Summer Vacation

It's been a while...a very long while. Everyone here had a pretty good school year with only a few bumps along the way. School's out 'till September and I'm writing on my back patio, a cold Mikes sitting next to me, dinner on the grill, life is good.

Our original plan was to head out on another adventure with the King this summer and we were looking at doing a somewhat shorter yet fairly ambitious East Coast Loop. Alas, that is not going to happen, and we will be spending this summer at home. No worries though, the boys have several camps lined up to keep them busy and friends have been calling for get togethers. It's been quite relaxing actually. The husband also has several projects lined up and has been doing some engine work on the King. And we have also launched head on into a full scale update of our house (the one without wheels).

The first of the husband's projects is a new transmission for the King. He had a friend over several weeks ago and they took the old one out...and apart. I was very nervous when I saw all the pieces.

I had no idea a transmission came apart in so many pieces. The goal was to get it apart and see if it could be rebuilt or if it just needed to be replaced. Some of the parts were really quite warn and when we priced everything out, it was worth it to replace the whole thing, so the search was on. Who knew you could order a whole new transmission online! Ours came from a shop in Eugene Oregon and took a couple of weeks to get here. A great big semi brought it down our very narrow dead end street last Friday.

Here it is, all shiny and in one whole piece!

The husband's friend Charlie will be back on Thursday to put it in. Hope for smooth sailing because we are supposed to leave Friday morning for a weekend camping trip with the cub scouts!

Our other huge project this summer started out as a simple little update of the kitchen. When we decided not to travel this summer we thought it would be a good opportunity to launch into some home renovations that we have been putting off. Our house was built in 1959 or 60 and the kitchen, with the exception of the appliances, has never been updated. We started meeting with contractors in March and soon realized that to really update and end up with something we would really love for a long time we needed to work with the space on the entire first floor. So, walls are coming down!! It's been a long process and we just started tearing the old out today! I'll have more pictures later this week but for now, here are some “befores”

I know, it's pretty grim, but this project should keep us all out of trouble for the next 8-12 weeks, according to our contractor. I'll post some updates and lots of pictures along the way!