Can they build it?

Yes they can!

This past weekend was a big one for Mike. He was asked to build a temporary wall at my mom's house for my aunt and uncle. They are going to be moving in with her for a while and wanted to make one of the living rooms enclosed to make a bedroom for them. Mike is not a carpenter and has never built a wall before but he was pretty sure he could do it.

We headed on down to their house around noon on Saturday. My mom and I took bets on how long it would take for him and Stan to build it. I guessed around four hours, and my mom guessed nine.


Three hours later

I knew I was going to lose the bet when the MEN took two hours just to buy the supplies. I think they were secretly just enjoying themselves perusing the aisles of Home Depot.


The start of the wall is born.


Four and a half hours in the bones were in place.


Seven hours later the drywall was on and there was an official wall!


View from the other side.

It looks pretty dang official to me. Mike knows about every little flaw in the wall and it just eats at him I can tell. But everyone else was impressed.

It was no easy task to keep James occupied the whole day while the boys were building. The big kids were having a great time watching youtube videos and playing video games. My mom even had a special dinner planned for them.


They got to cook their own meals. They cooked shrimp, hotdogs, broccoli, ham, and sausage. This kept them entertained for a looong time and in fact I am now in the market for one of these little fondue-ish type grills. Anyone know what the heck they are called?


Entertaining James was a little harder. He always enjoys outdoor nudity so we let him do that for a while. He got mud in every possible crevise while he was gardening in the mud, and seemed quite pleased about it.


He helped Grandma and Nathan make a nice shady home for their turtles.



After all that, which was only about 1.2 hours of activity we decided it would be easier to just hang out at Walmart for a while. James had fun pushing the cart and running away from me as fast as he could. That boy is dang fast for a little chubby kid.

It was finally time to go home just before midnight. Wall was built and some other minor projects were completed. We had taken out our middle row of seats in the van so Mike and Stan could fit the drywall in. I thought I would save time and put the seats back in and get it ready.

Not a good idea.

Apparently there is a difference between the left seat and the right seat. And apparently you have to install the front of the seat before the back of it. I screwed it all up. After trying to "undo" my installation error for an hour we gave up. The three older boys rode in the back bench seat, James rode in the front seat with the airbag disabled, and I got to ride in the death seat that wasn't installed properly and didn't have a functioning seat belt. Thank God we all made it home in one piece and Mike was able to fix the seats in the morning.

He is so darn handy.