The weather was right and the chainsaw was working, so we decided to have a fire last weekend.
The girls had a blast outside all day. We did pyrotechnic things like playing with the flint & steel. I think this weekend we might try lighting our own cotten balls.
And smoke sticks of course. Obviously lots of controversy around this practice, but so far so good.
They enjoyed the day/fire so much, they decided we’d eat leftover Thanksgiving in front of the fire that night.
And of course do it again this weekend with friends – and marshmellows of course.
– b
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Had to get Grandmas HVAC inspected. Hadn’t done it in a while. Signed up for the annual service contract. Scheduled the appointment. I expected it all to go swimmingly. We’d had a few cold spells, so I know it was working.
The guy fired it up and walked downstairs to see the glow plug cherry red, but no heat or running fan.
“That ain’t right.” he says.
“See here boss. That ain’t supposed to be all red and nothing else working.”
“I gotta call the shop”
“Was anyone complaining the heat don’t work?”
Nope. Must have coincidentally just failed. Fancy that?
A little further investigation showed the control board had burned itself out.
New control board = warm house again.
It’s all good.
– b
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Got another.
Left a bunch of traps baited after the last sortie just in case.
It worked.
– b
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I’ve done these shots before, but I always love the collection of boots we have between us.
I guess it exemplifies the activities/capabilities to which we’re all striving to be successful.
Or maybe it’s just a boot fetish?
– b
ps. there’s actually a lot more I could add to this collection. This just happened to be what was in this location at the time of the shot.
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283,000 miles on the odometer.
58,000 on the motor.
It runs pretty well and has become my go to dirt bike hauler.
Problem is when little things like power window switches, taillights, or dash controls stop working, I can’t always take it to my mechanic and expect a quick or cheap fix. Parts like that aren’t readily available from their normal providers and generally have to be special ordered.
Sorry technical glitch with the blog softwae lost half of this nifty little story, and now I’m annoyed. The jist was shit breaks. I don’t have time. It’s hard to find parts. I want a new truck. Somehow I found some time when the window switch died. I even found the part. Wasn’t confident it would actually fix it. Luckily it did. We’re all good and the truck passed inspection again this year.
Moving on.
– b
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In addition to the digital entertainment, we also added a rope ladder to their already physically demanding setup in the basement.
The rope ladder, being free hanging and comprised of many independently moving parts, forces them to focus and balance just a little bit more when trying to get to the monkey bars in the ceiling.
Of course that wasn’t challenging enough for them. THEY decided to make it a bridge (their term, not mine) as they tried to ascend it, thus forcing them to concentrate on the horizontal movements as well.
I may now regret telling them “That which does not kill you only makes you stronger”, because all they try to do is kill each other in an effort to get stronger.
– b
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Jen gave the green light to get the girls a bike, so I struck while the iron was hot and found one the next day.
The plan is for it to show up on Christmas along with all the necessary safety gear.
Currently planning out riding strategies, so that we’re successful with this thing. Sitting them on it and letting them rip doesn’t have a high chance for success. One must have patience and proper expectations with these sorts of things.
It needed some work, and has been at the shop. The guys there, though slow, have been pretty cool and helpful. They’re lowering it (it’s adjustable), and helping to make it as tame as possible (without training wheels). An older model like this is nearly infintely tunable. We’ll start it out slow, and incrementally dial it up for them as they get comfortable.
Yes. It’s a 2 stroke of course.
Stay tuned for Christmas day when there will be lots and lots of pink dirt bike gear.
– b
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Who doesn’t love a giant leaf pile?
I was hardly done making it and Lu was diving in.
– b
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Recent insurgence of mouse activity required another trapping session.
In a 24hr period we got 3.
2 dead
1 maimed
Not sure what really happened to the maimed guy, but I took him outside and he ran off under the bushes away from the house.
– b
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We decided it was time to introduce the girls to the Wii. Considering we have only a few games, I wouldn’t go as far as to say we introduced them to video games. It’s mostly Wii Sports and dance games.
It was super cute watching them learn the hand/eye coordinatation and challenge themselves to win.
Lauren of course doing what we all naturally do when our bowling ball doesn’t quite go the way we want.
Considering the winter months are upon us, I imagine it will get a lot more use.
– b
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