New Driveway!

Well it took almost 5 years but we finally have a driveway that isn't dirt full of ruts, pot holes and heaves! Two thumbs up for Central Asphalt for a job well done. I reserve the right to remove that opinion if it rains and ponds somewhere. That will not make me happy.

It looks like the 4th of July in my kitchen!

I was going about my normal activity of working on a task only to be distracted mid-task by some other much higher priority task. This can go many levels deep until the 10^th task in eventually takes me back to the original. It kind of reminds me of the Give a Mouse a Cookie or . . .Pig a Pancake or . . .Moose a Muffin books. I was in the kitchen to find some lunch around 2pm. Kind of late but I had been distracted by too many other little tasks prior to that. Then I realized the special popcorn salt needed to be put away. But when I opened the cupboard to put it high on the top shelf I realized that shelf was disorganized. So I decided to clean it up. In the process of pulling down a container, a very LARGE bottle of red white and blue sprinkles fell upside down onto the counter-top, popped the lid off and blew the container onto the floor. I was surrounded in festive sprinkles. It sounded cool but wasn’t so funny at the time. But I’m laughing now. The bottle was nearly full when it fell. It would have taken me a lifetime to use that many sprinkles anyway. What was I thinking? Now I’m left with maybe a 15 year supply instead.

NO GYM MEMBERSHIP NEEDED. . .

. . .when it snows around here! The pictures might not do justice as to just how many square feet of driveway we have. There was about 10+ inches of snow Friday. Saturday morning it took both of us (no help came this time from the kids since they had both thrown up within the last 24 hrs) less than two hours to tackle it together. This is with shovels ONLY! No snow blower - don't own one. The pictures below were taken before additional snow fell. Then last night and this morning we had about another 4+ at least. Now the wind is blowing and drifting those 4 new inches and previous snow making it look like lots more fell than that in places. Since the temperature as I write this is -11 with wind chill (sustained winds of 25 and gusts of 35mph), there is NO WAY we are going out to shovel! It would do no good anyway. We will wait until tomorrow for our next workout. Its Sunday anyway. Isn't this a day of rest? WE LOVE MICHIGAN!

(Looking away from the house the paved driveway ends where you start to see solid white. Then it turns into gravel. There is a turnaround off to the left and then the road is out by the pine trees that mark the entrance.)

Completely Random

Monday while at the Doctors office for one of the kiddos, we noticed the crayons to draw on the exam table tissue paper. I have often thought this was a great idea for whoever thought of it. We were drawing pictures of the United States and talking about in what state everyone in the family was born. Our family of 4 represents CA, UT, IL and NH. The interesting part was noticing the patriotic “American Crayons” that were made in MEXICO! Something is simply wrong about this.

Our front door has sprouted a pair of “Mystery Shoes” that we have no clue where they came from. Our front porch is not well trafficked. We don’t have sidewalks in front of the house. The house is set off the road enough that strangers don’t generally wander in. So where did these black shoes come from? They aren’t ours and we would like to know who they belong to. Just a little strange to have someone’s shoes neatly placed outside your front door!

When will I learn? If you try to cross the middle section of Campus at the wrong time of day, plan to be there awhile. Honestly traffic here isn’t nearly as bad as some places. But when you are accustomed to traveling around without a bottleneck its painful when one occurs. One must become aware of the standard start and end times for classes because it is impossible to see walking or car traffic when looking toward campus from the East or West. It may look perfectly fine until you are at the point of no return. The cars back up quickly because of students crossing the roads, non-stop in mass. Has anyone noticed that students these days could care less about cars on the road and simply feel empowered to not even look when they cross into the traffic?

The other day I noticed a bicyclist (it was after sunset and fairly dark outside) out of the left corner of my eye. It was on the opposite side of the street and would have been in my blind spot had I not noticed. He is lucky he didn’t have a close encounter with a Ford Windstar that evening. He didn’t even budge his head to look to his right for traffic but barreled right across the road full speed ahead. He didn’t even stay in the cross walk but continued at even a greater angle prolonging his ride along the road as if no one else were around. Hulllooo McFly!

What do you get with a curious 5 year old, a full bottle of air freshener and bathroom that I guess must have not smelled too good? An empty bottle of air freshener and bathroom walls and floor covered with a very potent smell of “winds & springtime”.

It’s really not springtime around here but fall. Yes the leaves are beautiful. Many are falling from the trees creating the need to rake. I’m hoping for a good breeze this week to blow them out of the yard. I should have posted a daily “favorite tree”. I guess I still could but I missed having the camera with me for my favorite tree this past week. OH well, just know that the colors are vibrant and beautiful. I never want it to end. However, if it were this way year round it wouldn’t be nearly as thrilling to seek out the best colors before the disappear.

This is a test of the 72 hour water supply, this is only a test

When we bought our house almost 2 years ago the first thing we noticed was the water. It was so hard and it smelled awful! You never felt clean after a shower. Considering this was a new house it was really ugly to peer into the shiny new white toilet only to see rusty orange (which has since been cleaned out and it is shiny white). We had never lived anywhere with well water but most homes we looked at had them and they all had something in common. A top priority quickly surfaced – a water softener and carbon filter. The other homes had been around awhile so those owners had obviously learned this lesson that we were just learning. Our basement is one large expanse of completely unfinished space. In one corner sits our wellmate small holding tank and this is where our water softener was also installed. The carbon filter is attached to the ceiling and encased with a thick plastic blue housing. It hangs down almost 2 feet. So Friday night Nick went downstairs to find a cable and noticed water on the floor which was coming from the carbon filter. He found the o-ring was not working properly. In the process of holding onto the heavy thick plastic housing, half full of water, while trying to fix the o-ring at the top, it slipped out of his hands and fell to the cement floor. Now one might think that considering how heavy and thick this plastic thing is it would hold up to such a fall. Nope! It had at least a 7” vertical crack that was almost impossible to see until you connected the housing back up and let the water pressure flow through, quickly showing you right where that crack was.

We do not have a shut off valve to bypass the water filter. So, this meant we needed to keep the water turned off or we would have a mess downstairs! It was Friday night around 8pm and therefore too late to call businesses to see if we could get a replacement. Online the part was available but it wouldn’t have been processed until Monday and even then overnight shipping for a Tuesday delivery would have cost an extra $100+. Saturday we found that there were no businesses open. So we accepted our little test and decided to live without water until Monday when we hoped to be able to get this fixed.

To make it more interesting I was trying to prepare for a Tastefully Simple event I needed to be to very early Saturday morning and also trying to get a head start on soup preparation for our monthly Soup Saturday project for Dan. I learned just how often I rinse my hands while cooking! Fortunately we have a supply of backup water. Probably not enough for a REAL emergency but it was a great test of a 72 hour crisis situation. We put a large 7 gallon tank of water that had a spigot on the kitchen counter next to the kitchen sink. When tipped on its side we could easily wash our hands with it. We had bottled gallons of water that we could use for drinking and things like making soup and brushing teeth. Because the outside water does not pass through the filter we could fill up buckets of water to keep next to the toilet so we could flush occasionally as needed. Nick even took some of the outside water and boiled it to do dishes the old fashioned way. I must admit that when I helped to finish a few I enjoyed the extra warmth of the water. Or maybe I was just missing not having the instant access to hot water. All in all it was a bit of an inconvenience but a really good test for a real emergency. We do in fact have running water now! So I guess it was less than 72 hours. Our local Culligan office, who installed the filter originally, had a housing they sold us for about the price online (minus the hefty shipping charges). I’m sure they would have charged us more but they had one that had been in a truck and was dinged up a bit but had never been used. I can live with a less than smooth housing unit. The good part – no cracks! We are back in business. Now the laundry can begin again. I think I will start with a fresh cup of ice water. I think we have some ice left. . .