More Chelan

Hadn't nabbed all the pics off the cameras from Chelan and found a couple nice ones:



Almost ready to stand by herself:

Lake Chelan

We had a couple days this week in central Washington relaxing at Lake Chelan. The weather was a little nicer than Seattle, but not as hot and sunny as I guess it usually is. Mabel and I still had a nice time while Kate took place is some continuing education/legal conference thingy.

Pool floating time:


Mabel almost took her first solo step:


Walking the beach:


And with Kate, who Mabel is looking more and more like:

Tub runner

Started just a few days ago:

One tree down

Our neighbors behind us are getting ready to replace their rotted, worthless fence. Which is nice. As part of that, they offered/asked if they could remove a Hawthorne tree that was growing on our side of the fence. Yes please, as we still have a much larger one for shade and dropping lots and lots of petals and other junk.

Before:


After:


Now to make sure the neighbors build the tallest fence they can.

Woodland Park Zoo

Today I took a day off of work and we could take Mabel to the zoo. Of course our primary reason for the zoo visit was to find some real hippos and see if Mabel liked them in real life. She did.

She even tried to climb over the railing:

One of the hippos we were watching:


We also went to a "farm" part of the zoo where she got to pet a goat, a rabbit, and a donkey. She liked the donkey best and comes by that honestly.


She got a bit low on the rabbit going for the hay it was sitting on:

A minute after we walked out of this area this donkey got really loud and most of the kids near it just froze.


A fun day and we're all pretty tired. Kate and I missed lunch in our excitement and hurry to get Mabel to the zoo in between naps. Good times.

Sun is out, go outside

Today has been our first and last day of sun for a bit so we walked up to a nearby park for some swing time:



After the swing session Mabel settled in to watch some kids playing basketball:

Gutters and pruning

In a town where it rains a bit, roof and gutters are important. While our roof appears to be in good shape, the gutters wanted some attention.
Video from Friday evening:


With Kate's help at the bottom of the ladder, I cleaned out all the gutters on the house. Not a real treat. As with most of our projects, found some other problems - a rotted beam, gutter not angled correctly, etc... - but can't fix it all in a day.

Kate, aside from helping hold the ladder and dodge the nastiness I found in the gutter, freed our porch from a few closely planted, really overgrown plants and a tree. A huge improvement.

Wall repair

Almost done with the closet wall.
Lath off:


Insulation in, backed with some screen door material left from previous owners:


Vapor barrier, trash bags:


Plasterboard up, reused piece:


Still some gaps, mud and tape before I can get the clothing rack mounted.

Closets

With the non-stop rain, indoor projects have been the focus lately. Of those projects, storage has been an ongoing one, from shelving in unfinished parts of the basement to now trying to squirrel away Kate's endless wardrobe. The heaps and piles of clothes in each room - hoarderesque - must go. A 20% off coupon to The Container Store and I now have a good stack of Elfa shelving to install. Not really wanting to tackling the project until the weekend, I took a minute last night to see fun might be ahead. Looks like a good bit.
The first wall I started to poke at, trying to find a stud, had a surprise of its own. At some point a previous owner put a piece of plasterboard over the plaster lath along this short wall at the back of the closet. Weird. Until I removed the plasterboard, and found that the plaster lath was all (historically) water damaged, with big chunks of plaster missing.



A right way to fix that would've been to remove the plaster lath and then put the plasterboard up. Not just cover the "bad". Sigh. Morons. In fixing this the right way I will have the opportunity to add a little insulation when I've got the wall opened, but I'm hoping I don't find other "bad".

Plaster now gone. Will tackle the lath tomorrow.


And then at some point I can get the closet going.