Chapter 352

So many Chelsea memes, so little chance to use  them!

 Every five years our program has to recertify as a NATEF shop. At this time, we are the only NATEF certified auto program in the state but Kentwood High School will be certified soon. This certification says that our shop has met blah, blah, blah, standards and our students are uber-capable of being hired. This is also how we get car donations from dealers and others. What I know about NATEF certification is that it is hundreds of hours of work in both the shop preparation and supporting documentation collection. I've set up this "temporary" area to build our three 4" notebooks of collected documentation. Other than getting hand sanitizer on my stuff, the kids have been amazing about leaving my stacks of papers alone and that never happens.

One night last week Bob wanted to make marinade for meat he bought. He didn't buy orange juice so I used two freezer-burned Popsicles instead.

It actually made some tasty marinade, all without going to the store late at night.

Bob got a little electric yard blower/vacuum to use instead of his big gas backpack blower. He was all over the homestead blowing and sucking as the job required. It's much easier for him to move around and it doesn't put out so much air that our chairs end up in the neighbor's yard as a result!

Of course, cleaning up meant the flood gates had opened on getting ignored yard work done. Bob started pulling weeds and before we knew it, we were all-in on the pruning and pulling. This is the picture from last week.

And after the weeding this week. I don't thing the front flower bed area has been properly weeded since Carissa did it when she was pregnant with Reagan. 

After a long day of blowing/sucking/weeding, nothing says "relax" like making beer in your garage.

Last week when we were walking around Snoqualmie after our train ride, Bob spotted a brewery supply store. He bought himself a Jersey Cow Brown Ale kit. He feels like this is cheating in a way, but it's so much easier to collect a box and go home than to pluck the individual items off the shelves ourselves. It should be ready in about 3 weeks, c'mon over!

Today we had lunch with Ryan and Kyanne. I love the little bike cozies that someone makes for the bike racks in that area. I don't know if they are meant to be kitschy or to protect the bikes from the racks or both but they sure are cute.

We went to Engine House #9  lunch. I love the old building, built around 1909, and purchased for a restaurant in 1971. There is, of course lots of old fire stuff inside.

Like these old horse stalls. According to the menu, when the fire bell rang the horses would go out of their stalls and stand in the traces ready to be harnessed and they could be out the door with the steam fire lit in under 30 seconds.

The light covers are the jumpie-thingies that firemen used to hold for people to jump out of burning buildings. Since jumping from 40 floors doesn't work out so well with these things, other safety systems have been in place and the jumpie-thingies have been relegated to lamp shades.

 Ok, so it's not the dead deer crisis that JoAnn had at her cabin last year, but it sure stunk like it was. I had been noticing a "dead thing" smell in this corner of our patio. I finally traced it to this gutter drain pipe. Apparently some curious critter fell down this drain pipe and couldn't back himself out. I'm thinking possum. Anyway if a CSI guy were around, he could tell us how long this guy had been in there by the larvae that were crawling out of the pipe. We bought a bag of lime which, apparently, only comes in one size: Giant. Bob poured some down the drain and this will be followed by more rainwater tonight. Wish us luck. 

This is a meme that Carissa sent last week. I believe she was referring to Bear.

"You can't see me!"

Reagan making sure that Mom's flowers don't stay pretty long.

Mom's been to Costco and she brought me this wonderful box!

Poor little waif, no one loves her and there are not enough books to read.

Last week when Reagan was here Bear suffered some of the usual humiliation that he gets when he visits grama.

After a busy day at the Children's Museum in Tacoma, Reagan decided nothing would make dinner taste better than to eat with her backpack on.