We just returned from New York, where we were for the last few days so we could lay Nan to rest. We flew out on Monday (09/05/16) and stayed with Mom. She seemed to be doing well, though she was tired and drained. We spent some time that night at my brother’s house and then at my nephew’s. It was nice to have some time with family even though Melissa and I were tired from travel. Tuesday (09/06/16) was spent finalizing some things for Nan’s services and spending time with Mom, we also ran a few errands but mostly had a low-key day. Wednesday (09/07/16) was the day of Nan’s service. My grandmother had made all the arrangements for her own funeral years ago, which meant there wasn’t much we needed to do to get things ready. I am very grateful that she did this as it minimized the stress for my mother as much as possible as all of the arrangements fell to her for everything else. Per Nan’s wishes there was no obituary published, and the viewing was immediately prior to the services and interment. It had been a number of years since I had last seen Nan, and it was amazing to see how much she had changed since that time. I certainly regret not being able to make it back home more often, but thankfully my family all understands. The service was very nice and a lot of family that I had not seen in years made it up to pay their respects. Myself and her other grandsons and great grandsons had the honor of acting as pallbearers, and it was with heavy, yet joyful, hearts that we carried out that duty. After the services were complete we had a small family gathering back at the senior community in which her and my mother live. Following that we went back to my nephew’s house for a little while to spend additional time with family. Our plane left today at noon, so we had to say good to Mom around 10am. Unfortunately due to some layover delays we didn’t get home until a little while ago, but honestly it still shaved about 4 hours off of driving and was vastly more comfortable. While I am thankful to have had the opportunity to go back home and see everyone, I hope the next time we make it back to New York it is for happier reasons.
The Start of Middle School
My oh my how time does fly! Today was Kylie’s first day of 6th grade! That means that in just a few short months she will complete her primary education! I am honestly not sure how we got here so fast! It seems like only yesterday I was dropping her off at daycare, and now she is in middle school. I am looking forward to watching her continue her swimming and am hopefully that she will try out for the school team (as it is one of the only sports the 6th graders are allowed to participate in) but know that she will at least continue with the club team if she passes on the school team. Academically, I am hopeful that she continues her progress and, more specifically, I am hoping that math no longer causes her so much trouble. We will continue her tutoring once a month to help ensure this as well. Here’s looking forward to another great year!
Loss of the Matriarch
Today is a very sad day for my family; Nan passed away in her sleep about 10:30am, she would have been 98 in January. She was my maternal grandmother and she was the matriarch of the family, always keeping everyone in line and connected. A very direct, outspoken, and bold woman; she ruled with a heavy hand, and was simultaneously the nicest, sweetest, and most caring person you could ever meet. Nan had a way of taking in people and making them feel like family no matter where they came from. She was also very stubborn and set in her ways. She had no qualms about telling you that any given situation would be “her way, or the highway,” and she meant it! I have fond memories of my grandmother, but the majority of them are from when I was younger, particularly when she still owned her cleaning business. This is due to my being far away for the last 20 years, having gone to college out-of-state and then moving even further away to finish college and begin my life and family. I called her when I could though, and even though she was always quick to get off the phone, as she didn’t want to take up too much of my time (no matter how much I tried to tell her she wasn’t), I always made sure she knew that I was thinking of her and that I loved her. I wish I could have spent more time with her these last 20 years. She had great stories and I am certain there are many that I never got the opportunity to hear. She will be dearly missed, but after 28 years she will finally be reunited with my grandfather.
Good-bye Nan, I love you, I’ll miss you.
More Camping Fun
The summer of camping continued this week as we spent the last few days with our great friends Alex, Nicole, and Kira camping at the Metamora-Hadley Recreation Area. This is the same area that we camped at last year for a short weekend and what spurred all of this years, and hopefully many more years’, camping trips. It was a good five days of canoeing, fishing, swimming, and general camp fun! The weather wasn’t as hot as our time in Jellystone last month, but I contribute the vast amount of trees here to helping with keeping the temperatures much more comfortable. We did have a persistent raccoon visitor this year that made the evenings a little more adventurous. This little guy, on more than one occasion, came right up to our table while we were sitting by the fire. It eventually became a fun little game for us to try to enjoy our adult conversations and still watch for his approach so we could shew him away before he got too near. I think we are all already looking forward to next year’s trip!
I’m smarter than the av-er-age bear!
What a great adventure we have just returned from! This past week we took a camping trip out west and stayed in South Haven at Jellystone Park with our friends Alex, Nicole, and Kira. Overall it was a really good. The camp itself is geared towards families with children, so there were a lot of activities for the kids to participate in (along with the parents too). Some of these activities included fire engine truck rides, breakfast events, swimming pool games, and gem mining. Many of the events included Yogi Bear and his friends. In addition to the campground itself we got to go explore the city of South Haven, and swim in Lake Michigan! Kylie really enjoyed swimming in the Great Lake and has set a goal for herself of swimming in all of them, which I think is an awesome idea and have added that to my bucket list as well! The only down side of the campground was that it is relatively new. Now this doesn’t seem like it would be an issue, however, the area where the camp is constructed used to be open fields, so all of the trees were also recently planted, which means they are still relatively young and short so they didn’t supply much shade. As such the already hot July weather was magnified by the lack of places to find shade and we found ourselves spending a good amount of time in the little restaurant or camp store for no other reason than to enjoy some air conditioning and try to cool down. The heat led to some issues as we were irritable and uncomfortable, but for the most part things went well. While I believe we will visit South Haven again in the future, I do not believe we will revisit Jellystone, as far as camping goes it was expensive compared to other parks due to its commercial appeal, but we wanted the kids to have the experience of the themed park. Next time we will either stay at a hotel or find a state park to camp at. In any event, it was a lot of fun and we are looking forward to our next camping trip which is planned for next month!
Shop Wall Overhaul
One of the main selling points of this house, for me anyway, was the secondary structure. That structure is an additional 1 ½ car detached garage in the backyard. From what we were told from the previous owner, this building was her late husband’s workshop; he had lots of woodworking equipment out there. As such we have continued to reference this building as “the shop,” and for me the added space was exactly what I wanted in order to ensure that the main garage attached to the house could be used for our cars. The shop is where the motorcycle stays along with all the lawn care tools, snow blower, etc., and is a real valuable feature of the house to me. That being said, we have known from the beginning that this building needed some small repair work. The external paneling on the back wall had a small hole right below an external piece of duct. It looks like at some point he may have had a wood stove inside the shop and this was the exhaust vent. It appeared that the steam released from this pipe has caused some accelerated weathering and water damage to the paneling. So yesterday, with a lot of help from Zack, we replaced this back panel… and then some. I began removing the panel before he arrived in the morning and my anxiety quickly rose to heights previously unknown. The trigger for this was when I pulled off the first panel and the wall stud came out with it! After Zack arrived and we continued the removal of bad paneling and more and more of the interior studs came out, we realized this was going to be a larger project. Thankfully Zack stayed calm throughout all of this and took it in stride, his broader experience and deeper skill set really made this project possible. We were able to salvage the internal drywall to reuse, but that was about it. Everything on the inside of the wall was rotted and falling apart. I have a sneaking suspicion that the previous owner (or perhaps her kids) knew this wall was failing and simply put up new drywall inside to hide it. With the exception of about a two feet, the entire back wall was removed. At one point the roof was being held up by my 3 ton car jack on cement blocks with a 2×4 propped on the jack saddle. I have framed a wall before, but never while the roof was hanging over my head with basically no support. We determined the main cause of the failure was the rotting of the bottom plate. This caused the roof to sag by about 3 inches (something we didn’t notice until attempting to put the new studs in) and allowing for the studs to pull out as well. We replaced the bottom plate with some Trex 2×4’s that were left in the shop, so we have little concern about that particular piece ever rotting again. The top plate remained and was solid, which aided in using the jack to hold up the roof, but did make it a little tougher to place the new studs and bottom plate. So the project that started out as just replacing a couple of panels with an estimated time of 3 hours, turned into the complete rebuilding of the back wall and taking 17 hours. When all was said and done we replaced approximately 10 feet of a 12 foot wall. I learned a lot from this experience and from Zack in particular. I’m very lucky that he has the knowledge and skills that he does, as there is no way I would have been able to do this on my own. Now we need to start stripping and sealing the rest of the walls in preparation to paint the structure, as it is long overdue for that as well.
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.