My husband the Handyman

We had a great time in NJ, we always do. The only problem that we've run into taking vacations to visit family, is that Josh gets bored pretty quickly. He's not used to being in the house all day with me and the kids, and doesn't know what to do with himself at someone else's house. So, one of the stipulations of us visiting my family this time was that my parents would make a "to-do" list for Josh while he was there. The conditions were this, that he would have the options of projects that he could do or chose not to do, whatever, whenever and in which-ever order he wanted. To be honest, I didn't think that any of the projects would get done. Just the idea that he had things to do, I thought, would be enough for him. However, he proved me wrong, and I couldn't be happier (neither could my mom and dad). Here's the rundown of his projects.

Patching the garage roof with shingles that had come off. This job was much more dangerous than I thought it would be. It required two people and a lot of bending over and leg muscle. My dad was glad he didn't have to be up on the roof and Josh was thrilled to take the risk.

My brother J had asked my dad to make his dog Jonnie a dog bowl stand, so that he wouldn't have to bend over so far to eat his food. Lots of pet stores sell them, but are pretty pricey, plus we all like hand made things from dad. Well, here's a hand made dog bowl stand from Josh. Josh used dad's handwriting to carve out the name. I think it came out awesome. Josh was sad that he didn't have enough time to make Jersey one. Just a side, most hand made items from dad are finished off with stain, paint, or cross-stitch by mom, this is no exception. Mom did the staining.

Mom had been begging dad to put in a peep hole in the front door so she could ignore people that she didn't want to talk to, like the Jehovah's witness that came knocking 2 weeks ago. For some reason dad didn't want to take the 2 minutes (I'm not joking) that it took Josh to put it in.

The last project he got done was putting up the fence that my dad built for Ange and Andrews wedding. Mom wanted it to separate the backyard from the front. Josh dug the holes, nailed the 2x4's together to make 4x4 posts and put up the fence. Josh got many splinters doing this job, I dug at lease 4 out yesterday on the ride home. He had already gotten two out the day before. The price you pay for family!

The finished fence.