Whittling and such

We went to the zoo on Wednesday with some of the neighbors and unbeknownst to me, Luke had put a corkscrew in his pocket before we left. I didn't know he had it until he pulled it out to whittle with it. He's carving a piece of soft pretzel into a model of the zoo. I did make him keep it in his pocket when we were in crowds.

Luke and I spent a good part of the day today dismantling my half of the closet, moving stuff into the attic and organizing. We have to have all the contents of the house packed and moved into either the attic or garage by Oct 4th. I figured today was as good a day as any to get started since I wanted to stay home today. We have a long ways to go but it's good to get a headstart.

The house - It just occurred to me that anyone else who bought this house would have considered it a tear down. I always thought it had such potential. The siding is done on the back and the shingles are going up. Erik (the contractor) hopes to have the back completely finished by Wednesday. That means I have lots of scraping, priming and painting to do. Thankfully Lauren, Luke's babysitter, is back from vacation and will be here Monday and hopefully Wednesday.

A neighbor came by and said she grew up in the neighborhood and even back then the house was "a shack". She said she has really enjoyed seeing someone finally fix it up. She was in her mid-late 70's, he father is 99. The house is 86 years old so even when it was new it wasn't taken care of.

Luke and Randy have a busy weekend ahead, or not. The Maritime Festival is this year which means the Tacoma Rail Open House, Boat building for kids and lots of fun. And he's also signed up for the Lowe's Build and Grow workshop tomorrow. AND he's been talking about wanting to go to Kitsap Steamers forever and it runs tomorrow. The Steamers also runs twice in September so that may have to wait.