Health Update

I thought since I’ve posted quite a few times about health issues that I should give an update.

Weight Loss Attempt

The goal continues. Since we started really working on my parents place we stopped the morning veggie drink in the interest of time; and I’ve only been mediocre on the self control after 8pm.

As such, I haven’t lost a ton of weight. But I have lost some. Depending on how I stand on a notoriously unreliable scale it is possible that I’m under 300lbs. Lean a little one way and I’m under, lean a little the other and I’m not. But I think I am down at least a few pounds from the 310 I was a few months ago.

I think that loss is almost exclusively to the pool time almost every afternoon AND spending 4-6 hours a day in a 100F room building walls and such. Together the sweat box and the swimming hole have done me a little good!

Numb Hand

The numbness in my hand is still there unfortunately. The medical info that I read about says it should take a few weeks to go away if I take care of it. And since I still spend too much time at the computer (the activity I think is responsible because of how I rest my arm on the edge of the desk) I’m not sure when it will go away.

The numbness is one of the reasons I haven’t been posting as much lately. I’ve been trying to not sit here too often.

Mental Health

I’m still a nutcase! That might always be true, but I’m trying to deal with it better than I have in the past. I’m still going to my weekly VA appointments and meeting with the counsellor.

I’ve also started the Canines With A Cause classes. Those are once a week and in the primary stage that I’m in now it is mostly learning how to train your dog; basic canine psychology and such. They will hopefully be able to find me a good dog to adopt. If not then I’ll have to find one myself at some point. (If any of you would like to donate a dog to me, I’d be thrilled and highly appreciative!).

Back/Headaches

I hurt like crazy all the time. I’m sure I’m taking more Ibuprofren than is good for me, but since I need a home to live in permanently I need to keep going. There have been a few mornings where the headaches were so bad that I was vomiting, but only a few.

My back is holding out okay. It hurts, and I’m only able to do about 30 minutes of real labor each day. Thankfully I’m able to use Julie, Caitlin, and Joshua to largely do the things that need to be done by just being near by and directing them. There aren’t really too many things that need someone big and strong to do. So it’s slow, but it’s coming along. And my back does what it must in order to keep going.

Hopefully we can get through this without a complete physical (or mental) breakdown again.

2 July 20171 July 2017

My Scout Camp

I went to scout camp on June 12-17. We went to camp Tifi up next to Mt. Pleasant. The camp was up in the mountains so at certain places you had a very good view of everything. There were ten boys and a couple leaders. The boys that went with me are Dallin, Caleb, TJ, Jaeden, Charles, Liam, Clint, Sam, Braiden, and me.

Monday

Monday was our first day and we spent the first half of the day taking a tour of the camp. Our camp assistant was Ben Barlow, but because we were all twelve (and slightly immature) we all called him Barley. In our tour we saw all the different camp sites, all the places the different merit badges took place, the pool, the trading post (this is where you bought stuff at), the mess hall, the zip lines, and basically everything there. Afterwards, we went and set up our tent at the camp site and decide who would sleep where.

After we had camp all set up we went to lunch at the mess hall. The main course was pizza but it was very pasty and gross. Thankfully there was much more to eat. It was basically a very large buffet. You could have as much cereal or salad as you wanted. There was cake and pie and lots of juices. They had chips, soups, and sandwiches. We all probably ate our weight in cereal and everything else that week. So meals were some of the best times we had at scout camp because we are boys.

Merit badges

After lunch we went to do our separate merit badges. I did survivor with Caleb and Liam on Monday and Tuesday. The survivor track contained the merit badges, Pioneering, Indian Lore, and Wilderness Survival. We only got the Wilderness Survival badge signed off because the Indian Lore cost thirty dollars and the Pioneering teachers didn’t like our knots. For the Wilderness Survivor badge we had to do some fire starting. We had to start them with flint and steel, nine volt battery, and a magnifying glass. Then we had to show the leader our seventy-two hour kits. Then he signed of our badge.

Tuesday

On Tuesday we had to go down to the lower field to do a flag ceremony. After the flags were posted the commissioner introduced us to the spirit stick. Every flag ceremony he would give the spirit stick to one troop who could take back to camp and put an item on it to decorate it. Then the next morning at our flag ceremony he would give the stick to someone else. The method our commissioner used to chose which troop to give the stick to is having each of the troops do cheers. The troop that was the best got to take the stick for that day. We never won the cheering contest.

So after breakfast we all went to our merit badges where we finished them and got them signed off by the teacher. Then we had a time called troop time. During troop time your troop got to sit at camp and do whatever. So usually my troop either played mafia or wrestled in the dirt for fun. But every time we would sit around the smoldering fire and watch it. Occasionally someone would spray it with bug spray, which was fairly dangerous, but thankfully no one started on fire. We also had a time called open program. In that time you could go to your merit badges to finish them, go to the shooting ranges, sit at camp, go to the trading post, and mostly everything you could do there.

Wednesday- Thursday

On Wednesday we all changed merit badges. Now almost all of our troop was doing the waterlogged track. It contained Swimming and Lifesaving. Everybody who did the track got both of the merit badges. Wednesday they taught us all the strokes. We had to do the sidestroke, freestyle, backstroke, elementary backstroke, and breath stroke.

There were seventy kids so they split us into three groups and taught us in rotations. One spot taught strokes, one taught lifesaving, and at the last one you had to dolphin dive nine feet, grab a brick, and bring it back up. After the merit badge time ended and free time started none of us went anywhere because were so worn out. So we all sat around the fire with a can of Axe and bug spray until dinner.

On Thursday we had to swim 550 yards doing all of the strokes. They had us do 150 before lunch and then the other 400 after. While you were swimming if you stopped for more than five seconds then you had to start over. After we finally finished the swimming and the lifeguards signed off our merit badges, my troop was dead. We went back to camp and sat and talked for a while until we got up the energy to go sit at the trading post. Then dinner rolled around and we sat up there for a hour or two. We went back to camp started a fire and played games in the woods until about 10 o’clock. Then we had reflections of the day and went to bed.

Friday

On Friday we didn’t have any merit badges to do because it was the game day at camp. After lunch we went to the COPE and did the rope course and the zip lines. You had to be a certain height for the rope course so only three of us did it because the rest of the troop is short. But the short guys could still do the zip lines. On the rope course you were up forty-five feet and had to walk on small ropes to get to the other pole that you could stand on. You had two carabineers to catch you if you slipped but it was still really freaky. The whole thing was scary except the zip lines but that is what made it so much fun.

After the zip lines we all went to the shooting range for about two hours. We did the rifle and the archery. On the rifle we all did pretty good. Our leader hit the center on about every shot every time he shot. On archery we all shot we about the same. We couldn’t get the bullseye, but we did miss the target plenty. But we all got a few on the target. After we finished that we went to Swords of Helaman.

Games

We had to go the middle of the field and get these foam swords. We were split into teams and then we were told to kill each other. If someone’s sword hit you anywhere you were dead. That was a blast. My troop was on the same team so we stayed in a pack and slowly moved around the field to kill once all the teams had spread out. We killed many men that day.

That all ended after a good hour and we all went to lunch. Then we were able to watch the boat race which was pretty cool. Then we did the Swords of Helaman when it started again. It was just like the last one. We went back up to the shooting range once that ended and had fun up there. Then we had dinner and went to the camp Campfire.

Campfire

We all watched the skits that were preformed and laughed and talked. We had a skit but it didn’t win the competition to get into the Campfire. Then the staff members had a slideshow of pictures of everything that went on that week. After they finished the commissioners came and had the spirit sticks to show us. They talked about the enthusiasm that was with all the cheers and how much fun they had. Then they said they would give the spirit stick to the troop that had the best cheers and enthusiasm on everything throughout the week even though they had never won the cheer contest. After they finished building tension they announced that our troop got to keep the spirit stick. We had been sad during the week that we never won, but this changed it all.

Leaving Camp

Then they sent us back to camp with a final goodbye. We sat around the fire and talked about all the fun things that had happened at camp. After about an hour of that we decided to go to our tents because we had to wake up early to take down camp. My tent stayed awake for another hour talking about all the people and all the fun things we did.

When we woke up the next morning we took down camp and left for home. On the drive we all slept until we got to PG. Now every time we see each other at church or for our Wednesday meetings you can always hear something that happened at camp come up in our conversations. We all enjoyed it and we wish we never had to leave.

29 June 2017

Oh What Changes In a Year!

Our youngest, JR, has reached a new milestone… 1 YEAR OLD! Kids change a lot in the course of a year.

JR

JR this morning with his siblings. A great family!

27 June 2017

Penrod Family Reunion

Yesterday was the Penrod family reunion (Julie’s family). The desired location was Payson Lakes in southern Utah County. We had five out of six families show up and had a great time.

Highlights

With 26 people it was tough to catch them all on video or camera without making it a dedicated goal, which I didn’t. I’m not sure even all of my own kids made it on here, so my apologies to anyone who feels like they got shorted or left out.

This was just a one day event at the lake. We enjoyed the day just relaxing and playing water sports. The paddle board and kayaks were a great hit and even the little kids loved the water. I think all but three people got in and got wet.

Three of the families actually decided to do some camping the night before, and so they all got together for a pre-reunion campout. The other two families (including us) arrived around 11 am and stayed until approximately 5pm. It was about as much sun as I could take.

The sun burns were surprisingly mild and I was only worried about one child getting heat stroke/exhaustion (mostly because of the ride home with grandparents when the AC stopped working).

Lots of water, lots of fun, and lots of laughter. It was a fantastic way to spend the day. I hope that everyone else felt the same way. We’ll look forward to the Penrod family reunion again next year.

24 June 201724 June 2017

Making Progress… Slowly

It took a little over a month, but we are finally making progress on the house “remodel” effort.

ENDLESS CLEANING

Most of our first few weeks were simply spent on cleaning out he space to be “remodeled.” I keep putting that in quotes because it is only partly accurate. We aren’t technically remodeling the house, we are actually finishing it. The space we are primarily focused on has never been completed.

For years it has served primarily as a storage room. Things put into there were neglected and forgotten. I’ve found countless items I had forgotten I owned, and so have my parents. I’ve posted several humorous lists about it that you can read here, here, and here.

Here’s a quick glimpse into what this room was when we started.

As you can see, there was a LOT of stuff to go through. Much of it went into the trailer and was hauled off to the landfill. Some of the items were good and useful and were moved to a different location in the house. And some of it is needed to finish this space. But first it was the cleaning, and it took us a seemingly endless period of time.

I may or not have noticed in the video, but there were open access points directly to the outside. These allowed birds to almost freely come and go from this room. This meant that along with dust, we were also cleaning a fair amount of birds nests and feces along with our own possessions. For the first month we did nothing but cleaning/organizing. But as I say, it finally feels like we are really making progress.

MAKING PROGRESS

Insulation

This space is a bit over 1200 square feet. In the end it will turn into 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, 1 full kitchen, a laundry room, and a living room (which will likely be filled with that pool table you saw).

A big portion of our cleaning was dealing with those big piles of insulation blocks. This room is over the garage and needs insulation from that space, and those blocks were always intended for that purpose. Because the space was never finished, the floor boards were never screwed down and were easy to lift up. So up they came, and that block insulation went down below it.

This week we were also able to get additional fiberglass insulation blown in on top of those blocks. This was done to fill in gaps left by the block insulation and to provide the appropriate R-value. We were able to do this ourselves and was a fairly easy process.

Plumbing

The plumbing for a kitchen was already in place, but we needed to add plumbing for the bathroom and wash room. We started that last week and are almost done. A good competent professional would probably have been done in about 5 hours, but we’re all either old (Dad), broken (myself) or in need of direction (Julie/kids).

As an aside, Julie has repeatedly proven herself as the best worker amongst us. She doesn’t always know what to do, but she is the most capable one to do it. She has definitely been held back by Dad and I because we can’t keep up with her. Absolutely completely awesome!

One of the challenges slowing us down is the fact that we need to get the plumbing done before we put the floor down, and we need the floor down to build walls, but it is nice to have walls built before you do the plumbing. We’ve spent a fair amount of time discussing the best order to do things in, and another longer amount of time going back and forth to Home Depot for supplies.

But we’re making progress. We have the rough plumbing done except for vents that need to go through the walls. For water supply, we only need to connect to the house water lines AND pray that where we brought the supply through the floor is in the right locations.

Main trunk of rough plumbing — The main trunk of the waste lines made from ABS, before insulation was blown in

NEXT WEEK

Next week we will hopefully be making progress again. We think that on Monday the HVAC guys will be there to install the gas line for the furnace and to the oven in the kitchen. When they are done we can start building the interior walls. We’ve bought the electrical wire to run from the meter to a separate breaker box in this space. And if all of that gets done we’ll start running the individual electrical lines for outlets and lights.

I won’t hold my breath for all of that getting done next week. We are painfully slow. A competent craftsmen could build the walls in half a day. I think it’ll take us three at least. Dad used to be more than competent, but 70 is just around the corner for him. I’m young enough, but just unable to do more than about 30-60 minutes of real work a day (broken into 5-10 minutes segments).

So keep watching and I’ll give you more pics and fun stories about what we’ve got going on. If you notice the countdown timer at the bottom of the page we are now under 2 months before school starts, so any day we aren’t making progress is a day driving me nuts.