Building a better Waterfall.

It was time to replace my water fall box that I had built back in 2000. It was done out of galvanized guttering but still rusted over the years and I was starting to loose water from it. The pump I have been running the waterfall with finally gave up after 8 years of continuous use. I would say that was pretty good.

I already had bought my new water fall pump off EBay for a great price, but had been thinking of redoing my setup someway to make it last longer. When I came across this at Lowes. Two sheets of glass, 3/8 of an inch think by16 inches by 48 inches for $5.00 each and the plastic parts were $0.75 per pack what a steal. This will be my new waterfall.

You can see I epoxed the plastic pieces in and used black expansion foam for ponds on the sides.

This is the workhorse of the project a 10,000 gallon an hour Torpedo pump, Sweet! Coke can for size comparison.

This is the size pipe I had to put in to control that much water. I will hide them with rocks after I make sure it is going to work for a couple of days.

This is the look I gave Lori when she told me to smile like I was about to get lucky. She, after taking the photo told me nobody would get lucky with that dorky look on their face, try again.

This is better I guess?

We are still waiting for a SN referal, best guess sometime around December or January.
Glen

Happy Birthday to Annie, Brandon, And Me!

All three of us have our birthday this month, For Brandon’s birthday he wanted snow crab and a big cookie. We gave Annie hers before she left, and I needed a pump for my pond so that is what I got.
We have also made two recycling bins for the garbage men to pickup. The city wanted us to rent the recycling bins from them can you believe that! Now that is going to get people to start recycle charge them an extra fee for it. We made our own, just our way of sticking it to the man, Ha.
Annie go’s for her visa in just 5 days we are all looking forward to her return so she can start Collage. I miss her so much, but I hope she is making the most of the short time she has with her parents and grand parents in China. We hope to be able to visit Annie’s parents and grand parent’s when we go to china next year. When I last talked to her she was studying hard for the SAT’s so she can apply to a different collage more geared towards Med schooling after her first semester or year.
Good luck Annie we love you, miss you, and will see you soon.
Glen

Biggest baby boom since 1957!

http://gmy.news.yahoo.com/v/8869871/abc/20080718/av_abc_wnt/_goodmorningyahoo_abc080717_wn_baby_boom

Anyone ealse seen alot of babies Around? More babies were born in the U.S. last year then any time in history. The new U.S. baby boom.

Glen

New Roof, digging my own grave, & harvest time.

Lori and I think our house looks so good with our new roof on it. We paid to up grade from 20 year to 35 year architectural shingles and it was sooooo worth it, they update the house a lot. Besides it was just $345.00 to upgrade so after 20 years have passed we

still will have 15 more years to go on the roof. $345.00 divided by 15 is $23.00 dollars a year. Sound investment if you ask me, looks wonderful too.


It is like a before and after pic, left side looks good!
I try, for the most part, to do all the work on our house. #1 because I’m cheap, not cheap like I don’t tip, that's just rude, but cheap like if I do it myself I can also do this project and this one and this one… with the money I would have spent on getting the first one done by someone else. #2 because even though I haven’t been blessed with the best spelling in the world I can build just about anything from a photo. #3 because I’m still cheap.
I knew that I could do our roof myself but I also knew that it would take me over a week to strip it off and redo it. Which brings me to #4 I don’t like it when it rains inside in my house!
They did a fantastic job. 6 roofers showed up at 3:00 PM and started by 8:00 PM they had the back done and half of the front. The next day they started at 7:00AM and got done with the roof by 10:00AM. So it took 6 highly skilled roofers one day to do my roof. It would have definitely taken me over a week, at least.
So it was one project I was happy to let it go; besides I had another big project underway.

Lori and I have been thinking of putting in rain barrels for some time, to be able to water the yard and fill/top off the pond in the summer when the water evaporates out of it. We do already have a small 88 gallon water collection sistine at the back of the yard that we pump the spring/rain water that collects under our house into to water the yard and fill the decorative fountain with but it is not enough to keep us from using what we consider a lot of city water.
We plan on expanding the garden next year so we are going to need to set something up to cut down on our water usage. Nothing will eat up your water money like having to se all city water. So I got two 275 gallon water tanks ( they were bought used )to collect rain water in and found just the right spot in the yard for them and proceeded to dig one BIG hole. I had to go down another two feet form the photo above.
Lori thought that a normal person would rent a backhoe for the job, no no too costly I can dig it myself and with the money I saved from not renting the backhoe I can put gutters on the house. I vaguely remember someone saying something about me having two back surgeries and that renting a backhoe was alot cheaper that spending another $75,000.00 on surgery. I can’t remember I was up to my neck in red clay at the time. Did I mention I was cheap?

Awwwww! tanks are in

The box is to catch rain water coming across the yard, the pipe coming out the right side goes down into the right tank then also fills the left tank threw a pipe at the bottom,(water find its own level so both tanks will fill and drain at the same time). The short pipe on the left side of the box will connect to the gutters once we put them up. The pipe to the left will be cut off lower and plummed to the back fence so that when I put in a shallow well pump ($99.00) we will have 550 gallons of water on a regular basis to water with.
All back to normal. The black square is covering the water intake box for now until all of the sticky red clay that was dug up washes out of the surrounding gravel.


We harvested most of our corn & onions, packaged them up in freezer bags for yummy eats later. I am very pleased with the gardening experience this year.

Glen

Busy, Busy, Busy

Vegas had enough on July 4th. There had been storms all day (he REALLY doesn't like storms), then to top it all off there were fireworks all night which sound suprisingly like thunder. Since Brandon had his bedroom door closed last night Vegas found a pair of Brandons pj bottoms under the sink in Brandon's bathroom and settled down for the duration.

The lilly pads in the pond are starting to bloom. The blooms on them open up early in the day and then close when the sun gets to be to much for them. They almost look fake.

The garden is really starting to produce. We were able to harvest this whole sink full of veggies recently. I apparently need to plant three times as many green beans next year because we eat them as fast as we can harvest them, leaving nothing to save for winter. The tomatoes are still not producing yet but they have started to grow more foliage and are flowering so I'm hopeful that they will kick it into high gear. The bell peppers are starting to ripen and the basil is taking over the bed that it is in.

Our cat is huge, old, cranky and can be extremely attention seeking. Anytime that Lori lays down in bed to read he comes flying in there and flops down on top of her book and then gives her this look (above) when she shoves him over so she can see the page.

Yes, she does have two books open ( one on the bed and one standing up behind the bed). She usually has at least 2 books going at all times. All though I don't know how she can stand to read in such close proximity to cat butt.

Lori took a mental health day a while back and got Brandon out of the house and to the driving range over by our house to hit a bucket of balls. He did very well and was consistently hitting them out to the 200 mark.

All of his buddies will be over at the house AGAIN this weekend for what we loving refer to as "Geek Night" (they come and play games unitl the wee early hours). Then tomorrow after church Lori's Mom and Dad are coming over for lunch and to visit. I am busy out back digging a huge hole (pictures to come later) to sink two large containers in that will collect rainwater from the gutter system for use in the yard, filling the pond, and washing the cars. It will be yet another busy weekend for all of us.

On the Road

(Yes, I know this is sideways. I got tired of trying to correct it so just tilt your head.)

Well after getting up at 5am getting everything left over together and packed and Robbie fed some breakfast they were able to leave our house at around 5:45. Of course it was raining and storming the morning they left. As you can probably tell from the pictures Robbie was a bit confused as to why his day had start so early. Amanda and Robbie made it after a 13 hour drive to meet up with Robbies dad/Amandas husband at around midnight. It was very fitting that they were able to arrive by Fathers Day. Amanda said that the trip went well and Robbie was a trooper. It was quite an extended drive for a brand new driver who just got her license a few days before they left. We are thankful that they made it safely and can now start setting up their household as a family.

Roof and Garden

The garden is doing well, except for the tomatoes, they just aren't producing like they should be. We have been using produce out of it on almost a daily basis. There are several things that we will plant more of next year, like onions and green beans. Lori had sauteed sugar snaps at a resturant the other day and would like to try growing those next year as well.

The water plant in the koi pond has put out four blooms this year that are about the size of an adults hand. They are beautiful but they only last for a few days.

We had another severe storm move through about 2 or 3 weeks ago that damaged the roof quite a bit. We had to call out the insurance people and are now in the process of getting a new roof. So for now there is lots of plastic all over the back of the roof. Beautiful, isn't it.

So where are we now?

We are in the best place we can be for now. We see progress with the SN adoptions through our agency and now there is a calm that has come over me like never before. After years of such uncertainty I now feel like we will get a referral sometime close to the end of this year, the beginning of next. Lori would have to talk me off the ledge every time referrals would come out for NSN and they would only get through 3 or 4 days in a month. We have been dreaming of Norah since December of 2005! Once we finally got excepted into the SN program, there has never been second thoughts about our choice. We continue to study up on the different SN and there requirements/treatments and watch for updates from our agency. We got finger printed back in January, and we just sent in our updated home study a couple of weeks ago so we will see if waiting to send in our home study update pays off or not, I think it will. This way hopefully it will be good until we get our referral and travel to meet our sweet girl, or wild child depending on her personality.

We continue to be Gingers sponsors and send her care packages and are awaiting another letter she wrote us. We are so blessed to get photos and letters from her, she is a wonderful child and we like doing things to make her happy.

Speaking of wonderful children, Annie is to come back to go to university here at least for the first semester. We were so excited to get the news that she will be coming back. I hope nothing changes from now until the start of school. As long as she can get her visa to return to the U.S. we will see her soon. We would like to highly recommend being a host family to an exchange student and may do it again after the adoption at some point due to the positive experience that we have had.

Brandon got into a charter school that is done mostly online. He is looking forward to that and we hope that the independent study will be something that really clicks with his personality. He also is looking for a summer job at this time.

My niece and her son Robbie have been visiting us for a little while. She has bought a car and will be heading out soon to go be with her husband. He is in training for the army now and will be so glad to see them when they get there. We have had to be very careful with what is left on the floor as Robbie has become super mobile since he arrived and is trying to put EVERYTHING in his mouth. We have purchased a few things to make it easier on them. A portable crib, a highchair that attaches to one of the kitchen chairs, and a swing that we hung in the tree out back. All of the items have gotten much use and the portable crib and highchair will go with them to their new place. The swing will stay here for Norah.

We had another storm blow through and tear some shingles off of the house. It was bad enough that we are going to have to have the roof replaced. I am hoping to get that done by the end of this month. We also lost some corn but will still have a bumper crop. All our vegetables are doing good and producing lots of food.

We have expanded our garden to include; three lemon trees, two lime trees, three orange trees, a banana tree, and an avocado all of these are in pots that can be transported into the garage during the winter to ensure their survival. Also three peach trees, a fig (that one was already there, Lori planted it 3 years ago and it has really started to produce), and a nectarine tree. There will be no scurvy around here!

So that is where we are today.