The last five days have been very full!

Since Wednesday, James has been here helping us. He arrived just in time to help us with the perimeter drain; I don’t think he was expecting to help sort rocks when he offered to build our tire house! He’s been a good sport and it was only a few days before we moved back to filling tires.

We took a break on Saturday to celebrate Gail’s retirement from nursing. We spent the afternoon and evening at my brother Tom’s cabin near Bridge Lake. It was nice and relaxing and Chris and I took the tandem kayak out together for the second time ever. It’s been a long time since we’ve paddled together without kids.

Despite good intentions on Sunday the day meandered with odd jobs. Mid morning a family from Kamloops came to visit and ask questions about the house. Sunday evening I took the kids to weigh in day for the lambs and dropped Helen off at Dad and Gail’s for a few days. Stephen and Katie and I returned home to find Sean and Anna returned with Josh. Alvin brought his big excavator in anticipation of faster work on Tuesday. Monday evening was a flurry of packing for summer 4-H camp in a very chaotic house!

This morning we tidied the house, hung laundry, fed lambs, vacuumed our rug and swept the floors and then two very wired kids and I left for Stump Lake and five days of 4-H camp. Upon my return through Kamloops I dashed about picking up supplies and trying to figure out pex hose and propane lines.

When I returned on Monday evening, the Robinsons were here (see their blog at http://canadianfamilyrobinson.com) and Nikki and Monica came to help. It was the biggest group of like-minded people we’d had here yet. We planned a potluck and by 7:00 or so everyone stopped working (we’re on the 4th round of tires!)

I took the Robinson girls, Sierra, Ocean and Indigo to feed lambs (what an adventure!) and to check for eggs. What lovely inquiring minds those kids have! They discovered our frog family in our water service pipe and were quite entertained by them.

The Robinsons are the first family we’ve had visit our project with young children and we are amazed at how similar some of our own values are and how closely aligned our thinking is on how we want our family life to be. We, for example, don’t think it strange at all that Kim and Curtis Robinson sold their home and bought an RV and have been travelling and home schooling their kids. That is seriously cool. What a great expererience for the entire family (sort of like closing your family business to build a house out of tires and pop cans!)

By 9:30 the mosquitoes were getting agressive and Monica and Nikki had to make their way back to Lone Butte.

Tomorrow we fill more tires. We are so grateful for the help; the house is moving along at a speedy pace thanks to the simple abundance of extra hands.

I continue to get more offers of assistance and requests to come and see what we are doing for later this month and next. I haven’t had time to respond to all of them, but hope to do so this week. So far, we haven’t turned anybody down as we know that getting into the thick of things is the best way to learn before a person builds their own earthship.

We’ve been taking photos and with Monica’s cache of photos I will try to get some more posted in the next few days.

And yes, I am posting this in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Some days are so packed with activity that I have trouble falling asleep!