Hi everyone. It's me, Mitch.
Guess what I have in my mouth?
Did you guess right?
I took a bite of my apple, picked it up and we're continuing on our morning walkie.
This is the corner of our property where the big tree came down. We have a new pole and all that's left of the big tree is the stump. The workers have been working hard!
This neighbor of ours has 2 Labbie girls - one black and one chocolate. His Labs are littermates and we run into them often on our walkies. Irene made this tree fall on his garage. He said it was an easy fall with no damage! WHEW!
Who the heck are you? Want to join us for walkies?
Our neighbors, Chris and Heather, lost their tree that was uprooted by Irene. Luckily, it didn't do any damage. It landed on their stone wall. So many of our neighbors have enough firewood to take them through the winter!
Things are getting back to normal at our house. The yard is pretty much cleaned up and mom and dad are back on the project clapboarding! Yup, we're supervising and doing a great job!
We are back! A tree took our power out on Sunday morning at 3:45 AM and we just got it back late last night.
The worst part of Irene was going out to pee and poo and having to come back inside soaking wet! We told mom we needed her to hold an umbrella over us while we did our business but she only laughed at us and told us that Irene would only blow the umbrella inside out and we'd get just as wet!
This telephone pole is on our property and it was our tree that snapped from the wind and tore down the power lines.
Another tree came down at the other end of our street and took down those power lines too. Falling trees and downed power lines were the biggest problem for hoomans in our area.
Yesterday we cleaned most of the leaves and sticks from the storm. Leaves and sticks are down EVERYWHERE!
Mom's wisteria got damaged and this time the pruning saw came out. :-(
We did have a generator so our refrigerator did stay cold and we did have water and we had pizza 3 times so how tough did we have it?!
At one point, I needed eggs and veges made for my dindin so we borrowed dad's hotplate from his workshop. It took a whole lot longer for water to boil but beggers can't be choosers, right?
We were listening constantly to our battery-powered radio to stay updated and we did have our lemon meringue pie candle going.
We feel so fortunate that all we lost was tree limbs and a couple of lilac trees. So many others didn't fare as well as we did and so many others are still without power! Our thoughts and prayers go out to all of those affected.
Please be patient with us as we make the blogging rounds. We are anxious to see what we've missed these last few days!
We have so many red tomatoes in our vege garden that they're going to go to waste so mom decided to fill a basket and make fresh tomato sauce!
They're having a boiling hot bath so their skins will split and mom can remove them.
Now we just have to wait for them to cool and off come those skins.
Some people just chuck the whole tomato in a blender. They don't mind the skins and seeds but mom isn't a big fan of the skin in her fresh sauce.
All set to make the sauce.
We sauteed about 1/4 of an onion in olive oil till it was nice and then added our tomatoe paste.
Now to squish the tomatoes and add to the paste-onion mixture.
We added some salt and pepper and sugar and Italian seasonings.
It's beginning to smell delicious!
Time for dindin!
Mom and dad finally got the windows in on our project! We are praying that Irene is kind to us!
We are crossing our paws that all of our friends in Irene's way will be safe!
Today is our friend, Wyatt's birthday! He's three! We'll be spending our day at the Wyatt County Fair with him and having a great time eating all kinds of fAire foods that mom would NEVER let us have and we'll be going on the ferris wheel and the rollie coaster and having the time of our lives!
I picked flowers from our garden early this morning and have entered them in hopes that my arrangement will get me a pretty ribbon!
And I have an entry in the quilts and crafts. This is the Dale runner that's on our kitchen table. I sure hope it takes a ribbon too!
And Mitch has entered his most perfect apples hoping to snag a blue ribbon!
We are ready to pawty with Wyatt and Stanzie!
Hope to see you at the fAire!
We snagged a picture from cousin Trish of our dad and Jeff at the barn raising. Jeff is the owner of this beautiful building.
This is the barn at the end of Saturday. The timber framers are fast workers and they do beautiful work!
And this is the end of day #2, which was this past Sunday. Afterwards was the huge barn pawty. Dad said that the chicken and pulled pork was fabulous!
Dad left early this morning because he's the man in charge. Mom took us for walkies and left an hour later taking cookies with her. She did share one with us before she left! yeaaaaaaa
That's our dad in the red bandana. They're preparing to raise the first bent. A bent consists of 3 posts and a tie beam and hurricane braces.
This is the director's chair that Jeff and his wife Marsha presented to our dad. Dad never sits down at a raising but if he needs to, he has his very own personal chair! He also has a voice that booms so we're not sure about the megaphone!
OOPS, the video should be before this photo because this picture shows that the first bent is already up.
This is bent #1 going up!
And this is bent #2 going up.
See what we mean about our dads booming voice!
This is bent #3 being shuffled into place.
There isn't enough room on the foundation to work with 4 bents all at once, so two are placed on the foundation and raised and the other two are off in the grass all built and ready to go and when they're needed, the timber framers carry them up on deck one at a time.
There is also not enough room to lift these guys into their permanent home in one shot, so they are raised and then carefully shuffled into place
Mom took a peak in Jeff and Marsha's family room at the clock that everyone was talking about. Wow! What a cool clock!
And check out this cake that timber framer, Katie made. What a talented girl! They aren't actually going to cut into that work of art, are they?
Mom did bring us a pressie. A hat! We were sorta hoping for edibles, mom!
Tonight is the first barn pawty and this is the bottle that will be presented to Jeff and Marsha!
Barn raisings are a lot of fun! We wish we could have gone to this one. We hear that pizza is on the menu for tonight!
