AUG. 4 UPDATE: Housier all the time

I haven't blogging the last few days and finally came to the conclusion that I need to adjust my blogging schedule -- Erik seems to be awake and hungry at my usual blogging time (between 10 and midnight or so), so instead I need to blog by day. Or at least daylight, since it's already evening for today's blog.

In any case, here are some pictures from the last few days to catch up.

Dave and Dad were able to start shingling the roof of the new addition Sunday evening.


They got several rows done before quitting for the night.

... We had been trying to keep Dad off the ladder. Apparently Dave failed in that, but at least Dad wasn't up on the roof. Mary said she hopes she's that determined when she's 84!

Looks pretty good, doesn't it? Dave and Don got all the trim pieces up on Sunday afternoon.


... Here is a historical photo: Erik is the first male baby to be born at (or come home to) the Marttila farm in 91 years! His great uncle Leo, holding him, was the most recent baby boy before that. My uncle Arnold had been the first male child born at the farm; Leo was the second. My grandparents had two more boys in their family of 11, one being my dad, but they were born in the years when the family moved to town and rented out the farm. Dad, the only one to marry and have children on the farm, had just Mari and me -- so you can see that this baby boy is some cause for celebration!


Little Erik still likes to be in the little frog fetal position, so here he's had one of his admirers get him all cozy for a nap.

... We're working on getting some estimates for someone to put siding on the house. I think we're going to go with fiber cement siding -- vinyl siding is much cheaper, but somehow I don't like the way it looks, and I've seen warped vinyl siding on many houses (though from what I've read, that's an installation problem more than a problem with the siding itself). I read up on what was the best environmental alternative, and basically there isn't one kind of siding that stands out above the rest, though vinyl is not as good as some others. (Frankly, what I really like the look of is wood siding -- OK, what I'd really, really like is some combination of a stone foundation and wood siding, but we won't even bring that up around Dave -- but after spending several summers scraping, sanding and painting our house in Boone, Dave declared absolutely not on anything that required that much maintenance.)

... The plumber will be coming next week.

... So I started this post at about 7. I was interrupted by a hungry baby, and guess what time I'm finishing up? 10:30, right at my usual blogging time. I guess baby Erik isn't much interested in my attempts to set up a schedule yet!