Getting some more headway in the remodel. We’ve got a ceiling and have the walls painted. It looks nice and sharp if I do say so myself. Props to my wife for picking the color. 

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It’s been raining quite a bit but this am was really nice after I dropped the kids off so I went for a walk. When I crossed the bridge over the river at 619 I saw a log floating down the river I so knew the creek would be high. It was so beautiful that I had to snap a few pictures. 

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Overall I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.

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Last year about this time we had to bid farewell to Tyler, our faithful lab mix. He was the best dog and my oldest son still says, “Tyler was my best friend.”

It was a difficult time and I really struggled with it for a while, but back in January we got a new puppy. The family decided to call him Link since there is a dog in the neighborhood named Zelda and you must have a Link to go with Zelda

He was born on Thanksgiving, so it is easy enough to remember his birthday. I thought he would be a great pup. His siblings were either all black or all yellow but he was black with some white spots. That made him special. I felt super excited when they let us bring him home.

The first month was tough. He didn’t kennel well to start with but we kept working with him. After a month of taking turns sleeping next to him we got him comfortable sleeping in his kennel by himself. Now he sleeps through the night and does a really good job letting us know it’s time to go potty.

Anyway, here are some of the pics we took with Link so far.

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I spent the day at the Apple Blossom Festival. I just want to say that spending all day looking at crafts is not in my top 10, not even close. Normally I will do pretty much anything to avoid it. However, spending all day with my family is in my top 10, even if it means looking at crafts all day.

The day was just gorgeous, 70 degrees and sunny. My oldest son was at another event and my youngest daughter was with someone else for the first part of the day, they got there shortly before we had to leave, so mostly this was time with some friends and my oldest and youngest.

I can say I learned a few things. First, I need to take more time with my family. I try to spend time with the kids every day, but I don’t often have a whole day with the family. There is so much that needs to happen, church stuff, design and development, and stuff around the house. That kind of stuff just eats up time.

Second, it is hard to focus on my family. I think this is related to the first thing I learned. The whole day I was fighting those things that say “hey I’m super important, don’t forget me.” I wanted to get work done because I’m already behind, but I did try to stay in the moment. Part of how I did that was taking lots of pictures.

I mean LOTS of pictures. You can see them below.

As far as the day goes, we got up there and started looking at crafts, I’ll admit there was some really cool stuff. I didn’t take pictures of the crafts though, that isn’t what I was interested in. The only thing that really stood out to me was a woodworker booth. He had tons of wooden toys, trains, boats, cars, firetrucks … I really thought about buying a couple for the boys, the prices were really reasonable, but I’m not sure they are ready for something that nice. Then I got to looking at the rubber band guns. I don’t’ know if you remember the old school ones, with a couple of clothes pins to hold the rubber bands back till you are ready to fire. Well these are significant upgrades that can hold multiple rubber bands and use a rotating firing mechanism. There were pistols, rifles, and several other options, including a massive gattling gun with a rotating crank capable of firing over 100 rubber bands.

I was told no, then we looked at more crafts, bought the kids a few small things, and then took them down to the park next to teh event for a break. It is one of the nicest parks ever. We’ve taken our kids there a few times, and it seems like they keep adding new things.

Then we went back to the craft show for a bit longer, got some treats, and headed home. Please enjoy the images.

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We also found several that were black, and I really didn’t want a black vehicle after the last one. I really didn’t like the fact that you could wash and wax the car and have it looking dirty in minutes. There were some around that were great deals, but priced closer to $30k, which we could afford but I just didn’t want to spend that much on a car at this point in my life.

A few days ago I had all but given up hope. I did the math on the fuel savings and just couldn’t justify the cost we would have to pay for the hybrid, so I began a search for the regular highlander, figuring I’d start researching fuel economy again and wanted to use that as a base comparison. Then I saw 3 vehicles returned with the hybrid engine on the regular Highlander search. All 3 were in the price range, one was white, not the worst but not the best, one was black, which I skipped automatically, and one was blue. The exact color I really wanted. I know that color is the least determining factor, but the mileage was well under my max (52k) and the price was great ($21k) so I contacted the dealer to verify it had the third row (once before I though I found the perfect vehicle, but it didn’t have the third row as advertized). Oh Happy Day! It had the seating we needed. Teh car fax was available and all maintenance was done at the dealership and recorded. This vehicle sounded perfect, so we drove over 2 hours just to look.

Fortunately we found everything to be exactly as we required, maybe not every bell or whistle, but everything we needed. It took forever to get the paper work done, with drive time it took nearly 12 hours to complete the purchase and return home, but we have a new to us vehicle. Here are a few pics I took this morning when the sun came mostly out of the clouds.

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Anyways, long story short, here are some pictures from that wonderful day. Enjoy.

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