Wednesday, June 17, 2009

It's Beginning to Look a lot Like...

No, not Christmas...a house!
But, before I get into those pictures I should recap the week since I have been MIA! Thanks to a very moody computer, I can only get online when it wants me to. Most of the past week, it hasn't let me. We've had a couple of inches of rain and some really bad storms, which knocked out power for about 12 hours. Thank goodness for chicken house generators! The storms also blew the port-o-potty over, twice! Talk about a nice surprise for our house builders!
The pool has opened, but thanks to all the rain, it's still too cold to swim! My father in law finally shot the snapping turtle in the pond that he's been after for a while. It was so big, it wouldn't fit in a 5 gallon bucket. No wonder it was eating all of our fish.
I've had 2 flat tires on the lawmower, gotten stuck in a ditch on the 4 wheeler, and have seen a snake, twice. Now I don't know about y'all, but I am terrified of snakes. I was mowing at the chicken houses when I saw it the first time, panic and screaming followed, and I burned rubber all the way home. My father in law and Lance's Aunt Nell had to finish mowing for me. They never saw the snake again. Needless to say, I was a bit leery of mowing up there again, so on Monday, I made Lance do a pre-mowing snake check. It was all clear, so I was feeling a bit better. I was half way done and had stopped to talk to Lance, while he was filling a spray tank up. I started back mowing, turned the corner, poof! There it was!! Where did it come from? Does it hide from everybody but me?? Was it out to get me?? Screaming and panic sets in again, but this time I did not burn rubber because Lance was up there to save me. I parked a safe distance away facing the other direction and closed my eyes. I would've prefered to have been breaking a land speed record on the mower, but I stayed and pointed at the snake for Lance to see (I'm so brave). Of course there was nothing sharp and pointy for Lance to kill it with, so he had to beat it to death with a 2x4. It was a 4 ft long chicken snake, although, if you would've heard me scream, you might've thought it was an anaconda.
My parents are home from Alaska. They survived melting glaciers, volcanic eruptions, bad cell phone signals, eskimo kisses, and no sweet tea. Here's the 1,237, 985 pictures my mom took Alaska Pictures.
And last, but not least, we had a streaker. Now this wasn't just any streaker at 11:00 at night, it was Lance's Uncle Jim. To make a long story short, he locked himself out of his house, and had nothing but an old girl's bicycle to ride over and get a key. My mother in law answered the door, and there stood Jim, barefoot and in his underwear. I would've paid money for a picture.

Now, back to the house!

This is our garage.

Looking from the living room, into our bedroom.

This is where the fireplace and surrounding bookshelves will be in our living room. Behind that is 2 bedrooms, some closets, the hall, and a bathroom.

The kitchen. To the left is the guest bedroom and bathroom.

This will be the view from our back patio! It will look a lot better once we get rid of the burn piles, trash, and mud. (That green stuff is cotton!)
It's hard to tell what things look like in pictures because there's just wood everywhere, but I hope yall have enjoyed the tour anyways! Maybe it will not take me another week to do an update, but it all depends on my computer. If I haven't commented on some of yalls blog posts, its because most of the time, when I click on comment, it says "internet explorer cannot display this page". Now and then, I get lucky and it lets me comment. My computer and I are gonna have words. I may have to take it out behind the wood shed.

8 comments:

  1. I feel a drum roll coming on! Congrats! You are nearly done ... TTFN ~ Marydon

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  2. House is looking good, Steph. You'll really feel like it's a house when the roof goes on, and you actually step "inside". LOL

    Hang in there.

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  3. Word of computer advice Steph: FIREFOX!! We got totally fed-up with IE and switched this week-what an AWESOME difference. TRY IT-YOU'LL LIKE IT!

    House is looking like, well, A HOUSE! I can't believe you are that freaked out over seeing a snake.. Unless they kill your chickens, they are good to have around to kill rodents that eat your feed!

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  4. hi steph, when internet expl gives you that message, just back out with your arrow on the upper left corner and it should display. that does it to me all the time on some blogs. not sure why. sounds like a busy time you have had! what is a chicken snake? never heard of it before. sorry you do not like snakes...our black snakes are so nice and friendly. now copperheads and rattlers are a different story. i still shriek if i get surprised by a black snake but they just lay there and do nothing. never coil, never threatening. even the dogs do not mind them. and they are excellent for eating mice and supposedly keeping the copperheads away! (so they say around here). your view is so pretty from your house!

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  5. Thanks yall! A chicken snake is also known as a rat snake. Here's a description I found. Most are found in woodlands and around farm buildings. They hunt rats and mice and kill them by constriction. They also eat eggs, and some species raid poultry yards. Some hunt birds in trees and have the ventral scales keeled (ridged), for climbing. These rather large, nonvenomous, egg-laying snakes are normally slow and docile, but in self-defense they vibrate the tail, discharge a foul liquid from the anal gland, and strike from an upreared position.

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  6. that is interesting...we probably have those as i see that snake in the tree alot. maybe it is a rat snake? never knew about the vibration of the tail and the discharge..thanks for sharing!!!

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  7. We have some big chicken snakes around here (up to 7-8 feet long). Usually they slither on away. If they happen to be in the barn near the henhouse/eggs, I kill them. Don't want them eating my eggs or baby chicks plus the boys like to play in the stalls in the barn and I'm afraid if they stepped on one they would get bitten (they are nonvenomous but I bet it still hurts!) We also have copperheads. I killed a 35-inch one near our house last year and apparently the largest copperhead killed in this county was at our pond several years ago (before we lived here).

    The house is looking great Steph! Love the view!

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  8. Steph...would love to chat with you...am planning to move to Arkansas this summer and marry a chicken farmer....I'm a SoCal girl...not sure what I'm really in for. Definitely don't like snakes either. Email me sheryl_315@excite.com.

    Sheryl

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