Labor Day Weekend

Labor Day weekend brought big change to the cabin...we got a driveway right up to the house!  All summer we have parked out on the main driveway and used the quad or the 6x6 to get up to the house.  In June my dad helped me cut a new trail in following what would become the driveway route because the original trail was so steep and muddy that the kids had to get off and walk.  The new trail was such an improvement, but Labor Day weekend the pieces fell into place and by Sunday night we were driving our vehicles up to the house where Friday night we'd had to walk.  Pretty amazing what equipment and people with know-how can get accomplished!


As you can see, my cabin painting project never happened this summer.  I needed 3 dry days to apply the primer that was recommended to me at the paint store and it never worked out that way. This was an unusually wet summer!

The other benefit of doing the driveway was getting many of the sketchy trees away from the house!  there are still more that should come down, but we sure are in better shape than we were in June.

Here are a few "in process" photos...



This area is all gravel now.  See that leaning birch?  Gone!


Just for fun, you can ride along on my first trip up in my car with the girls...



As awesome as the driveway was, the main project for that weekend was helping our friends move...


We are so sad to see them go, but also excited for them on their next adventure.  They had a big job of emptying one entire house in Anchorage and also taking a number of things from their cabin.  It was a very emotional weekend, that's for sure!  The girls had so much fun having one last weekend to play with their pal.  They fished, jumped on the trampoline, swam, built, cooked, you name it!  One of their memories will be picking crab apples and making applesauce...


Guiding kids through goodbyes is hard.  Harder the older they get. 

We also completed a few small projects that weekend.  We hung the final blind that we had custom ordered.  All of the rest were off the shelf from Lowe's, but this one was 3 inches too long and we had to special order it.  We are loving the insulation these cellular blinds provide!


And now we can check the battery status without having to go out to the generator shed.  This is going to be nice this winter!  We are also loving how much power we are making now that we've cleared some trees and our solar panel can actually get some light.  It will be really fun to see how that works next summer!


I got to try out this great cast iron waffle maker I got for my birthday.  It works really well!  We've used it couple of times since and it's great!


As I look back at all of this, it seems like three days worth for sure, but we crammed all of that into Saturday and Sunday so that Monday we could hit the state fair on the way home.  We met up with friends and that helped us put our sad goodbyes behind us a bit.  The weather that day was fantastic and we had lots of fun!  Snuggling Iditarod puppies is always fun...



Giant vegetables are fun, too!


I grew some (tiny) potatoes this year.  Maybe I'll win this next year???


Every year they go on the rides.  Every year they like it less and less--poor kids.  I feel like that one is my fault...I don't really like rides either!


After rides we headed home.  It was a full, fun, tiring weekend!

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