Weekend in a Nutshell

We had a very productive weekend at my Mom's house. There was a really big dead tree in the back that the woodpeckers were eating and it needed to be removed. Lucky for us, the neighbor's son-in-law cuts down trees. He showed up first thing in the morning with two teenaged boys in tow. Between the three of them, it took about 10 hours to cut down, cut up and clean up. Only one minor accident during the whole day. When "timber" was yelled and the tree finally fell, it clipped one of the clothesline poles, snapped off one of the bars and uprooted the massive amount of cement that my Dad had the pole secured with. The deal was that we got 1/2 of the wood and he got half. Those nice boys even stacked our wood into a nice pile. We are left with a huge log and will have to be cut up, but we have a larger saw and it shouldn't take very long.

The next job that got accomplished was the holes for the new fence. Kate and Lissa's dad was good enough to offer up (for a fee) his services, tractor and auger to get the job done. In less than 15 minutes, all the holes were in place, three feet deep and ready for the fence to be started. Well worth the fee. Getting to watch the ex-husband and current husband working together ... PRICELESS!

During the tree cutting, Warren kept busy staining the slats for the new fence. There are a total of 240 slats and he got almost 100 done on Saturday and Sunday morning before he ran out of stain. He was told that two gallons would be plenty ... wrong. This was an all day job and he just kept putzing away at it.

Whit and I did inside work. I'm not going to post the final inside pictures until everything is done. I got my Mom's room completely cleaned out and the second bed moved back there. Whit got some of the border down from my Dad's room (which was quite a chore) and her Dad had to finish. It's going to take a long time to remove all those borders. My Mom put borders up in every room. UGH! A lot of trash got either burned or put to the curb this weekend. Things are finally headed in the right direction.

 

My sister came and got Mom's van to try to trade in for her new vehicle. It's to the point now where neither one of us want to mess around trying to sell a car. This seemed like the best option. I hope she can get enough out of it to make it worth while.

The sad part about this whole weekend was when two of the neighbors showed up to put "For Sale" signs on their cottages. We were told that it was because they wanted to be on the water (we are just off the lake with shared access). I'm not sure if that is the whole truth but no matter what, hopefully we get good neighbors again. I'm thinking that maybe my niece/nephew should get a second or third job so they can buy one of them and scoot over a little closer to us. That would be the nuts and berries!!!! I know it's not in their budget but a girl can dream can't she? Who wants to shout across a stranger's lawn to say "Good Morning" to their family? Not me! The way I see it, they could scoot over and we could have a 10' fire pit right between the houses. OK, maybe not 10', but at least a picnic table. I guess we will just have to wait and see what we get. Hopefully not this:

Tune in tomorrow to hear about Sunday date night. It was a good one!