Jake and I arrived a little before 11:00 am after stopping at Menards to get some lumber. Hot and muggy, but beautifully sunny with a slight breeze. It was already 85°, so the first thing I did was fire up the A/C in the trailer. My goal for the day was to get the deck finished, but I wanted to be sure Jake didn’t overheat. He didn’t seem to mind the weather at all, though. We unloaded the dump truck and tractor that he brought up with us and he set off to explore the yard. He thought the new deck rail was really cool, and was even more excited when I told him he could help me finish it.
Before getting to work, however, we had to take a four-wheeler run. Jake loves having his own seat on the blue ATV, and is already excited for helping me plow snow this winter. We ran the long marsh loop, which is pretty dry these days, and went down to the river landing and back. Jake had never seen a cattail before and wanted to bring one home to show Mom.
Once we got back to the yard, I started to prepare the spindles while Jake played with his trucks. I made sure he always had a Gatorade or water available, but he never seemed fazed by the heat. His big dump truck came in handy for hauling the cut-off pieces of wood over to the burnpit. We got the two 12′ runs of spindles installed when I decided he needed a break from the heat. Jake protested and wanted to stay outside, but I had gone through several bottles of water and Gatorade already, so I knew he could use some cooldown time. I put a movie on in the trailer for him and went back out to work on the deck.
By the time I started work on the posts for the base of the stairs, Jake was ready to come back out. I think all the sugar in the Gatorade got to him, because he spent the rest of the afternoon singing songs and climbing up and around everything in the yard. He told me he was getting hungry as I was cutting the stair rail boards, so I got a frozen pizza going. I turned off the A/C while the pizza oven was running, but it thankfully didn’t heat up the trailer too much. While we were waiting, we could hear a continuous roll of thunder, even though we had mostly clear skies. I checked the radar and there was a huge storm moving through just to the north. Lyssa later told me they had hail back in Oshkosh, but the most we got was a rain shower that lasted less than a minute. The passing storm had a positive effect, though; the wind picked up and the temperature and humidity dropped.
I put the last spindles on the stair rails and the deck was done. We took one more ride on the blue ATV and I started loading up my tools into the truck. We left at 8:00 after a full and productive day. Jake was out cold half way home.
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