and so the week continued...

So it seems I put my camera down on a table on Thursday morning and it went on an interesting adventure capturing all sorts of  fun stuff...

I don't think either one of them has ever used one of these before now.

Merna is sooo going to kick Jake's butt at ping pong

Hey, don't take MY picture!

It's Lola!

Billy, just hanging out on the lunch prep table

Jake, just give it up, you will not win.

Anyone want to sing with Ruthie?

Clearly Steve needs more coffee

Shane, chowing down a little breakfast

Emily is getting the bandaids ready for the day

Hi Doug, how's it going?

Sam and Michelle having a little fun

The gang is getting ready to leave for work

Interweb Issues

Sorry I haven't been able to post.  the internet at camp was not working Friday.  After a day in the car I'm too tired to put much on here tonight  either.  I will attempt to load more tomorrow if we stop somewhere during the day.  If that's not possible it will be tomorrow evening.

Just to give you a little bit of a taste of things, here are a few photos from the Bunny Friends community garden site from Thursday:

and a few from the Rampart Street house on Wednesday & breakfast prep on Thursday morning:

Michelle is clearly in charge!

Christina, one of our fearless leaders

One of our Canadian friends doing battle with a tree stump that grew through a fence

Clearly Joan is ready for lunch

Alycia and Billy

Lawn decoration in front of a house near the river

Top is the date searched, bottoms is # found dead inside, fortunately none here.

pretty trim work

Street names done in tile on sidewalk

Simple, yet effective sign!

Tomas and Dave, hard at work

Breakfast anyone?

Thomas stirring a "cauldron" of ice tea.

Pancakes!

Mmmmmm, bacon

Billy is barely awake, but at least he's working.

It's always good to start your day with a smile!

Thoughts of Amy Duda

    After going on the Katrina 10 trip to Houma last year, I was very excited to get back down here and help out in any way I can. We did demolition work in Houma, and it's nice that this year instead of demolishing, we are creating. Headed by Frank, our 11 person team has been priming, painting, and preparing the floors for installation of bamboo wood flooring this week. The first few days were rough because we had to scrape the plaster off of the floors to make them smooth for wood, and it was definitely hard work :) We were able to meet our homeowners Al and Joyce and talk with them about their experience, which was amazing as well. Yesterday we started the flooring and today we finally started to paint with actual paint, not primer! This was pretty exciting for everyone.

Vacuuming up all of our debris from floor scraping, it got messy!

Starting the floors!...excited about using the nail guns!

And the priming continues.....

Taking a MUCH needed break on the second floor deck.

Most of the krewe pulling together to finish priming the last room!

The rollers are impossible to take apart...

Cleaning everything out for the day!

    Even though the week is over tomorrow, we got a LOT done at the house...there's much more to be done, of course, but it's nice to know that we made such progress this week. I love coming down to New Orleans to help out, and I would stay for a year if I could!! I'll see you all next year :)
Amy Duda

Thursday Already

This week has been another whirlwind! We have all been busy, busy, busy!  After spending all of Monday under the Rampart Street house I was ready for a new project on Tuesday morning, but our fearless leader, Alex, had other plans for me, Ang and Sam, so..... back under the house we went to finish us the footings.

First we had to find capstones for each of the footings and glue them down. Then we needed enough boards to fill in the space between the cinderblocks and the support beams. Once the boards were all planed down to fit neatly, everything was glued in place.

I felt that the girls had been really good sports about spending 2 days underneath the house so I felt they earned the right to sign it.

Me too because I had been underneath there on two different trips.

So we left our mark for the future home owners and maybe some others to see one day.

I don't think we'll be going back under any time soon!

While we were under the house all sorts of work was going on above us.  With a total of 20 people on our site, 10 from the Detroit Presbytery and 10 from Canada, the house is a flurry of activity.  

Billy was painting

Doug was grouting

Dave was painting the trim

P-Dah & Gumby were hanging out at Stonehenge

This sad little hunk of concrete was waiting for a make-over

Alycia was painting

and Michelle and Thomas made a bench