Doug and Sara

Monday, February 13, 2017

Wind 2, Trees 0

Woke up today and found a large tree in our yard. The unfortunate part is that our favorite fruit tree (peach tree) got destroyed as well.

Thursday, February 9, 2017

Cooperation at the Store

Two kids, one cart and 10 minutes at the store. Usually this is a recipe for disaster, but a strange thing happened on the way to preschool today ...

Monday, February 6, 2017

Hiking in February at Pimmit Run

Weather: 62 degrees and sunny
Equipment: One day old hiking boots from Marshalls
Post Acumatica Summit: Day off

All this equates to a great hiking opportunity. RJ wanted to explore a new trail, so we tried Pimmit Run.

First worry: it would not be exciting enough

That worry was quickly dismissed. We discovered rocks to throw, ice to break, and a huge climb that scared both kids to the point where they begged to go the other way. (grr ... should have gotten some pictures of the vertical so CPS would take the kids away).

After turning around we reached a sign which said "Fort Marcy 0.2 miles". The only problem was that you had to cross a stream/river to get there. Doh. We decided that wet shoes were not a good choice. Next time!

Afterwards ...

Sunday, February 5, 2017

Lionel O22 Switch Repair

I have six Lionel O Gauge 022 switches. They were produced from 1945 until 1966, so it's not surprising that three did not work. Specifically, the auto-switch / non-derailing feature was working in only one direction. The switch automatically flipped if a train approached from the 'straight' side and the switch was set to receive a train coming from the curve, but the switch did not flip automatically if a train approached from the 'curve' while the switch was set to straight.

Fortunately, the repair was easy. In all three cases, a solder joint failed as illustrated below. Simply re-soldering the switch brought it back to working condition.

RJ's 5th Birthday Week

RJ's birthDAY was more of a birthWEEK this year.

On Feb 5th, Granddad and Grandmother Johnson visited. Granddad took RJ to the lego store:

We got to fill a bucket with Legos ... which was a lot of fun. There was another guy in the store that was quite exacting about filling his buckets. My guess is that his bucket weighed about 2X ours due to his smashing all the pieces together and filling every hole in the bucket with Legos.

After the Lego store we got cake ... good job Mom!

Grandpa and Grandma Fritel gave us a remote control car which could flip over and drive all over the place ... way cool.

Feb 9th ... Happy Birthday RJ. Unfortunately, he missed school due to illness, but he put together this cool puzzle while Dad worked from home. Then we made it to Santini's for lunch.