Busy Framing and Doing Life

It has been busy around here. I have not been to the jobsite much. Ray and the boys have been working nights and weekends since it all began. Presently, they have the upstairs built and are about to begin the 3rd floor. I have not even seen it to this stage.



I spent all last week running around town dropping children at Ballet and Bugs classes. It was drop off at one end of town at 9:30, other end of town at 10:30, back at 11:30, and then back to the other end at 12:00 for pickup. In between these drops which are 15 minutes drive apart, I had to do all kinds of building errands. So it was busy. And another week of summer shot by.

This has been a weird summer. I didn't spend any time at the beach, but we did go to two camps for adoptive families. The rest of the time I had kids at summer camp and then day camps. The weather has really looked like winter. The sky is full of smoke so we have had barely any sunshine, and it has gotten cool. Thankfully, last night it rained for the first time in a long time. It was an answer to prayer. This fire season has been one of the worst ever. Two days ago, I heard that in our province we had 253 fires burning! In our area there are fires threatening some bigger towns and people are on evacuation alert. We have friends in the nearest town that is watching to be sure the fire doesn't jump the river and get close to where they live!

When we tried to buy construction insurance for our new house we had a hard time getting it. Only one company would insure us and that was only if we were 50 km from the nearest fire. We are 60 km! As it was, they charged us $2900 for 8 months! That is nearly 4 times the amount of normal construction insurance. By the time they found us a company I was just thankful that *someone* would insure us!

The little boys have picked up the slack for the older workers. Briton and Cooper have picked up Cassidy's evening chores, since he is at the jobsite most evenings. They clean the downstairs bathroom, tidy, and clean up the laundry room and the two entry rooms. It is quite cute to see as Briton takes his bathroom cleaning very seriously. Raine could not believe that Briton was doing the bathroom solo. She was quite impressed. She and Savannah clean the girls' bathroom, but they are older. Cooper is also a hard worker.

Briton the Bathroom Cleaner

Cooper the Floors and Entry

Austin the Dish Man

Austin has picked up from his older brother, Dane. Dane does the dinner dishes, and Austin makes breakfast and then does breakfast cleanup. But now that Dane is working so hard, Austin works with me to do the dinner cleanup.

I will get out to the jobsite soon and take some pictures. I know the house is coming along nicely. The boys and Ray have worked extraordinarily hard. They really haven't had any time off since it all began in the middle of July. So this weekend was nice because Dane left on the Greyhound bus for a Missions Trip Reunion in a town 3 hours from where we live. He was to be gone from Thursday through Sunday, so that was a great break for him.

Then Colt left on Friday morning, driving to his girlfriend's Cadet Camp. The last time he saw her was about three weeks ago, when he took off one morning at 6:00 am and drove three hours to see her at the Cadet Summer Camp, spent the entire day with her, and then drove home late that night. He was home by 1:00 am and arrived at work on time the next day! Crazy.

This time will not be as easy. She does not have a day off. He called to tell me that he sat in the office waiting for her to get off for a few minutes, just to see her. She finally got off when he was talking to me on the phone. He hung up quickly, stole his minutes with her and that was that. He called me back to tell me what it was like. She came in the office and they were allowed no physical contact, so he couldn't give her a hug. They had *sixteen minutes* to talk and then she had to go back to her duties!

Later that night, after she got off work, he was able to chat with her through the fence. Him on one side, her on the other. That is what love is all about! *smile*

She was going to be getting out of Cadet Camp the following morning, but was going to be driving back to her town (another 7 hours in the opposite direction) at 11:00 am. Not a lot of time to see each other. So they made a quick decision that he would drive home with her mum and spend til Tuesday visiting her and his old friends, jump on the bus and catch the bus back to his car at the Cadet Camp, and then drive home from there. He should be home Tuesday night.

I have no idea how he will cope when he goes off to school and is 11 hours from her. It will be a long school year! He has 16 months ahead of him with only 2 weeks for summer and 10 days for Christmas!

And then Cassidy and the younger five and I took off for a couple days. We headed to a northern town in our province. There was going to be Pure NRG concert and the tickets were only $10 each! It was being put on by a church, and they kept the price low so the neighbourhood kids could see the concert and learn what these teens were all about. The message they sing about is their love of the Lord. They sing about purity and faith. They have been singing together since they were 10, 10, and 12, and they are now 15, 15, and 17. This is their last concert as they are going on to do different things. The music is amazing and even my seventeen year old son totally loved their initial CD named Pure NRG. You would never know they were so young.



We knew they were going to sign autographs, so we got in line right away and were the second in a long row of nearly 400 people. And then I asked about photos and they hadn't even organized that yet, so they used our family as the starting point for the photos with the group. How cool was that!



It has been a busy and fun summer and I am SO not ready for school! I haven't even begun school planning. I jokingly told a friend the other day, "I'm not even sure if I'm doing school this year." She panicked, but you have to understand, she is a traditional school teacher and to her, school is books at a desk.

To me, school is: building houses: math, language, PE, life skills etc; nature studies: learning about animals, sketching them, identifying what they are; reading piles of *good quality* living books; playing chess; art classes; learning to play the guitar, drum lessons; rhythmic gymnastics; skiing; self made projects: Cassidy and Cooper are presently painting a bookshelf that they found in a garage sale; memorizing Bible verses: as in 100 or more in a matter of months; cooking meals and baking: science, math, reading, social studies: cultural foods; and the list goes on.

I suppose I might possibly pick up a text or two. But seriously, most of it can be learned through real-life and that is the best way. It sticks the best and children enjoy learning that way.

So let the learning continue...
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