Rest in Peace Grandpa Vincent

Our family pre funeral with our guests from Chicago

Sorry I forgot to warn you I would be out on Friday. Actually I expected to make a post at some point but was just too busy.

Thursday Heath and Pumpkin went to the visitation and Peanut and I were on our own.

I split wood and Peanut helped some and played jets and helicopters on top of my truck and talked to Stephen and Becky and he climbed the tree and jumped out a few times. While we were playing outside our pizza dough was slowly rising in the kitchen.

We mixed everything together and poured it in a bowl and then let it sit. When we were done playing outside I rolled it out and cooked it some then Peanut put on sauce.

Then we added toppings and cheese. This is how Peanut left it.

He said that was enough cheese but I went ahead and covered it and baked it. We spent the rest of the night eating pizza taking showers and getting to bed early.

Friday morning I got up and got busy. I made a big breakfast.

And then helped Heath get all of us in fancy clothes and fed and ready for the funeral.

On the way to the church Pumpkin yelled/sang to us the whole way. We got there and found seats near the back and joined the mass. I was expecting Pumpkin to keep yelling but she did great and smiled and people and watched everyone and only sang when other people were singing. After communion she fell asleep in my arms for the rest of mass. After mass we went outside for the burial and the wind woke her up. Then we went to a luncheon thing in the cafeteria next door. We took pictures with Heath’s family.

And 4 generations of girls.

and troublemakers.

After the lunch deal was over we took Peanut to his dad’s house, stopped by to visit Kevin then headed home. I put on boots and overalls and headed to Jon’s house.

The boots were a great idea but the overalls turned out to be a terrible idea. Jon’s been busy working on getting his new house ready and I spent almost the entire rest of the weekend with him working on it.

He rented a big dumpster and our job was to get all the debris out of the house and into the dumpster. Jon was working on Allison’s room and I got started in the family room pulling tiles off the ceiling.

After pulling them down I got a crowbar and pulled out the cement and little boards that make up the plaster ceiling above the tiles leaving just studs.

After about 1/2 the room I got smart and went into the attic and started kicking. I sat on a stud and held on the them then kicked down. In this way I was able to knock out the ceiling much faster.

Once most of the ceiling was down Jon and I shoveled all the stuff into big trash barrels and then carried them around to the dumpster and dumped them. Around 7 we stopped for the night and went to find dinner. Jon is pretty sure there is lots of asbestos in the house and even if not the insulation and plaster dust is pretty nasty so we wore masks and goggles.

But we were still filthy from head to toe.

My overalls had slowly filled with insulation as it fell down the front of me and filled the legs of my pants. I took a really long shower then joined Heath and Amanda in the kitchen were cutting fries. I fired up the grill and Jon showed up with beer and we had burgers and fries and beans. While eating dinner we watched Step Brothers and laughed quite a bit.

Then everyone went home and Heath and I watched Cops and headed to bed early.  Saturday Heath got up early and went to a 5K race just down the street. I slept in a little then got the stroller and everything ready and planned to go cheer her on but it had started raining pretty hard so I stayed home and made a tasty breakfast and got some tools and stuff togehter for Jon’s. Heath came home and we ate breakfast then KK came over at 10 and we headed to Jon’s. All day long we knocked out all the ceilings in the house plus the walls in the kitchen, bathroom, hallway and closets.

We were going hard for 9 hours with a 1 hour break for burgers at burger king. We got sweaty and really dusty. We made great progress though and got most of the plaster down.

Kicking the ceiling out worked really good but there were 2 problems from it first I slipped a little bit and bumped my head on the roof where a nail was coming down. I was hot and sweating like crazy at the time so didn’t really notice that it was bleeding. It was still hurting after a while so I rubbed my head with my gloves then looked at them and they were just wet so I kept working. Later on I climbed down and carried out some stuff and Jon told me I was bleeding. I took off my goggles and mask.

It had stopped bleeding so I cleaned up a bit and got back to work. Near the end of the day I realized my phone was not in my pocket. I looked through the van and the area outside where we took breaks and drank tea and it was no where. I had Jon call it and it didn’t ring, went strait to voice mail. So it is either off or somwhere there is no signal. We searched the house and it was not found. That really only left 1 option.

Jon called it again but still just voice mail. The dumpster was nearly full and very heavy and nearly impossible to look through. I hoped it was still in the house but seemed unlikely.

My theory is that I kicked out ceiling and it slipped out of my pocket and I was pushing the ceiling down, then we shoveled it up with a pile of rock wood and insulation and then dumped it into the dumpster. It either broke on the fall or a rock hit it or it is so far covered in plaster that it can’t get a signal.

Saturday night KK and I came home and took showers then made some dinner with Heath and the 3 of us relaxed on the couch and watched the Big Labowski then went to bed.

Sunday we got up early and wen back to Jon’s. Most of the hard stuff was done but there was a closet we needed to gut still and lots of sneaky boards and nails to get. We spent most of the morning finding these and taking them down.

Then we ate some tacos and got a shop vac and brooms and did a through cleaning. My phone did not turn up but the place started looking pretty good.

Jon has lots to do but we filled the dumpster to the top.

KK and I left and he headed home and I showered then got Heath and Pumpkin ready and we went down to Westport for a goodbye party for a coworker.  We had a few beers at McCoy’s and showed off the baby then headed home. We ate a bunch of random leftovers then took a walk then crashed on the couch watching TV the rest of the night.