Weekend Projects

Mowing the Lawn

The weekend is always filled with projects and one constant one is ALWAYS mowing the lawn.

As I was mowing this morning around 10:00 a.m., it was HOT!!! It got up to 99 degrees today and it sure felt like it was near 90 when I was out mowing earlier.

I was mowing in the backyard and would go under the shade of the trees and boy did that make a difference. Felt 10 degrees or more cooler. And as I walked under the trees it reminded me of a situation we had encountered with our neighbor a week and a half ago.

Trees

When we first moved into our home about 6 years ago, there were no trees just shrubs. And the shrubs were planted haphazardly throughout the lot. No rhyme or reason to any of it. We moved all the shrubs to other spots in the yard and planted some trees. We put in 6 willow trees, 3 pine trees and a quaking aspen. Realizing this was way too many trees, this year we pulled out 3 of the willows and 2 pine trees all from the back yard. Still have to work on getting the stumps out and putting grass over them.

Well, our neigbor came over and told us that we "have to cut back our willow tree" that overhanges in her yard (see picture below on the right). She said that they grow 3 feet each day and they are too messy.
Needless to say, we were not going to trim back the trees or take them out. These trees provide a little bit of privacy and create the much needed shade in the hot summer sun. Alecia volunteered for us to go talk to our neighbor after dinner and I did not want to go. The neighbor was all up in arms about the leaves dropping on her garden and the sticks that blow out of the trees when the wind blows. I said that was an act of God and not our doing. I also said that we don't throw these things into her yard on purpose like she does with our yard. YES, she actually picks up the leaves and sticks and throws them over the fence into our yard. Things were getting a little heated at this point and Alecia had to calm us down.

I told her she has every right to trim the tree herself up to the property line but not an inch over. Then I volunteered to trim it myself up a little way, but not all the way up. Better to do it myself than have her hire someone else to do it and look totally bad. If you enlarge the picture above, you can see a notch on the bottom right corner as not to hang over too far into her yard.

Cars & Bikes

The next project was to work on rearranging the parking situation in our garage.

With the price of gas so high these days (just paid $4.14 gallon at Costco today), I decided to start riding my bike to work each day and let Alecia drive the smaller car that gets better gas mileage. She takes the kids to swim team practice every day and has to go back and forth more than 2 times.

With Alecia driving the small car, it is usually parked on the side of the garage without the automatic garage door opener. She wouldn't park the car in the garage because of having to get in and out of the car and would just leave it in the driveway to soak up the summer sun. Boy did it get hot in there.

So, I rearranged some things to make it so the mini-van could be parked on the manual garage door side and the small car could go on the side with the automatic door opener. Now there is no reason to let the small car sit out in the sun and get super hot the next time she drive it.

Utah Trip: May 2008

Mt. Timpanogos Temple

The 2nd week in May, my brother Wade and I flew down to Utah for a special reason. Our dad. After many years of being less-active in the church, my dad had a change of heart and decided to come back into full fellowship in the church and return to the temple after many years of not going.

A date was discussed and decided upon, that bing May 10, 2008. Alecia and I wanted to be as supportive as possible and not dictate what day he should return to the temple but rather let hime decided. We discussed going down as a family to be with him whenever it was, but decided with school and finances, it would be more feasible for me to make the trip than bring the whole family. This also left the date decision more in the hands of my folks, as I would be able to work around my work schedule easy enough.

Everyone else had parts of their own family down there, except for me. Wade's son Ryan was even down there, so Wade had a member of his family. Alecia, however, DID participate in the temple trip in spirit by providing some of her family names for us to take through the temple that day. It happened to be a family of brothers and sisters that she was able to share with all my brothers and sister. It was truly great as we were all in temple together for the first time ever.

Wade & I flew down on a Friday, went to Mt. Timpanogas Temple on Saturday, May 10. Celebrated Mother's day with my family on Sunday and flew back to Seattle on Monday. I enjoyed being with my birth family, but missed my family in Wenatchee so much more. The only thing that would have made this a better trip would have been to have my wife and children by my side.

Childhood Home

On the way to the airport on Monday, I asked my Mom & Dad to take us to different stores looking for webkins stuffed animals for my kids that we couldn't find back home. We had no luck in finding one. When we were in West Valley City I said let's go look at the only home I grew up in as a youth.

As we drove through town, it looked so different yet very familiar at the same time. We got to the old home located at 3701 S. 4485 W. and we couldn't believe our eyes. What an eye sore. The new owners did not take care of it at all. Looked like a slum. My dad has always taking excellent care of his home and had a nice looking yard. Even the yard at his new home looks much nicer than many of the neighbors.

My dad couldn't believe his eyes. He had to circle the cul-de-sac twice to look at it. It was just so sad. Some of the homes on the street looked the same, but there were many that didn't look well. What happened? The above picture was taken in the summer of 2006 and believe it or not, this is a good day for the home.

I went onto Google maps and found a street view of the home and it doesn't look much better.