The Boat Drags

Through my work I got tickets to the drag boat race at Creve Coeur Lake. We went two years ago and had a good time. This time we knew to bring chairs or a blanket to sit on. We also got two extra tickets so we invited our friend Travis and Christy Wilson and their daughter Lauren. We weren't sure how she was going to like the noise, but she loved it.Lauren got hot, so dad Travis sprayed water in her face. I love this photo and how you can see the whole stream of water before it hits her.

Step 5: Demo the concrete patio

Now this was a project and I'm not even strong enough to use the jack hammer. Come to find out, our patio is 4 inches thick with wire mesh at the bottom so the concrete did not break up in nice sized chunks like we were hoping. We did get some large chunks, but mostly we had to grind the stuff up until it was gravel to get it lose from the wire mesh.
Just Starting...
Before
After

We had a nice surprise when Jeremiah showed up to help!
Next step is to clean up the mess we made, figure out somewhere to dispose of the concrete and start building the retaining wall. Stay tuned...

Step 4: Repair/Install Siding

So, since the deck was attached to the house we had to purchase additional siding and repair some damaged siding.

Before

After

Sandbagging in Hull, Illinois

So my physical therapist's (who also goes to our church) parents live in Hull, Illinois. A tiny town just across the Mississippi from Hannibal. The whole town was flooded in '93 and her family lost everything...even after they moved everything up to the second story of their house. The water reached 16 feet then. The water is supposed to crest a foot above what it did in '93 so Sunday we went and helped sandbag and build up the levee.
This is how close the water already was to the levee.

This picture is taken while standing on top of the levee. The water should be behind the farthest tree line you can see, it's already flooded this much land.
Jeremiah and Brice leaving from the other side of the levee to go help move furniture to higher ground from a cabin that is already partially flooded. Jeremiah said the cabin had a 15 foot high deck out the back door and they stepped directly from the boat right on to the deck. So the water was already 15 feet high in that area.

We mainly filled sand bags for the saddle bags that go on either side of the levee. Renee and I were quite the team.


This is my physical therapist (in green) who we are helping.
A huge thanks goes out to everyone that was able to help that day and to Heather and Jenica who came over the night before and made 50+ sandwiches and 9 dozen cookies.

Step 3: Install new french doors

So, after repairing the damaged boards and a small section of the floorboards, my new fancy french doors with blinds in between the glass was installed. It look a bit of work for Jeremy and Jeremiah to get it to fit and as you can see in the pictures below we still have a bit of work to do to make it look nice from the inside and out, but it works and I love it! Next step is purchasing siding and gutters to finish the house and then we'll start on the retaining wall and deck. We're slowly moving along.
Ahh! We have a hole in the house. We got lucky that it didn't start raining before they got the new door installed.
My new beautiful door!