What a great and productive weekend!

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My sister and brother-in-law, Beverly and Cliff, drove down from Avondale (just west of Phoenix) to help us with projects.

They arrived Thursdsay evening and left earlier this afternoon (Sunday).

Michael and Cliff concentrated on electrical issues with a few other items thrown in.

We now have all our low voltage lights working around our driveway and we added a couple to highlight more trees. They identified all the wires and fixed the problems with both lights and broken wires. They reburied the wires when they finished and it looks great! We all went out last night and adjusted the lights for the best tree view. Cliff managed to back in to a prickly pear! Ouch!

They also changed out our motion sensing spotlights on the garage and the breakfast nook with brighter and more sensitive lights.

Cliff removed some poles I could not get out of the ground and some rebar that had been used to support trees that I couldn't get out with hammers!

However, the first project they started on was a new socket in the middle of the steps in our hallway. A simple - maybe 40 minute - job that took all three days to finish. There turned out to be horizontal 2x4s in the wall supporting a vent pipe between the electrical source and where we directed Cliff to cut the hole. With the hole we were committed and through many hours of work and a lot of brainstorming they managed to finish the new socket without damaging the wall anywhere. Michael even got to use his orthopedic skills to remove the old electrical box. We're waiting to see if our medical insurance will pay for the procedure and the damaged hands of both Michael & Cliff.

And for everybody's information the power was off so all those wires touching Michael's hammer were not active.

We now have new dimmer switches in our bedroom and by our jacuzzi and a motion sensor switch for one set of inside garage lights.

You can see that Cliff and Michael had to remove and replace all the boxes that make up the modular box springs for our air mattress.

Beverly and I concentrated on vacuuming (several times) the carpeting and then shampooing all the carpeting in the house to get rid of cat hair from the previous owners - of course, we had to move all the furniture from the two bedrooms including all the boxes of books. I must admit Beverly did all the vacuuming and shampooing - I was the support crew for both Beverly and Michael and Cliff.

Washed the mop boards. Painted many areas of the house. Repainted the outside furnace doors and doorframe.

Recut the pool cover.

Worked on the pool scale again and so on - you get the picture!