The reception and the wood.

12/2/10

The final decent down the hill to the Bath Center where we met up with family and friends to celebrate the end of the ride.

Welcome home, Linny. Are you so happy now? Yes.

Before we got there, Nancy made a "Welcome Home" sign for us. The "e" of "house" and "home" had to be shared. Pretty cute little sign. :)

Family on the stairs.

We played cards all evening. The games were Pig, Texas Hold 'Em, and Apples to Apples.

Poker face.

We had a pretty perfect last ride to home. It was a beautiful full moon. Walter rode beside Soj and I in the truck and friends and family piled into the back of the truck. Sojourner was feeling his oats and moved at a fast canter down the road to home. He was hopped up on all of the pears, carrots, apples, and apple cider he got at the reception.


After the reception a bunch of us went to see my dad play the drums. He was fantastic as always.

Walter and his sister, Meaghan, had warmed up our ears earlier in the evening...

And then the work began....


HG Wood gave us such an incredibly generous donation of 4,000 feet of siding and 10 bags of shavings. Now we can build Soj the stall he deserves. BUT....how to get the wood there?

We don't have anything long enough to load 16 ft boards of wood onto. Well, a bus would do it. So my dad got us a bus.

I called the receptionist at HG Wood.
"How are you getting the wood?" she asked.
"Well, we're going to put it on a school bus and take it", I said back.
"That's an awful lot of wood to hand load."

And it was.
I asked the guy who helped us if this was the first time someone had come with a school bus to load the wood.

"Yup, that's a first", he said with a big smile.

We have to go back tomorrow and get the second load of wood. We transported this first load a couple of days ago. The thing is, we have a long driveway and a brook runs through the property. The bus was too wide to get over the bridge so we had to unload it on the other side and then take multiple loads in the pick-up truck.

Is there any chance we can get it over???

Nope. Too narrow.

We would put as much wood as was possible in the truck and then my mom and I would walk behind holding up the other ends of the planks that hung way out while Walter drove slowly. It was a workout and a half!

So we ended up going to the lumber yard with a school bus, hand loading one of the wood piles into the bus, unloaded it out of the bus on the road side of the brook, and then slowly re-loaded it into the truck to unload it once again over by where the stall is to be built.

Needless to say, I'm not looking overly forward to it again tomorrow, but then at least it will be here and done. Plus, in it's way it was kind of fun...very much only in it's way, but none the less...a way.

My pop...always ready to help.

My mom was like a workhorse. I wish we had her to help us tomorrow!!

I will continue to write about Soj and our time here in NH this winter, but the blog will take a bit of a turn and focus more on our art.

Walter and I are entering the next step in our lives. Usually we would probably just up and go somewhere (I really want to go to Costa Rica for a while), but now we have this big, white, furry, hungry creature in the back there that grabbed both of our hearts and will make us stay put for at least a little while...

"Well, we've got a horse, why don't we just go ahead and get a puppy?" has been the recent talk.
We'll see though...it is still easier to only have one animal (plus Porter the cat...but cats are easy) than it would be if we added a dog as well. (but I really want a goldendoodle).