WALLS GOING UP UP UP

Now this is what you must do to get the WHOLE PICTURE.......go to the bottom of this post of "walls going up up up" and then come to the top of this page. this is going to be SOME HOUSE. I'm taking this photo from the driveway looking up. two more arched window panels will be on the left side. the lone arched window to the far right will hold one of two arched stained glass panels that I found in Burlington when I first came to Nauvoo.
a little further down the driveway.
Here the fork lift guy is lifting up another worker to screw in the upper scews so as to tie the whole wall together with the others. It was 4 p.m. when this wall was put in and more will go in tomorrow.
here you see the tallest panel going onto the rebar that it's going to "tie into". I had to go to Fort Madison, Iowa and get some "extenders and some threded things" to add onto what was in the stem wall. then the workers cut these and added the extender and placed the wall panel on it. THAT IS TRICKY....and then the workers would tightly screw the walls together and have them be straight. it's windy and cold, but ahhhhhhh, sunshine is out and the wind helped A LOT to dry out the wet ground from Fri and Sat. rains.
this is the tallest window panel coming into place.
panel to the left of tallest window.
I wanted to show you the threded ancher bolt thing here that is screwed down.
I think the worker guys are having fun building this house.
another wall going into place. VERY VERY exciting. and whew, the WIND....but they kept working.
you can see here the log walls within the frame. Vicki is trying to stay warm....it was 44 degrees as I'd pass the bank, but the WIND....I thought we'd do these when the wind was not so fast. We had "brown caps" on the Mississippi. ha, in compared to "white caps" on the ocean.
Tomasi, Vicki and I had to go measure and haul 3 more logs for the infill of the walls. Tomasi said as he waltzed with this one, "like dancing with a fat lady".
I'm taking the picture looking down from the upper part of the property. This was more when we were loading them onto the property last Friday. On last Saturday we were going to put up the walls, but it began to rain...sooooooo nope, didn't happen then.
I'm very grateful that we didn't put up the walls then as when we set one up, the window that Vicki put in for ventelation ......................nope, that put the arched windows up too tall. So on Tuesday, the crew took the lower window space out and lowered the arched windows and ahhhhhhhhhhh, wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy better.
These are the log and arched pannels that are being taken up to the house site. Vicki was so clever to think of using the unfinished resturant inside to build my pannels. I have 27 panels that are 4 feet wide and 12 feet tall. keep looking.
This is where they are building the panels and they are done with the panels. much plaining and sanding. then they are fit into the flat bed being pulled by the pickup truck.
Here are the panels being brought up to the house side. The truck had to be flat so as to use the fork lift to scoop up three at a time.
And this is another worker that is giving me a smile.
and another sander. It looks like a log "bone yard" in front of Vicki's "was gonna be a restaurant.

Vicki's miniature horses

Here is Vicki with MOLLY. Her darling miniature horse. She's being taken to her "boy friend" and so Molly will stay with that little farm for a month. Vicki wants to have these darling little pets to pull her in a cart........she just loves animals. These guys are so fat and fluffy as they've not lost their winter coat yet.
Before we Vicki got Molly out of her little pasture area, here she is with her brother and Jack (the Jack ass).
cute, yeah?

LOOMS and TABLE

These are the tables that Tomasi and I made when we first came here to put these in Vicki's restaurant. She didn't finish the restaurant and so we had an abundance of tables and benches IN STORAGE. Yes, I have one in my house and Vicki has one set somewhere else. all but these three are unvarnished, but finished. It has a lovely clear epoxy coat on the top, so it is smooooooooooth. We want to sell these for $450.00. the unfinished ones we'll let go for $350.00
Here is the side view. These are 6 feet long, benches the same and the two end ones are perfect. I seat 10....but if we have BIG FOLKS come...then 8 is more comfy.
These were taken in our Nauvoo Women's Guild in the "book room"
Okay, now you may really wonder why I have this loom here. Okay, my story.....When I was a student in BYU-PROVO, Ut.......1962............before I came to Hawaii, I took a course in weaving. I JUST LOVED IT. I made a shawl for my mother. Then the following semester, I got to Hawaii and attended Church College of Hawaii (aka BYU-H) and met Tomasi and you know the rest of the story. I always wanted a loom again. When I went to visit my mother when I was expecting Sarina, I found that there was a weaving studio below her little house. OH WOW ZOWIE.....and I fell in love again with weaving just looking at that Studio. The woman that ran that studio and classes was 93. My WONDERFUL Aunt Myrtle bought me a loom to take home. I would go into Honolulu and get the strips of the Muumuu factories.....I made many rugs and loved making these, sold some and mostly made for my families to give gifts. I then got more involved with my music at the U of H and the "loom room" did it's share of leaking and someone came to my house and wanted to buy my loom and I sold it.
So when I talked with my dear friend, Sylvia Fellows, and told her about our Women's Guild, she said, "Irene, I'll not weave again as I have other interests and I'm looking to clean out my garage, I have TWO looms, if you want them, you can pay for the shipping and teach the women in your Women's Guild how to weave." HOOOOOOOOOOO BOY, whoooooooooopies and hallelujah....................and so paid for shipping from Anaheim, CA to here. about $100.00 per loom. So they arrived last week and I'll set one up in the Women's Guild and another with a friend that will "loom sit" her for me while my house is being built. She is also a weaver and has no loom at the present. Somewhere, dear Sylvia remembered that I wanted to weave the rugs in my own home....now another dream coming true...and I get to share that love of weaving with others. THANK YOU DEAR SYLVIA.

Nauvoo Ward Relief Society Presidency

Here is our Ward's Relief Society presidency folks. (from left to right) Bonnie Holliday, Sec. Ann Hawkes, Pres., Phillis Anderson, Homemaking counselor (yeah, I know it's all those other names)and Irene, Education counselor. We met at Ann's lovely oak log home and she is surrounded by pine trees. I feel like I've taken a trip just up to the mountains when I go to her house as I see these trees everywhere. ahhhhhhhh, the sound of the wind in the pines....... Her Husband Glenn had a blazing fire going for us as it was a cool day when we met on Monday. YALE girl here has a son graduating from there next week. I love R.S. and these ladies are all wonderful to serve my other sisters with. I am blessed. and yes, I do miss my beehives as well, but you know, they'll be in R.S. soon.............and now I work with their mothers.

Pouring the stem wall on the house.

and here they are pouring the larger back stem wall. Harrah for Tomasi and his Tongan hoe.
This is the finish of the job. look closely at the red box thingie, that's the control for the WHOLE cement conveyer belt. this will be my front door area with a covered porch.
Even Vicki loves to haul that tube around and let the cement pour. We had fun playing with some left over cement, made 2 BIG FEET...put some marbles in for toe nails. If I made more of these, I could tell someone to just "follow the feet path"? ha ha. Vicki also put in a bunch of bent rebar for the attachment of the walls later on. Everything ties together. Fasinating process. This was a lot of work to do a STEM WALL for Irene here wanted wood floors. no basement. It would have been cheaper to do cement floors, but I just didn't want to walk on cement floors for the rest of my life. sooooooooooo wood it is. Thanks Vicki and Ralph.
A lot of folks have asked us what a "stem wall" was. well, now here is this cement truck that is putting the cement in this GOING UP TROTH....and it goes on another thing that has a belt on it and then it moves around and drops the cement into the round troughs that Ralph made. yep. tricky, but yeah, better then doing the mix in a wheel barrel and going all day for this. The first cement truck was full, the second was much less. Ralph ordered JUST THE RIGHT AMOUNT. yeah.
You can see the stem wall in it's form. The foundation is under that and is sitting on solid rock. It's cold, but not too cold. Ralph is following Tomasi with his cement trowel. The guy in the red shirt is directing the HUGE ARM thingie that has the cement coming up it and onto the conveyor belt. It's all computer run by this guys little thing in his hand. very interesting.
We came earlier as we didn't know if the cement truck was going to come and found a bunch of mud that had to be taken out of the stem wall troths. I had bought a small shop vac and gave it to Vicki as she needs it for all sorts of projects and she asked me to bring it NOW.....that was 12:30 p.m. Soooooooooo we get there and Tomasi had his Tongan Hoe. What a blessing. He got the mud out more near the mountain side and I and Vicki got the harder stuffs sucked out by the shop vac. you may wonder "where is the electric power?" well we have power hooked up there and belong to some "co-operative" electric power thingie. I even have a fancy printed out certificate.
You can see Vicki here sucking out the dried muck that Tomasi busted up with that great Tongan hoe. You can see the cement truck and this huge contraption.
Taken from above and you can also see Darling "silent Bob"....the Scottie dog of Vicki's.

Nauvoo Women's Guild making quilts

THREE CHIEFS....Chief of police, Chief of fire department, and Chief Moon Consulting, Susan Stanton. She's pretty much the director of the Nauvoo Women's Guild. This gift is long reaching for our community.....

These are some of the quilts pictured up close.
cute the teddy bears within the plastic bags.....these were put into plastic bags so that the police cars and others could carry them around with them until they needed them so that they would stay clean.

Here are two dear friends of mine. The redhead is Ann Hawkes. She's the new R.S. Pres. Outgoing is the one inbetween us, Betty Ka'aiakamanu. This wonderful even took place over at the City Hall tonight. 40 quilts of all sizes were made in rememberance of one of our friends who had a daughter and grandchild die in a terrible accident in Arizona. Many women contributed materials and yarn and all took one or two home from the Guild. We had a workday/humanitarian day service at the Church house. This was given on the birthday of the grandchild that died. I'll post more pictures. this post with my cell phone. ha.

Here are all the quilts in these little bags so the local police and fire trucks can give them away when the emergency happens. all these darling little teddy bears too were put in. The reason for the plastic bags was so that they could be seen easily in the emergency cars and still be kept clean.


you can see that we also served refreshments that all of us took part in making. there were around 28 folks here at this event.


I was coming in the door when these were being taken. The middle short gal is the grandmother that got us all going on this and we'll make this an annuel event. To the left is Christy Cluff, the sister of the one that was killed. this was a healing event for her as well.

Nauvoo Women's Guild

Okay folks, here is the WINNING TEAM in our town of Nauvoo. The older lady to the lower right, she knew sooooooo much as she used to be a teacher here in Nauvoo "back in the day". there were 9 tables and all 9 tables had 8 folks at them. The questions were based on a T.V. game of trivia questions. These were hard and fun. Mary to the lower right here knew most every one. We were such a routy group....We got all sorts of prises and so sometimes I'm on a "winning team". Taken from left to right LOIS, Vicki, Denise, Irene, Ramona, Mary. We all laughed sooooooooo hard. This was a fund raiser for new walks near the Mississippi, and fixing up the City Hall and other worthy causes. There were goodies sold at the back of the room. This took place at the little Elem. School down the road. I'd do this once a month any time. $10.00 for a BLAST of laughter, community, and learning answers to questions you never thought you'd want to know about.