Building also Brings Blog-less-ness

November and December were no doubt busy months with a trip to SD for Thanksgiving, a birthday celebration for Cody and hosting the family Christmas here at home, then a trip to Roseau for the Dunham side Christmas celebration! However, somewhere in all that free time...HA!...we also started some work in our barn.

For those of you who have been reading my blog site for a while you know we have been piecing together our barn little by little. We met our goal this last fall by installing indoor lighting just before the daylight savings change brought extra hours of darkness. We have been thankful for each little completed project and it has been fun to see the barn come together more and more.

Stalls and a tack room have been on our wish list for 'sometime in the future'. However, this fall we were gifted some money to get started immediately. So, off to Menards we went for a trailer load of lumber. My mother offered one full weekend of babysitting in December so we could have a marathon building weekend. Well, we needed to scramble before then to get the post holes dug before the ground froze and get some of the framing up, in order to make the most of our time on that weekend. As soon as Cody was tucked in for the night Grady and I would head out to the barn, baby monitor in hand, and build away!

Both of us enjoy working on building projects and enjoy working with each other. MOST of the time we are good partners and make a great team. We each have had different building experiences in the past so it has been fun to bring our ideas and knowledge together and watch the fruits of our labor as the stalls and tack room began to take shape. We were also trying to race the clock as certain things needed to get done before the weather got colder. We found ourselves up many a late nights, considering we usually didn't get started until 8:30 p.m. at the EARLIEST!

We managed to get all the preliminary work done that we needed to in order to benefit the most from our marathon weekend while my mother was babysitting. That weekend we had bitter cold winds so I was very THANKFUL for a closed barn AND my insulated Carhart bibs! After 2 full, long days of building we had Cody's birthday party that Sunday night! Whew what a whirlwind!!

Well, we have had to take a little break from our building project during the holiday festivities and the record COLD temperatures. Somehow, building in -35 below zero (that is not windchill!!) just doesn't sound all the fun! We have nearly completed the stalls, (they are usuable at this point) and gotten all the walls up for the tack room. Hopefully, now that we have a little warmer weather (yes even 10 degrees seems WARM..today is a tropical 20!) we can get back out there and finish off the tack room. It will be so nice to have our saddles in the barn instead of in the house, or garage, or whatever random place they end up. I'll post more pics when it is complete. In the meantime here's a little glimpse of our work:

Thanks a bunch for the gifts Mom and Dad (and Grandpa)!

Busy-ness Brings Blog-less-ness!

Ok, so I'm rather behind in blogging!! It isn't because I have nothing to share, but rather that typical busy-ness of the holiday season along with parenting a toddler has made it hard to find time to sit down and get my pictures uploaded to the computer. I'm sure there is at least ONE of you out there that can relate in some way (ha, ALL of you, probably)!

So, first things first, in case my son reads this someday and wonders why I seemed to just skip right past his birthday. Cody, you were not forgotten, and we DID celebrate and there ARE pictures to document it! Your first birthday was a very SPECIAL day (more like week) celebrating the birth of a VERY SPECIAL little boy who is LOVED dearly!! You are such a blessing from God.

So, almost one month has slipped by since Cody's birthday. I have FINALLY posted pictures below of the little birthday party we had for him. We celebrated a few days early since my parents were here visiting then, and the inclement weather forced them to head back to the cities earlier than expected. On his actual birthday we made a trip with the trailer to get a load of hay for the horses. Woo-hoo BIG party! HA! This, I'm sure will be the last year we can get away with that! Hay will probably not continue to be on his birthday wish list. HOWEVER, I imagine some future birthday we could again be hooking up the trailer to pick up a special something that we are HOPING will someday be on his wish list...a PONY! For now, a stick horse, rocking horse, and oversized stuffed horse will do!!