Jobs around the house

Just want to document that I did these and remind myself that when I have a job around the house, most of the time it is KT who is doing the heavy lifting by taking the kids while I'm doing it, so nice work with these jobs KT!

We're trying to make our home temperature more manageable while still using the little window AC units that we have.  Our house is actually pretty nice, but the sun makes it into our big windows between 2 and 4 in the afternoon and really heats things up.  We've gotten pretty good about closing up the blinds during this time, but our little corner windows don't have any coverings, so we still get a bunch of heat in.  We got some quotes for some blinds there, but they are all in the multi-thousands of dollars.  We decided to give window tinting a try.  We got some tint at HD, and it took me about 1/2 of a Saturday to put this up.  Now that I've done it though, I bet I could speed this up big time.  Luckily, the windows are high enough that you can't really see what a poor job I did.  Next time, I would buy a squeegee.   So it is ok: not the solution everything, but when you touch carpet that is in direct sunlight, it is not hot.  And you can see through it just fine other times.  In total, I'd call this one a B-.

The other job I've been doing is installing a ceiling under the deck.  I'm sick of not being able to park my car because of bikes, so we thought that rather than building a new structure, we would just waterproof the space under the deck.  We got these panels at Lowes and I put them up.  The hardest thing was getting the slope right and working under a deck where I can stand straight up.  I clocked my head a few times.  You can't see in this picture, but I put up a gutter at the end to catch the rain as it comes down.  It's pretty good, but now I need to make the ground flat and possibly put pavers down.  It'll be a lot of work, because the ground is super rocky.  If I were to do it again, I would find someone to help me hang the panels.  Some of them aren't exactly straight because I had to make my own little jigs to be able to hold the panels up there.  Bottom line is that there is now a dry space to put bikes!

Scout Camp

Just got back from scout camp in Sharon, VT.  We had a great time: I took T and A, even though A is underage:).  We attended the "trail to first class" course the entire time, and learned a lot of useful things from Br. Bosen, our kilt-wearing expert!  Some highlights:

Red Efts were all over the place: I think we found 18 or 19 of them.  Really cool!

We spent a lot of time making fires, because what scout doesn't love making fires.  We used flint and steel, lighters, etc.  We worked on fresh fires, making fires from coals, and then we had the opportunity to work on making a fire in the rain thanks to Br. Worthington, who teaches survival classes around the US.  I'll never look at fire-making the same again!

Finally, we went on a 5-mile hike the last day.  We had lunch on Patriarch Hill, overlooking the Joseph Smith memorial.  We visited the Visitors Center and had a nice run-through by the missionaries there, then ended at a nearby lake (a pond out here, but really a lake) where the boys waded in the water and tried to catch fish.  We learned all about New England forests, how to spot signs of old roads, old farm fields, etc.  It's really amazing how most of these areas were totally clear cut for farming at one point, but are very dense forests now.  The farms were largely abandoned around the industrial revolution, and the minerals and climate just encouraged massive re-forestation.  Even our yard has pretty clear signs of being clear cut at one point.  Hopefully this will work with the rain forests too someday.

One of the fun things for me was meeting all of the leaders, mostly from the Vermont Stakes.  Really nice people, and I was ready to move to Vermont and start tapping my trees to make maple syrup by the end of the camp.