefully we will have a much better night.

Bats, oh no.

Well, this was not a very restful night. After we got the kids in bed, Jonathan and I went to our room to watch a little TV. And that is when the fun started. There partway through the show a BAT fell from the ceiling just outside our doorway. We quickly shut the door and hoped our cat, Merlin would take care of if. Or actually wondered if he had done something to it. After all of the running around and closing doors and putting Merlin in places and all, we discovered that there was not one but two bats in the house. The night ended with Jonathan getting his gun and trying to take them out. In the end we had one dead bat and one missing one. Now believe me, I don't really mind bats as long as they are not swooping around over my bed. It was a long night. And I am not looking forward to it happening again tonight.

Day 187

Mom and Dad went home yesterday afternoon. So the rest is up to us. We have tons of stuff yet to do. So we got an early start, Jonathan pulling the trailer with his car, and me with the seats still out of the van. When we got over to the house we started packing up the remaining stuff and putting it in the van. We also were trying to vacuum and sweep up the cleared out rooms. Surprising ourselves, we mostly got everything in the van. And with the trailer still empty started working on the shelves in the garage and the shed.

We are not quite finished. There is still a bit of stuff in the garage and shed. But we got a lot more finished today then we thought that we would.

The funny thing is that we went over to the gas station and ordered a pizza for lunch, sat down in the middle of the floor in the empty kitchen and ate the pizza straight out of the box. The reason that this is even interesting is that when Jonathan and I first bought the house in Hickman, our very first meal there was a pizza that we ordered from the gas station, that we brought home, sat down in the middle of the empty living room and ate straight out of the box. We didn't even plan that. I didn't even think about it until we were eating our pizza today. It is funny how things work out.

After we got everything loaded we headed back to Beatrice. Before we could unload the trailer, we had to rearrange things down in the basement. So we worked at getting the workshop in order just a bit. It is actually starting to look pretty nice down there. Then we were able to get all of the stuff off of the trailer. The van is still full of stuff. But we are tired and Jonathan wanted to see about hooking up the washing machine. It is so exciting that the washing machine is now usable and nothing leaks. YAY!

Day 186

Saturday....
Moving Day: Part two

Mom and Dad came over again to help us out. We made three trips filling, the the trailer and the trunk of Jonathan's car, the Van (without the back to seats and full cargo capacity), and the back of Mom and Dad's car.

Wow, another tiring day. And we still aren't finished. I know that we have way too much stuff. :)

It is starting to be hard to find places to put things in the new house. It is amazing that you can fit this much stuff in a smallish house. And when you move it over in boxes it seems to take up even more space.

Day 185

We found out last night that we really need to get the rest of our stuff out of the house at Hickman this weekend. Not sure that is going to be possible or not. But we are going to give it a shot. The kids and I brought over a ton of things today. I am tired of driving. But I am more tired of carrying things up and down all of the stairs. The good part of all of this is that if we get everything over here, we will be able to start sorting through all of the boxes and try to get everything organized. I feel like I am living in a tunnel of boxes right now. The first floor is a maze of things piled high. But I am going to have a good start on having the kitchen a bit more organized by the end of the night.

Day 184

Spent most of the day with all of my family. :( It has been a busy, hard couple of weeks; moving, Myrta, Aunt Verona. I think I need a long vacation. I wonder if the house elves will work on getting my house organized if I go away for a couple of days.

Day 183

Well, today is a busy day... but not much to do with the house. I brought over another load of things from Hickman. Then I packed up what we would need to take to my parents' house. A sad trip home for my Aunt Verona's funeral tomorrow.

Day 182

My work has continued, the search for clothes... I have found enough of what we need to get by until I can go through a lot more of the boxes. I have also been working on the windows again today. I am getting close to having all of the windows on second floor covered with plastic. Then I will move on to one of the other floors. Mostly we will be living on 2nd floor so this is the most important area. But I do want to seal in as much heat as I can, even from the other two floors. I also started getting out some of our books and putting them on the shelves.

Jonathan was working on getting the washer and dryer hooked up. He has the power run and working for both of them. And the drain is in place. He also has the pex tubing hooked up in the basement and ready to be hooked up to the washer.


Here are the girls and Merlin in their mess of a room. This is something I want to work on tomorrow... getting their clothes and things in dressers instead of in bags and boxes on the floor.


Jonathan's and my room / my plastic cutting station. :) You can see my roll of plastic on the floor.


Zeb reading a book that I just put up on the shelf. This is going to be our dining/living/library for a bit. Hopefully I will get rid of the piles on the floor soon.

Day 181

The kids and I headed over to Hickman, to try and pack up some more stuff and bring it over. We brought along all of the boxes that we had already emptied and filled them up again. Some of the main things we were looking for were, clothes, the other TV and stuff to get the internet up and running.

After Jonathan got home he got our central server running and the internet up. Yay!

We have been using that wood stove. All of the plastic work I have been doing seems to be helping with the heat loss.



Here is our stove, keeping us warm. Merlin's new favorite place to be is right in front of the stove soaking up some heat. He has been having an interesting time exploring our new house.

Day 180

Today we went back to Hickman to get some more stuff. This was the first time I had been back since the first trip over to Beatrice yesterday morning. So I really didn't know how much of our stuff was still in the old house. All I can say is WOW do we have a lot of stuff or what. There is still so much for us to move over.

I continued my work of putting plastic over the windows today. We also continued to set things up and see what we could find. We are having a bit of trouble finding the clothing that we need. This has been one of my main missions.... making sure everyone has socks, underwear and warm clothes.


Here is our mirror up in our bathroom. And look there are our toothbrushes, I guess we did move over. :D

Day 179

Moving Day: part one



We woke up the some of the fluffy white stuff. Boy were all of the kids excited. Us grown-ups, not so much. But we were glad that we didn't get as much as they had said was possible. Here we are filling the van, Dad's truck and our trailer full of stuff. It was a long tiring day of moving. And then it ended on a sad note, Dad got a phone call telling us that Aunt Verona had died.

After my family headed home, Jonathan, the kids and I got our beds ready for our first real night in the new house. We had the wood stove going, and it was still cold in here. It took quite a while to get things heated up. And then there are lots of places that leak. We started covering the windows with plastic and blankets.

Day 178

Mom, Dad, Philip, Andrea and the kids (theirs and ours) were coming down. We are planning on taking over as much of our big furniture as we can. When Mom and Dad got here we loaded up their truck (I already had the van full), and we drove over to the new house to unload.

When we got back to Hickman, Philip and Andrea had gotten there, bringing my children. After taking them over to Mom's on Monday, I was really glad to get them back. Now it is time for hugs and snuggles. Then one big sleepover to get ready for Moving Day Part One.

Day 176 - 177

Wow, I have gotten a little bit behind. But you will see why in a few minutes...

Wednesday and Thursday: I am not even sure what we were working on these two days, beside loading and hauling boxes over to the new house. I know that we finished hooking up the wood stove and we put some wood in and tried it out.

Day 175

Happy Birthday Jonathan!

Jonathan used his last personal day and took the day off. We started the day off in Lincoln, hello Menards. We got the last few things we thought we would need to hook up the stove. Then we went shopping (the relaxing kind). We checked out the thrift stores and an antique store we hadn't been too. Then we went and had BBQ for Jonathan's birthday lunch.

Next we headed over to Beatrice. Before we went to work, we wanted to check out the two antiques stores in town. That was really fun. At the last one we found boxes and boxes of hardcover science fiction books. We I am sure you guessed that we couldn't pass that up. We wished that we could have bought more of them. But if we are lucky, they will still be there next time we go.

Over at the house, it was time to start working on the stove. The first order of business was the pipe in the chimney. It wasn't quite in there the way that it needed to be. So we messed around with that (Back UP on the roof... oh, no) and got that to be more like it needed to be. Then we took the stove out of the box. These things are heavy. But we got it in place and started planning how to do the pipe to connect it with the T. We were able to almost finish it. Too bad that last pipe couldn't have been just a little bit longer. But we needed to stop there for the night.


Here is the stove setting on the hearth pad and ALMOST hooked up to the pipe in the chimney.

Day 174

Bright and early in the morning, I pack up the kids and take them to meet Mom. They are going to spend a week at my parents. They are so excited. Now it is time for me to get really busy and see what I can get finished.

After I got back to town to took three loads of stuff over to the house in Beatrice. Wow am I tired. But I did get a lot moved over.

We decided to take it easy tonight. It was quiet in the house without the kids. Jonathan rented a movie for us to watch.

Day 173

Today we finished up with the insulation. Jonathan covered the hole from the gutter, so we should not be getting any more animal friends through there. Now we just need to insulate that gutter area. We also put the plastic over the east side of the room and around the tower. All it needs now is the sheetrock. :)

Then we went up to 3rd floor to work on insulating the stove pipe. Wow was that a job but we got it done, and mostly in place down the chimney. That was really not a fun job.


Melinda is standing next to our shiny, silver, insulated stove pipe. Now it is time to haul that thing up to the roof and put it down the chimney. :P



The hardest part of this job was getting the stove pipe connected to this T. But we got it done. Now I hope getting everything hooked up to the stove is a bit easier.

Day 172

Time to insulate. :D It is a cold day over at the house. So insulating seems like even a better idea.

Here you can see one of our newly insulated walls. It looks so soft and fluffy warm. We also got plastic that we are going to cover the walls with as well as all of the windows in the house.

Day 171

We are celebrating Jonathan's birthday just a little bit early. Sunday or Monday we are going to send the kids over to spend the week at my parents' house. So they won't be here for Jonathan's actually birthday. That is why we decided to stay home and celebrate this evening. We made chicken tacos and refried beans. And Daddy's cake... carrot cake. :) It was a yummy meal. Then Jonathan got to open his presents. :) And now it is time to relax. Watch a couple episodes of Jonathan's new anime and then play Beatles Rock Band.


Here are Jonathan, Zeb and Ella playing Beatle's Rock Band.

Day 170

Time for insulation. So we head into Lincoln to get the insulation for the walls. We are hoping to finish up the wiring and be able to put the insulation in the walls this weekend. We will have to wait and see how much we get done.

Day 169

This evening we continued to work on our wiring. Jonathan pulled the wires down through our 'wiring closet' to the basement. He stapled them into place and got them ready to be connected in the 2nd floor tower room. While he was working on this, I started connecting the outlets to the wires we had put in all of the boxes. Soon we will have power and lights in the room.

We are getting a little worried about the coming cold weather. Tonight and the next night the low will be 37 or 38 degrees. And the high will only be in the low 50's. We need to get that wood stove hooked up and ready very soon.

Day 168

We stayed home and watch "The Sound of Music" with the kids. :)

Day 167

Today the kids and I went over to the house to work. I started the day out by mowing the lawn. Then as I was waiting for them to come and haul the dumpster away, I decided to haul down as much plaster as I could from 3rd floor. The kids and I got most of the plaster (that we had already knocked down) taken out to the dumpster.

This evening with Jonathan we did some more wiring. This time it wasn't electrical wiring. But Cat5 for all of our networking needs. Some of this wire will be used for our home automation. We got most of the room wired and ready to go. Now all we have to do is hook everything up.


The blue wire is the CAT5 wire that we were working on. It will be how we control our house.

Day 166

Today we worked on wiring in the tower room. We got wire to all of the outlet boxes. We still need to connect them and then bring the wire up from the basement.

We also got the boxes on the ceiling for the lights. We are going to have a ceiling fan/light and two other lights in this room.


In this picture the black pipe on the right was for the original gas lights in the house. The fixture hanging from the scary black wire on the left was from the light fixture that had been in the room. The shiny silver box in the middle is where we are going to be hanging our ceiling fan from.

At home in Hickman, Jonathan was working on some of the home automation things. He wants to get the box ready to put in the wall in the Tower room. But first he has to get everything soldered and ready to go.

Day 165

Mom and Dad are here on their way back from the hospital in Omaha. We are having some more wood delivered this morning.

Jonathan and Dad spent much of the day getting all of the pipes out of the floor and wall. There was a lot of unneeded pipes coming through the floor, as this space had been a bathroom and a kitchen. It looks a lot better. Then they built the frame wall that we will run the pex through for the radiators and also the electrical wires. We are almost ready to go.

Here is the wall. The hole in the floor goes all the way to the basement where all of the wires and pex will come from.

Mom and I were on clean up duty, hauling things out to the dumpster. We were also sorting through the boxes. We started moving the girls' things to their room and Zeb's to his. Then we were attempting to organize the others so that we will be able to find things when we need them. We also got a shelf set up and filled with the kids' craft things. :) Now Melinda will be able to play with Play-Doh.

Day 164

We are off to Lincoln to do some grocery shopping.

Day 163

The kids and I went over to the cool park this morning. I took a bunch of pictures there it was a lot of fun. Then we went over to the house to work. I finished getting all of the boxes and tubs moved out the the Dining room. :) Now we are ready to get the smelly, wet carpet out of there.

After supper, Jonathan and I got the carpet cut into smaller pieces and carried out to the dumpster. YAY the house already smells better!

Day 162

Today the kids and I went over to the house again in the morning. We started out the day with a drive around a cool park. We are very excited to go there to play and take pictures. At the house the kids did their school work. And I did all sorts of things mostly clean up related. The exterminator came and took a look at our bees. :) Hopefully that problem will be taken care of soon.

Then after supper we went back to the house with Jonathan. We looked inside of the walls and tried to figure out how we are going to run the pex for the heating, as well as for the bathroom up on third floor, and all of the electrical lines from the basement.

Day 161

The kids and I went over to the new house this morning. We took a load of Zeb's things over. We were able to take them up into his future, temporary room (otherwise known as the Green Room). Then I worked a bit more in the 2nd floor tower room. I carried several loads down to the dumpster and did some general clean up in there. Now it will be easier to move around and work in there. I also opened up the kitchen and the basement to let things dry out a bit more. I also called someone about our bee problem. He will be coming over to check out the bees tomorrow. So hopefully that will be taken care of soon.

Tonight we are staying in Hickman to do some research. There are a lot of things that we need to get worked out.

Day 160

Jonathan finished up the misc. plumbing. He made sure the water heater was dried out after the flood waters from the second floor bathroom had resided. He also rehooked up the the pipes to the bathtub. So we once again have hot water and a working bathtub. :) I was working some more in the 2nd floor tower room. It seems like we work and work in there. I haven't taken any pictures to show the progress, mostly because I can barely see what we have been doing. I am sure no one else would be able to see anything. But within a day or two I am hope for some noticeable changes in that room. So I will be post before and middle pictures. We will have to wait just a while longer for the 'after' pictures.

Day 159

The good news first:
No water running down three floors of our house.. YAY!

Things are still a bit damp in the 1st floor kitchen and in the basement. But they will dry out soon.

We got all of the rest of the plaster, lathe and insulation out of the 2nd floor tower. We are getting close to the fun part of this room. Sometime this week we will be doing the wiring in there. It will be nice to have electricity in there again. With it starting to get dark earlier in the evening it gets harder to work in there after supper. We just have a bit of clean up before we can start on that.

Jonathan has been working on all of the home automation. In fact right now he is sitting at his computer working on the program to get things running. I don't think I have talked much about what we are hoping that our home will be able to do yet. We want to have an intercom system. We have already found that it is hard to find someone in the house and you don't want to run up and down the stairs to go looking for them. He is also planning on having all of the lights and fans on this system. This way if we forgot to shut off a light somewhere we can do it from any intercom box, or even my parents' house. We are going to have moisture sensors in the walls so we will have early warning of leaks. At some time there will be camera set up in place for security. We have even discussed the possibility of automating the drapes to open when we want to bring heat and light in and closing them when we want to keep it out. Oh, and being able to tell if a window is open from any intercom box. As this is the first room we are going to be finishing (along with the bathroom) we need to make sure all of the wire and things are in place before we close up the walls.

We are going to name our house "Howl". Has anyone seen Howl's Moving Castle directed by Hayao Miyazaki? It is a great movie, one of my favorites. Then who remembers Hal from 2001? Well, I hope that our computerized house turns out just the way that we want it to.

Day 158

Water, Water, Everywhere... Oh, NO.

We got to the new house this morning to find out that something really bad had happened. There was water, lots of water, spraying out of the pipes for the bathtub. We had used plumbers epoxy on those pipes. Well, we would recommend not doing that. These pipes had been good and leak free for quite awhile now. But some time between Thursday night and Saturday morning they started to leak and spray water everywhere. The entire 2nd floor bathroom was wet. Water was running down through the floor into the 1st floor kitchen. Which was puddling at least an 1 1/2 deep. The sheetrock was soaking and falling off of the ceiling. The water was running down the stairs into the basement from the kitchen as well as flowing into the 1st floor bathroom and going down into the basement through the open floor there. It was also starting to go into the Dining room. (The strangely being the worst of it, as we have been stacking all of the stuff we had packed and brought over to the house in there.) And the basement was very wet... Though not as wet as it could have been. Jonathan quickly went down to the basement, through the dripping, pouring flood and shut off the water. Then we started to clean things up.

I started by trying to move all of the things out of the dining room to see how badly some of those things might have gotten wet. I was really glad that many of the things on the bottom had been plastic tubs. And there was a shelf that lots of things were stacked on near the wettest part. There were actually only four boxes that got wet. The one marked "photos" was the one I was most concerned about. But lucky for me cardboard boxes are thick. The pictures were just fine. The boxes that was the wettest was filled with plastic tubs of craft supplies... so again nothing was wet. YAY!

Jonathan started up in the 2nd floor bathroom, as this is the room we care the most about. It is the only room that we have 'finished'. He used the shop vac, to get any water that was left in the room. And got everything out and setting around to dry. Then he went down in the basement to clean up some of the water, and putting things out in the sun to dry. We did discover one good thing. We had thought that the drain in the basement did not work. But now we know that it does. Or there would have been a lot more water in the basement. There was a 5 gallon bucket just setting in the basement. It was completely full of water. So we know how much water had been flowing down into the basement.

The 1st floor kitchen is a terrible mess. But we don't care much about that room. The sheetrock and plaster are still falling. But hey, we are planning all knocking all of that down sometime in the future anyway so no real problem.

So that was our morning. Not what we had planned on doing at all. Now we are half a day behind what we had hoped to be doing. But I guess that is how things go somedays. So after lunch it was time to start on the 2nd floor tower room. We wanted to get the rest of the plaster and lathe out of the room so we could clean up and start working. :D

Even with the "late" start we got a lot done in the tower room. When we left for the night there was only a little bit of plaster, lathe and insulation left. Ella and I got the nails out of a pile of lathe. We are going to nail these back up to the studs so that when we put on the sheetrock it will be the right thickness for all of the woodwork. And whatever is left we are going to burn in our wood stove. The dumpster is getting nearly full. :) Another thing to smile about.

And today is another birthday... Happy Birthday, Eva.

Day 157

Today we stayed home in Hickman. Time to rest up for the weekend.

Day 156

There was a sale on batting at the fabric store... So I bought enough to do 16 windows. That ought to keep me busy for a while. I think I only have enough fabric to do 8 or 9 windows. But at least it will be a good start.

We went over to the house after supper. We worked a bit in the tower room. Then Jonathan epoxied some pipes and we stacked up the wood that had fallen over.

And there was a surprise... Bats in the belfry. Well not exactly. The bat is not in the tower. It was hanging from the light fixture in the Green Room. I am NOT excited about this. Jonathan opened up one of the windows in that room and we closed the door before we left. So we are hoping it found it's way outside and didn't bring any of it's friends back home.

We are working our way through the "B" words. Bees in the wall... Bats in the belfry... bugs in the hmm, not sure where they are coming from. Not looking forward to see what other kinds of icky "b" words we will find.

We are hoping to get everything out of the tower room over this weekend so that we can start wiring and getting everything back in the walls. We also want to start getting the stove all set up.

Day 155

Off to Lincoln to get Jonathan's car back from the mechanic... No work on the house tonight.

Day 154

We went over to the house this morning. We only have four more weeks, so I really need to get busy. My goal today was to get all of the yuck that we had knocked down out to the dumpster. We still need to knock some more stuff down, but it feels better and is easier to work when you are standing on piles of nails and rubble.

The kids took all of their school work so that they could work on it while we were their. They also helped me to carry some of the bucket down. They are such good helpers.

Day 153

We went over to the house a little bit this afternoon. We are waiting for some packages and didn't want them sitting out over night. While we were there, I did a little bit of work. But just wasn't excited about going up and down the stairs with those heavy buckets today. We are still giving Jonathan's back a couple of days rest before we get on with some more real work.

Day 152

We didn't go over to the house today. After all of the heavy lifting of yesterday, Jonathan's back needs a break. Also Mom and Dad came to spend some time with us to celebrate Melinda's birthday.

Day 151

Happy Birthday Philip! It is my brother's birthday today.

We were at the house early this morning. We were getting three loads of firewood delivered. We are getting quite a pile of wood. But by Jonathan's calculations, it might only be half of what we need for the winter.


Here is a picture of our woodpile after the three new loads have been delivered. Ella has been begging to help carry the wood. So she was watching and waiting for it to be delivered. She has offered to bring wood upstairs every morning. I hope this attitude lasts through the winter.

We bought one of the loads of wood from one of Jonathan's co-workers. He offered to help carry the new wood stove upstairs. Oh, my that thing is so heavy. But the two of them got it up to second floor.

With all of the lifting and carrying, Jonathan's back needed to take a break. We had planned on getting the rest of the plaster and lathe out of the tower room today. But moving the stove up was such a huge help. We decided to go and look at a different antique store. And do a little birthday and Christmas present shopping in Lincoln.

Day 150

Happy Birthday Melinda Johanna!

Because it was Melinda's birthday today, we didn't go over to the house. We let her pick where she wanted to go out to eat. She chose McDonald's with a big Play Place.

We took her to the big antique store. She has been wanting something for her room. So we let her pick out one of her presents from the antique store. She decided on a jeweled treasure box / jewelry box.


Melinda was very excited about her birthday. :D

Day 146 - 148

We got some of our packages this week. I am looking forward to getting to use some of these things.

We also worked some more on the plaster and lathe.

Half of the ceiling down. :)

And the best news is that we have sold our other house. Now we really need to get to work. :D

Day 149

Jonathan decided to take a day off of work today so we could get a bunch of work done.

We knocked down a lot of plaster and lathe. We also carried it out to the dumpster. We lowered a lot of buckets out the door and carried them to the dumpster. The kids all helped quite a bit with this job.

We are planning on burning the lathe in our wood stove. So we are sorting them into piles. Soon we will be removing all of the nails from the lathe.


Load after load....bucketful after bucketful of plaster...

Day 144 - 145

Time for major work on the tower room. All of the plaster and lathe has to come down.

We want to get this room ready for winter. We are putting the wood stove in here. But we decided that we should go ahead and knock down the plaster and lathe so that we can put some insulation in the walls.


Time to see if there is anything hidden in our walls..

We also want to Lincoln to do some shopping. We were looking for fabric. I need to make some insulated drapes for the house. We are trying to make sure that we stay as warm as possible. We also went to some hardware stores. We got some of the things we are going to be needing, electrical wire, outlet boxes, light fixtures, a ceiling fan, cat 5 cable, and other misc. things. We are gearing up to finish the tower room.

We also have a lot of things on order, the stove, chimney liner, pex for the radiant heat, and some things for the automation.

It was a productive weekend.

Day 143

Today Jonathan was working on the tub again. He is so close to getting that thing working. He has been fighting "tiny" leaks. But I guess that is what plumbing is all about... making sure there are no leaks at all.

Day 142

Well, now for my craigslist shopping again...

While looking for firewood, I found a cabinet for the bathroom. Yeah, I know, firewood-cabinet. Not really related, but that is what happened.

So this evening we are off to look at a cabinet in Lincoln. And of course, we really like it. :) So the bathroom is one more step to being finished.


Here is our new cabinet setting in our bathroom. Now we have a place to put our towels and things.

Day 140-141

We are to the point where we need to do a lot of planning. We are starting to 'finish' a couple of rooms. We are going to be doing a lot of home automation, and need to get all of that figured out. We also want to be sure about the electrical and Cat 5 cable that we are putting into the walls as well as the pex for the under floor radiant heating, and the pex for the plumbing up on third floor.

We are working on the second floor tower room. So before we finish the ceiling we need to get the pex in for the radiant floor up on third floor. We also need to get the plumbing up there for the bathroom that will be on third floor. We are also hoping to run up the electrical and cat 5 while the walls are open. None of this will be hooked up for a while. But still needs to be planned out.

So we have been doing a lot of research and planning as well as 'window' shopping.

Getting behind...

Well, I have gotten behind on my posting. I will try to get all of the things up that we have been working on.

September 1-13 Coming soon.

Day 139

Today the kids and I went over to the new house this morning. We were waiting for the guy to come and set up the internet service for us. I guess that means we are getting close to moving in if we are getting the internet set up there. :D

While we were waiting I knocked down some more plaster and carried it out to the dumpster. Melinda wanted to help me knock the plaster down.


She used the giant hammer to knock a hole in the wall. Then she used the crowbar to get some more plaster down... GO Melinda!

On the wall that I was working on I found yet another kind of wallpaper.


Wallpaper #4.

We will not be going back to the house this evening. Tonight we will be attempting to make some purchases. We need to get a few things, some more pex for the radiant floors, the woodburning stove and the things we need to get that up and running, and anything else we need before we close up the walls.

Day 138

We got a bunch of pieces that should work to get the tub working. When we got to the house, Jonathan went to get started on the bathroom. Wow I can't wait to be finished with that room. ;)

While he worked in there, I went to the tower room to cause more destruction. I really hate it when we are paying for a dumpster and it sits there mostly empty. *grin* So I started taking the sheetrock off of the wall. After I got the sheetrock off, I started on the layer of plaster that was under it. I found several interesting things. There were at least three different kinds of wallpaper...


Wallpaper #1
Wallpaper #2Wallpaper #3

The next discovery I made was the best...


Here is Melinda checking out the doorway that I found. There used to be a door between the tower room and the Mars room. The funny thing about finding a doorway here is that just a few days ago, Jonathan and I were talking about how we should maybe put a door here. I guess we are really in-tune with the our new house.

After Jonathan had another setback in the bathroom he came into the tower room to help me. The kids were also carrying buckets of plaster and sheetrock down to the dumpster.



Here is the whole doorway opened up.

Day 137

Over to the new house bright and early. We were having some firewood delivered. :) The first step in keeping warm this winter. We staked it up on the back porch. We still need a lot more wood, but this should be enough to get us through October and November. We are still calling and looking around for some more wood.

Once at the house we had plenty to do. Jonathan worked on the bathroom plumbing. We now have a working sink in the bathroom. :D But we need a few pieces from the hardware store to get the tub operational.

Ella is trying out the new sink. Clean those hands, Ella.

I did a bunch of cleaning. I got the landing room empty and clean. We are going to be moving the eating area back into this room. I am hoping to start setting up the bedrooms for the kids.

Then on to the hardest work of all. We started by carrying down some more plaster to the dumpster. Jonathan took down the toilet. And we turned over the huge and heavy tub. Jonathan used the giant sledge hammer to break the tub into pieces that we were able to carry out to the dumpster.


Here is the tub after he had broken it apart. :D

Jonathan broke the rest of the tub into smaller pieces and we carried it out.


No more tub or toilet here, just small bits of broken porcelain. That was a huge job. Now we only have one more tub to get out of our house. It is up on 3rd floor... anyone care to help with that one?

Day 136

It was Cub Scout Open house night. So we played a few games and had some yummy homemade ice cream. :)

Day 135

Today we stayed in Hickman and did some planning...

Day 134

Jonathan worked on the bathroom a little bit today. But found that there were still a couple of things we needed to hook up the water.

Then we hauled out a bit of trash to the dumpster. And took all of the tools back to the basement. We are clearing out the main landing room on second floor. So we can put the table back in there. This will let us start to set up the kids' rooms.

Day 133

Yay! Jonathan got our new gas stove hooked up. Now we can do some real cooking at the new house. We are so excited. :D One more step in getting closer to move in. Next on the list is the rest of the bathroom.

We have stove, we have gas, we have fire... now what should we cook?

While Jonathan was working in the kitchen, I knocked the plaster down on another of the small walls in the tower room. When the walls are between 2 and 3 feet wide it doesn't really feel like I am making any progress. There are so many walls in that room. ;) But the hardest part of the work is carrying all of the plaster downstairs and out to the dumpster. With Jonathan's help we got all of the plaster that we had knocked down carried out to the dumpster.