Sexy, Sassy Sandra!

Sandra and her mom got their hair cut yesterday. She got about 8 inches cut off! She looks 10 years younger. Here are a few pics...

Here is her before picture...






Sandra's after picture...



Sandra's mom...




Well, I'm going back down to Alabama on Sunday. This time I will stay a little longer in hopes of finding some work and getting more work done on our driveway. Work here in Michigan has been scarce. The difficult part is getting the jobs to come back to back with less down time in between. It makes managing my time back and forth difficult. I never know exactly when or where the next job is. Every time I have gone down in the past, I have had to return within a couple of days for one reason or another, but this time my return date is open ended. I will be back here before Easter. I will try to post more often next week as I make progress on the property.

Work Bee Weekend!

Sweet Home Alabama! We had the best weather the past four days. We could not have picked a better weekend to work on our new property. It was 80 degrees and sunny today. We all got sunburned this weekend and Sandra was worried she might need her winter coat when we left Michigan! We got to meet more new neighbors this weekend. There is no lack of southern hospitality around these hills. Every one of them offered to help us cut and clear trees or help us in any way they can. We spent 4 hours Saturday night just talking with Mr. & Mrs. James King, our neighbor two doors down. We went to a new church in Cullman on Sunday and the kids really like it. It's a modern baptist church. The music was a little too contemporary for me, but we really liked everything the church has to offer. They made us feel very welcomed. We even went to Sunday school! It was pretty cool. They have so many areas for us to get involved in. We met a couple at Sunday school and the offered to come help us work cutting trees and invited us to their home already. I believe God has some great things in store for my family. We are all looking forward to making new friends and doing life together.

Here are my worker bees!




The funnest part of starting on any new job is finding new reasons to buy more TOOLS!



They call in the big dog when there's heavy lifting to do!




Clearing a tree that fell on our "driveway".



Sandra got a picture of the tree falling.

Time to Move!

Moving stinks! It's been a long and busy two weeks. Our time is up on the house and we decided it was time to make our move. We spent the first week packing everything in the house and selling off anything that we didn't need. My friend, Randall, went with me to Alabama last weekend to help with the loading and unloading of the truck. Sandra and the kids moved in with her parents for a couple of months until the kids are finished with school. I'm going to be working on setting up us a place to set our "temporary" residence on our property. I still have a lot of work to do. Hopefully by summer I can finish fixing the drive and get power up to the property. I'm going to be back and forth over the next couple months, I still have some work here which helps pay the bills. Pray God blesses me with work in Alabama. That is the one thing that will help further our progress more than anything. Sandra and the kids are going down with me this weekend. She hasn't been down since the beginning of November and she is starting to feel depressed. I think this trip will help to keep her spirit up and motivate her. I know I get motivated and excited every time I go down. We are going to check out a new church while we are there. The kids are excited.

Valentine's Day!

The kids went to memaw's house yesterday for a Valentine's Day party. Sandra and the kids will be spending a little more time after Friday with memaw. They will be moving into memaw's home this weekend and staying there until school is out. I will continue to work on our place in Alabama. Hopefully work will pick up and we will have the money we need to get things set up so they can come down in a couple months.



Sandra finished Carrie's new dress. Carrie picked this one out and wants to wear it to church. I think she wants to be Laura Ingles.

I'm legal!

I received my new Alabama Builder's License today. Just one more step in making our move. I'm still waiting for my business registrations. I transfered my driver's license last week when I was there. This is the first time I've ever lived in another state. There are a lot of things to think about when moving out of state, it's not as simple as just changing your address. I am planning another trip down in the next 2 weeks to do some more work. I can't believe the weather in Alabama, sure beats this Michigan weather, especially since I'm going to be roofing a house tomorrow.

Timber!!

Can you say "Tim-ber"! We cut a few more trees down today, and spent the better half of the day cleaning up the mess we made yesterday. It's amazing how fast you can cut them down and cut them up, but you spend as much time cleaning them up and burning brush. We made some good progress today, but still going to take a little more time than expected. It will be easier to spend more time working on it once I am permanantly moved. I met the sister of the lady that lives in the trailor in these pictures. Nice lady, but her sister in sick and not doing well.

Bob & Mike



Pictures taken this morning, you can see her trailor now!





This is after the clean up.

Making Some Progress!

Well, we started trimming some trees today. We have a long way to go. I think at this rate I'll probably be at this for a couple of weeks. I have about 2000 feet of tree line to clear. The first 500 feet is probably the worst part, the rest isn't that bad. I'm just excited to be here working on it. I met Tony, from the electric company, here today and he gave me a good idea what we have to do to get power up to the property. We have a couple of choices, but either way the trees on the property line have to go.

Gettin' Ready!





This was before we started, my driveway is the treeline.




This is part of the driveway that has been cleared.




The small ones are the toughest!!



View from the drive about half way up.



After we cut about the first 100 feet or so.





Dinner! Oh how I love a buffet!