Football and Garage Insulation (grunt, grunt, grunt!)

All right. January has been kind of gray, but time seemed to move a little faster than the last year, at least! We finally got flag football to work out for Owen. We know someone with a big camera on the sidelines, so enjoy these sporty pics. :)

Apparently, there were so many teams and kids that played in the fall (there was a wait list and 10 10-player teams), that no one wanted to play in the winter league (they scrounged up 4 teams of 7 players). Anyway, we are on a team that obviously hasn't played together before, most of us met a few weeks ago, and we're off to a rough 0-3 start. He's on the Seahawks again, so he could actually even wear his old shirt from Fall 2019. It's been good to be back in a routine of practices and games at least.

Owen has gained a reputation for knowing the plays, and he's a reliable center snapper. There is no blocking or running allowed in this league, so it's a pass-happy, interception-prone game, and even the center is an eligible receiver! Owen's made a few catches, the one below was a long run until they got his flag just before the end zone.

He's still a pretty good flag grabber, too. He got this one, and has slapped a few passes out of the opposing receiver's hand. It might be an ugly season, but it's been good for him to get to be a kid in organized sports again.

On the home front, the mister needed a new project so we've been learning about insulating our free-standing garage. That's been consuming a lot of his free time on evenings and weekends. To give you an idea of before, it was pretty bare bones: just studs, weather-barrier, and the siding. This left little-to-no awkward places to hang things and the weather-barrier was damaged in several places. Not to mention that the garage is a hot box in summer. I had rubberized gardening gloves that basically melted together, because it got so hot in there!

Insulating the garage is a multi-step process, as you can imagine. The first step is to replace the weather-barrier, then add some spacers to allow any moisture to dry out, followed by a sheet of foam insulation (my specialty!) sealed with special tape, and finally the top layer of wood for the wall surface. Each of these has to be measured in multiple places as the stud spacing varies a lot, carefully cut, accurately placed, and securely attached. As a family (though mostly just J), we've been able to get six bays done in one weekend day.

And finally, lest our garage look like a '70s-era, fully wood-paneled man cave, we decided to take it step(s) further and paint the walls. This is also a multi-step process consisting of oil-based priming, dry wall mudding, and eventually painting (all J labor). A month in, and we're about 1/3 of the way done... When all finished, this should give us a 20-degree differential to the outside temperature, make the space more functional and clean, and of course, provide many more opportunities to upgrade other parts of the garage in the future. 😏