7/22-24/03 Andrew and I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

We stopped and visited with Marilyn and George on the way up and arrived about noon. There were two frogs under the padlock can on the gate when I went to open it. One of them jumped onto the ground but Andrew got the other one to hop into the can and he took it up to the trailer. I opened the gate and drove up to the trailer and then realized that I couldn't find my sunglasses. I remembered taking them off when we caught the frog but now I couldn't find them. I searched inside the pickup and I searched down by the gate twice, but still couldn't find them. I was baffled.

It was 93 degrees out and very hot. There were quite a few mosquitos but not as many as the weeks before. We put a little water in the bottom of the can to cool off the frog and he seemed to enjoy it. Later, we brought the can with the frog and the water back down to the gate post and left it there. Andrew was impressed that it was 93 in the shade and he wanted to know how hot it was in the sun. We put a thermometer in the sun and in a few seconds it went over 120 and was about to break the thermometer, so we took it out of the sun again.

We spent quite a bit of time using the bench grinder to reshape a broken blade on a knife Andrew got for a dollar at a garage sale. I started the grinding, but after Andrew saw how to do it, he took over and between the two of us, we made a pretty good looking blade and got it nice and sharp. Then we went for a hike in the woods looking for a big rock Andrew had found on another trip. We found it and then came back out of the woods.

I went to work caulking around the door and window frames and plugged some worm holes in the wall logs. Then I dismantled the scaffold and brought all the planks and frames inside. I took some pictures of the wall with Andrew posing in the doorway and the dining room window. Then we went in for the night. We played Scribbage, told stories, and got to bed kind of late.

On Wednesday we slept in until 9:00. It was another hot day. Andrew started out by putting some unlucky ants in antlion traps and watching the action. Then we went into the crawl space where it was nice and cool and worked on pulling nails out of boards. That was a low priority job that was just waiting for a day like this. Andrew also did a little more grinding on his knife and he used the grinder to polish up a rusty 20 penny nail. He got a kick out of making sparks with the grinder.

We took a couple pruning shears and walked the trails cutting brush away to open up the trails. The mosquitos were pretty bad but we had bug juice on and it was tolerable. We went up to the little tree to check it out and it is doing pretty well. It looks sort of dry, but the new growth is about 5 or 6 inches which isn't bad. The chicken wire is still in place so the deer haven't nibbled on the tree. We went down to the spring and got a cool drink from it. I spent some more time looking for my sunglasses.

After lunch, we drilled 10 new holes in the walls so we can hang scaffold frames in position to install windows. Andrew wanted to do some sculpting in mortar so I mixed up a small batch for him and he worked on that. He made a volcano, but before it set up, he changed his mind and made a bunch of small balls instead. In the evening, we played some more Scribbage and got to bed a little earlier.

On Thursday morning, a chipmunk came around but he seemed too nervous to approach Andrew. He took some peanuts from the ground and he got up the nerve to come up into my hand once, but he wouldn't get too close to Andrew. But at least Andrew got to see him up pretty close.

We put some sheets of plywood at the base of the three trees where I planned to stack the windows when they arrived and we were still working on the third one when the Milgard truck pulled up at 10:00. I hadn't expected him until the afternoon but I was glad he was so early.

The driver was wearing a short sleeved T-shirt and as soon as he hopped out and started talking to us he was swarming with mosquitos. I ran in and got him some bug juice and while he was wiping it on his hands and arms, he lost his wedding ring. The ground was covered with wood chips in that area so all three of us got down and started looking for his ring. He was very anxious about it and was saying he didn't know how he was going to explain losing it to his wife. While I was looking for the ring in those chips, I was also thinking about my sunglasses which were still lost too. Pretty soon, the guy spotted his ring and we were all relieved.

Then we went to work unloading and stacking the 15 windows against the three trees. After the truck left, Andrew and I carried 11 of the windows up the hill and stored them inside the cabin. The four big ones are too heavy to carry up so I covered them with plywood and tied a rope around them and the tree to keep the plywood and the windows from blowing over.

Larry stopped by for a short visit while we were carrying windows up, and Bill called during lunch. Bill said he would like to help install the windows so when I get to the big ones, I'll call him and Dave to help me.

We left for home at 1:30. When I went to close the gate, I decided to look under the log. I moved it a couple feet and looked around where I stand when I set it down. There were my sunglasses. They had evidently fallen out of my pocket or my hand when I set the gate log down. I was very happy to find them.

We stopped in at Tutinos to pet Bert and Ernie. Andrew wanted to see them and since they didn't come over to visit us, we went to them. Mike said that they stay pretty close to home in this heat. We also stopped in and visited the Reptile Zoo on the way home. This was a fun week and it feels good to have the windows on site ready to be installed. Getting the windows in will make a big difference in how the cabin looks.