Decking the Yard

Early Saturday morning - the cement truck came to visit us.

The excitement in the house was reverberating mostly off the stairs as

little feet jumped up and down trying to follow the action.

The "cement man" loading up the wheelbarrows.
The men had 20 minutes to unload the cement.
The children kindly stood at the door letting
everyone how much time they had left.
They didn't seem to notice that
the men were ignoring their
hyper vigilance.

Brother Mitchell was a huge help - he's got muscles,
which we needed. I remember when he was born - sigh...


A bird's eye view of Mitchell and our messy yard.

Will already brought one load of wood to the dump.

Dad leveling the cement once it was poured in the forms.

Will and his Dad have always worked really well together.

I guess it's partly from all those sailing trips that required mutual respect and responsibility.

I love watching them.

At one point Matthew yelled "That's team work!!"

Mitchell too, just fit right in with the "team work".


And of course we can not forget the supporting cast who

were delegated roles "behind the scenes".

The wooden forms after the cement was poured.

It's hard to smile while pushing a cement laden wheelbarrow but he managed.

The "cement man" filling up another wheelbarrow.

The cement in the "sono" tubes. One learns so much when building a deck.

Did I know anything about footings and sono tubes before? Nope!

Dad filling the sono tubes.

At the end, we had two sono tubes to fill and only one wheelbarrow left.

It's neat what you can do to fill every corner - turns out we had exactly the right amount

but not before there was some sweating about it!!!

These are the "saddles" that fit on top of the footing. I guess it could also be called a

"bracing". I am using quotations because I don't know if those are the correct terms or not.

So that's where we are today. It will take a week for the cement to completely dry and then we get to start building. It's down hill from here, as far as I'm concerned. Yippee!!

Like anything in life, building the foundation takes the most time, skill, exactness, and energy.