The steel posts were completed last Sunday.  Dad and Jim installed them while Mom went to Debbie's Garden Party!!  Men flee when there's a "hen party"!

We got our first load of wood!!  Everything for the subfloor!  Had another inch of rain this week so still have mud.  Temps are cool this weekend.

We've been having some chicken drama.  The three big girls are not happy about sharing their hen house with the two little girls.  The little girls are hogging the house and when the big girls go to lay there is too much commotion inside.  They like to sit quietly and meditate!  Egg production has been very low.  The little girls are too young (stupid) to let roam around the yard yet so they have to be caged in.  Hopefully they'll all become friends soon!  The blonde is definitely the lead chicken!

Dad and Jim are welding the brackets to the steel posts that get bolted to the basement floor and hold up the floor joists!

While leveling and compacting the final section of the garage footer on Sunday, we discovered that one section of the footer wasn't wide enough to correctly place the garage in line with the house.  So luckily Billy was visiting and we knocked down one side of the trench with picks and shovels to widen it.  Then on Monday, the foundation guys came and laid out the string lines and batter boards only to find that the other 3 sides of the trench also had to be widened.  We got it done this morning in the rain thinking they were coming to set up the footers, but they're not coming today!!!

This is my new toy 5 minutes after I got it.  They sure don't make them like they used to!

Today is my birthday!  One year old!  I got a new toy and for dinner I'm having some wet cat food!!  We thought the cat was dying so Dad bought her wet food hoping she would eat, but she didn't like it and she didn't die so I get it!  I love, love, love cat food!

We got DG leveled and tamped down for the garage footer.  The concrete guys were on another job this week, so not much progress here.  It's good to have more drying time for the garage area because some of it was excavated and filled.

Focused on mowing and yard clean up.  Going to work in the garden and the fencing project!

This picture shows the process we came up with for loading drainrock.  Two foot high lengths of plywood were laid along the wall with spacers put in to hold them in place.  The backhoe pushed dirt against the outside of the board.  Drainrock was dumped inside the boards and filter fabric along a shoot.  Then the boards were jacked up by hand another two feet and repeat!

The good news is that we finished on Friday!  Even had time to dig the trench for the garage footing!

My boyfriend, Bear, spent a couple days with us this week.  I was beside myself with excitement.  I'm not sure my flirtatious body-slams won him over in the end.