a year ago.....

Last year we were up north running around in shorts. This year  I'm huddled at home, 2 inches of snow last night covers all the mud.

I would take the shorts and warm weather any day.

bathroom sink

Finally got the picture downloaded but this is the new bathroom sink. HD had a great price and it was time for a sink. We got the pex run to the pump room and need to hook up the lines for water. Next trip or two we will have running water and then we will add the hot water tank for the house.

March 8 2013

Three day weekend AND decent weather as well!!! Ben started showing interest in video making so we brought the camera and took a quick video.

We got a bathroom sink at the HD and spent Saturday installing it. We tried to get the water running but we broke a fitting and so no running water. Temps are not supposed to be above freezing this week so no biggee.

Feb 9-10 camping in the cold

We only went up 2 times in January, not much happened, no pics and usually a one day trip. Too cold, too depressing- go figure that out.

Hank working hard on the drive north. Don't try this at home, professional stunt dog!!!

Temps at 5AM were -12 degrees(as in minus-negative)
according to the folks at Garrett's. So by 10AM we hit a whopping 15 degrees. At least it was positive. We had the woodstove working and the kerosene heater on high to help warm it up.

By early afternoon it was popping 80 and actually got to 90 degrees before we went to bed. Kids were running around barefoot and lightly clothed. Whole house was feeling warm. Sat up on night watch and kept fire going till 2am, then kinda was too sleepy to reload it and fire went out. Temps had dropped into 50's by 5am.

Silly picture of these two goofs. Hunter was on couch and Hank on floor till I pulled out camera and then they both switched spots. Goofy dudes. They look sad cause I just told them we had to get going before the ice/rain started.

Dec. 15-16

Well cool but not cold, kinda wet, typical Michigan weather in winter....

This is the bedroom floor. Had originally planned on installing the door but the price was higher than I recalled so we passed on that. But the great HD had some flooring on sale and wow I like. It is called scraped hickory. Once we figured out how to install it, it flew into place. We have one small piece to fix in the subfloor and then the last pieces can go in. Been working to finish this room ( mental health reasons) so we hung the drywall and started planning out how to finish up the ceiling and such.

We definitely want to add an exhaust fan to pull the smoke out when you open the woodstove door. 

I'll hunt around town for a door and see if I can beat the price from up there.

December

Well we have been visiting each weekend this month, no pictures to share. Keep the woodstove going and the place is real comfortable. Have been working slowly on electrical stuff, finished up the bedroom. Working on flooring in bedroom Dec. 16th. We got reasonable temps so even in the morning it is not too hard to warm up the place.

Basically running through the supplies we bought and using them up as cash got REAL tight this fall. Kids having fun so we are muddling through.

Ben figured out paper airplanes fly off the loft real nice......

Thanksgiving 2012 "when winter begins"

Well quite the storm blew in from Canada for Thanksgiving. We arrived on Friday afternoon and hurried to make a fire and warm up the place. The next day we awoke to snow, reports were up to 8 inches just north of the lake, we got 3 inches of snow but it was piled up with the wind. We kept the fire going all night, thanks the night watch....

The vapor barrier REALLY knocks the wind out, it was blowing like crazy and we did not feel it inside, even though the insulation is minimal.