We are having a big wind storm and I'm worried about the greenhouse. This morning my husband drove down to see it and frankly I was expecting to hear it was destroyed but it is fine so far. The winds at our house which is about 20 mile away are very strong and luckily the greenhouse hasn't been hit as hard. The wind gusts last night are reported to have reached 51 mph. I was working late and felt the house shake as the gusts hit so you can see why I expected the worst for the the greenhouse. We did screw down all the panels with stainless screws including the roof vents. The corners are all firmed up using Gardenwantobe's brace system but the rear wall has some flex in it and it needs immediate help. I'm thinking of putting in the bench framing using the galvanized pipe - just not sure how to attach the pipes to the greenhouse frame. Lazerfan I looked at your photo of the cross beam you added to your greenhouse and I'm wondering how you attached it to the frame. I read that you welded L brackets on to some of the pipe and I'm trying to think of how to install the pipes (for both the cross brace and bench frame) without welding. I guess I could bolt an L bracket to the wall stud, drill the pipe and attach the pipe by bolt to the L bracket. If there is a better way please let me know. Our neighbor who is building the greenhouses is out of town until the 3rd and I want to be sure there is something left when he returns. It is so cold and windy out that it is hard to get myself motivated to deal with all this - for now I think the worst part of the storm is over. I live in Pacifca, CA (hence my name) and you may see us on the news as the surf here is very high and the local news stations keep coming down from San Francisco to film the waves. Mary

I didn't say I had just one, haha. I meant I like to travel light - a smallish (relatively) bag and my carrier and I am good to go. I hate fighting a stroller and just in general do not carry a lot of "stuff" with me. Not even really toys when I am running errands, he is pretty happy with me chattering away at him and handing him the occasional item to look at before he turns around and drops it in the cart for me. I actually have a maya wrap that I bought while pregnant on the advice of friends that I never used because 1) I couldn't get the hang of it and 2) my son HATED being swaddled and by the time I had him encased in that thing he was screaming bloody murder and would not calm down until I took him out. We used a baby bjorn for a little bit (I know, the horror!) that was actually a gift too I think and he seemed to like that for a while until he started to realize "hey, where's mommy???" facing out and it seemed to be making him more anxious, not less when I had him by myself. It worked much better for DH because I was always there walking next to him so he knew where I was. It never fit me well or comfortably either, but he was so content being "on" one of us that I started looking at carriers in earnest at that point. Then I went down to a local shop that caters to pregnancy, breastfeeding, babywearing and cloth diapers and was able to really try various carriers out, get them fitted, get suggestions based on lifestyle and try them out for a couple of hours during a mom's group meeting before purchasing them and I settled on the beco and haven't looked back. DH loves it too. I don't use it as much anymore because I just pop him in a shopping cart (I am not a stroller fan because I can't see/interact with him) - it's easier on my back than carrying him but I can still interact with him. I also like to let him walk as much as he wants to even though it does slow me down a little bit. I started him in the beco kind of late though, and always wore him front (he was MUCH calmer that way) and now that he is pushing 26 lbs clothed, I can't carry him much longer than an hour or so on my front and he is not super happy on my back for very long because I just never got him used to it I suppose. I can wear him that way if I am taking a walk and on the move because he is distracted by everything around him but he wants out the second I get where I am going. I wish I had gone to the shop with my maya wrap way earlier but judging by how much he HATED to be swaddled, I am not sure even being less clumsy would have helped that situation - but with the next one maybe it will work and I will start way earlier. I've seen other moms carry their babies with the maya wrap and it looks soooo cozy. I have never gotten into cloth diapers. To tell you the truth I am a terrible housekeeper as it is and I have laundry piled to the gills - it was even worse when he was first born and I was TOTALLY overwhelmed, dealing with severe dairy intolerance (I had to cut all traces out of my diet) causing reflux and other issues, then once I got that under control he started teething really hard (at 2 months). I could not even think about taking on even more laundry so I just went with disposables. Maybe with number 2 I will give it a try. I bought one to try it out and just never got around to it and now I am so used to disposables that I haven't switched. My family already thinks someone hit me with the crazy stick for breastfeeding in the first place (let alone after a year), never letting him cry, wearing him even though he is bigger than my niece who is 9 months older etcetc, they might try to have me committed if I started using cloth diapers. I admit though, those beautiful mai tais in all of those gorgeous fabrics makes me want a different one for every day of the week and I also saw a combo buckle/strap mai tai with a waist buckle and then shoulder ties that someone posted once that looked really interesting but the beco really does the job for me and we have other priorities for money besides a collection of baby carriers.

Robbi, I also think checking back in will give us all an incentive to work on some of our 2013 goals. One of my goals this year was to finish cleaning up UFO lain away in my stash bins. So far in January, I took two large sections of a pattern I can only say about "what was I thinking?" and backed it to make an easily washable and drying bath mat. I am glad I had enough sense not to try to finish a pattern I didn't like. And to be able to salvage the effort already put into it. It actually looks pretty merry and bright in the bath. Yesterday I finished off a crib-sized quilt. And my first project, although not a quilting project was a fabric creation.......a new floor cloth. Today I am cutting out and starting a quilted handbag to replace good old faithful Vera Bradley purse. I'll post the little quilt pic later, here is the floor cloth.

The meeting with the adjuster went fairly well. He gave very mixed signals on if the house would be considered a total loss or not but said he "wasn't adverse to it." There is still some uncertainty on how our contents that we'd moved into the semi trailer will be handled. Our agent and adjuster both feel "pretty sure" they'll be covered but since they weren't actually in the house, we might have to fight for it. The National Weather Service also came out and determined it was a microburst with winds in excess of 75 mph. The adjuster feels certain it was more than that to actually lift the fully loaded semi trailer off the ground, blow it forward several feet before turning it on its side and then continuing to push it on the ground for several feet past that. He thinks likely nearer 85 mph right where our house was. All in all, the microburst was estimated to be 75 yards wide so pretty narrow. It hit our house in EXACTLY the right spot to take 70% of the roof (metal, two layers of shingles, sheeting, and rafters) off and deposit it up to a half a mile away. Our neighbor found a piece of metal from our roof in his pasture that isn't even visible from our house. Crazy stuff! The good part is that since the house will be taken down to the foundation, we can add more layers of block to raise the basement ceiling and also build with taller ceilings and a higher roof pitch so lots of chances for improvement to the overall plan :)