tell your sister you're sorry...: Building a mother in laws quarters part 4 (Act One,,,)

We spent a very hot... humid.... sweaty.... Memorial Day weekend at the property. When we are at the property and need to go into town, we say "we're going to town". Literally, we have to drive 7-10 minutes to get to town! Trust me, "the town" is very exciting when all you have are trees, bugs and wild animals surround you. Walmart has never been so exciting for me (and I'm a total Target girl!).

Anyways, since I'm splitting this post up into two days worth (today is about the cabin, tomorrow is what we find to do to stay busy....) here is the story so far:

We arrive at the cabin LATE (early in the morning?) at night -- and we go to bed immediately in the pop up camper (air conditioning is so awesome when you are camping!). The next morning, Mike shows us the cabin. He warns me "listen, this is going to be MUCH bigger than you think!" Well, imagine my surprise that I think it's much SMALLER than I thought! But, it's OK, it's just a small cabin -- and it's totally doable to stay in for short periods of time. I'm not spoiled.

The girls and I start by gathering all the sticks & branches that are lying around the ground. Mike mows the grass all around. By this time, I can't wait to burn the dead branches and smell the delicious smell of smoke burning. Odd, I know. Mike starts to work on the bottom part of the house.

After picking up branches & wood, I notice a big pile of wood off to a section of the land that we can toss into the burning pile, and yell for Maddie to help me. We have our gloves on, grab some wood and away we go. All of a sudden I glance down and see all these red ants moving around on the wood, realize they were fire ants -- RAN to the fire to throw it in, and yelled at Maddie to drop her piles of wood. Maddie holds her wood close to her body, not away from the body like I do. Just as I screamed at her to drop her wood, she starts screaming and throws down her branches. The fire ants were ALL over her little arms and shirt. I start swatting at them, trying to brush them off her arms, realizing that my gloves are covered w/ the darn ants as well. Yank my gloves off, yank her gloves off -- and tried to get her to take her shirt off. Miss Maddie is so modest, that she can't think of taking her shirt off, but I yank it off her anyways. Eighteen bites later (it is actually 19 b/c I saw one on her neck this morning) -- she was given hydrocortisone & a Benadryl to ward off a possible allergic reaction.

By this time, Mike is almost done w/ the bottom part of the house (sheathing? is that what it's called?) -- so he gives Katie & I a job to caulk. I caulk, Katie wipes with a rag. We do a darn good job. Other than holding up pieces of plywood for Mike and sweeping dead bugs, this is the only thing I help Mike out on. So, he's totally a one man on the job worker here this weekend. Oh, and I made sure he drank water & Gatorade as well -- so that's a few things I helped out while there. I'm so important.... {rolling eyes}

By now, Mike's ready to start placing plywood on the walls. This was his first sheet he put up. Notice the bug zapper on the right? We had a huge mountain of dead insects by the time we left. It covers up to 1 1/2 acres .... thank goodness for bug zappers!

And here is the finished look as we left it yesterday. Notice Katie sitting on her butt in the chair? I'll be sharing more stories of how the girls entertained themselves in my next post.

So now all is left is to put up the rest of the plywood, the roof, then wrap some kind of paper around it all to keep the moisture out. I'd call it Saran Wrap, but I'm 100% positive I'm wrong. Not sure what it's called. Like usual, goes in one ear, out the other, but I get the basic idea: needs to keep the moisture out. After that, the siding goes up on the outside. We still need to pick out a siding.