Busy days

We’ve had so much going on, I’m not sure where to start. It’s always easiest to start with Quinn, since that who everyone is really interested in .

A couple of posts ago, I wrote that Quinn had started potty training. I’m happy to report that just a couple weeks later, he’s got it down. He’ll wear a diaper at night for a while longer, of course, but he’s really proud that he can now wear underwear all day. As a bit of a reward, we got him some “Thomas the Tank Engine” and “Cars” underwear.

Quinn also will be starting swimming lessons next week. A friend of mine from my book selling days works for Foss Swim Schools and they just built a new building around the corner, so we thought it was a good time to get him started. He’s pretty excited about it and asks most days now when he can go for his swimming lessons.

The other big news regarding Quinn was that we have taken him to the doctor a couple times since we’ve been home. Gretchen was pretty sure that he had allergies, but we weren’t sure just what and we needed to get him tested. We had noticed in New Zealand that he would wheeze quite a bit after being around dogs and would also break out if they licked his skin, so we were pretty sure about that one. The test came back and it turns out that he’s allergic to dogs, cats, and peanuts (and to a lesser degree, eggs). Dealing with the peanut allergy will be through eliminating exposure and carrying an EpiPen for emergencies. We were given a DVD on how to use it, so anyone that might babysit or spend a fair amount of time with Quinn will get a little EpiPen lesson.

As far as the pet allergy goes, the main problem is that it triggers asthma. He’s been prescribed some medication that he takes though a nebulizer 2-3 times per day. Hopefully we’ll be able to wean him off that as he gets better, but for now, it really helps him breathe better (and he thinks it’s kind of fun). In my opinion, he’s a different kid as he seems to have more energy than before. But unfortunately, a consequence of his allergy is that we are going to have to give our cats away. We’ve got a couple of potential options right now, but if any of you are interested or know of anyone who might take a couple 8 year old cats, we would love to hear about it.

Here’s a few photos of Quinn at a visit to the Grandma and Grandpa Luckow home. Jill also joined in the fun with bubbles.

Aside from Quinn, we’ve been busy working on the house. The two big projects for the summer/fall are to do landscaping around the immediate house and to finally build our deck. The landscaping has been going pretty well as I’ve been digging a little here and a little there. Here is some of what we have done in the front yard.

As far as the deck goes, here is what our backyard looked like before I had done anything. Pretty blah, so you can see our need to do something.

I started by cutting off a bunch of siding and attaching the ledger boards. On the weekend of the 18th, the Pallo family came over and despite the near constant rain, Joe helped me lay out the footing locations and dig the holes. The soil in our yard is very sandy, so it was actually not too bad. It went pretty quickly once Joe realized he hadn’t turned the choke off on the auger motor.

While the sandy soil was good for digging, it was BAD for stability. If the weather would have been nice, it wouldn’t have mattered. However, it poured rain within an hour of us finishing the holes and didn’t really stop for 5 days. This meant that the sand in the holes collapsed into the bottom. So I dug quite a few of the holes over again, some of them twice, since I couldn’t get it inspected until the holes were dry and deep enough. Finally on Friday, it dried out and I was able to get the concrete form tubes installed. It was looking pretty good and I had the concrete scheduled for delivery early Saturday (and two neighbors willing to help).

All was going well on Saturday until the cement truck ran out with only 6.5 footings poured out of 8. I wasn’t very happy to say the least and getting more delivered was going to take a few hours and cost quite a bit for just a little. So we decided to simply get a few sacks of Quickrete from Home Depot to finish it. And of course, the 8 bags I bought were about 1 bag short still, so I had to go back AGAIN. Anyway, by noon the footings were poured and the first big job for the deck was complete.

This coming weekend Joe is coming over again and Roger is going to join us as well to do all of the framing work, so there should be more interesting pictures coming.