Busy Weekend and May Showers are Bringing the May Flowers!!

ACK!  After the warm lovely week of Wisconsin weather during our vacation, this week has turned cold and wet and rainy.  Right now it's only 51 degrees and wet wet wet. It's been raining most of the afternoon.  We turned on the furnace and also Steve lit the gas fireplace to keep us cozy this evening and chase away the dampness.

I am thinking we're going to need another vacation again! Since we got home on Friday we have been busy busy busy.  Of course my Mr. Stevieo Zoom Zoom wanted to get absolutely everything unloaded from the motorhome within 1 hour of arriving home.  We were in a flurry of unpacking, hauling into the house, and putting away the leftover food from camping--- plus the newest groceries we picked up on the way home.  We had the washing machine going, ran to get the mail that was being held at the post office, and carried in my quilting supplies of the newest project I was working on.

After supper I baked a few dozen cookies so I could have a box full to bring to the museum Saturday morning. Steve got together a cooler full of water bottles. We had a bunch of teenagers coming from the local high school history class to help with a cleaning day at the Calumet County Historical Museum.

This is my favorite recipe from my friend Hilary:

I split the batch into three portions, 

and mixed one with chocolate chips, one with Easter M&M's 

and the final third with white chips and sprinkles! (the favorite by far) 

It was nice to sleep in our bed in the house, but it's actually the same memory foam mattress that we now have out in the motorhome. I am glad we upgraded to that, because now it's comfy sleeping no matter which one we are in. The dogs were excited to be home, with their familiar toys and dishes, and to sleep on the floor next to my side of the bed.

We were up early so we could get dressed and over to the museum by 8 a.m. The school kids were coming by 8:30 and we still had to unload cleaning equipment and the Shop-Vac and find out from the other volunteers what needed to be done.

The museum has these two large buildings and....

a log cabin. 

Steve and the guys just replaced the cedar shingle roof a few weeks ago.

They had a chance to show a few of the others 

what a good job they did! 

The kids came and we set to our tasks. The buildings are unheated over the winter and everything was covered in a layer of dust and (dead flies) that needed to be sucked up with the shop vacs. Brooms were flying around, cleaning rags were busy, and the guys handled all of the heavy stuff that needed to be moved and organized.

Steve worked with the guys mostly in the other building moving around some displays and used our little trailer to move an antique sleigh from one portion of the museum to another.

The Museum recently purchased some used display cases from a store in Manitowoc. So we had an opportunity to move around some items and get items enclosed in glassed-in areas for protection and preservation.  The girls did a great job arranging all of the new displays, plus learned about a few things in the process. It was fun! 

I was able to mess around with my Fiber Department of spinning wheels, shearing equipment, and various fiber tools.   I got two new display cases in this area to start to set up as well.  More stuff to come, but for now it is taking shape.

There was a man's wool military uniform that I was able to seal up inside of a plexiglass display unit so it will be protected now from any moths or bugs

We worked hard all morning, and by noon we were winding down and putting away our gear. It was time to head on home and get in some rest after such a productive morning. Both of us crawled into bed for a nice long afternoon nap. I think we really needed it!

Saturday night I buzzed around the house for a while "de-kidderizing" because on Sunday we were due to have three of the grandkids come to visit. I put away my sharp weaving tools and scissors and electronics as best I can. I baby-gate off the tv and stereo/dvd equipment.  Once that was done, I filled up a nice big bathtub full of bubbles and soaked away the evening aches and pains.


Since we were gone camping during Mother's Day, we insist that our children (who are all mothers or married to a mother) spend time with their own families. I know that in the next few weeks I will get together with each of them for our own personal Mother's Day celebration.

I got a lovely handmade card and beautiful photo in the mail from Allegra and Mason while we were gone, that is now hanging up on the fridge. We will see them soon at one of Mason's T-ball games, but it was rained out tonight.

We prepared some food in advance so all we had to do was bring it out when they were here to eat. We chopped up all the makings for tacos, guacamole and salsa, I had shredded chicken with taco seasoning I prepared in the electric pressure cooker. Everything was ready for the next day. Less kitchen time and more grandkid time!

Sunday was supposed to be dreary cloudy and cooler. So Steve and I figured out a couple projects to do with inside of the house with the kids. Imagine our delight when the sun poked out and it was getting warmer and warmer. It turned into an absolutely beautiful day!

Our daughter Erin and husband Waylen with three grandkids Chelsea, Clayton and Claire showed up at noon to spend the afternoon with us. Waylen and his buddy Jason wanted to go to an event, the annual Beer Fest taking place at the Calumet County fairgrounds. We have a microbrewery in town that sponsored this festival with hosting other microbreweries from the area. For a $40 ticket wristband you can sample as much as you wish of any beverage on tap.

We had a nice little lunch with the kids out on the front porch.  We left the grownups to eat at the diningroom table while the kids ate in the sunshine.  Little Claire, our youngest grandchild is now old enough to sit at the little table and chairs.  Chelsea and Clayton are now up to a larger table and stools.

Smart Finnegan knows exactly where to hang out

catching any dropped bits of chicken tacos! 

(Binney hides out in the corner until the grownups leave,

then she comes out to see Chelsea) 

We took the Little Red Wagon down to the hardware store. I wanted to get some geraniums and spikes for four of the flower pots around the house. We also needed a new bag of birdseed.  Loaded up little Claire so the kids could take turns pulling the wagon.  (I ended up pulling her back home!) 

 We did a little video clip of their walk:

We have such a cute little hardware store in our town, it even has a small Pet Department with fish, gerbils, lizards, and birds. The kids enjoyed looking around and their their favorite thing is to put a dime in the sample box and choose a piece of Brach's candies.  No hard candy for Claire... sigh.

We also went home with a great big purple ball

 for the dogs in the big backyard, 

because I think Claire took over the little blue ball? 

We kept the grandkids busy at the house with projects! Put to task with helping us to plant the geraniums and then help water all of the flowers around the house.

Grandpa even got into the act... we put in geraniums and spikes and ivy in the two new pots that I got last fall from Craigslist.  These are on each side of the garage door.

Then we put more geraniums and ivy and spikes in each of the big pots on the front steps too. Soon they will grow and bloom some more and the ivy will cascade over the edges of the pots.

We also planted my two Mothers Day gerbera daisies from Steve

and to top it off, my lilac bush is in full bloom! 

That lilac bush was pretty gnarly and twisted and overgrown when we bought the house 5 years ago.  With careful pruning each year and shaping it, a little more each year, now it's a nicely rounded shrub. It gets more and more blooms each spring!   I have started a white lilac out back, and hope it grows as well. 

The kids really enjoy doing the watering with the cans, drawing from the two rain barrels I have, one on the house and one on the garage.  Even Clayton, a kindergartener, understands the rain comes off the roof, through the gutter, down the pipe and into the barrel. He told me so!

The kids each brought me a hanging basket for Mother's Day, along with an assortment of their artwork for the refrigerator. Steve put up brackets on each side of the back door for the flower pots.

Clayton helped his grandpa with projects on the motorhome while Chelsea was was busy keeping little Claire occupied in the backyard. Erin and I relaxed in the sunshine for a while and just enjoyed unwinding.

They even planted the Easter Lily they gave me last month,

and each one earned a popsicle for their efforts!

After Erin retrieved the two guys from the Beer Fest (where they had a LOT of fun) it was time to have a quick dinner before heading on home.  Those stinker kids remembered these hot dog cutters that I had out in the motorhome.  So we got them out for some "play with their food" fun! 

Here is a silly video of them in use:

Erin loaded up the kids, 

the guys and headed on down our driveway.

As they rode past the house, Grandfaddah and I waved goodbye

from the front porch windows, as usual.  

It was a great day! 

MOTORHOME MODIFICATIONS - *M* is for Muffler and Museum

I am going to start off the new year with posting some of our motorhome modifications, a few at a time. I will post repairs, modifications, or neato things we have found for RVing.  I have lots of pics in my files so I will do them in alphabetical order.

Underneath that stuff, I will post my regular daily stuff..... kinda sorta fun, eh?

So here it goes, we are up to the letter M now!

MOTORHOME MODIFICATIONS 

STARTING WITH THE LETTER M

Muffler:
A while back (2009) our motorhome was getting a little louder and we realized that the salt on our Wisconsin roads is tough on vehicles.  Just look at where the muffler is all rusted out.  It was rusting around the holding straps where the salt gets trapped, even after we rinse things off from a snowy winter road drive.  Bummer, eh?    

We called around to a few Cat truck and parts places for a new one, and they ran in the $350 range!   So then we called our local CarQuest auto parts in our tiny town.  He was able to order the exact same muffler for us for only $170!~

Next he had to special order another part leading up to the muffler. It was the big snaky 4 inch diameter pipe and flange made up at a local exhaust muffler company.  That was more expensive than the muffler!

 MUFFLER  for our 3126 Cat

ORDERED FROM CARQUEST HEX M120598

DONALDSON M120598   5373160   $170

NEW EXHAUST PIPE

 CUSTOM FABRICATED

 AT EAST SIDE EXHAUST, GREEN BAY $228

A fellow Safari owner just supplied me with this information:
 Donaldson p/n H000349
for the 2 muffler hangers/straps/bands

Once all of the parts were in, it was time to head out and do some work. Steve does the hard stuff, and I am the tool gopher and picture taker.  Some of the work was able to be done from up above through the bedroom, where we can access the engine compartment.

Lucky that our king-sized bed lifts up for easy access to our engine compartment.

The old parts came out surprisingly well and in no time Steve had the big snake part bolted up into place.  We both crawled underneath so I could hold up the muffler while he bolted the straps tight to hold it.  It lined up really well, so Steve's measurements were correct on having East Side Exhaust make up the part from his drawing.

Here he is finishing up the job by hanging on the tailpipe. We were able to reuse the original tailpipe as it was still in good shape.

This is what it looks like from up above looking down from the bed compartment. See why he had to make a special piece that needed someone flexibility to reach down to the muffler area?

Whew… good job all done!    And now our Cat is purring along nice and quiet!

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yesterday was a pretty busy day for us. We volunteer our time at the Calumet County Historical Museum. Steve is also a member of the board and helps with a lot of their mechanical repair and construction situations.

A local high school teacher was bringing over about 15 history students to help with our spring cleaning to get the museum ready for opening day on Memorial Day weekend. We were so very appreciative of their assistance.

I took charge of a crew of four young gals.... they became my bottle stackers, bug-suckers, and glass display case washers.  We had a lot of giggles and fun while they buzzed along and worked hard.

Steve and I brought along a case of water and dozens of cookies to keep them fueled. Since many of them had never been to our museum before, they were discovering fun stuff and finding out about a lot of interesting historical items from our area. 

We got a LOT more accomplished than we ever expected to get done 

with all of their great help and energy.

Steve had a crew of boys over in the agricultural area in the north building, and they were so busy moving things, unloading the junk stashed in the rafters and helping to organize a lot of the displays. Steve and Mike just built this huge storage rack in the back room last week.  It can hold 100 categorized boxes of artifacts in order with a main index cataloguing them all for easy access.

This is a body retrieval basket (nope no bodies in it) made of wicker for air circulation. Years ago, it may have taken a day or two to get a body into town from the outlying farming community until the mortician could attend to it.  Pretty gruesome, but the kids enjoyed the story behind it.

Our girl crews were pretty much finished over in the commercial, educational and domestic areas... so we sent them over to give the boys a hand in the agricultural and mechanical building. Someone had stored years of cardboard boxes up in the rafters....  The girls helped flatten and stack all the cardboard for recycling.

One of the students present was fortunate to have her grandfather come out to the museum. He is a local resident with a lot of interesting stories. He gave a talk about life on the farm, what he did as a teenager, and how he was enticed to complete high school and graduate (an aunt promised him a new shiney Schwinn bike)  when so many of his pals quit to work on the family farms.  He was an engaging speaker who kept their interest.

At one point during the talk, I noticed his loving granddaughter come over and adjust the fleece throw over his shoulders.  Awwwww  It was kinda cold in the museum buildings and it was a nice thoughtful thing for her to do.

Once all of the kiddos were gone, it was time to gather all of our cleaning supplies and tools and load back up to go home. I tell ya, even through we are smiling in this pic, we are TIRED!  We were in need of a long hot shower and sound nap!!!!

We hauled home all of that flattened cardboard to be recycled --- we will put some of it in our recycling dumpster one week at a time. It's a good thing Steve had just picked up this cute little utility trailer that morning. It sure came in handy.

Yes, Steve found this adorable little utility trailer on Craigslist the other night. He was able to take a little break from the Museum to run over to the next town and buy it. The first people that were going to look at it passed, so we were next in line. The seller called and said he had two more people lined up after us, so it was "buy it now or lose the deal". Steve handed over his crew to another board member, grabbed some cash at the bank, and went to pick it up. Not too bad for $300!

He will take his grinder wheel to it and get off some of the rusty spots and flakes of loose paint. Then we will brush on a little primer and Rust-Oleum paint and it will be good as new. It seems to be pretty well-built, for a lightweight trailer. Our little Tracker can only safely tow about a thousand pounds according to the manual. So this trailer will really come in handy for little loads. Tires are good and he is going to grease the bearings and hubs. Electrical all works fine, as well as the hitch latch and built-in ramps.

I could have really used a trailer like this on Thursday when we picked up that Union Custom Loom! We wouldn't have had to dismantle it to fit it into the back of the Tracker. It could have come home all in one piece. Oh well, we are going to dismantle it anyhow to work on it, but it would have saved time.

We are looking at a nice warm Sunday today, temperatures might reach the seventies. Might do a few things around the yard, and hang up some laundry on the line. Steve is working on adding a 50 amp power outlet to the side of the garage for the motorhome, and running heavier service wire out to the garage breaker box. 

Yesterday we did some work on the flower beds and straightened up all of the white edging around the sidewalk from the front of the house to the back. It was all tilted from the ground heaving during the winter frost. Today I might get the front and north side done as long as it is warm out. 

But as turned on the tv... that danged weatherman says it might rain today!!!

Now we are thinking that after our coffee this morning

 it might be a good idea to take some dogs

 for a nice long walk.