Doing OK: The big day came and the big day went and then it came again

If you think it all went smooth, think again!

Ok, so we geared up for the big day, doing final prep work. Rory is putting the dead bolts on the safe room door here, with help from his friends. The goat going into the room it Eight followed by her twins, Bacardi and Coke (a long story) The goat with her head to his head is the lead girl, the white head behind her is Carol Channing. Bear and Max always like to help.

So, we were ready. It was all very exciting. That night a big storm came through and it rained and turned cold but we were not deterred. Up at the crack of dawn and out to the farm we go. It's pretty wet out there but we forge ahead and here comes the pump truck ( notice the water laying around)

He pulls up to the back of the house and promptly gets stuck. We end up pulling him around with the tractor trying to position him but to no avail. Meantime it's too late to cancel the first cement truck.

Here is the result. What you are looking at here is $847.11 worth of cement that we had to dump on the ground. At least we positioned it over the mud hole where everyone has the potential of getting stuck. Everyone goes home and we wait for a better day. I was not Happy, I can tell you that.

Okay then, fast forward a week and a day. The weather is beautiful and we are ready to try again.

We Arrive, not so early this time. Bear is ready to go.

We put the big girls up in a pen and the calves over in the east pasture. We are weaning them right now and they are not happy but they will still follow you anywhere if you have a bucket of food.

And here comes the Pump Truck again. This time it's a bigger one. He parks in one spot (on the new cement where the mud whole used to be) and proceeds to start unfolding the boom.

This was the most amazing thing.

This guy walked around with a remote control box and directed the boom and regulated the flow of cement while Sam walked around with the hose pouring it into the forms. Everyone else scrambled around tapping on the forms with rubber mallets mostly to hear how far up the wall the cement was. We went around 3 times, three courses the first, two the second and then topped it off. When we went around the windows you had to bang on the wall to have it fall down while shoving it in with a piece of wood so we wouldn't have any gaps. We had one blow out, that was exciting, it was the big scramble to patch the hole and clean up the cement but other than that it went without a hitch. We had the whole house poured in 5 hours and that included about an hour and a half wait time between cement trucks. The walls took 58 1/2 yards, for those of you who know what that means. It was all truly amazing

I'm putting a bunch of pictures here so you can be as impressed as we were.

You can see how impressed Max and Bear were.
My big guard dogs would sit in your lap if you let them. Look at the look on Max's face. they loved this guy.

Okay, so it's done and it's finally Miller Time. We hung out there for awhile just looking and being very relieved. We then had to wait two days before we could start wrecking out the forms to get ready for the framers. We were already a week behind and they were getting anxious. We are due to wreck out on Saturday and Sunday so they can start framing Monday morning. Friday night we have severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. We get up Saturday morning and the rain has stopped but it is far from nice out. The sustained winds were around 40 mph with higher gusts. But we are not deterred!! we get out to the farm, we have one helper meeting us there and we find a lake in the house!!

The good news is the house is definitely water tight.

So, we knocked out the wood in the door openings and I proceeded to sweep the water out of the house for the next several hours. Meantime Rory and Joey started tearing down the scaffolding. We worked all day and got it all down leaving carting it out of the house and chipping up spilled cement, sweeping up and stuff like that for the next day. It was a good day.

Okay, we set up with Joey to meet us there at 10am to finish the cleanup figuring it would be and easy day, think again.

We get there at 10, no Joey plus, we get a call from Reed and Sherri that their little goat is in labor and having a hard time. Off we go next door. It was a long labor and the baby was born weak so we let Angel dry her a bit and then we finished the job. She couldn't stand so we held her up to nurse then wrapped her up and carted her and her mom off to the barn where it was warmer with no wind. Here she is. She has the longest ears and legs you ever saw. We named her after the flying nun (Sister Bertril) and we call her Bertie. She is the cutest thing, I'll never get tired of this.

Now it's 1:30 and we go to get started on the cleanup. Still no Joey. We worked till dark, lifting carrying, scraping, shoveling. You'd think I'd be skinny but actually I'm heavier than I've ever been. We were exhausted!! But it was done and ready for the framers on Monday.

The wood had arrived on Friday and we were all set. Monday morning comes, no framers. They had taken a another small job to tide them over until we were ready, which was fine. It would have been nice if someone had told us, we then could have taken 2 days to do the cleanup. Oh well, you gotta roll with the punches.