Life's Special Moments

There are moments in life that are so special or impactful that you will never forget them. The day you first laid eyes on the love of your life, the birth of your children or even traumatic events like where you were when your wife has to remind you it is your anniversary. 


I had one of these moments this week. When it happened it brought a tear to my eye and the world stopped for the briefest of moments. At the age of 57, 34 years into our marriage at exactly 3:36pm on February 8^th, 2020 Barb said 4 words I will never forget.....“Honey, you were right”. It does not matter the circumstance in which it happened, it only matters that it happened! As it happened though, I was working on drawing out the wood storage area for the fireplace so I immediately wrote the date and time.

Some husbands go their entire lives without hearing these words. I am one of the lucky ones having to only wait 34 years...I am crying just writing these words and is a moment I will never forget.


Speaking of marriage, this past Friday was our anniversary. I may have mentioned it before but it bears repeating again. Barb and I met the fall of ’85, had our first date on Halloween just a few weeks later. I guess that should have been an omen in itself. We were married just over 3 months later on February 7^th, 1986. We spent our wedding night in an ice fishing shack on Mille Lacs Lake in central Minnesota.


So what did we do to celebrate this year? We went to the Rapid City Stock Show and attended the rodeo. The tickets were a gift from Kevin and Cheryl who drove out for the weekend to pick up some wood and stone for a house he is building in Wisconsin.  

Cheryl and Kevin ready for the rodeo!

We had a great time, the pictures are not the best but not bad for our phone given they were action shots.

Calf Roping

Saddle Bronc

Barrels

This is not going to end well!

They stayed with us for two nights before heading back home. It was a short but awesome visit. Kevin walked through our next steps we needed to do on the house; putting the wood up on the ceiling and walls, siding outside, trim around the windows both inside and out. We have enough on our “to do” list to keep us busy through the rest of our time here.

We are super excited to start working on the ceiling as we took delivery of 1300 sq ft of tongue and groove pine for just that purpose. We are going with beetle killed pine also known as bug wood or blue pine. Over the past decade or so, Pine Beetles infected over 94% of the Black Hills killing almost 500,000 acres of trees.

As devastating as this was it left behind a very remarkable kind of wood. Beetle Killed Pine. This wood has a blue discoloration and holes giving the wood unique character as compared to healthy pine. 

The two stacks on either side of the will soon be on our ceiling

We (and when I say "we" I mean Barb) installed flooring and painted the bathroom. Once we get a new mirror (don't ask what happened to the first one we bought) and get the towel holders up it will be pretty much done. All that will be left is the trim which I think I am going to do at the same time as the other rooms. 

Barb putting the flooring down

We also installed our first two interior doors this week. We chose knotty alder 3 panel doors and installed them on the bathroom and upstairs bedroom. Nice to finally have a door to replace the curtain we had on the bathroom door!

Paint, flooring and a door!

Thursday Barb and I went into Rapid City we met with a custom cabinet maker to design the kitchen cabinets. It was a bit chilly on our drive up there, one of the coldest we have seen here.  

We are not in Arizona any more Toto!

The meeting with the cabinet guy and picking out cabinets was a very detailed process. We walked through each of the cabinet designs and decided on rustic hickory.

Rustic Hickory

The design process was very interesting. It is amazing the software that is out there now to help you design the kitchen. We spent almost two hours with the owner; adding, deleting and viewing different versions. Finally we came up with a design that we really like…..

Our kitchen will look something like this

Once the price come back we will see if we can actually afford it. 

Kevin and Cheryl left at 5am Sunday leaving us a long list of things to do. Our first project is going to be to put wood on the ceiling. We are not sure how long this is going to take but we are up for the challenge! Tune in next week to see how far we got!