Tony's Birthday. . .

Connections. . .

Blogging in Real Time for a moment. . .

Interesting day today and I don't want to forget to post more about it later so I'll put this up now as a reminder!!  It's what I do.  Weird, I know.

GOOD day at church.  Haven't been able to say that for awhile so wanted to make a note of it.  Zach gave the message and it was GOOD.  And relevant.  Steph and I sang a special together for the first time.  Ever.  It was GOOD.  Both of these events were recorded so I hope to post them here later in the week.  Maybe.

And THEN, Gloria found out that her good friend from school is actually her cousin.  3rd or 4th cousin anyway but she is related to people I KNOW and used to visit on occasion!  Jessica stayed the night with us last night (she and Gloria had discussed things they have in common over the last two school years- familiar names, common places) and today we had lunch with my mom for her birthday (HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!) and more of the pieces came together.  My mom has done a ton of genealogy research on our family so she called me just now and I put it all down on paper. 

In this picture of my grandpa with his siblings, my dad's dad, my Grandpa Chet, is 4th from the left.  The only girl is his sister, my Great Aunt Lil.  I remember visiting Aunt Lil when I was little and I went to her funeral when I was a young adult. 

Lil's daughter was my dad's cousin LaVell and she married Gene and they had a daughter named Jeanie.  Jeanie grew up and had a daughter named Judy.  Judy grew up and had Jessica.  Gloria and Jessica have been hanging out at school for the last couple of years and now they find out they have common ancestors!!  Pretty cool.  One of these days soon we are going to visit LaVell (who I have talked with on many occasions) and show her the connection.  I'm pretty sure Jessica has already told her since it sounds like they are pretty close.  I'll be sure to post about it when it happens! 


PS I hope this Real Time Blogging takes off because I prefer it. . .

The Remodel. . . Part 4. . .

The back end of the building was the most time consuming of all to remodel due to the fact that there were many walls, false ceilings and even one room with a hardwood floor.  It's difficult to describe and impossible to take one picture that shows what the back end looked like before we began the destruction.  I won't even try to match it up with these before pictures but if you were standing in the room where Rob and Kurt build cables, to your left would be the back door onto the dock and to your right would be a short hallway.  At the end of the hallway, to the left, there was a small-ish room and straight ahead was the bathroom.  Turn left again, before the bathroom, and it's another hallway. If you were to go through the bathroom (not recommended) there would be another good-sized room with a door leading outside.  And finally, there was a fairly good sized room at the very back that was completely enclosed and even had a sliding glass door and hardwood floors. 

Before the remodel, we used all of these rooms to store our gear between shows.  Everything about the backroom was dark and crowded and made it difficult to get to what we needed when we needed it.  Of course, it got much worse when we started to tear it all down but it actually went pretty quickly and the end results were amazing.  I'll just let the pictures (and one video!) tell the story:

Ahhhh. . . Light!!!!

It's still a work in progress- the bathroom is still un-usable and we need shelving but I know that it will make a huge difference in how we operate.  A place for everything and everything in it's place!!  Right??  That's the plan!!!  And it's finally coming together!!!!!