Mother's Day Weekend

Not a lot of work got done this weekend as Francis decided he needed to spend time with me for Mother's Day. In his mind anyway not much was done, but actually progress was made on several fronts.

Friday evening was also busy looking after a member of the family who was ill--- Francis' VW Golf that he bought in 2003 is sick. He had ordered a part to see as he was "trouble shooting" from YouTube again, but alas to no avail. Hence, Saturday morning saw us driving his car to the local VW hospital ( Woody's Garage in Cobden) to have tests done. We are still waiting for a diagnosis and treatment plan. Francis says if anyone wants to visit he will check to see what the visiting hours are. Francis spent a lot of time grieving over the weekend as he is afraid it will be a terminal diagnosis.... 

Saturday morning saw finishing touches being done to the barn doors-- now you can open all or none or the doors, they have fancy new handles ( made of Romy's old horseshoes that I painted) with a design by Francis to attach them to the doors. The new "Z" boards were attached as well. These add esthetics but also cover up the small gap between the upper and lower Dutch doors so no more drafts coming in! It is actually getting quite cozy in that part of the barn now.....ok so the rest of the long wall is full of broken windows but they too will be replaced in good time. Francis and I had a design conference on how to put the "Z" boards up--- you see there were 4 possible configurations.... We finally chose the one that has them looking like a "X". He drew all the possibilities on the white board we put up in the barn, and then had me sign it like a contract( you see I am notorious for coming along after he has something made with- " We should have done it like this...." or " I don't like it like that, can we change it to ......? much to his frustration.

These were the design options and the agreement--hehe

Sunday being Mother's Day and all, he only spent about 4 hours in the barn total. I managed to pry him away to come and have lunch with the family- my Mum, Dutch, Adam.Kristen, Rowan and Brynja all came. 

After that, it was out to Home Depot to shop for windows for the remaining window in Raphi's stall. Installation will take place next weekend ( maybe??). We found two that will do the job nicely. We also made a spontaneous purchase of two plastic Adirondack chairs for the barn-complete with cup/beer holder! Francis says they are for Marina and I to site and watch the horses, but I know his secret.........they are really to encourage me to come and hang out in/around the barn while he is working!! ( which I will be happy to do once the weather improves, but sorry yesterday we actually woke up to snow on the ground!!). I am a fair weather kind of girl......as he should know by now after all these years LOL

When we got back with our lovely purchases, he set to work removing the cement pad that sticks out into the alley way. The original idea was to cut it back and use the rest of the old pad as the floor for the new tack room. However, the pad was coming up so nicely, Francis has decided to remove the entire pad - this means he won't have to pour new concrete for the other part of the tack room ( you see the slab/pad is not as wide a s the tack room will be).....there is an old cement floor that is intact under the pad he is removing(not sure if this makes sense to readers or not) that we can just build directly on. He was happy as a pig in S... as he finally got to use his new toy( well , he bought it about 6 weeks ago for just this occasion, but just broke it out of the box yesterday)---a new jackhammer!!Boys and their power tools.......