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