Operation Build-A-Deck, day 3 & the ice cream festival

Poor David. He just can't catch a break with this deck.

On Sunday, I had to sing at church in the morning, which is a 7:30–1:45 time commitment. Originally, I had planned to sing the weekend before this, but that was the last day of turkey season for David.

So, yesterday he lost half a day of work waiting on me to get home (someone had to watch Noah... he can't hang out at church for hours while I sing).

Once I made it home, he began framing in the other four support posts. For whatever reason, this process took HOURS. Noah enjoyed this part. In fact, he even tried to help Daddy.





So David framed the day away, and the result is that at the end of day 3, we now have SIX posts. Not two, but SIX!



When Noah went down for his afternoon nap, I worked on clearing out another brush pile in our lawn. (Side note here: we must have four giant piles of branches and whatnot spread across our acreage. One main one—the one that looks like an A&M bonfire—and several baby piles from the times when we didn't want to haul stuff clear across our yard.)

About 5:30, we decided to order yet another pizza, which is our standby when we have busy weekend days.

After pizza, we hopped in the car and drove 10 minutes to the Utica Old Fashioned Ice Cream Festival.

Utica happens to the be home of Velvet ice cream. The ice cream is good—not great—but it makes for a fun drive to the fancy schmancy ice cream parlor every now and then.

And every Memorial Day weekend, Utica blankets its street signs in ice cream banners, and the Velvet factory constructs a mini festival for the town's patrons.

We have never gone before, so we decided this would be a good break from home improvements and to pass the time before Noah's bedtime.

When we arrived at 7, things were already shutting down for the evening. A huge craft tent was closing up shop, and the food vendors were pulling down their walk-up windows. But, the ice cream tent was still hopping, and a band was entertaining folks clapping along on a small grandstand.



So, we ordered up a small mint chocolate chip for me and a cookies and cream for David.

Enter Noah... he LOVES ice cream. Actually, he loves anything sweet he can wrangle out of mom and dad, with a side of pizza. (I promise he usually gets the healthy stuff!)

Here's a few shots of our happy camper stealing bits of both of our ice cream dishes.








And then, it was back to work...