Whew, It's Been Way Too Long

I can't believe it has been over a month since I last posted anything here. Can you tell it is getting close to Christmas? Hopefully your Thanksgiving was a blessing for your family. We had a wonderful time going to my brother's home. We had not all been together for Turkey Day for so many years, especially wonderful to have Mom there with us. Now we are really excited about Christmas. For the first year, Amanda and Mike will bring the girls up here to celebrate with us. That means GG (my mom) will be able to be part of our entire Christmas weekend watching her three great grand daughters, what can be better at Christmas than little children?

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Winter seems to have finally arrived here at Loon Lake. We had a few weeks of delightful Indian Summer with lots of sunshine and warmer temps. But, now we are seeing tiny snow flakes and skims of ice on local ponds. Know eventually the cold temps will take hold of the lake and provide the ice for winter sports fun.

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Our renovation project continues to progress. With Poppy busy days up at the office in Nappanee, his ability to work on things non-stop has come to a halt. Now it is the weekends when he makes his best progress. We have almost ALL the drywall hung. The only places to complete are where the old transitions into the new. We have one wall in the master bathroom water closet where we have left it open to the utility room for a pass through during construction. This means that wall in the utility room, which takes in around the furnace closest also is the largest section that still must drywalled. Last week we had a fellow come in to give us an estimate on finishing off all the walls - taping, mudding and sanding all that drywall would take Poppy FOREVER to do. So, with a crew coming in it can be done in less than a week and Poppy will save all his energy for the finishing work to do with trim, doors, etc.

Here you see the stairwell fully drywalled, all but the last section that will go over the bedroom door and connect to the front lodge wall eventually. One of those areas of transition.

These two photos taken the Friday after Thanksgiving show the front wall of the lodge room mostly drywalled. What a difference this made, the room seems so much larger now. He did this the day we hosted the neighborhood euchre group that night. Made a mess, but he did help clean it up in time for our guests!

This weekend Poppy has been working on the transition between the lodge room and the new section along the front wall. He moved the door that used to lead into the temporary walk-in closet. The door was moved to the back side of the "closet" area where we broke through that wall to access the new section months ago. This will allow him to drywall the rest of the front wall of the lodge room.

Here he is hanging the vapor barrier over the insulation.

Here you can see the relocated door to the back of the closet. It used to hang right there where the 2x4 is still on the ceiling from the framing of the wall that enclosed the doorway.

With the door open at the back of the closet area, you can see the stairwell in the new section that leads up to the bedrooms. This whole area will eventually be opened up to create the area leading to the new hallway at the bottom of the stairwell, outside our master bedroom and the half bath. Can't wait til this is ALL done!

A parting shot for tonight, this beautiful full moon seen through the bare branches of the winter trees. Later in the evening it was sparkling off the entire lake making things all aglow!