A Snowy Day by the Bay

Rudy and Paul had a snow day today; we got about 4 inches or so last night. They went to a playground and then went on a 'journey' into the woods and followed deer tracks.

Heading into the woods.

Pointing out the deer tracks.

A Cold Day of Exploration

After a busy weekend, we decided to do something outside today, despite the chance or rain and cold weather. We never got the rain but it was cold. We headed to a nearby historic town, with plenty of open areas to run and explore and trails to walk. First we explored the town and old buildings. Nothing was open because it is Presidents' Day, but we could still walk around the grounds.

The perfect tree to climb.

The waterfall/dam was by the old mill. Rudy loved looking at it and all the water flowing through it.

You can see how barren all the trees still are.

Sitting on the porch of one of the bunk houses. When I explained to Rudy about the outhouses he said, "Cool. You get to go outside to go to the bathroom!"

Another tree to hang on. (Please note, no trees were harmed by the taking of these pictures.)

Rudy: I want to take your picture.

Me: Make sure you get our heads in.

Rudy: I know.

Oh well, it was a good attempt.

Always a performer. He was sitting nicely on my knee as Paul counted to three. As he got to two, Rudy would jump up and pose. Such a ham!

Not only barren trees but no green grass or other people anywhere to be seen.

It took everything in him, not to go in the water, or at least stick his hands in the water!

Look, Daddy, isn't this cool?

Tah Dah. A door at the side.

Another pose.

Checking out the storage areas.

A little boy along side a huge mansion.

Heading out on the trail.

Paul explained what moss was, and told Rudy to feel how soft it was. Regrettably, the next words out of Pal's mouth were, it's like a soft bed. So guess who had to try it out? Maybe we won't need to bring a sleeping bag for him on our next camping trip!

A cold, tired bunch almost back at the car. Rudy looks surprisingly happy considering at this point he was getting very tired and cranky.

A Rare Warm Day

Yesterday's weather was predicted to be in the 60s and sunny. Since Rudy had a half day, we took a picnic to a playground and met up with some friends. The kids had a lot of fun running around for hours and we all enjoyed the fresh air and sunshine. Of course, today it is windy and cold again, but it was a nice reprieve.

Batman and Superman working together to fight crime.

The three kids played really well together. At one point, Rudy was a storm trooper, Tommy was Luke Skywalker and Jade was Princess Leia.

Rudy wasn't too sure I knew the way home, so he decided to consult the map book as I drove. He was very serious about his job.

Some Things Never Change

Like the need to have cars and trucks all lined up. Look here for another blog post about cars lined up.

Stories Galore

It seems like forever since my last post, and when we don't do much, we don't take many pictures, and then I don't blog. But then I started thinking about what we had done recently. After the last 'snow storm', that really wasn't, we had a plumber out because we thought we had a small leak in a pipe in the crawl space under the kitchen. Well, that 'small leak' was the tip of the iceberg. A major pipe under the kitchen, and in a crawl space we never even knew about, had busted, who knows how long ago, and there was a lot of water and food waste in there. The plumber came out the next day and spent several hours pumping all the water out, then fixing the busted pipe and a few others that were close to busting. He then suggested we call a company to do a mold inspection. At the advice of several Facebook friends, we called out home owners insurance broker to see if anything would be covered. The plumber and our insurance broker both recommended the same company to come out.

The following week, a man came out and inspected the crawl space and told us we didn't seem to have any mold problems, but it did need to be sanitized and dried out, and our insurance would definitely cover it since it was considered a sewage leak. So we called our insurance broker to make a claim. Within a week of making that claim, yesterday, the men came out and cleaned out the crawl space, removed all soiled parts of the floor, and dried it out. We ended up with our laundry room cordoned off with plastic, and an industrial sized fan/dehumidifier/HEPA filter blowing into the crawl space.

They came out today to remove the fan, but there are some parts that aren't dry yet, so we are keeping the fan running until Monday. It means we have this constant white noise sound and that I am unable to use my washer and dryer this weekend, hopefully I can wait until Monday to do laundry!

On top of all that, Paul and I were both off Friday for an appointment. Thursday around 1:00, we got a call from Rudy's school stating that there were a lot of teachers and students out sick, so they were going to close school for Friday and try to clean the school really well for next week. So we checked to see if it was okay to bring Rudy to the appointment with us, and planned to just make a day out of it.

Friday morning, as we were all getting ready, our poor, old, arthritic dog fell as he struggled to go up the steps. He limped around, seeming to walk off his injury, tried and failed again to get up the stairs and limped some more. He stood in one place for a while, then finally settled down on a pillow I set up for him downstairs. We were uncomfortable leaving him alone for most of the day, so we canceled our appointment , stayed home in the morning, and ran a few errands at lunch. After lunch, we decided he didn't seem much better and called the vet. Getting him to stand up and walk a little turned out to be easier than we thought, but getting him into Paul's car was hard. The vet determined he didn't break anything, and gave us some pain killers to use that will also help with his arthritis. He has been just lying on the pillow all day, but hopefully by tomorrow he will feel better.

And just for a smile, here are some pictures of Rudy. This was his costume one day recently. I made the mistake of assuming he was a diver (I don't know what made me think that!) when he was really being a superhero.