Preparing for the next road trip

Our summer can roughly be divided into three chunks.  The first is preparing for and riding the STP.  Although we do a lot while in this training, many days are devoted to riding, preparing for riding, or healing from riding.

The next chunk has been time with grandkids.  Of course we see them at other times, but the last three weeks has been almost exclusively devoted to them.


The next one is getting ready to go.  These preparations, like for our other activities, occur throughout our summer, but now they are into full swing.

So now I'll report on some of these projects.

The first was putting up wood.  Last year we had a major wood project--cutting down several trees, cutting them up, and splitting and storing them to dry.  Fortunately, that isn't something that needs to be done every year.

This year, all we needed to do was to throw the wood into the trailer and haul it up to the breezeway with the lawn tractor.


oops.

We no longer have a lawn tractor.  I gave it away.  I had been fussing with it all summer, and finally got all fussed out:




It died in that spot, and I just had it hauled away by someone who might be able to fix it up and make some money out of it.  But it was every dang time something was happening.

When I bought this mower, back in 2007, I had planned on it lasting just a few years.  I knew it would take a beating for awhile in the yard until I got all of the stumps, rocks, and branches out of it.  Then the plan was to get a better mower.

So this was just part of the plan.  And we did buy a good mower, in fact a really good mower, in fact the bestest mower on the planet:  A DR!  It is on order, so we won't see it for awhile, but it will be safer and easier.  More on that later.

However, the DR isn't a lawn tractor, and when I dumped the old guy it hadn't occurred to me that this meant that we wouldn't have a lawn tractor to haul things around in.

So, what do we do since we don't have a lawn tractor to bring up the wood from the outside shed to the breezeway?

We needed a new lawn tractor, and here it is:

The breezeway before we started:

I brought up the wood and Vicky stacked it.  This will be enough for the few weeks we are at home during wood-burning season.  

Now that part is done.  On to the next project, which is home security.

The boy who took care of our cat and watched our home is moving.  So we needed another plan for both.  Jules, Jess, Ian and Adam will be adopting our beloved Jack, which is hard for me but best for him.  

We had our home security system updated and improved.  We added a heat and cold sensor, so if the furnace stops working for some reason we can get it repaired before there is damage.  We purchased a camera so that we can monitor the house from our IPad.  How cool is that?