Tree Hugging Hippy

My daughter has turned in to a tree hugger. Literally.

I blame TV. Every show seems to have an environmental slant to it these days. I bet that if GI Joe were on today, Duke and Hawk would be having discussions about to recycle all those blown up Dragonflies, and that they need to carpool to the base to reduce their carbon footprint.

And the Rest of the Time?

And what else have we been doing? In one word: Weddings. Kara and I had three weddings to go to in May. They ranged from extremely casual, to pretty darn formal. They were all fantastic and a lot of fun. Congratulations to all the newly married couples out there. We're wishing you the best.

And in a related note, my parents just celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary. I guess getting married on D-Day wasn't such a bad omen after all.

That's a Whole Lot of Gruetzmachers

On May 11, my brother and his family flew in from Serbia to come and visit us. I picked them up at the Raleigh airport after their flight was slightly delayed (darn you Icelandic ash cloud!). They came and stayed with us for about ten days and it was a great time. The weather however was not so great. When we were building the deck, the goal was to have it done before they arrived, and we beat that goal with just two days to spare. However, after the Gruetzmachers arrived, the weather turned south and we had a lot of cold/rainy days. Regardless, we had a great time.

The main highlight for Kasia was Aunt Susan. Despite the fact that Kasia spends every day with me, she has somehow turned out to be all girl. She loves painting her nails, playing dress up, and setting up Barbie's dollhouse. Needless to say, these are all things that I tolerate, but far from enjoy. So when Susan showed up and actually WANTED to play these things with her, Kasia was amazed. The Girls Only Club was immediately formed. This was followed up with the Purple Nails Club, and a slew of others.

While the girls were busy with that, we boys had a good time playing some video games and other, more boy things. Alex and Noah proved they are both very adept at the Nintendo, and by the end of the week, Noah was a pro at MarioKart and giving me a run for my money.

Then just as quickly as they arrived, they had to leave. Fortunately, we'll be seeing them in a couple of weeks when we make the long journey up to Chicago for a quick visit.

I Built A Deck (with a lot of help)

I know. Where have I been? Why don't I update this blog anymore? What have I been doing with my time? Well, for Kara's 29th birthday in April, I built her a deck. Technically my father-in-law and I built a deck, but since it's my house, I'm claiming all the credit.

Now I've never really built anything like this before. I think the extent of my wood working skills was watching my dad build my pinewood derby car in Indian Guides. So with that vast amount of experience under my belt, how hard could it be? You dig a few holes. Mix a little concrete. Screw some boards together, and voila, you have a deck.

Now if only the county's building inspector thought it was that easy.

But like I said, first we dug the holes. Many of them actually. 16 to be exact. 30 inches deep. Now, since doing that by hand would mean we would be working on this thing until Christmas, we rented a power auger. I naturally thought that would help things go easier. In theory, it might have, except for the fact that it didn't cut through the clay that is abundant in our yard very easily. It didn't help either that by the third hole, we got the auger stuck in the ground with now way to get it up (that's what she said).

Obviously, we got everything dug and ready to move on to step two. What was step two? I had no clue, but I was ready for it.

We put in some posts. We nailed beams together. We put in joists. Kasia was not having a good time. For two weeks, almost every day, she had to find new and different ways to entertain herself because I was unable to play with her. To make it worse, her best friend was knocked out with a really bad fever for almost the entire time we were working on the deck.

After we put on the deck boards and built the railing, we had something that pretty much resembles a deck. Now we have some really nice patio furniture that makes the deck actually usable. We've actually already entertained some friends and family on it. I'm too scared to have too many people on it at the same time because I'm just not that confident in my woodworking skills. Oh, and for the record, my car never did that great in the pinewood derby either. I'm just saying.