Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Mitttens, Baseballs and Fred Flinstone

We had a quiet and productive holiday weekend. Tom thought the gas tank was leaking in our Nissan Sentra. He discovered that the gas tank filler neck that he found at the junkyard to replace the rusted one did not fit our car after he did a lovely paint job on it to prevent rust. The car will be 10 years old next year and is still running like a charm with no major issues except for body rust, which is unavoidable in these parts. Soon it will be a Flinstone car. I see Tom driving around sitting in the midst of 4 wheels with just the sleek, black, filler neck still intact! Anyway, we realized that the tank is not leaking after all. We did however have to have one whole side of the Dodge truck brake lining replaced after our breaks went. Don't ever buy a Dodge Dakota. This vehicle is also almost 10 years old, has only 70,000 miles on it unlike the Sentra with 150,000, and is in the shop every other month. Our SUV however is running well with 73,000 miles at the ripe young age of almost 5. I see a new car in our future and we are looking at hybrids. If anyone has any advice on these I am all ears.


The fellas prepared for baseball season by getting their arms in shape on Sunday. Tom was going to be a professional umpire this year but opted to wait until the kids graduate. He already has enough on his plate without adding rushing to ump games to the list. It's pretty hectic just getting to the kids' games. In this photo the ball is about to hit Tom in the head.

And I FINALLY finished one of the monster mitts. Since I suffer from severe 2nd sock symdrome (SSO), I better not add second mitten syndrome to my list of shortcomings and keep the momentum going. I WILL start the 2nd mitt today! This is a photo of the mitten turned inside out, where you can see the alpaca thrums. These mittens are incredibly warm.

Here you can see a comparison of my mittens and John's mittens. Huge difference in size huh?

I finished washing Amelia's fleece. Even with jackets, the wool attracts a lot of dirt.

Dirty water

Clean fleece

We have been talking about renting the cabin out for a weekend or a week just once for each month of the season, but only to people we know. This is because we don't see ourselves going up there every weekend with the price of gas, both in terms of driving up there and putting gas in the boat. This way we can also offset some of the cost of the place. It's not a resort like Branson cabins but it's a darn nice place. Just click on Categories in the left sidebar and click on Lake Cabin to see photos and blurbs about it if you are new here.