Two weeks of grandkids - week one

My grandkids who live in Germany visited last week. Kira is recently nine and Lucas will be seven in August. The week flew by quickly and we took them to meet their grandmother on Friday night.

While they were here they painted the side of the large trough. Sandy had primed it with a light blue background and here's Kira working on her design for the art work.

I took Lucas one day to the cave nearby. There was too much water in it for him to get down the hill, but he tried sliding down a fallen tree 'til he realized it was too steep.

I wish I had taken lots more pictures.

How we spent the Fourth

On June 29th, after an early morning meeting in Indianapolis to discuss our passive solar plans, we left for my sister's new home in Milford, Delaware. After approximately 13 hours we pulled into her driveway. She has gotten much of her belongings unpacked and placed in the house, including all the furniture for one of the guest bedrooms which we soon put to use.

On Tuesday and Wednesday Sandy and I helped around the place, I installing curtains and shades, and a few plants we took with us from Greene View Springs and Sandy with more unpacking and organizing.

Thursday morning found us on the road again heading for my son's place in Durham, North Carolina. Also there were his two kids, our grandkids, on a summer visit from Germany.

The next day we all drove to northern South Carolina for a rendezvous with my other son and his family, nine of us altogether. The motel we chose was a compromise to reduce the drive time for son 2. We spent Friday afternoon and evening together, mostly in the motel's pool. On the Fourth we drove to Myrtle Beach for a day in the surf and an evening trying to find the best fire works in the area.

Here's the happy group, except for me and Sandy who was seated across from me, at dinner at the Golden Corral.


Finally, on the fifth, Sandy and I headed home with the grandkids. We got back before midnight and took little time to get to sleep.

The Energy Fair

Leaving on Thursday, June 18, Sandy and I drove to the Midwest Renewable Energy Association's 20th annual Energy Fair. We left on Thursday because it's about a nine-hour trip and the first workshop started at 10 AM on Friday. Along the way, near Baraboo, Wisconsin, we stopped to visit the Aldo Leopold Legacy Center, a Platinum LEED certified building with lots of great ideas we were interested in examining. We got there a full 2 minutes! before the 4:30 closing time, but the staff was generous and allowed us to poke around inside and outside until about 5 PM.

Michael Beczkiewicz, an active member of the Southern Indiana Renewable Energy Network (SIREN) made arrangements for many of us to camp together at the MREA-owned campground near the fair site. In all, about 20 Bloomington-area folks were at the event and about half camped with us.

Each of the three days there were six one-hour workshop slots. And during each time slot there were at least a dozen different workshops from which to choose on topics like passive solar design, solar water heating, wind power, efficient home building, transportation, local food, and many, many more.

Most useful to us were workshops on earth-sheltered homes, window insulation, timber framing, alternative building options and others.

In addition to the 200-plus workshops there were more than a hundred booths with books, products and services where we picked up information on many things we hope to implement in the new home.

Here's a picture of the crowd waiting for the gate to open on Friday morning and a long shot of some of the dozens of tents for workshops and vendors.


This was one of the best run events I have ever attended and well worth the long drive.

Updates coming

Tonight I'm going to try to catch up on over a month of activities.

We have been to Wisconsin for a weekend energy fair and back to the east coast on a long trip to Delaware, North and South Carolina over the Fourth of July weekend. Our grandkids who now live in Germany visited us for nearly a week and the grandkids who live a lot closer are here for this week. Earth work for the driveway for our house was started today. All this and more in the next series of entries.