Checkin' In

Things are starting to slow down for us a bit. I am probably on my last stretch of traveling to Evanston, as I am anxious to stay in Star Valley with Casey and possibly find a job. Currently we are looking for places to rent here, but nothing has been impressive yet, but I am hoping to find something by mid September, if not sooner. I am extremely thankful to my brother-in-law and his wife, though, for letting us bunk with them for the last little while. I know it's not terribly easy having other people live in your house for an extended period of time, but I am extremely thankful to them for letting us. Though I have my reserves about Star Valley, I can definitely think of many an uglier places to live! I still have a lot of warming up to do, but I am grateful it is here in SV that we are currently, rather than a million other places that I can think of. It has almost everything I have been wanting in a place to live! I am definitely sad at the thought of those great friends back in Laramie that we left, but I am confident that we will find many more friends here as well! SV isn't lacking in young couples surprisingly enough! I do have to say that I am in need of some structure in my life again and I will hopefully be getting that very soon! But, life has been great to both of us! I can't complain! I miss you all, and hope to see you sometime in the near future! Bye for now!

Moving On

Just a quick update,

Casey and I sold our house on Aug. 13th! We are very happy to have it sold to a great family! And for now it looks like we will be in Star Valley for a time! But many adventures are sure to come!

Monday Blues

Here is a quick update before I go back to doing some work. Casey and I got into Laramie on the night of the 10th. Did some work on the house and met with a Realtor on Friday to talk about listing our house for sale. Saturday we decided we wanted to put it on the market asap since it was pretty much ready to go. Sunday we continued to do some last minute work before the Realtor came by Monday to take pictures. Monday, I did some last minute cleaning, the Realtor came by, took pictures and said that the house would be listed that day. Now, get ready for this super exciting and super ironic part of my story: the river a couple blocks away was rising pretty fast, and had been for the past couple of days, as was the ground water here at our house. While the realtor was taking pictures Casey decided that it was probably time to start moving Bj and Tersa's stuff out of the basement, just in case we had to tear up carpet due to flooding, as we could see the ground water seeping out of our french drain. So a bunch of people came over to help us move their stuff out of the basement, and then we just watched and waited for a little while, hoping that we wouldn't have to tear out all the carpet, padding and baseboard. However, as luck would have it, the ground water kept rising higher and faster, so we eventually had to pull it all out. About 30 minutes later the water started seeping through the cracks on the floor, and then it started seeping in from the side of the walls, and needless to say it's been a very, very long week, and so far and it doesn't look like we'll be selling our house for a little while. The most ironic part, there haven't been water levels this high since the late 1950's. This house has been sitting here for 20 years with no water damage in the basement that we know of, until the DAY we go to put it on the market.

To try to look on the bright side, it hasn't rained since Sunday, and hopefully it doesn't for a while. And, nothing of Bj and Tersa's was ruined, and we were able to save our carpet. The water has stopped seeping into the basement (thank goodness!), and Casey and I were able to rig up a sweet irrigation system, with a water pump and gutters yesterday to prevent further water coming in from our drain. So far, we have had to cut out a couple of inches of drywall were the water had soaked in, but fortunately that's the extent of the damage at the moment, we'll see what else pops up in the next little while. There were some other awesome things that went wrong Monday, but it's really not worth my time to list them, we are just super grateful to the people that helped us move stuff out of the basement, as well as the GREAT friends that stayed until close to midnight trying to help us keep the water in the basement to a minimum, so with this, Casey and I say thank you to all that helped us. Here's some pictures for thought:

BEFORE

DURING AND AFTER

Our pump and irrigation system

Luckily we had our sump pump to push water into, as well as our water heater drain to keep water levels down fairly low during the night.

Goodbye Texas

Casey and I are wrapping up our time here in Texas. It has been a great time though! I am going to miss being down here though. However, we picked a great time to go for many reasons. It's starting to get ENTIRELY too hot for me, working in 90 + heat sure isn't my idea of fun! So we will miss the really really hot summer, not too sad about that. And, we stayed just long enough to see Candice's new baby! She had her on Tuesday morning (Which was when we were originally thinking about leaving). So after we have a little more time with Casey's sister and niece and finish up a few jobs here, we will be taking off and head to Laramie and then Afton! Take care and see you all in Laramie soon!

Texas

I thought I had better write a quick update on how we are doing. First of all, we are still alive and doing well. We are at the end of our time here in Texas, which is a bitter-sweet feeling, though I can't say I am sad that we will miss the really hot heat but I have really enjoyed it here!. We will leave around the first of June and head back to Wyoming and spend the summer doing jobs in Afton.

We have definitely accomplished a lot in the time we have been here though! Casey has done alot of work and I have learned a lot of carpentry skills that have helped me be a more useful employee!! There are still a couple of projects left to do however so I had better get back to doing them. I will add pictures later when I get the desire! Hope everyone is good!