Happy Eleventh Birthday

Happy eleventh birthday Kylie! Today is the first birthday in the past few years that you are not spending with me, but that’s because you will be with me next week! Today you will be spending the day with Mommy, and I am sure she has something fun planned for you. You have a busy year coming up, as you enter middle school it will be the first time in your school career that you move to a new building. Though it is just across the parking lot, it’s going to be a big change. As you said yourself you’re going from “being the big kid, to being the youngest in the building again.” We know that you will do great though! Hopefully this next year will be your best one yet!

Moving up to Middle School

Today was Kylie’s last day of 5th grade, and as such the end of Elementary School! Hard to believe that next year she will be moving up to the Middle School. She’s excited but realizes that she is going from being one of “the big kids” to once again being the youngest. However, she is already looking forward to the possibility of joining new clubs and looking forward to making new friends as students from other elementary schools will be going to the same middle school. At the end of the day there was an awards presentation, after which there was a clap out for the 5th grades to send them off to middle school and say farewell. When everything was complete we went to Red Robin for a celebratory lunch.  

New Brakes, Part 2

Man, that was one heck of an ordeal. So we finally got everything back together and fully changed out. We ran into a number of problems today that we were not anticipating that slowed us way down. We had broken bolts that caused us to have to exchange brackets and two defective calipers. The original O’Riely’s store didn’t have the replacement parts for the parts we purchased from them to replace the defective parts we got, so we had to go to another store to get them. It seemed like we ran into issue after issue. Diagnosing the second defective caliper took a lot of time because it wasn’t until we were trying to bleed the brakes that it was discovered. I can’t even explain all the stuff I learned in one way or the other during this entire process. However, the main thing I can say I learned is that changing brakes is nowhere near as difficult as I had thought for so many years. Sure, it’s time-consuming, but basically it’s very easy! While it has been a very long two days that has been both physically and mentally exhausting, I am very happy to have gone through it and learned everything that I have. I am very grateful to have such good friends as Nicole and Alex, who took a lot of time out of their days to help me, and especially Nicole for teaching me everything she did! So, after roughly 118,500 miles and 10 years, the original brakes, rotors, and rear calipers have finally been replaced on the Envoy!

New Brakes, Part 1

I’ve had my truck now for just about 7 years, and in that time I really haven’t had to put too much money into it. There have been some parts replaced here and there, oil changes and new tires and such. I’ve even been really lucky in the sense that a number of these repairs have been performed by friends for the cost of parts, smokes, and food. In addition to that, I am also learning things that I have never had the opportunity to learn before. Today was another of those learning experiences. Last night my brakes started making some really bad grinding noises. I’m not really surprised as I knew they were getting low, particularly since during one of the previous repairs my friend told me that it appeared my rotors were original to the truck. So today my friend Nicole help me and taught me how to change the brakes and rotors on my truck, all of them. I picked up a new jack and some various other tools along with the necessary parts and in about 8 hours we changed all four brakes and rotors. The front ones did not give us any issues but it turns out we are going to have change the calipers on the back as well, which means most likely bleeding the brakes too. Something else to learn! But that’ll have to happen tomorrow.

Third Swim Meet

Kylie had her third swim meet tonight. She participated in 4 events and did great! This was the second meet that Melissa and I were able to make it too, the first one being last week’s. I was very proud, and impressed, to see how much she has improved in the last week. I know she has a lot of practices during the week, and was even practicing in the lake with her cousins when we went up north, but the change in her form is incredible. Tiffany sent me the videos that she took during this meet like she did for the other, and as soon as I can I will get them posted as well. Also, once again, I do not know what her rankings were in her events, but that doesn’t really matter to us. We are very proud of Kylie and everything she accomplishes, and even more for just simply attempting it and following through. Looking forward to her next event already!