New Baby in the Family

Before (21 Sep 10 PM), After (22 Sep 7:30 AM) and Results.

Willow Emilie Livengood was born this morning at 5:25 AM Pacific Time. She weighed in at 7 lb, 13 oz and standing 20 in.

Jude and I arrived on Sunday night, there was a baby shower yesterday and a birth this AM. Not bad timing. Jude and I will be here at Carrie's house for another 2 1/2 weeks. More pictures to be posted later. I figure I will do that separate as that those who like baby pictures can enjoy and those who only look to be polite (like me) don't have to.

Carrie had the baby at home using a mid-wife.

Rob

Our New Home Pt 2

Let me continue and see if this goes any better. The gentleman running the Bobcat in the previous post is Ron Lillie. He is an Army friend through Amanda and Julius. While he was deployed his kids became our surrogate grandchildren. As a matter of fact, they came to meet us at the airport one time and when we were making the boat trip last year we visited them near Mobile, AL. Ron will finally be medically discharged from the Army at the end of the month and will be able to get back with his family. Ron was here to help build the deck over Memorial Day weekend. He put in over 24 hours during the 3 days running the equipment. Without his help, we would never have gotten this far with the project. Thanks again Ron. Anyway, here is the finished product.

Notice how that it is a pretty good distance to the neighbors house over the hot tub. Also notice the two white tables over the flower pots. The moose got one again last Saturday morning. The moose was on the deck. Our bedroom is the window closest to this end of the deck. You can also see how well the grass has come in and what the moose did to our flowers.

The deck and grass project was finished by the end of June. We began the month of July bringing Ron back out to the house to help me build Jude's Yarn Shop. We built an 8x14 foot for her yarn and knitting supplies. This project went faster and better than the deck as you can see in the following pictures.


Also here are a couple of pictures from around the house. Looking out the back, our lot goes half way to the street/tree line on the other side of the gravel pit. The gravel pit itself gets limited use. We have seen the owner takes gravel out only once this summer. The white chairs are at the campfire pit. The building is my workshop.

As Labor Day weekend is almost upon us, Ron is happy that we are out of projects and that he is heading home. Jude and I will be working putting people on the ships on Friday and we will be working in the Hotel on Monday putting people on their flights home. The birch trees have a yellow tint beginning to show as summer is beginning to come to a close.

I hope this gives you a little insight as to where we live.

Rob

Our New Home Pt 1

OK, some of you have been asking to see our place here in Wasilla, Alaska. First of all Sarah lives just down the street. Well, about 5 miles down the street and across the lake. Actually Wasilla is about 50 miles north of Anchorage. Wasilla is a town of about 6000. It is located in the 25,000 sq mile Matanuska-Susitna Borough. A Borough is similar to a county. We are about 20 miles from Palmer with a population of 4500 people. There are many housing projects and subdivisions that are close by that are not within either of the city limits. So I would guess the area has a population between 15,000-20,000.

We are 6 miles out of town and shopping which includes Home Depot, Lowe's, Fred Meyers, Target, Sportsman's Warehouse, Sears and Wal Mart. Of course there are numerous support businesses including some with unusual names.








We bought a simple 3 bedroom, one bath ranch, on a slab so no basement and no storage. We are still working on that issue. When we were looking, Jude took three steps into the house and that was the end of the looking process. The open kitchen/living room arrangement were the clinching items, especially for Jude.















I was please with the outside in the sense that we have never had this much property, 1.35 acres, and the neighbors are a good distance away. All of the lots in the neighborhood are at least an acre. We will never have anyone build in between us. But as with everything there are always surprises. We first looked at the house in March with a foot of snow on the ground. What I thought was 2-3 foot snow drifts turned out to be a yard that needed proper grading!

Jude and I had a sauna when we were in Canada but decided to switch to a hot tub here in Alaska. Since installing, we have used it every night at Happy Hour time. However we needed a place to put it. So the first project was to build a proper deck (12x32) off the back of the house. This turned into more than I had bargained for. First, it was actually to be 14 feet, but they do not sell 14 foot timber up here, so okay, we will go with 12 ft. Then I discovered that this deck could not simply be placed on blocks on the ground because of frost heaves. That meant footings that went down at least 4 feet.
But, becausee the hot tub was to sit on the deck that some of the footings would need a two foot diameter, one foot high base. Oh, did I mention that the "soil"






around here is a medium quality gravel, meaning sand and rocks that seem to be cemented together. Bring in the heavy equipment.















This post is giving me fits! I will publish and finish all later.