Building the Barn--Early Mother's Day celebrations

Paul and I spent another Saturday in Petersboro working on the barn. Paul has done hours of mental gymnastics in the spiritual creation of this barn and amazingly it is coming together. He has already purchased glue-laminated beams to go at the top of the upright supports and the plan for Saturday was to raise these big—heavy beams up 10 feet to rest on the supports that we have been putting in place for the last month. And these are heavy, I couldn't quite figure how the two of us were going to lift beams that are about 12 lbs a foot and are up to 27 feet long. Somewhere around 250-300 lbs each. And with all due respect to me—I am a mature woman, who is not a body builder at all. But Paul had it all figured out. We had heavy duty nylon slings and he had gotten a couple of chain hoists and some poles that were two feet taller than the support beams and between the two of us and the chain hoists and the slings we were able to pull the beams up higher than the supports and then lower them on to them with remarkable ease. Once we had them up on the supports, then Paul got on a ladder and made fine adjustments while I easily raised and lowered the beams so that Paul could maneuver them in just the right spots. It was quite a miraculous activity. We were able to do a 56 foot stretch along the whole northern side over the course of the day on Saturday. We were able to manhandle the beams on the ground with the aid of two hand trucks. All in all it was a very successful day. We still have about three more long days to get all the beams in place, but the system works and the process is moving along. Good on Paul—good on us. We had a family party Sunday night. We had the standard 11 guests, Paul and me (of course), my brother Stephen and his son, Steve, my parents, Erika and Jono (and they bring their “puppy”—who is over 50 lbs now—but I didn't count him in the guests because I didn't have to set a place for him at the table) and Peter, Kortney and Eleanor.) It was essentially a Mother’s Day dinner. My mother will be out of town with my dad next week, so I decided to do a dinner this week instead of next week, and that actually made it better for my children who will then be available to have celebrations with their mothers-in-law on the following Sunday. We had a fun time. I try to have some kind of amusement in addition to dinner for family events held at my house, and sometimes we also play some kind of commercial game as well. This week, I had a game that was a feat of skill game. We divided into teams—including Granddad (age 93) and Eleanor (age 3). There was one team member from each team who sat on a chair at the front, and the rest of the team members lined up in front of the chair. The two team members who were sitting on the chairs each put on a baseball hat, which I “frosted” in shaving cream. Each other team member was given ten mini marshmallows and the goal of the game was to toss as many marshmallows as possible onto the hat and have it stick onto the shaving cream. (I also understand that it works with Cheetos cheese balls—though I think they would be messier because of the loose cheese dust that would fall on everything.) It was surprisingly more difficult than one might expect even though the distance was less than three feet, but it was actually a game that my aging father and my little granddaughter could both play. We had ten players who each had ten marshmallows – five per team and the winning team managed 33 marshmallows, while the losing team had 24. But everyone had a good laugh and it was fun.