I think I should update my site. I see it's been a few years since my last entry. Well, time has brought huge changes to me. Too much to list all here. I think I'll try to get some of the highlights. You might know that I was a St. Paul cop for almost 30 years. I retired in 2014. Paula retired from running the office at "Cafe Latte" for 38 years a few years later. We were both born and raised and lived our whole lives in St. Paul. We sure did enjoy living in our house for 36 years. We've made great friends in that neighborhood. We've had a motorhome for almost 20 years and stored it in Hastings, 45 minutes away. I've always dreamed of having a home that I could store the motorhome in the back yard. St. Paul has become overun by cop haters with megaphones. The mayor is a cop hater. Most of the city council is cop haters. The county attorney is a huge cop hater. The media is full of cop haters. The police department has become extremely understaffed. The pay is much lower than many surrounding departments. Crime is out of control. Back in early 2022 my mom had been living alone in her Inver Grove Heights home for about 4 years and fallen a few times. One of those falls resulted in a broken leg. Our son, Jeff, has been working as a union journeyman electrician and had moved back home with us for various reasons. All of this convinced me that it was time to consider moving out to the country. If we were still working in the city I don't think we would have considered moving. We have ridden our bikes to work and wouldn't want to have a long auto commute. My mom would not consider moving into a senior building. Paula suggested we see if she would move in with us if we found a house with a 1st floor master suite for her. She being 91 years old and we knew stairs would be a bad idea. We also wanted to find a place out near my brother and his wife in Afton. Well, mom loved the idea. So, the hunt was on. No home owner's association and enough room to build a storage building for the motorhome. Pretty simple requirements, hahahaha. We actually managed to find the almost perfect property in West Lakeland Township. I know, you've never heard of it. Well, that's the way we want it. WLT is located very close to the I-94 bridge over the St. Croix near Hudson, WI. I contacted the building inspector before purchase to make sure I could build the building of my dreams. The sellers had built this house in '92 and we are only the second owners. It's 5600 s/f, 5 bedrooms, 4 bath, on 3 acres. Very quiet street and neighborhood. About 1-2 miles to I-94. 8 minutes to tons of shops/stores in Hudson. We sold our St. Paul house to Jeff and his then fiance (now wife). We moved mom into her suite. We did all of our own moving using our enclosed trailers. It was great having plenty of time to move things since Jeff & Karissa let us get out on our own time. Mom really liked living here, especially having Buck (our 9 lb poodle) on her lap most of the time. We started prepping and planning for the motorhome building. We had to cut down several trees to make a new driveway in. I spent lots of time planning the building. We hired an excavator to work the land into a driveway and level pad. Found a company to supply the materials for the building. Couldn't find a company to come out and build it for us. At the same time Jeff & Karissa were planning a wedding. We suggested they get married in our yard and have the reception in our new building. That was back in 2022. We were planning everything for a June, 2023, building delivery. The company assured us we would be able to assemble it ourselves. The building is a 100% steel building, not a pole building with wooden framing as is much more common. Since we moved out here we have met several neighbors and forged new friendships. Our new neighbor directly across the street happens to be an expert excavator and a pretty darn good builder. So, he agreed to work with me for a very reasonable rate. We started working like crazy. Got a bit behind schedule because we couldn't get the foundation in until early July. Then the building company couldn't get us the materials until Aug. 30. My brother, a couple of old good friends, Paula's two brothers, our sons, a nephew, all worked tirelessly all day every day. It took us about 3 weeks to erect the building! I hired a roofing company to screw down the steel roof sheeting. Well, they screwed it up. Damaged a bunch of the sheeting. Oh well. I'm quite sure nobody that came to the wedding noticed anything out of place. I'm so incredibly grateful to all of the people that spent so much of their summer nice weather hours working on this building. Everything came together just in the nick of time. Every night when I'd collapse into bed I would reflect on how amazing it is to have great friends and relatives helping me build my dream. This building is absolutely awesome! It cost quite a bit more than I originally thought it would. But, worth it. The wedding was amazing! The reception exceeded all expectations. After all the wedding events we hosted the neighbors for a chile party in the new building. Then we started filling it up with all the stuff from our storage unit in Hastings. A few weeks of that and we've got a great storage building filled with all my cherished junk. Gonna finish this entry up now but I promise I'll try to post another update soon. Because I've got lots more news to share. We have a Google Photos album documenting the building assembly. Check it out: https://photos.app.goo.gl/nTABzXikYSNGw1V89
