WAY BEHIND

We've been doing so much lately that I haven’t taken the time to write a new blog posting.  At the end of August, we volunteered to help out in the kitchen at The Pines Bible camp near Grand Forks.  We worked for 2 mornings putting in about 5 hours of work.  Stuart made soups from scratch both days, cooked multiple trays of bacon, diced bread for croutons and helped out with a variety of jobs.  I made salads the first day and made puffed wheat squares and apple crisp the second day.  We were feeding about 75 kids plus the staff and volunteer workers.  It was great fun and we met some very nice people.

Back at home, we finally got around to sanding and refinishing our front and back decks.  We rented a big floor sander and spent a couple of hours getting most of the old finish off and smoothing down some rough areas.  We had already prepared the surface by screwing in or replacing screws that were sticking up out of the boards so the sanding job went well.  We were also able to use the sander on the steps which was a bonus.

Once the sanding was done, we started staining and that went quickly as well.  We completed both decks in a couple of hours so the whole job was done in one day.  The weather was good when we did the job and we didn’t get rain for at least 24 hours after completion.  It sure looks nice now.

Stuart has been viewing videos on how to replace a single board in a hardwood floor and decided to try out the process in our bedroom.  We had one board with a fairly big gouge in it so he used the techniques he learned to replace it.  First, he had to cut lines in the board with a skill saw and then pull/chip the old board out.  Next, he had to prepare the replacement board by cutting off the bottom part of the tongue section of the tongue and groove board and then fit it into place.  He glued the board down and it looks good.

We’ve been playing golf more often this month but not as much pickleball.  There is a renovation project going on at our church so we’ve been spending one or two days a week helping out with that.  The first jobs were in the basement doing demolition work, removing drywall and walls and pulling up carpet.  Very messy work.  Now we’re moving on to framing the inside of the exterior concrete walls, adding insulation and drywalling the ceilings.  We have hired contractors for the electrical, heating and air conditioning, etc. and there are other volunteers, but it is a big undertaking.  We expect to be working at it until we leave for Arizona at the end of October and the work will likely continue on into December.

The garden is still doing well and we’ve been giving away lots of tomatoes lately.  We picked our biggest acorn squash and cooked it last week.  Yummy.