Awana Wacky Hair Night!

J loves awawa.. but it's kinda hard to do 'wacky hair' when you haven't got much of it! Mrs. T had some colored hair spray and so we made him a red headed boy! His vest is missing the green patch that says Hangglider... I need to sew it on. Speed sew did NOT work.. bummer. I hate to stitch. :) 

Washing it out! We had to do it a couple of times as the color really stuck! I think the water in the background is cool! 

~A Little GIRL 4 Year Old Birthday!~

This week when we got together with the T's for our weekly Friday afternoon we hit on a little girl birthday!! Mrs T had planned a mini party for E and got all the kids to make her a card as well! 

 Working on the card! Mrs T has all kinds of crafty stuff!! Here she's giving out stickers, princesses for the girls and Mickey Mouse for the boys!

The end result! An AWESOME Rainbow Birthday card! 

 The Birthday Girl making part of the rainbow! Miss T looking on! The skirt E is wearing is from Miss T and she loves it and HAD to wear it to go see T's!!

Mrs. T made cupcakes and served them with candy's and (missing from the picture) homemade chocolate chunk ice cream I made the night before! YUM!!

Weekend Project. Day 7!

This wall needs 3 more levels of bales on the very top and it's completely finished. This is the wall that is right next to the trailer. That white door leads into the trailer.

the back door area is almost finished. That large open space on the left is waiting for a window and then we can finish it off.

The outside wall. Both windows are in. The second one, farther away in the picture, needs a few supports before I can bale around it. I love the wide window sills.

The front half is almost completely done!! There is that little bit between the window and door on the front to do and some high ones on the left! Papa is using a bale needle here to make that bale a bit smaller! I stacked most of the bales in the walls as he was busy with windows and doors. We are already talking about doing some things different with the other side of the house. Window and door frames will be finished bit by bit first and then we'll concentrate on bale walls. Windows and doors take FOREVER!! :) Bales are super fast. 

Putting his re-tied bale in.

Got the bale in and is stuffing the crack between the window and door with loose straw! It looks like Papa doesn't have any days off, besides Sundays for a couple of weeks so building will be kept to evenings. We are heading out to the city to get ceiling materials tomorrow (kid less, Thanks Mom.) as that is the next big part of our project. The days are getting too cold to stucco the outside of the addition but we are planning on stuccoing the inside as well. The ceiling will be simple insulation and 4x4 finished plywood sheets and should go fairly fast. There are several little things that Papa and I can do in the evenings, like the door windows and hardware, bringing more bales home, the floor, wiring. Hopefully they will go smoothly and we'll be using this area soon. I miss my wood heat and washer and dryer :) Out of the 100 bales we had at home we use all but about 17. 

Day 7 was a great day for visitors as well. The whole T family showed up in two installments :) My mom brought us supper and stayed for a bit to see the work. Thanks Mom. My sister and brother in law stopped in with their two little girls and we had a nice visit! 

Hokey Pokey!

The 7 children and Mrs. T doing the hokey pokey in our kitchen! They had a BLAST!! R didn't quite 'get' it so I didn't get a lot of pictures as I was helping her! She caught on right at the end. I think this ones a keeper and we'll surely be doing it again! 

My God is SO BIG!!!

Friday afternoon we got together with the T's and sang some songs and did some other fun stuff. Here is a short movie of J and Little Miss T showing their siblings how to do the actions for the song, 'My God is SO Big!' We also sang the hokey pokey and turned all about :) After I finished taping (they didn't know I was :) We sang it faster and faster until no one could keep up!

Weekend Project. The End of Day 6!

It's starting to look like a building and not just a mess of wood and straw! You can see most of it in this picture. The bales fit nicely around the poles and the poles keep them in place. The one corner with out a pole has rebar chunks thru it to keep it pinned together better. 

The front wall!! Window and door are in place and bales surround most of it. I need to make mini bales for the gap between the window and door. At this point I was doing, and had done, most of the bales while Papa worked on doors and windows and all things wood. He did help me get a few high bales up. But I also had a couple of buckets that I used stacked together to give me some height. 

Inside view. Papa swept the floor and boy did that ever change the look! Straw covered the floor before.. Actually straw is everywhere at this point! *STILL IS!! :) 

The back corner. The wood stove you see will be in that corner. 

Weekend Project. Day 6!

The door to the trailer half surrounded by walls :) Waiting on a window box for the window into the trailer. That window will be removed and will help with heating the trailer. The woodstove will go in the corner right by that piece of flashing (tin) and a fan in the middle of the room to move heat around.

It was a beautiful day, the sun shone all day! The kids had a blast helping and playing outside. Here is the start of a frame for the front window. At this point there was a 2 course layer of bales around the whole thing!

The back door! In and waiting for a window on the left side. 

Papa monkeying around, he's actually screwing the header to the window frame.. squared up and ready to roll!! 

L and E pulling a bale with the sticks Papa made them. J and L did a LOT of work too.. pulling bales, pushing bales off the floor on the other side so we could bring them over, picking up sticks and garbage and keeping the fire going. J took this picture and these next few pictures.

L goofing off for the camera.

E goofing off for the camera! He took one of R too but she was too close it was blurry and he wasn't happy with it.

The kids wagon doing bale duty! 4 bales fits nicely! And it's easy to pull!! 

Weekend Project. Day 5!

Started out with SNOW!! I walked into the kitchen and did a serious double take when I looked out the windows! Papa thought that was VERY FUNNY!  It melted by noon and we're all grateful! It's too early to have snow!

The side wall.. in progress..it got taken up and down a bit while we figured things out. Big Mr T surprised us and showed up to help that afternoon! He and Papa put the back door in and made a box for the dryer vent. They also had to 'fix' the front wall so the door would open and close. This next picture is of the front wall.. they took it apart and re built it at least 6 times.

I didn't take pictures that night when we were done. Sorry I forgot. But the back door was in and their was a couple of half walls done. They even got Big Mr. T's vans lights working :) 

Weekend Project. Day 4!

Papa had 5 days off in a row because of a work training session and we are taking the time to build build build!! The 1st day off was Sunday and we took it off and had a Party :) This pictures are from the middle about of day 4. Papa started at the door into the trailer and worked his way around the whole thing placing 4X4's 17 inches apart as a base for the straw bale walls and putting doors in. Doors take forever! In the top picture you can see the two front doors just about done and the 4X4's in the corner.. the 2 bales we were using for measuring depth. I put wood filler on the cracks in the floor when ever Papa didn't need help! 

This is as far as we got on the back door that night. We ran out of straight 2 by 12's and it just was not working so we quit for the night. But the 4X4's all got cut and only 2 needed to be glued, but the door had to go in first so we had to leave them till day 5. You can see the new door leaning up against the pole in the background. 

Here is the front view! There is a 3 foot (about) deck on the front. 

Here is the front wall and part of the side wall. The black bag is insulation from the old addition that we are using for between the 4x4's under the bales. You can see my dryer plug in all done there in the wall. All in all it was a good day. The doors TOOK FOREVER!!! They ended up working on them the next day as well as the bales squished them and made them really hard to open and close.. so they had to support the doors better.