Yea! The doors fit! 

Sunset view from our future house...lovely! 

Fantastic progress for one weekend! 

Full moon...beautiful night 

The peanut gallery 

Getting it just right 

Hanging around 

Voila! 

Starting the roof 

Family enjoying the comfort of the tepee 

The final wall to be raised 

One down...three to go 

Siding the wall 

The first wall 

Contained campfire in the tepee 

Enjoying a beer on our new shed floor 

Our good luck omen 

Shed floor finished in a jiff! 

Delivery truck 

June 9-11, 2006

Wow! What a weekend! My brother-in-law, Rick, offered to come up this weekend to help us build a shed on our land. This would be our second project on the land (the tepee being the first) and our first real construction project. My brother-in-law is a home improvement guru and thoroughly enjoys such projects. He built a really nice shed at his house that was pretty impressive handy work. He made the back side of it into a finished playhouse for my nieces complete with carpet, lights, windows, an address and even a doorbell. We knew he was the man for the job. He planned out everything for us last weekend and we managed to coordinate ordering all of the supplies here locally within the week.

Rick and family arrived late in the afternoon on Friday with a trailer full of tools. All Kirk and I had to provide were the supplies to build the shed and the generator to run Rick’s tools. What a deal! My sister and I drove the 20 miles into town to pick up the generator for the weekend. We arrived back around 5:30pm and to no surprise the work had already begun. With all of Rick’s power tools, the guys had the shed floor done in no time and were enjoying beers on the “deck” watching the sunset. The 6 of us spent our very first night in the tepee together…. a slumber party! Kirk set up the campfire that our friends gave us for a wedding present in the middle of the tepee. They discovered that if you fill an old pressure cooker with paraffin wax and coiled corrugated cardboard it makes a great contained campfire that you put out with the lid. The campfire lit up the entire tepee from the inside and out while putting off enough heat to warm us up. We were all in good spirits and enjoyed the evening in the comfort of the tepee.

Saturday morning my sister and I fixed breakfast while Kirk and Rick went to work. My parents arrived in the afternoon to enjoy the weekend with us as well. We invited them up so we could help them celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary. Pretty amazing! Later that afternoon Kirk’s parents came up as well. All the guys pitched in with building the shed and by the end of the evening they had all 4 walls up and had started on the roof. We enjoyed a big family dinner that was prepared in our outdoor kitchen. At the end of the evening after the sun went down, my parents left with Kirk’s parents to stay at their house in town.

Sunday morning we got up and did it all again. Kirk and Rick went to work on the shed while Shelly and I made breakfast. Then Shelly and I drove to town to pick up my mom and take the kids to the park. The whole wham bam family met back up at our land in the afternoon to watch the guys finish putting on the galvanized roof. They made some amazing progress for one weekend. All Kirk and I have left to do is make the doors and put on the trim. I was sad to see everyone leave since I enjoyed their company so much, but Kirk and I were looking forward to spending our first night alone in the tepee. The whole evening I sat outside until the sun set taking in the quiet beauty of my surroundings. I feel so blessed to be living in such an amazing place….don't pinch me....I don’t want to wake up from this dream...

Thanks to my family…especially Rick…for all the help on the shed! It was a successful weekend and we’re very pleased with our new shed. We can’t wait to put it to use!

June 7, 2006

Kirk participated in the Clear Creek Challenge this past Saturday which was a run, pedal, paddle otherwise known as a multisport race which consisted of a 5 mile run, a 20 mile mountain bike ride and a 12 mile kayak run. The race started at Loveland Basin and ended in Idaho Springs. Kirk placed 2nd in the solo men's division and 5th overall. He would have placed first except he didn't realize that his drain plug wasn't closed before hopping in the kayak and had to pull over at one point to dump the water out of his kayak. In the meantime, the guy behind him passed Kirk and won the race. Kirk was disappointed since he had about a five minute lead in both the run and bike portion and gave it up due to this mishap. However, I'm really proud of him for doing so well as it was. He won a bunch of great prizes and was overall pretty happy about his performance. If you want to see some of the photos from the kayaking portion of the race go to:
http://www.rapidimagephoto.com/mp_client/pictures.asp?pagenum=27&action=viewphotos&size=fullsize&id=1242570&eventid=16240
and check out photos 21-27.