Miscellaneous images

I'm posting three pictures that are unrelated except that they all have something to do with my life. The first one is our grandson, Martin, who has been busy with a new activity: a special needs cheerleading squad. The picture here was from his first big competition. His hair is actually red, that's not a glitch in the computer image. For an autistic kid, he is quite a ham on the stage! He worried about "not winning" but he did really well, thanks to his "cheering buddy". There are some young men and women who are experienced in these cheerleading routines who sit in front of the stage giving cues to each of the members of the special needs team then will actually go up on the stage when needed for support on lifts or other potentially risky maneuvers. It's wonderful to see these kids succeeding at what they do! This next picture is partly to show two of my cute grandchildren but more to try to show the creativity of my children. Russ and I are blessed with 4, and one adopted, and one from Argentina who lived with us as an exchange student, children who are intelligent, capable, and willing to make a good effort. Lisa made this "Optimus Prime" Halloween costume for Aaron. You can't really see the amazing paint job very well in this picture but Russ and I were quite impressed with the quality of this costume. We're proud that our kids have followed in our tradition of trying to do something more creative than purchasing the cheap pajama-like department store Halloween costumes.
This last picture is the fenced-in northwest corner of our 1/2 acre lot. You can see how close our backyard neighbors are. This area will hopefully be a wonderful vegetable garden next summer. That is, if the trees don't shade it too much. Angela and Lisa did a lot of work to start cleaning out the years of growth crowded into it then Ammon spent many hours finishing clearing out the roots and stumps and remaining vines. True to the nature of city living, we also found countless pieces of trash here including broken toys, chip bags, candy wrappers, broken glass, pieces of wire and wood, cans, and on and on. Russ and I are looking forward to some day living away from people who don't seem to care about cleanliness and order.

More progress and changes

Our son Ammon's family has been living with us for several months now. During the time they have been here their family was increased by the birth of our 15th grandchild who holds our family record for the smallest baby- and she wasn't even early! Anyway, Ammon moved here hoping to better his career. He has gotten a good job with a subsidiary of Johnson&Johnson in Cincinnati. He has been commuting for about a month now. Victoria found out about an incredible deal in an apartment closer to Ammon's work so rather suddenly, they will be moving. This big old house will be empty without the sound of our giggling young grandsons and the newborn cry of their sister. We are excited for them to be in a place of their own sooner than expected so they can have their own stuff. After spending a year with our "stuff" in storage, we can truly empathize with feeling like a permanent visitor.
Russ and I got the insulation done under the kitchen. It was nice to walk into the kitchen barefoot in the morning and not have the floor be uncomfortably cool. Also, the water came out of the kitchen tap hot much more quickly. The job wasn't too long or uncomfortable but I did take a shower immediately afterward. I'm just not a fan of cobwebs in my hair, dirt all over my back and knees, and fiberglass everywhere on me! Now all we have left to do of the really dirty type work is to clean out the ceiling of the third floor and insulate that. We have windows to cover, too, but that won't be dirty...........just expensive.

More winterizing

This is a picture of the south side of the house, the side on the driveway. The windows at the top are both new replacement windows that Russ put in. You probably can't see it in this picture but the corner near the downspout and behind the gutter had been pretty well chewed away by the fuzzy-tailed rodents (squirrels) that live in abundance here. Russ had to wrap the corner with aluminum which should be more difficult for their busy little teeth to penetrate! It was the areas at the base of the roof and behind the gutters all around the house that I crawled into to clean out years of accumulated bedding and animal droppings. The little bit of roofline you can see at the bottom left of the picture is the kitchen. I have posted pictures of the transformation of that room earlier. At the beginning, there was just an open porch on the back of the house. Later it was closed in and made into a kitchen. We're thinking seriously that this house is older than the approximate 1920 building date we were given. I intend to do some research. If anybody has any advice as to how to go about doing research on the age of a home a century old, please let me know.
The picture below shows the inside of the back wall on the third floor where we have been adding insulation. Since the lower two floors of the house have exterior walls consisting of three layers of brick, we can't do anything reasonable to insulate them. However, the third floor front and back has walls we can insulate. We still need to do the top of the ceiling of the third floor and under the kitchen floor. That should do it for insulating.

Getting ready for winter

I'm including an old picture of the way the house looked when we first bought it. It's difficult to see details in a small image on the computer but you can see we now have new windows on the third floor, cleaned up and replaced windows in the door and the big window on the porch.
In this side view of the house, you can see new replacement windows on the right, first and second floor. The windows on the left are in the staircases and are more unusual windows so we will eventually make storms for them. For this year we may just have to put plastic over them. We haven't had snow yet but we're pushing into cold weather and getting tired a little bit. We'll see. We still have some insulating to finish and the two front big windows on the second floor need something for the winter, too. They're too big for any conventional storms.

I'm still here

Apparently blogspot is having trouble with the photo posting application. I have tried several times in the last couple of days to post pictures with no success. We are currently continuing to work on preparations for winter. We have the top floor nearly all insulated and we have either replaced full window units or added storms to most of the windows.
We made it through Halloween okay. This was our first Halloween in a "city" and we were concerned about possible pranks. We had a dozen or so trick-or-treaters, mostly small children with adults or older siblings accompanying them. They came on the evening before the 31st on what is called around here "beggars night". It is the publicly announced night for trick-or-treaters to make their rounds and they even designate hours, 6-8. That was nice so that you don't get people ringing your doorbell at 10 when you are headed for bed! Our little church branch had a trunk-or-treat in the parking lot of our building downtown on the night when we had a branch party and chili cook-off. Ammon was the only judge and did a great job!