WE HAVE ELECTRICITY!!!!

Holy cow do we have some fun updates to tell you all about!!!

The last 2 weeks have been a roller coaster of emotions for us.  2 weeks ago, Scott was really stressed out about lots of things, but particularly because of the crazy rain we’ve been getting!  He was ready to start working in the cellar so we could work on our water hookup, but with all the rain we had anywhere from 8”-12” of standing water (plus lots of mud too) in the dug out cellar. Thanks so some wonderful friends and neighbors, they were able to get Scott out of his bad mood!  I try to do everything for him that I can, but sometimes he needs someone else to talk to too.  (I don’t blame him… that’s why I have so many wonderful friends that I lean on too!)

Just a side note – and please don’t mention this to Scott that I posted it.  It’s not a bad thing and I’d have no problems telling him myself, but it’s more of a heads up for everyone!  When military/veteran holidays come up – Veterans Day, Memorial Day, 4^th of July…  - these are really hard days for Scott.  Most of the time he will stay bottled up, in a bad mood, and all to himself.  For Scott, he’s best left alone and he’ll come out if it.  The worst thing anyone can do is to pry (I’ve learned the hard way!).  If these holidays come up and he is being anti-social, don’t take it personal.  Scott has been through and experienced a lot.  Most of the time he compartmentalizes things, but these holidays in particular can be difficult.  This is mainly a heads up for you if/when you are around Scott or around any other Veteran too!!

Ok, back to our crazy 2 weeks!!

First off, the electrician originally came out on May 15 to hook up our electric.  I had a doctor appointment that day, so after it was over, I drove home and he wasn’t there!  I called and found out he needed a few PVC pieces to hook to the box that we didn’t have and he didn’t have on his truck.  Because we used a 3” PVC conduit instead of the more standard 2”, they didn’t have any at the store.  The reason we used a 3” is because we were running a larger wire (a 350 wire) plus the ground and the neutral all the way, 300’, to the house.  The 2” may have worked but it would have been VERY tight, so we opted for the 3” to make life easier for us!  Anyhow, I made a trip up to Cody to the electric store to buy the pieces we needed so we wouldn’t have to pay the markup on them.   They were supposed to come the next Tuesday (the 19^th) but didn’t show up.  I got a phone call that we were definitely scheduled for Tuesday the 26^th.  That proved to be the lucky day!!!  The electrician showed up at ~2pm and even with the wind/rain, he successfully hooked us up at the pole PLUS he rewired part of the breaker box too.  If this doesn’t make sense I apologize, but I’m not an electrician.  Basically, where the spots were in the breaker box for the wires to hook up, Scott hooked them up as the instructions on the breaker box said to.  However, the electrician said that the neutral and ground needed to be on separate sides and not at all connected by any metal.  Well, the way the breaker box was made had those two on the same metal bar (in their separate holes, but still connected on the same metal bar).  Even though the electrician said that it wouldn’t hurt anything, we still wanted it to be up to code.  So he actually fixed it and instructed Scott on all kinds of things to do with the breaker box, codes for wiring the house, and even gave him some of these plastic things (no idea what they are for, but Scott does so that’s what counts!).  Anyhow – after all that, he had us completely hooked up!! 

Are you ready to possibly laugh out loud??  After 13 months and 2 days with NO permanent electricity (only a single extension cord that went 300’ to the house and we had that from November-May), as soon as we were completed hooked to the pole for our permanent electricity, the electrician came into the house to test it and read the voltage/amperage, and he had a reading of NOTHING!  He said, That’s weird!  That’s never happened before!  So he went back out to check the pole.  I hopped on my phone and the first thing at the top of my Facebook page was a post in the Clark group that everyone’s power was out!!!  GO FIGURE!!!  The second we get power, there is an area wide outage!! We had to laugh and shake our heads!!  We still can’t believe that happened!

However on the plus side, just an hour later, the power came back on and that gave Scott time to finish wiring in a few outlets, so it worked out perfectly!

Another huge piece of news! I think in my last post I wrote about going to purchase all our appliances!  We bought them all at Lowes, but it would take a full week before they would be ready for us to pick up at the store.  Normally I would have them delivered; however, MT has no sales tax while WY has a 4.5% sales tax.  On $2800, that saved us $126!  Even with the gas to go up there and back, it still saved us money.  Here’s the interesting part…. If you purchase something in MT but have it delivered to WY (a sales tax state), they must charge sales tax!  But if you purchase in MT and you bring it back yourself, no sales tax! (Unless it’s a vehicle or something that has to be registered…. That’s a different story).  All our appliances were in on Friday the 22cd, but we were getting some serious rain and didn’t want to worry about driving in the rain, unloading in the rain, but most importantly, trying to get in and out of our driveway when it’s a muddy mess!  Finally on Monday the 25^th (the day before our electric was hooked up) we had a break in the rain!  Our neighbors have a 10’ flatbed trailer they let us borrow and believe it or not we actually pulled it with my car!!!  It did amazing with the trailer!  Plus our neighbor boy Brian came along with us too – mostly to give him a reason to get out of the house, but he was a huge help.  We got up there, verified our purchases, loaded everything up (which perfectly fit on the trailer!), and made our way back home!  The car pulled everything easily!  We had a refrigerator, upright freezer, stove/range, and dishwasher.

As soon as we pulled in the driveway and Scott had backed the trailer up to the door, Brian’s dad pulled in too! Perfect timing!  He, Brian and Scott unloaded everything while I herded cats.  Tuffy, as usual, was being ornery, so I put him on his collar/leash and tied him to the couch! The others were good and stayed away.  Brian stayed and helped unpack everything and get it into place.  We were very lucky because everything arrived dent free with no issues (that we know of so far). 

It feels so weird, but a nice weird, to have appliances in the kitchen! Now we still don’t have our water hooked up, so we can’t use the dishwasher quite yet, BUT now that we have electricity, we are using our refrigerator, freezer and stove!!!!  It’s so hard to explain to you how excited we are, but it’s been so wonderful!  Everything was running Tuesday night, and Wednesday I had to go to town with Scott to get some blood work done, so after I picked him up from work, we celebrated by going grocery shopping for cold and frozen food!!!  Scott’s never enjoyed grocery shopping, but he was excited then!!

Because we got home late and Scott still had to wire up the outlet for the stove (bought the 220, 4 prong outlet that day too), I didn’t make anything elaborate.  Our first meal cooked on the stove/oven was a Digiorno’s frozen pizza!!  But boy was it delicious!  Since then we’ve had scrambled eggs, sausage links, French toast all on the stove, and tonight I made Scott a batch of sweet cornbread with cut up pieces of hot dogs in it and cheese on top!!  He loved it! (I can’t have hotdogs since I’m pregnant so that was all for him!)  And for dessert – BROWNIES!!!  Oh, to be able to eat normal, non-canned food again is the most amazing feeling.  I think in the last 2 days I’ve eaten half of a giant watermelon all myself!

We still have lots to wire up in the house that Scott will be working on tomorrow.  He’ll be wiring up basic light sockets in the mudroom, kitchen, and bathroom along with their corresponding switches.  We do not have the money at this time to purchase our light fixtures (they can be very expensive when you have to buy a whole house of them!), so we are starting with just ‘garage/shop’ style basic light bulb sockets.  Scott will also be wiring up the outlets in the living room and eventually we will get to the loft, but probably not for quite a while because of all our boxes stacked up there.

He also has just a few last tiles to cut for the shower then it’s ready to be grouted!!  I think he’s planning/hoping to finish that this weekend too.

On the baby front – earlier this week I had to take my glucose test where I have to fast for 12 hours, then I have to drink a 10oz bottle of sugar water (mine tasted like lemon-lime and was actually very tasty to me!), then after 1 hour they take my blood.  Well, my blood sugar level came back at 141.  My doctor said that they want it to be around 120 and anything over 120 has to get tested again doing the 3 hour test (same thing as before, but you get blood drawn 4 times instead of just once).  I did some research online, and it says that most doctors say the cutoff is actually 140 (meaning I was just barely high) so I’m not too worried.  The big number to look out for is any reading over 200!  The good thing is that now that we have a working refrigerator/freezer/stove, if I have to stick to a special diet, it will be much easier now that we can have meat and veggies at our meals!

I go back in this next week for the 3 hour test and also for a regular doctor appointment too – I’ll keep you all posted what they say and how my results go for the next test!  Fingers crossed the hospital has WIFI so I can watch this current season of The Bachelorette (my guilty pleasure)!  Remember, we still don’t have TV channels… we can only watch DVDs and VHS tapes right now.

Otherwise, everything seems to be going well with Blaine and I!  My appetite has shot through the roof just this last week.  It’s going to be really hard to not gain much weight these next 11 weeks, but I’m still trying my hardest.  I’ve been eating a lot of watermelon this past week and after we go to Costco this weekend and stock up on veggies, we’ll be eating lots of those too!   I don’t feel like my baby bump has grown any more in the last month, but I’m feeling more and more pregnant each day.  She’s pushing so much on my bladder that when I have to pee, and my bladder is really full, it’s actually painful until I go to the bathroom.

We have to say THANK YOU to all of our wonderful friends and family!!  You all have been such a blessing to us, you really don’t realize just how thankful we are for you!  These last few weeks, we’ve received so many surprise packages in the mail with so many wonderful gifts for Blaine!  All of which are necessities like an infant car seat, clothing from 0-12 months, cups/plates/bowls/spoons, pacifiers, bottles, bath soap and washrags, plus so much more!  It’s hard to understand, I’m sure, but with all the stress that’s been on Scott and I to get our house basics in place for Blaine’s arrival, we were really unsure how we were going to get anything baby related for Blaine.  The weight that has been lifted from our shoulders, all because of your overwhelming support and generosity,  will never be forgotten!  Saying thank you just doesn’t seem enough!

For every card and gift that has been received, I am keeping track of everything in Blaine’s baby journal!  This is something my mom did in my baby book and I really want Blaine to be able to look back and see just how much love and support she is receiving  from all our friends and family! 

Thank you all so very much!!

I am WAY behind on adding pictures, but I’ll be in town 2 days this coming week for appointments so I hope to get them all uploaded (and hopefully the library’s wifi isn’t slow!) for you all to see our progress! 

Stay tuned!!

Making progress!! ALMOST have permanent electricity, more tiling, etc.

I have been bad.... I have so many pictures and lots of updates to share with you and I haven't been to town as often or when I have been, I've forgotten either my camera or my laptop! So I apologize for not keeping you all as updated as I should have.

First!!  Lets start with the tiling of the shower!  It's not fully completed but it's SO close to being done!  Scott ran out of mastic (the white stuff the makes the tile stick to the wall), so he has all the rest of the tiles cut and ready to put up.  And this last Sunday I went to Lowes and bought him 3 qts of the mastic so fingers crossed he has enough to complete!  He needs to drill the hole for the shower head's on/off handle, then he can complete that last wall (I don't think there is a picture of this wall - it's half tiled).

But here are picture of the tiling for you!!  Please note - it is not completed, there is not grout on yet, and we do not have lights in the bathroom (or anywhere in the house for that matter) so you will see some shadows her and there.

 

 

A couple remarks about the last picture....  The bump out you see on the right is there (not in the original plans) because we originally had the shower at either 30 or 36" wide (can't remember now), but after we got the wall framed up and set it in place, we wanted more elbow room!  But because the drain for the sink was set into the concrete, it couldn't move.  Instead we added this 'bump out' to hide the drain, and yet it makes a great foot rest for shaving legs!! (Making lemonade here!)

 

Also, you will notice the drain is set into the floor - we are going to (eventually) go to a local metal shop we found in Red Lodge and have them custom make a drain cover that will sit in this spot.  It's going to be a surprise for Scott, but the drain holes aren't going to be your standard look - I'm going to have them cut out either '<2>' or Ranger crest (the sun, lightning bolt, and star).  I think Scott will really like that!!! Plus it's one more small personal touch.

 

 

We are trying really hard to complete one thing before starting another, but weather, timing, work schedule, and baby mean we are veering off that path.  We had hoped to get the shower fully completed before starting with the trenches for the electric and all that stuff.... but it didn't work that way.  And we are lucky we did the trenching when we did because we've had some CRAZY weather here!!!  I'm taking lots of rain (we think maybe 3-4" just this past weekend), plus hail, and even tornados East of Cody!

 

About 2-3 weeks ago we rented an excavator for Scott to do all our trenching for a 300' underground electric line, 400+' water line (because it had to go around the septic area), plus a cellar too!  In addition he scraped our driveway too so it's very smooth now!  And I think he said he dug a hole somewhere  (I'm not sure where) so we can burn some of our trash and scrap building materials (the stuff we can't put in the woodstove like the treated wood).  I think he spent about 15 hrs on the excavator in 2 days!!!  Not to mention the time he had to lay the electric wires and the pipe for the well too.

 

We did run into a very stressful moment.... (I'll try to load pictures to show this).  The rental company delivered the wrong excavator.  They delivered this tiny thing that only had a 1 ft. bucket on it!  Scott was going to try and make it work, but after digging for over an hour and not even having a hole big enough for a grave, we knew we had to make a change or it would take at least a week to get this completed!  Next part of the problem - we were relying on the excavator to unload a 26,000 + lb load of concrete mix, mortar, concrete blocks and treated wood.  There were a few parts to this problem - the main problem was our excavator couldn't handle even the half pallets of these materials.  Second, the company both overloaded the delivery truck and stacked it so high there was no way for us to use our current excavator to unload it!  And third, the truck driver was lazy and didn't want to help unload or even move the truck to a different spot for better unloading.  All this added up to us being very upset and frustrated.  Scott unloaded several pallets by hand all by himself, but I was so worried that he'd try to unload the entire truck by hand and then land himself in the hospital, that I had our neighbor come over and convince him to send the truck back and we'd make trips to go get the materials that way.  Thankfully he went with Joe's suggestion!!  And once that truck left, we headed to town to get the correct excavator.  Scott said the correct excavator was able to dig the same about that took him an hour with the little one, but within just 2-3 scoops!

 

PICTURES (will be posted later)

 

On Saturday of that weekend, Scott had basically 90% of the digging done.  Sunday he started to lay the pipe for our water line (it came in one really long 400' roll) but he was having a heck of a time trying to do it himself.  No, I'm not being lazy - he didn't want me to help do anything for fear I'd get hurt or worse yet, hurt the baby.  But luckily, our neighbor boy Brian came to the rescue!!!  It was hard work as they had to uncoil this pipe just the two of them, but they did it!  Then, Brian was able to use his truck to help with laying the electric wire.  Because the wire was over 100' long, we had to go with a bigger wire so we wouldn't lose amperage (I think that's the correct terminology).  After 100' you have a drop.  Typically, you use a 4 aught wire, but we had to use a 350 wire.  Also, even though the wire we purchased was meant for laying underground, we decided to put it in a 3" conduit pipe so if we ever have issues hopefully we can just feed it through the pipe and not have to dig it all up - not to mention this will help keep out the water and other things too.  Anyhow - Brian and Scott fed the wire through the PVC pipe about 30' at a time by hooking a rope to the back of Brian's truck with the other end attached to the wire and pulling it through the PVC.  This worked great!!!  By early afternoon they had all the pipe down!  The rest of the day, Scott spent covering up the trenches.  By about 5-6pm, Scott was hooking up the final water line that would feed into the cellar.  He again had a heck of a time getting it to uncoil, so this time I, very carefully, went out and helped.  I also helped him (by standing on or putting pressure against the PVC pipes) force the two parts of the water line together.

 

During the next 2 weeks, in between recuperating and dealing with the weather, Scott (with my occasional help) hooked up the electric wires to the house, connected them to the breaker box, added in breakers plus wired up the kitchen, mudroom, and bathroom with the light switch boxes and outlet boxes.  Currently, he has most of everything wired up except he still needs to add the 220 outlet for the stove and the dryer, plus I think we ran out of outlets, so we need to get a few more of them to finish the one kitchen wall.

 

Scott had every intention of hooking everything up at the meter box too, but after talking to him about it, I told him I'd rather not have a fried husband, so lets just chalk up the $$ and have an electrician come do it to be safe.  It looks like it's going to be about $200-$300 for them to drive all the way out here and do it. 

 

We had it scheduled for last Friday, but they called and said that we needed 2 small pieces of PVC for the final attachment to the meter box and they didn't have it on hand.  So I ran into Cody and purchased the attachments (cheaper this way because of the markup cost).  We were hoping they would be out either Monday or Tuesday this week, but it looks like it may not be till next Tuesday to get hooked up.  I guess we've waited over a year... what's another week! 

 

Over the last year or more, Scott and I have discussed what type of appliances we want in this house.  We know we want a stove/oven (we really wanted either a dual wall mounted oven or a slide in dual oven, but at this time, those were not in our budget at all, so we decided to go with a very basic slide in single door oven), dishwasher that was quiet, and our luxury is that we want a commercial grade refrigerator/freezer.  We've never been happy with the side-by-side (not enough room on either side), the French door style leaves you with a tiny small freezer, and plus, everyone we know seems to have an extra frig and/or freezer in their garage or basement!  We don't have the money for quite a while to build a garage and I really don't want to have food stored in multiple buildings, so that's why we wanted the commercial style kitchen.  HOWEVER - the problem is, we are on a very tight budget and just the frig/freezer would have been over $3,000!!!  So we compromised and decided to get an old school style frig (freezer on top) and a full stand up size freezer - both of which combined were LESS than the price of one of the items in the commercial set!!! 

 

And when I say we are on a budget, I mean, we don't have any money right now at all for appliances, but after going 13 months now without a refrigerator, we are going to figure it out one way or another because we are getting tired of canned goods.  We are very much looking forward to cold drinks, milk, eggs, cheese, meat, storing our left overs, storing fresh fruits and vegetables, and so on!!!  It's funny I just got off the phone with my friend Shannon who is loosing her mind over not having a refrigerator since last Thursday (5-6 days) and she can't grasp the idea of going 13 months without one!

 

Well, here is the exciting part - We went to Lowes about 2 months ago and picked out the exact appliances we wanted (except the stove because we weren't sure which style we were going to go with). At that time, the freezer and refrigerator were on sale, but not the dishwasher.  Last Sunday, Scott was on call for work so he couldn't go, but I told him I just had to go buy our appliances so when the electric was hooked up we would have them and could use them.  I went, all by myself, to Billings to pick everything out, buy them, etc (It may sound stupid, but I was very proud of myself for doing all this alone!), and come to find out Lowes was having a pre-Memorial Day sale and the freezer was still on sale for the same price, the refrigerator was on sale for an additional $80 off, the dishwasher was on sale for $90 off, and I was able to pick a single oven stove that was on sale for $250 off!!  PLUS, I was able to get an additional 10% the entire purchase (I also got 100' of the red water line, 100' of the blue water line, 3 qts of mastic, and all the stove glass top cleaning products I'd need).  I had to get their credit card, but I took money from our emergency fund (yes, I think going 13 months without any kitchen appliances counts as an emergency!!) and paid off the CC right there.  The last thing we need is another CC to deal with. We've tried so hard to not have to charge anything from this move/build, but last fall we had spent all our $$ except our emergency fund and still needed a roof on the house, to move our stuff from OH, and to get by until Scott had his job.  We are still working on paying those off, but we've made a deal with each other that after the electric, water, kitchen appliances, and shower are completed (what we've deemed essential to have for Blaine's arrival), we are not planning on doing anything else to the house until we can make significant progress on these bills. 

 



Back to the exciting part.... ALL OUR APPLIANCES ARE ORDERED!!!!!  To begin to explain just how exciting this is - Imagine what's it's been like when you have a refrigerator go out or when all your power goes off because of weather and you have to go 1-4 days without!  I bet you were ready to pull your hair out going crazy!  Going 13 months without permanent electric (we were very thankful to have just 1 extension cord since last November), having no running water or hot water, no shower, and no appliances has been such a struggle.  But we stayed positive about it, handled it one day and one week at a time, and just kept looking ahead to the future.  And we are so excited that the future is upon us right now!!!  Hopefully by the end of next week we will have permanent electric, all our kitchen appliances, and since we will have electric, we'll be able to finish our water hookup within a month (hopefully)!!!  We can't wait!!!

Here are the links to the appliances I purchased - all of them total, with all discounts were about $2500-2600 (so not bad! for an entire kitchen!).

Refrigerator (in stainless - the doors are stainless but the casing is actually black, so I'm going to see about painting the casing to match the casing on the freezer):
http://www.lowes.com/pd_623749-2251-LFHT2131QE___?Ntt=623749&UserSearch=623749&productId=50269689

Freezer (in stainless):  http://www.lowes.com/pd_637402-2251-LFFH20F3QM___?Ntt=637402&UserSearch=637402&productId=50273099

Dishwasher (the quietest one they had available):
http://www.lowes.com/pd_498132-39047-SHP65T55UC_0__?productId=50264331&Ntt=

Electric Range:
http://www.lowes.com/pd_31903-2251-LGEF3045KF___?Ntt=31903&UserSearch=31903&productId=3057153


On the baby front - all is well!!!  She is growing like crazy! I have a definite baby bump now and I feel that everyday it's getting bigger!  Last Friday I had my normal doctor appointment and she's measuring about 2 weeks ahead of her due date.  So I'm guessing she will either come a little early and/or she will be a bigger baby.  I was 8+lbs while Scott was only 5+lbs.  It's hard to tell!!  I have to go in at 28 weeks (next week) and have more blood work done plus my glucose test and now I'm at every 2 weeks for my regular Dr appointment instead of 4 weeks.  She's kicking and moving around quite a bit throughout the day and last week I even felt her hiccup for the first time!

I've heard back from a lot of our friends/family that they received their Baby Reveal cards! I hope you all enjoyed them!!  We are also so very thankful to those who have been gracious enough to purchase things or make things for us! 

There was one gift we received off of our registry - a Pack 'n Play - that did not come with the buyer/giver's name!!!  I called Walmart to ask so we can send out a thank you note, but they wouldn't tell us.  If you, or someone you know, sent us the Pack 'n Play, Thank You so much!!  We are so thankful for every single gift we've received and we'd love to tell you thank you too!

Two of my friends, Deedee Hensley and Lindsay Watson, asked if anyone was giving us a baby shower.  Unfortunately we aren't going to be able to come home to Ohio this summer so they have asked to throw us a Facebook Baby Shower!! We can't thank them enough for doing this.  Scott and I have been stressed out to get everything done and ready for Blaine, and to have so many wonderful friends and family willing to help us has been the biggest blessing we could ask for!  Here is what our two friends had to say:

From Lindsay Watson:
Hello everyone! Super excited to be doing this! Blaine will make her debut shortly! Time is flying by so quickly (at least from the outside world...not sure if it is for Scott and Kristen!) If you chose to send a gift, Kristen will post pictures of her opening them...we want to make this as much as a baby shower as possible for her since they can't make it back to Ohio. We will be posting the link to the registry soon!

From Deedee Hensley:
Thanks to Kristen and to all her friends and family for joining this Facebook Baby Shower!! I like many of you, have been following Kristen and Scott's amazing journey this last year through Facebook and Kristen's Blog. I have really loved reading about not only their hardships and triumphs, but getting to see true blessings happen in their lives. Sharing the news about baby Blaine with all of us Facebook friends, made me feel like family and I've been truly excited for them.... We all know Kristen and Scott will need lots of baby items in the coming months.....what better way to help then a Baby Shower?? Because we cannot go to them and unfortunately the Adkins's will not be able to make it back to Ohio....we decided on a Facebook Baby Shower!! Please send gifts, or check at Walmart where they did register! Thank you so much for joining the fun and caring for this amazing young family!

Again I can't thank you two plus all our friends and family enough for all your support over the last year plus with all your support with Blaine!

I'm having issues uploading pictures, so I'll get them uploaded as soon as I can because I have a bunch!!

**Spoiler Alert** Baby Adkins Gender Reveal!!

We are so excited to announce that:

 

WE ARE HAVING A GIRL!!!

 



My goodness we are excited!!  And are you ready for the next reveal?

Her name is:  BLAINE AKLEY ADKINS

Here is a full description describing how we came up with her name.

What’s in a name?

When first deciding on a name, we wanted it to be meaningful to us.  It was also important for us to have a strong name. After much deliberation, we finally decided on 2 names, both of which could be for either a boy or a girl.  This time around, we decided on Blaine Akley!  I bet you are wondering how in the world we came up with this!

One very important thing to me is to honor Scott for being in the 75^th Ranger Regiment, 2cd Battalion. I’m so very proud of his service and I know that his time in Battalion means so much to him as well.

Scott introduced me to an HBO TV series called The Unit which is based on an Army Special Operations group (Scott’s group was also a Special Operations group).  One of the characters on the show is Jonas Blane.  This is a name that Scott and I both finally liked except we decided to alter the spelling slightly to ‘Blaine’. 

 While in Battalion, Scott was a staff sergeant in charge of lots of great guys that made a lasting impact on him.  Brandon Akley is one of those guys. For that reason, we chose Akley as Blaine’s middle name.  You may be wondering how to pronounce it.  It’s pronounced with a long A and is sounded out like this:  Ache-lee. (Brandon and his family live just one state over from us in South Dakota!) 

Now there is one more fun aspect with Blaine’s name!  When Scott and I first moved out here to Wyoming (and still currently a year later), we didn’t have TV or cable, but we did have movies, DVDs of TV shows, and even some VHS.  One of those DVDs that Scott has is of an older TV show that I had never heard of before called the A-Team.  Well, I quickly fell in love with it!  One of the characters on the show is called B.A. (also Blaine’s initials!!).  If you are not familiar with the show, B.A. happens to be the Mr. T. character that says, “I pity the fool!”  We both think it will be fun to nickname her B.A.!

Finally, if you weren’t aware, in the beginning, we decided to also nickname our unborn child Daryl and said that if we found out we were having twins (we are not) that they would be Daryl and his other brother Daryl – from The Bob Newhart Show (Scott watched this when he was a kid).  Blaine will no longer be referred to as Daryl, but since that was her first unofficial name I thought I’d mention it!

I hope this better explains the meaning behind Blaine Akley Adkins!  We are so excited to meet Blaine!

PS, a fun side note – Scott has NEVER held a baby before!!  Blaine will be his first!!

-------

Here is a picture of Blaine from my second ultrasound.

House Progress Updates (from this past weekend!)
Scott was really busy this past weekend working on house projects.  Unfortunately, I was not able to help because of being overly cautious and because I was also really really sick (I'll get to that later).

On Friday a.m., we had scheduled the delivery of an excavator to dig the trenches for our water and electric lines as well as our  cellar that would house our cistern and pressure tank.  After Scott flagged down the delivery guy (who didn't know how to get to our house apparently), we realized they didn't bring the excavator we needed! They delivered this dinky little thing that probably would have taken Scott an entire week to dig everything.  Well, that put us behind because within an hour we were expecting the delivery of all our cinder blocks and bags of concrete mix where we needed the excavator to help unload it all.  When that delivery guy/truck arrived, they had over loaded the truck by 5,000 lbs (what the driver said) and he was basically refusing to help unload the truck. Scott asked him several times to move it so he could get a better angle on rigging up the pallets to unload them, but the guy was just really lazy and didn't even want to do that.  In an effort to not get on a negative rant here, I'll explain the short version of the rest.  Scott hand unloaded part of the truck himself, then sent the guy back because he didn't want to waste the entire day when we were paying to rent the excavator.  We will just have to make multiple trips with the truck/bronco up and get the remaining materials that way.  After that we headed to Cody and told the rental place they sent us the wrong machine.  Luckily, right away their driver loaded up the correct one and brought it to our place.  Thank goodness!!  Just to give you a visual - Scott had spent 1 hour digging with the little excavator and was able to dig about 4' deep and 6' wide area.  When he got the big excavator, with about 4-5 scoops he had that same area dug out!  Having the right equipment makes all the difference!

Our neighbors felt bad about what happened and Helen made us an amazing dinner that night so we'd have something good to eat!  That started the rest of our weekend off positively!

Scott worked till I think about 8-9pm Friday night and got part of the well trench dug.  Then on Saturday, he spent nearly 11 hours in the excavator doing the rest of the digging.  Sunday we had a rough start but it was quickly fixed.  Scott started unrolling the 2" water line (it had been rolled up) and because it was so tightly wound, it didn't want to unroll very easily - not a job for just one person.  By this time I was very sick and wouldn't have been any help anyway, so our neighbor boy, Brian, came over and helped!! He literally saved the day!  He worked really hard next to Scott and the two of them unrolled all the water line, and then they also laid out the electric line AND encased all of it in (I think) 3" PVC conduit pipe.  Putting it in the pipe was a little crazy but they figured out if they tied a rope to the end of the wire, fed the rope through a few pieces of the PVC (PVC came in 10' lengths), then they tied the rope to the hitch on Brian's truck and pulled the wire through the PVC - this worked great!! Plus I think Brian had a lot of fun using his truck too!

By the end of Sunday, everything was in the ground and covered up!  As of today (Wednesday), Scott hasn't yet hooked anything up, but he has been getting the wire ready to feed into the house so we can hook it up.

Part of the reason he hasn't had time to work much since Sunday is because of me.... I am currently getting over a severe sinus infection.  Sunday night it got so bad that I actually went to the E.R. because I was having a hard time breathing and all the drainage was causing me to continuously get sick.  The problem is I'm pregnant - meaning I can't take the antibiotics they'd normally prescribe.  So I'm stuck taking Benadryl, an alcohol-free cough syrup, and a prescribed acid reflux medicine.  I've felt bad since last Thursday and I can actually say that today is the first day I'm finally feeling some relief!  Through all of this, Scott has been amazing.  He took me to the E.R. at 3am, stayed home from work on Monday so that I could also see my regular doctor and get all my prescriptions and medicines, then continuously checked on me to be sure I was ok, was eating (when I could) and drinking enough water.  I'm so very thankful to for him!

We are so close to having official (not temporary) electric hookup it's starting to get really exciting!!!  All that is left to do is for Scott to drill the hole into the house, hook it up at the house and hook it up at the pole.  I believe he's planning on doing it all himself, but there is a chance he may have the electric company hook it up at the pole (not positive what he's planning at this time).  But I do know that he is going to have the electric company turn off the power at the pole before doing any of it, just to be safe!

Now it's going to take probably another month till we get our running water in place.  We just received our well pump, the float and controller, but he still needs to get the plastic 500 gallon water storage tank, the pressure tank, and eventually the hot water heater for the house.  And he will need to start on making the cellar.  The primary purpose of the cellar is to keep everything air tight over the colder months of the year so the water doesn't freeze.  So this can be a summer long project if need be, but just as long as it's completed before October we will be good!

Now comes the exciting part - once the electric is hooked to the house, WE GET TO BUY A REFRIGERATOR!!!!!  You have no idea how excited this makes us!!!  Now the rest of the appliance will probably wait at least till June or July till we buy them (because we need to save the money for them).  An entire year+ so far with no kitchen appliances, makes you really excited about the little things!!

I hope you all have a great week! And as soon as I start feeling better I'll get to town and upload the pictures from the past few weeks.

Thanks!