Happy 4th of July and Other Adventures

Us at the Ward Breakfast. TC, Ashley, Savanna, Ashley, Devin and Spencer (in the stroller) at the Freedom Festival in Downtown Provo.



Happy 4th of July. The sombraro is mostly for luck...
Here's Chad and I doing insulation work. Peace out.

Here's the attic before I started. The insulation now is up to the horizontal 2x4.
Here's my exciting work in the attic. It only took about 6 hours in the attic.
Here's some of the 60 bags. They weigh 21.4 lbs.
Tim and Aubrey helping us by putting the insulation into the blower.

For the 4th of July we decided to put insulation in our attic. ALMOST as exciting as fireworks, huh. So on Tuesday, we went to Home Depot to purchase 60 bags of cellulose insulation to blow into our house. We received a free rental of the blower for every 20 bags we purchased. We had to pick up the blower and the insulation and we were contemplating having the insulation delivered, until they told us it would be $80. We noticed that we could rent a truck for $19 for 75 minutes and $20 for every hour after that. We decided to save $60 and rent the truck to pick up the blower and the insulation in one fell swoop. We tried to reserve the truck, but they said that they do not reserve equipment, so it's first come first serve.

So I drive down on Thursday night at 5:30 (after a dentist appointment where I had 3 cavities) to pick up the truck, blower, and insulation. When I arrived, the truck was gone, but they said it would be back sometime after 6:15. In the mean time, I could wait and they would call me. He also told me that I needed to have a copy of my insurance card (which I didn't have). So I had to go print a card from Geico. La Quinta told me that I couldn't print because I wasn't a current paying guest of the hotel. So I went to the Marriott and printed off my insurance card.

About 6:30 the truck became available so I went to the desk and filled out all the forms. Then I went back to pick up the insulation...except, they sold out my order. That's right, not one bag of insulation in the entire store. So they called the Lindon store and told me I could drive there and pick up the insulation, but I would have to repurchase the material and get a refund from the Provo store. They offered to give me 20-30 minutes extra time to pick up the insulation. So I got the blower loaded and left provo at 7:30. I got to Lindon at about 7:45 and they did not have the bags on a pallet (as was expected so that it would fit in the truck without tie downs). So one man helped me put the bags on two carts and bring them to the front of the store, but then disappeared, leaving me to load the bags by myself.

Since the bags were not on a pallet, they did not fit in the truck without a tarp to cover them. SO I had to buy a tarp and the recommendation I received was 19 X ??. So I got the biggest one, 19 x 30, big mistake. It was 4 times too long and after 5 requests, no one was there to help me put it on. Finally, one young man who had never done it before (the blind leading the blind) came to help me. We tied it on weakly, and within 5 minutes, the tarp was blowing everywhere. I managed to get it mostly secured with two tie downs given to me by the Provo Home Depot for the blower. By this time, it was 10:35. Home Depot closes at 10:00, and the truck had to be back before they could close. I called them, and they said they would wait until I got back. It took until 11:00 pm to get the truck back to Home Depot. All told, the one hour project took over 6 hours. It was the most frustrating experience ever. Oh and by the way, the tarp cost $50 and the truck was $30, so we really saved no money.

Thankfully, our friends TC and Ashley Perry, (who arrived at 6:30 pm) stayed until I arrived with the truck to help me unload it. Ashley was planning to run the 5k at 7 am in the morning.
Thanks Ashley.

I got to bed about midnight and had to be up in the morning (6 am). Luckily, Spencer did his part and slept from 12:00 to 5:45 am. Way to go Spence...

We had Tim and Aubrey Chavez help us on Friday (4th of July). We got about half of the insulation installed by 10:00 am. We went to the ward breakfast at the park, the Freedom Festival in the afternoon, and then drove up to SLC to visit my friends Diana Leeflang and Stan Bell.

A note about Stan, he is serving in Mosul, Iraq and was on leave for 2 weeks in July. He has to go back until February 2009. It was great to see him and thank him for his service. He has a 16 month old boy and a beautiful wife at home. Thanks Stan for all your hard work and service. We hope to see you soon.

On Saturday, Chad came over to help us finish the insulation. We started at 6 am and finished about 11 am. Naomi and I spent 2 more hours cleaning up. Note to self, put a tarp under the blower, cover all the furniture in the path of the blower line, and have insulation delivered.

Well, if you've read all this, congratulations. The pictures are more exciting.