Sloooowly but surely . . .

Mark has gotten all the preliminary fence stuff done and he and Jerry began putting up the actual fencing this weekend.  Got the front gates installed and two of the paddock gates up, then started on the top rail of the fencing in the front.  Mark's peripheral neuropathy has suddenly gotten MUCH worse and he has to sit down every ten minutes or so these days because his feet have begun to go completely numb when he's standing but they accomplished a good bit.  And now that the fence has been started and he has worked out the spacing and all, when he comes home next month he will be able to hire someone to do the actual hammering of all those huge 5" long nails that hold the brackets to the posts -- 4 brackets with two nails each on all of the hundreds of posts!  Believe me, that's a LOT of hammering -- all while standing up.  Not a good thing for him to do himself.

Here's the view from the front driveway corner ...

and along the front of the property (the tops of the posts will be cut off evenly later, of course). 

So it looks like it will probably be at least another month or two before the place is finished.  But I'm really going to love it.  Here's a wider view from an upstairs window.  That's going to be Boo's territory.  I'm going to keep Joey and Rock in the new big dog yard and let Boo have the run of the whole rest of the place since he seems to have no desire at all to leave and he's very good with the horses.  (He's been going to the barn with Mark this week to check that out.)

As for me this weekend, I didn't get a whole lot done.  I've been sneezing my head off.  But I did manage to get all the wash done and Mark's end of the closet cleaned up and all his clothes sorted out and rearranged.  We also got the big dresser out of our bedroom and up into one of the guest rooms so we could put one of those electric fireplaces in the bedroom in its place.  I've ordered another flat screen TV to hang over the fireplace and moved the chaise out of one of the guest rooms and down to the foot of our bed across from the fireplace. 

I love it!  I wish our real fireplace were in the bedroom instead of the livingroom, but this is the next best thing.  And the heater in it will let us keep the heat turned down at night in most of the house over the winter.