Today was going to be an errand and catch up day. After breakfast Rich took the truck to Mt. Vernon to get the tires rotated. We’ve put on a lot of miles this last month or so traveling between the kids in Maple Valley, Lake Stevens & Camano Island as well as our trips up north to Bellingham and Mt. Vernon. I spent the morning getting caught up on our blog and answering some long overdue emails.
After lunch we decided to drive all the way around the island. The several different times in the past year that we’ve been here for visits we’ve never taken the time to drive around the island. In some ways I was disappointed only because you couldn’t see the water that much, there was too much brush and trees that blocked the view. There are way more people that live on Camano Island than I ever dreamed of. That is the one thing that surprised both Rich and I, there were tons of houses along the way, both south and north. There also wasn’t much beach access for the public. I see why the kids were excited that their property came with three beach accesses through the local country club.
After our drive, Rich started getting things ready for our departure on Wednesday. Since we’ve been sitting in one place for so long, there is a lot more to do. One thing is he has to reconfigure our replacement BANKS Power IQ computer.
Tuesday
Today Kristina had a meeting at her school until noon (she’s a school teacher and they are starting to gear up for the coming school year so her summer vacation is ending) and we offered to watch the boys. We wandered over to the house around 10:00 a.m. and took over. We spent the morning playing two games of Apples to Apples Jr. Cameron was winner of game one and Grandpa (Rich) was winner of game two. After our games, we decided to take the boys into Stanwood for lunch at the DQ and of course Blizzards were on the agenda. We also needed to fuel up the truck with diesel. One of the things when you install a BANKS power system, the computer has to "learn" the gearing in each setting, so we took the opportunity on that drive to take care of that task.
We fueled up the truck first and then headed to the DQ. There was this "pet boutique" that we kept passing when we would go to Mt. Vernon that was just a couple blocks from the DQ that I was curious to stop in and check out before we left, so we decided after lunch we would do that. Well there is a lot to learn when you are grandparents…..one being…..make sure you know what your grandkids like on their hamburgers. When we were ordering the kids meals I didn’t even think to ask if there was anything they "didn’t" like such as mustard or pickles, you know all the good stuff that adults tend to like. Well our food came and yep, you guessed it, the little guy, Calvin’s hamburger came with ketchup, mustard and pickles and of course you can’t eat a hamburger with mustard and pickles. So Granny tried the scraping off the mustard and removing the pickles trick, but apparently in my earnestness, I touched another part of the hamburger bun with the mustard and the whole thing was ruined and couldn’t be eaten by Calvin. Oh my, I felt bad and Rich told the boys that if we were around more, we’d probably know better what they liked on their food. Well you would think that would be the end of the story, but no, there’s more. After Calvin ate his french fries it was time for his ice cream cone that came with his kids meal. He wanted chocolate so Rich brought him back a chocolate ice cream cone. Well the chocolate in Calvin’s mind was the hard crunchy chocolate on the outside of the dipped cone, not chocolate ice cream. Yikes, but at least this one wasn’t a total disaster, he decided he could go ahead and eat the chocolate ice cream. Poor Calvin didn’t fare too well with Grandpa & Granny. I think Cameron’s lunch was OK. Boy it’s hard work being a grandparent. =)
Well after lunch we decided the best course would be to forgo the "pet boutique" and head back to the house and let the boys run off some of their "sugar". We had just gotten back when Kristina pulled in so that was good timing. I explained that Calvin may need a little protein later on since his lunch consisted of french fries and an ice cream cone – not very nutritious was it?
We spent the rest of the afternoon doing some more chores around the 5er in preparation for our departure. One thing that I really wanted to get done was to wash the truck and 5er, they were covered in dust from the gravel road. There is rain in the forecast but I didn’t care, I still wanted to get all that dust off our rigs.
After we got everything all washed up, the boys had asked Grandpa to come and jump on the trampoline with them. After Grandpa was done jumping, I took my turn. Boy, that’s a good workout, I got plum wore out.
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| Grandpa, Cameron & Calvin - caught them on the down jump, they were going awfully high |
Here are some parting pictures of some of the finished projects we had been working on.
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| This is the completed school map that we helped with earlier in the month |
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| Garden shed (new paint, barkdust and rock border) |
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| Rhodies that I trimmed into trees and weeded and cleaned up underneath |
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| Shop that Rich painted |
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| Another angle of shop |
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