Chapter 70: My What Nice Siding You Have!

Greetings from the International Kite Festival in Long Beach!

We headed out for Long Beach Wednesday night after my karate classes with a trailer of building materials loaded up. Bob's goal was to get most of the work done before the weekend since we had a TON of folks coming to visit.

Chris and Roo came with their teardrop and camped in the yard. Unfortunately Bear failed teardropping and was returned to the cabin. Instead of sleeping quietly with us, he ended up in bed with Darla while Erik slept on the couch.

Mark and Tracy brought their giant trailer, Erik and Darla stayed in the cabin with us and my friend Bess and her husband Wade came down just for the day.

There were tons of kites in the air on Friday but I didn't take any pictures. Saturday was a BEAUTIFUL day but there wasn't much wind so the skies were not as loaded with kites but it was still impressive.

These are giant ground kites. They are about 3 stories tall and are staked to the beach. Look how tall they are compared to the people on the beach.

Here is Darla in front of some other grounded kites. They are also huge kites that are staked to the beach.

Chris and Roo in front of one of the kite competitor camps and their banners.

Bear and Carissa playing tourist in downtown Long Beach.

Mark and Tracy in the giant skillet in lovely downtown Long Beach.

Here I'm fryin' up a couple of my other friends Bess and Wade.

In the evenings we'd have a nice fire in the yard, torture a few marshmallows, and have a lot of laughs.

The sunset was fantastic on Sunday night.

I can all hear you saying to yourselves "It's nice that you had a fun weekend with your friends, but what we really want to see how the siding on the cabin turned out!"

And so you shall.

Here's what we started with. The tree fell during the big windstorm we had a couple of years ago.

...and here's the finished product...Notice that the "back door" and porch roof have been magically turned into a window? We now have two of the four sides of the cabin done. We've ordered the living room window so it won't be long before Bob will be loading the trailer again and heading back down.

Things got worse before they got better!

Another view of the finished cabin. Didn't Bob do a great job?

And I'll leave you with this peaceful sunset picture.