Christmas, Drywall and Mud

Merry Christmas to all and to all..................."I see one with my name on it!" Christmas was a blast this year with gifts traveling in from all over the country and the usual gluttonous amount of foods. We did our regular "take-down-the-decorations-and-argue-about-the-tree" day. I am a bit of a, well let's say a hard-core traditionalist when it comes to Christmas trees; they are made of wood NOT PLASTIC!! During last year's post-Holiday sales frenzy Cheryl purchased a FAKE tree for the price of a real one. Makes good financial sense right? We can save every year. No mess, no lights to string (it's prewired), easy to set up and a free Ginsu Knife that cuts an aluminum can and a tomato. BUT IT IS STILL PLASTIC!!! It smells like PLASTIC, not a pine.

It is an issue I will have to accept, for now..... So on we go..... We also ventured south to visit friends in Graham and continue the Psycho Cookie decorating tradition, we did Christmas Eve with our adopted farm family plus this year we added a spouse of one of my coworkers who was on duty. She showed up with two gifts for our boys as she and her husband have not started a family. Well they hit it out of the park delivering two double barrel Nerf shotguns. Seen below as the two new additions to the Nerf arsenal. I added a "green laser sight" to the 6-shooter but the boys think it gives me to much of an advantage so it seems to have been removed and hidden.

HOUSE UPDATE:

When we bought our first house in Sultan, Cheryl and I decided to save a few bucks and have the builder leave the downstairs unfinished. It was a good financial decision (Waaaaay better than a FAKE PLASTIC TREE) but whoa boy we learned a lot about drywall. Twelve foot ceiling sheets ARE HEAVY, and just because a little mud is good it doesn't mean a lot is better. (Stop laughing, it took a long time to sand it all away.) So on to the current house. The drywallers hung the house in one day and followed the next with a skim coat of mud and tape. PUD, after having us move a rather large decorative maple, hooked up the power and now the heater is drying the mud and heating the structure to prepare for a second coat of mud. It takes a few days to heat all the wood and suck out the moisture. So as of right now the house is sealed up and the heater is cranking. We are having a meeting with the builder today to hammer out the next few steps. It is all going quite well and the time table is right on for completion some time in April/May. Look out for an invitation to a house warming party where every guest will be asked to bring a cement cutting torch or saw an help remove part of the HUGE ribbon foundation strips left from the triple-wide. (jk)

Tony