Rick's Thoughts

Blog

  • Is it Summer Yet?

    Wow almost the whole month of May with out any posts, what have I been doing?? Here it is after Memorial day weekend, the traditional start of summer and it was 45ºF out this morning. I do hope Summer weather comes soon.

    The picture on the left is of Aiden pretending he is much older and riding a motorcycle. It is the neighbors electric scooter/dirt bike. But based on how quickly Aiden climbed up on it we will have to look out for broken bones in his future.

    The next item that has been sucking up lots of Danith and my time is designing and bidding out our backyard patio. We obtained three competing bids, each contractor asked different questions but one stood above the others. They had the best design and moderate prices for most of the work. Click here to see the design that they proposed. It has a nice seating area, an area for a fire pit and lots of places for greenery. I hope we get the patio done before summer is too far gone to enjoy it.

    On Monday Brandon and I went down to Rochester to visit his Grandma and Grandpa Braun. It was a wonderful day and we spent most of it outdoors. He particularly enjoyed a ride on a paddle boat with me and Grandma while he sat on the back fishing. (He came back empty handed). While walking near the dock he happened to find a large goose egg. I did not get a picture of that but his eyes were wide at the size of the egg and he was super excited to tell his class about it on Tuesday.

    While I was there we talked about our July trip to Iowa. We are planning on staying outside Des Moines in Altoona. The hotel we choose is close to Adventure Land which just happens to be one of our stops. There is supposed to be a nice train ride tour which I think the kids will enjoy. The only part I think the kids will not enjoy will be the car ride there of course!

    Now it is just up to Mister Sun to come out for the summer and play. Mister Sun, come out whereever you are! While waiting for Mister Sun Brandon will be chasing the ducks…

  • Garage Sale Results aka Hell Day

    So it is Monday, the garage sale is finally over, but the garage is still no where from being clean, but I am getting ahead of the story.

    On Saturday morning we woke up bright and early at 7am as Danith promised Brandon some McDonalds for a breakfast treat. So while she was out on the breakfast run I opened the garage door just to move stuff around and put stuff in the drive way. As I was moving things around cars started to pull up. By the time Danith was back with breakfast (And the nectar of the gods, coffee) I had already sold a bunch of stuff.

    Once Danith returned I grabbed a laptop and created a spreadsheet to track sales and profits and also put up a small camera. I configured the camera to take a picture 3 times a second and had this going for the next 4 hours. If you are bored play the embedded video below as I turned all these screen caps into a 20x speed video and you can watch those 4 “exciting” garage sale hours in 4 minutes.

    Around 3pm the garage sale started to slow down so we started to pack up. We sold things we did not think we were going to but the kids cloths barely sold at all! We still made a bunch of money to make it worth it but it was disappointing that we did not sell many clothes. I guess donation time is just around the corner.

    Sunday was spend planting a new tree in the backyard and a few day lillies around the deck. We also tore off the railing on our front porch and that really opened up the porch. Just hope the neighborhood association “gustopo” does not knock on our door for doing that without approval.

    Have a good one!