Lanikai Underway

We have had another busy two weeks both working on our new home and enjoying time at the Brill’s.

We have accomplished most of what we hoped to get done on our new house before we head back to Lanikai and the warm southern Mexican waters.

We moved one of the carport supports and removed another, adding a nice beam for strength.  That gave us added width for parking the car and allowed us to create a nice patio out of the rest of the covered area.  Next summer it is in the plans to concrete the floor of the patio area.

We accomplished much indoors as well.  We removed a coat closet from the dining room giving Doreen space for a new Hoosier cabinet.  We also converted the closets in Bill’s office and Doreen’s sewing room into shelves.  The addition of two new heaters with external thermostats will help to keep the house warm this winter.

We celebrated Jacob’s Birthday with angel-food cake and strawberries.  One of Grandmother’s favorite foods and Jacob’s too.  Jacob is all excited when he opens his birthday gifts of money as now he has enough money to purchase his own computer.  Grandpa Gord and Jacob got online and ordered one that very evening.

Doug had a fishing trip planned for the Wednesday before Bill and I were to leave for Montana, but when he went to pull the boat out of the garage the wheels on the trailer were locked up.  It took most of the day and some heavy prying to get the problem solved.

Bill and I left for Montana on Thursday August 25 to spend a week with Doreen’s parents.  The time here has been much more relaxing with few projects to do, than the last few weeks at home.  We leave Saturday to make the drive home with two stops along the way.

Tillamook’s fair was held the end of this week and we attended two days.  Bill took Nicolas to the fair on Thursday and they spent much of the time just checking out the many tractors.  They did take several breaks from the tractors for ice cream and elephant ears and to check out the snakes.

Then on Friday, Emily, Gretchen and Doreen spent several hours serving the Tillamook Ice Cream from the 4-H  booth.

After they finished their shift at the ice cream booth, Bill showed up and we spent some time checking out the fair exhibits until time for the Pig&Ford races – which are a blast to watch.  Stripped down model T Fords are raced with the interesting addition that large youngish pigs are hand-carried by the drivers.  The racers line up the vehicles and turn them off.  At the gun they run across the track on foot to gather a pig from the pen located there.  It is then off to the vehicles to give them a good crank and hope for a quick start.  Then around the track they go with the pig held under their arm.  Returning to the pen area they have to stop the vehicle, exchange the pig for another and make a second lap and then a third lap exchanging pigs at each pass of the pen.  Great fun to watch and it looks like the participants were enjoying it as well.

After the fair the four of us went out to dinner as no one was interested in cooking and we were filled up on “fair food”, so we were looking for a good meal.

A new home and dry weather here in Tillamook accounts for a very busy time for Bill and I.

Soon after Emily’s Birthday celebration was over we headed east again for a week in The Dalles.  We drove over to help our friends Tedd and Rymmel Lovell with their big yard sale, but had plenty of time to visit with Doreen’s sisters as well.  When we arrived at the Lovell’s, Tedd’s folks had just been moved in to the house the week before.  His dad (91) is failing and his mom had broken her arm, so living alone was no longer an option for them.  We had some excitement with Tedd’s dad having another heart attach at the hospital, but also enjoyed some real nice visits with his mother.  Sold lots and lots of stuff at the yard sale, but I got first choice at things and came home with some pots and pans for the kitchen, mixing bowls, towels and lots of other goodies for our still almost empty home.

We arrived home to find that the Brills were taking advantage of the nice weather (and Doug’s weekend off work) to get going on their roofing project.  Wednesday, July 27,  I joined Gretchen and the children to start removing the old roofing from the house.  Gretchen’s friend Heather showed up with four strong boys to help out, and help they did.  We almost got the entire roof cleaned off and hauled 4 loads to the dump, leaving the last load in the truck for the next day.

Thursday we took a little break and all went up the Wilson River to enjoy a day in the water and the sun.

Friday it was back to work again.  Doug was off work so he and Gretchen finished cleaning the old shingles off the roof  and started construction of the large porch cover pop-out in the front.  Bill and I drove into Portland to the nearest Home Depot to pick up supplies and electrical goodies that we needed for work on our new home as well.  Saturday and Sunday were long busy days as the new roof started to make its appearance.  Jeff, Heather’s husband and a professional roofer, did a beautiful job of attaching the new shingles.  Doug worked on his porch cover framing with lots of help from Jeffery (Heather’s son and one of Emily’s friends).  With Jeffery’s and Bill’s help we got it up and attached nicely to the main roof structure.  The back half was all roofed and tar paper covered the front by Sunday evening when we all gave up.

Tuesday Gretchen brought the two children over to our house to help dig my trench for moving the water faucet out of the carport area and into the back yard.  We ran into a big problem when we discovered that the old galvanized pipe (that we had hoped to simply cap off) was dripping.  We then dug lots along the sidewalk and the workshop area looking for the pipe at its entrance to the car port.  We eventually gave up and called a plumber.  A very nice plumber showed up on his lunch break to check things out.  Thinking that he had found the pipe under the house, he cut it and capped it for us – but it turned out to be just another stray unused pipe under this old house!  He discovered a second pipe in a similar location and returned yesterday on his lunch break to cap that one off.  All is well now, at least with the house water.  We are still trenching for the new lines to the yard though.

Wednesday was the big fishing day.  Doug has taken extra shifts at work to help pay for the roof and Wednesday was the only day he has off this week.  The weatherman gave a good report for calm seas offshore so Doug decided that today would be the day for the family to go tuna fishing and I went along as well.  It took three hours to get out to the fishing grounds (about 40 miles off shore) and then we hit the jackpot.  In just over an hour we had two ice chests almost full with 14 fish onboard!  Most of the time when we got a hit of one fish there were others hitting the other rods.  Several of the fish got off, thankfully, but we usually ended up landing two at the same time from the four rods that we had out in the water – and once we got three on board at the same time!  With 14 fish in the ice chest, Doug started to think about the work of cleaning and processing them upon our return, so we headed for home – another 2 hour ride.

There were lots of birds and fairly flat seas on the return and I even saw two dolphins that surfaced near the boat, but they went down and did not come up for the others to get a look at them.  When we got home Emily got the inside and outside of the boat cleaned of all the fish blood and salt.  Doug got to cleaning the fish and Gretchen into packaging the meat for the freezer.  I cleaned out the “new” old freezer that Gretchen and I had picked up for $50 at the local ReStore on Tuesday.  We got it moved into position (after moving their older small freezer out of the way) and plugged it in.  We left it to cool down overnight, keeping the smaller freezer working as well.  About half of the fish was frozen and the rest Gretchen and I packed into jars to process in the pressure canner.  We ended up canning almost 100 half-pints of tuna, half with jalapeno peppers and half with garlic.  I left Gretchen with the first canner loads still having a half hour to go and the second loads in the refrigerator to wait for processing in the morning.

While we were canning, Heather and Jeff showed up to work on the roof.  They got going and only took a short break for dinner.  When Bill and I left at 8:30pm Jeff was still shooting nails into shingles, so we do not know how far they got – but much progress was being made as Jeff is a very fast roofer.

New shingles go on the back side of the roof and the porch roof construction works its way off the front.

Everyone landed fish and then it was a long ride home again.

Granddaughter Emily’s birthday on July 15 coincided with the opening of the final Harry Potter movie.  Grandpa and I thought that going into Portland to watch the movie in 3-D would be a treat so we picked up tickets long ago for the show.  We left here at 9:30PM with Emily and a group of her friends(her mom was thankfully with us too).  We drove the almost-two-hours to the theater in a van that Gretchen had borrowed from a friend.  When we arrived there were lines and lines of people waiting to get into the theater.  Our tickets were for one of the early after midnight showings, so after checking the lines and discovering no spot for us we walked into the theater and Bill convinced them to let us in.  The show was great and needs at least another viewing or two to catch everything that was happening on screen.

We did not get home after dropping off most of Emily’s friends, and picking up our car at the Brill’s, until 5AM.  Bill and I both slept in quite late in the morning as we needed to be bright and cheery in the late afternoon for the family Birthday celebration.  Most of the Brill side of the family showed up and we enjoyed a nice dinner with them while sitting by their fire outside… well, until the rains came again.  Today had been one of the first dry days in awhile and it just could not stay dry all day here.  Finally late in the evening Doug’s sister and family made it thru the traffic and arrived.

By then there was enough water falling from the sky that the festivities had moved inside.

Emily received her specially decorated cake with not quite enough candles (yet!) to be a fire hazard, maybe in a few more years.

The cake and ice cream was enjoyed by all the children and the adults as well.

A sleepy Emily then opened her gifts.  The big box contained a fancy hanging light from her sister.  The blue globe was actually constructed by Alexa as well.  All in all it was a fun – although very long – day and hopefully one that brought joy to one of our special granddaughters.

Last Wednesday we got the keys to our first house in 15 years.  It is a nice older home near the downtown area of Tillamook and, although it is not very large, it sure seems spacious compared to Lanikai - which we have called home for the last 15 years.

Living on the boat that long has left us with little furniture (or even household items) but some came with the house, and a big shopping trip to the local Fred Meyer’s gave us more of the essentials.

After two nights sleeping on the floor, Bill purchased the material and constructed a bed platform for our new mattress.  We bought one of the “memory foam” mattresses and so far we think it is great.

The inside is quite livable now and we have started work on the outside.  Bill spent two long and hard days removing a large wheelchair ramp to the back door that blocked the direct passage from the workshop from the house.  Now we are digging fence post holes to separate out two stalls of the three stall carport so that we have an outdoor undercover sitting area.  It rains enough here that the cover will be nice.  The car can still be under cover in the third stall.