Up On The Rooftop

For my birthday I asked Derek if he would take me to Kentucky to meet up with my parents and my brother Ray and his wife Lori to help redo my Aunt's roof.  Derek took me, Tia, and Kayli.  We got lots of sore muscles, but we had a wonderful time.  My Aunt Gail, who is my Mom's sister, lives in Harlan where they grew up, and this is the first time Derek or any of my kids have been there.  My Mom enjoyed taking us all on a walking tour, and my Dad drove us around a little.  It is beautiful in Kentucky, and it was so fun to get to see my sweet Aunt, and to have a rare visit with some of my Kentucky cousins.  Here are some pictures my Dad took:

Before we got to Kentucky my cousin Ricky, and hopefully a helper or two, took the old roof off.  That is hard work!  This is my brother Ray by the pile of old roofing materials.

My cousin Ricky was taking off the old chimney when we arrived and patching the roof.

This is (from left to right) my brother Ray, Derek, Tia, Kayli and me.  We were the main work crew for the days we were there.  My 78 year old Dad was naughty because he wanted to be on the roof so badly helping, so he carried quite a few shingles up the ladder.  He even hammered in some nails from the ladder, and gave us instructions, which we sometimes took graciously.  My cousin and his son Raymond helped out with carrying shingles too.

This is Tia, me, Derek and Kayli.  I think that is Ellen and Raymond in the foreground.  Ray was up there working on the other side of the roof.  Ray forgot the nail gun and so we hammered four nails in every shingle.  Ray works really hard and was really the most skilled roofer up there so all turned out well.

This is when we were wrapping up what we could do.  We ran out of shingles, and the store was far enough away from Harlan that by the time my Dad and Ricky got back, there wasn't enough daylight to finish.  My cousins finished up the roof after we left since we headed off the next day to do more vacation like activities.

My Mom really wanted to know what my family thought of Harlan.  We loved the accents.  We tried doing good southern imitations with not much success.  We were thankful for the work Ricky and his helpers did (I'm a little vague on who helped him).  My girls and Derek (and me too!) thought my Aunt and my cousin Gina were really sweet.  They did keep feeding us and giving us water.  They also gave us bandaids for our blisters and made us feel heroic for coming from Utah and working up high on the roof.  We got to talk to Ricky's and Ellen's son Raymond quite a bit and quite enjoyed that because he always seemed so happy to talk to us and help us out.  I enjoyed my five minutes with cousins Mike and Jimmy and wished I could have seen them and other relatives more.  We often had an audience while we worked which was interesting!  We liked our trip to Harlan, and we liked feeling helpful.