THE Wall

JD's big house project for some time has been THE WALL. The wall is actually four walls, with the largest going from the front, along the side and wraps around the back of the house. JD ran out of bricks and had to order another 500; it is likely that he will have to place one more order. The wall is on break now so that he can get the footers in for the future deck as well as the wiring for the electricity to be run. After the breaker boxes are up, the siders can come and finish the last wall. Then the wall will get a bit higher, but lifting the 60 pound blocks is easy compared to the digging, leveling and graveling.

Here's the front (obviously) where the one wall starts. The first is way up by the actual house and the second is between the second and third garage doors.

 

Here's wall three and four running along the side; there had to be two because each one can only have so many feet of dirt exposed, etc, so they have to stair step.

This is the back where the side walls just kept on running.

I guess we will plant bushes along the area between the walls; it has the potential of being very pretty.

Up close picture of a wall built by a bit of a "building perfectionist". He's a pro with the level. Since the heat index is over 100 today, it's good that the major wall work is done!

                                                                                                      Jenny

On the Coasts

JD has joined the west coast kids, and today treated them to a tour of the Midway. The Midway is one of the first (maybe the absolute first and I should know this...) ships JD was stationed on, in Japan, and has now been turned into a museum in San Diego. JD likes to visit it (over and over and over), and while none of the rest of us are interested in seeing the same ship multiple times, there are enough of us that he still has new people to tour every now and then.  

Since there are no floating museums in our area of Virginia, we gathered some friends, put on our cow spots and headed to Chick Fil A for some free eating. Dress like a cow day has become part of our summer tradition and contrary to Selah's look, we all had a good time!

                                                                                                                  Jenny

A Bit More San Francisco

Here are a few more shots of San Francisco. This was the view from our hotel downtown. It was only three blocks to Chinatown, so we headed there several times.
 

  
Here's the world famous Golden Gate Bridge, which does have a barely visible golden gate under it on one side.

  
We saw a lot of the city and surrounding area. Recognize this shot from the old TV show "Full House"?

I have always been interested in real estate; it must stem from my mother toting me around to open houses as a child. I started looking at their housing market. Check out these houses - nothing like a 3 bedroom, ONE bath little house for $525,000. Downtown, you couldn't even get a rundown town house for under 600,000. 

 Want to live in Sausalito? It's considered the Beverly Hills of San Francisco. These houses were wild. They are built on about four levels of the hill overlooking the Bay and Alcatraz. The top has a road behind them and the bottom has a road in front, but the middle layers seem to only to reachable by steep stairs or these elevators that run up the side of the mountain. Can you imagine moving? Or just buying a couch? Oh, and they cost about 10 million. (I'm yet to figure out what the tens of thousands of people do for a living that can afford the housing market there.)

 Our last day we headed out of the city to Muir Woods, a redwood forest. The pictures don't really portray the true grandeur of the place.
 

  
I really liked this quote from John Muir -
 

 We really enjoyed our time away.
 

San Francisco

We just returned from our trip to San Francisco last night. I feel about it much like I do New York City - nice place to visit, but I'd never want to live there. San Francisco is much more crowded and pricey than even San Diego. I was especially impressed with the fee of $57 a day to park a car at the hotel!

The city was beautiful and we really enjoyed seeing as much of it as our time allowed.  

Not a bad picture for a phone!

Nice of this gull to land for the photo

The reason we went was for the commissioning of the new amphibious landing, helicopter attack ship, the USS AMERICA.  I had never attended a commissioning before this one and it is a really big deal. The AMERICA is home to 1,000 Sailors and can also accommodate an additional 1,700 Marines. It is impressive to say the least.

 We attended some functions there that were work related for JD.

 Two of them were rather formal.

We covered many tourist spots in San Francisco, but my favorite was Alcatraz. We had to get up at 4 a.m. to be in line by 5 a.m. to get one of the only 100 available same-day tickets; otherwise they are sold out weeks in advance.  It was an awesome tour and has some fascinating history. It actually has an interesting history as a war post in the Civil War and military prison before it was converted to a federal maximum security prison.

  
Another interesting piece of information is that the American Indians claimed it in 1971 as "their" land. President Nixon allowed them to remain in possession of the island for about 19 months until they burnt down the warden's house and the light-house that was still in use. Why they would want to live in an old prison with no plumbing, water or electricity is beyond me, but the marks from their time is still there. 

We did an extensive audio tour that even walked through the few attempted escapes, including one successful one until they probably drowned trying to swim the bay. 

This is the closest that I want to experience a prison!

  
Especially the solitary cells in the dark!

 A few more sights tomorrow -

Birthday and Baby News

 So, the new pets are awaiting their post in order to bring much more important news! Yesterday, JD had a major birthday - one of those birthdays that change your decade. I won't say what it is, other than I am in my forties and he isn't anymore. He is blessed to look younger than his years and still doesn't have any grey hair.

 Today we got the exciting news that the grand-baby on the way is.... a sweet little boy. It's really the pattern of JD's family - a baby boy comes first followed by a few girls. We had taken a family tally of who thought what and Elijah was pretty impressed to be on the winning side and find out that it's a boy. He will enjoy having a boy added to the minority in the family. 

Now all we want is for the baby and his parents to move to the east coast!

With A Sad Heart

I'm blogs behind, but it is with a sad heart that I post that JD's mother unexpectedly passed away yesterday. While she had several months of health crisises after chemotherapy, she has been in good and stable health for quite some time. She was rushed to the emergency room the evening of April 30th due to difficulty breathing and she never regained consciousness. After we received the call that she had been resuscitated twice in the ambulance, JD drove all night to get there. Now I am gathering the children and heading up for the funeral. Gabriel and Alayna are flying in from San Diego and the rest of the kids are driving up with me early Sunday morning. All of her 21 grandchildren will be attending the funeral.

JD and his mom - Dec. 2013

Grandma with several of the grandkids

 While we are dealing with the news of losing JD's mom, we have also been met with two other challenges. One is dealing with a child, so it will never make the blog; the other will surface post-funeral, but we would appreciate prayers for our family in the meantime!

BIG BIG Saturday

 Sometimes all of the big events hit at once and that is what happened at our house today. JD had to make an early morning building plans trip to the Amish and then be back to host a church men's event - "Beans and Bullets" at our house. I had to drive to town early to help Alyssa and her friend Jordan set up for a community yard sale towards their fast-approaching mission trips. I then had to leave before that was over to come home and get the boys to a 2:00 soccer game. Alei was sceduled to go sky-diving today because it was her only weekend off for a number of weeks. In the end, Aunt Deb cancelled her plans to spend the night here because JD, Alei, Alyssa and I all had to leave for three different locations before 6:30 a.m. 

Funny I didn't get pictures of the yard sale, but thankfully it was a success. Alyssa made about $170 towards her remaining $1500 needed. 

When I made it home, I was thrilled to see how many men turned out for the men's event. Our driveway was lined on both sides with cars most of the long way down - I think every one of the 60 RSVPs showed up.

  
The guys shot several kinds of weapons for hours and broke for super yummy pulled pork. I arrived home in time for the food.

 
Lest you be concerned about safety, it was very well covered! JD even had the local sheriffs in on it!

 Aunt Deb took the little guys to the playground at the Y during the morning shooting time. By afternoon shooting, I just let them play the Wii downstairs; except for Julia who totally hung out in the food zone sunbathing.

 My adventuresome daughter, Alei, was off a few counties away on her first sky-diving venture with her friend, Allie. (In case any readers have been wondering how to pronounce Alei's name - it is pronounced the same as her friend, Allie.) So, they are Alei and Allie. The deal with the sky diving is that Alei payed two deposits for her and Gabriel as his wedding present last July. Then it rained the weekend they were supposed to go...and he got married and headed to Florida and then moved to California. So, Alei has waited for almost a year to find a buddy that would go with her. 

The girls had to jump tandem, of course, so Alei was paired with this experienced jumper.

  
After all the talking and training, they were off - 

 

(These pictures were taken from the picture DVD that she left on the table without her permission.)

 I don't have a bucket list, I don't know why but I found the whole idea rather  annoying, BUT if I did have a bucket list - sky diving would NOT be on there. I guess I'm thankful my kids didn't inherit my fear of heights. (Or as Alei tells me, I don't really have a fear of heights, just of falling.) Either way, NO THANK YOU!
I had a good time at the yard sale!