Train ride!

We finally made it on the Frontrunner yesterday!  We rode from Murray to Ogden and back.  That's all he wanted to do.  I think he had more fun on the train than he would have had at an amusement park!

Waiting for our train in Murray.  SO excited!

All aboard!

He was facing the rear and that worked out pretty good.  I could spot things ahead and he still had time to see them as we zoomed by at 79 miles per hour.

Passing an accelerating freight.

Tank cars downtown.

UTA's Warm Springs Road facility is the temporary home to STADLER Rail where they manufacture electric light rail locomotives.  Their new facility is located out by the tailings pile along I-80.  SEPTA (Pennsylvania) locomotives in the background.

More of the yard.

UTA employees get to have a special train stop to get on or off the Frontrunner train.

Old COMET cars.  Nice job maintaining the rolling stock UTA! 😡

Union Pacific car repair facility North of UTA.  They used to repair locomotives in the facility that UTA now occupies South of here.

NASA SLS booster segment cars in the back!!!  Now with HVAC to keep the motors cool during Summer transport to the Cape.  They used to only haul Space Shuttle motors during the cooler winter months.  One can imagine why!

U.P. has been retrofitting the SLS booster cars all year.  I was surprised to see them parked on the siding North of Clearfield.

On the flyover on the way into Ogden.

Cars waiting to be scrapped by Durbano Metals in Ogden.  Skyler was sad.

More of the scrapyard.

We had the first seat behind the cab car on the way back home!

He was thrilled!  Meeting a Northbound freight somewhere between Ogden and Roy.

Hotwheels entertainment.

The damn Hotwheels track made an appearance upstairs this week.  It's a love/hate toy for me, love that he's playing and being creative, hate the fact that he has to do the "look at this" every 15 seconds and is extremely loud while playing with it!

After a rather large fit on Tuesday, we found the instructions and he was able to assemble the whole thing by himself!  Not shown, it's now much bigger!

10 years later...

It was 10 years ago yesterday that we got Maizey!

Aww...  Just a little puppy!

A little bit grey, but she's still active and strong.

Annual visitors.

The Milkweed Beetles have made their way back into the yard again this year.  Still no Monarch Butterfly caterpillars though...  :(

So prehistoric!  Their antennae make them seem so curious.  Skyler and I found 2 of them on the Milkweed Sunday morning.

At the park.

He even leaned his bike up on the random barricade!

Practicing his "Ninja" skills on the playground.

Baler repair.

After our walk on Friday, I got the call to come look at the neighbor's baler.  It was mis-tying bales and that started a month ago.  Turns out, listening to my initial advice and backing off the twine tension works!

Emulating what I was doing, watching the knotters tie the bales.

Pretty good!

Everything working fine.  It was shortly after this that he was stung by a yellow jacket.  He was NOT happy!

Ditch mower.

While on our Anniversary morning walk Friday, I first saw some tractor tire tracks along the canal road.  This was followed by the sound of mower blades slapping water.  Yep, it was the County's annual "let's burn fuel just to burn fuel" canal bank mowing!

I spy...

Once again, one orders a tractor with a "quick attach" loader and no one knows how to remove it.  😳

He was doing a wonderful job of scattering the puncture vine (goathead) seeds all across the canal. 😡  Don't ride your bike on the canal roads for a while!

Poor peach tree!

We had a limb split Wednesday night.  The tree is loaded with peaches this year!  I used the loader and forks to lift up the split branch and prop it up with some metal supports.  After we harvest all the peaches, it's going to be time for a major tree trimming.

One metal support installed.  The loader is probably the most useful tool on the whole place!

We have known that this branch wasn't in the best of shape for a while.  Turns out, peach trees don't like compression loads!

16.

August 10, 2002.

Chip sealing the road.

AKA, death to all tires and windshields!!

We got to watch the County chip seal the main road out of our place yesterday morning.  Skyler was rather entertained and was curious how nothing except the aggregate stuck to the hot tar.  Not only is is bad enough that they chip sealed the roadway, they used crushed mill slag to do so instead of gravel!! 😡

Here comes the road train!

Sweeper is the first machine to go by.

Followed by the hot tar truck.

There are worse jobs!  Stay in school kids.

Chip seal spreader.  It latches onto the truck and tows it along while the truck empties into the hopper of the spreader.

Another truck staged.  Rollers following.

The steel drum roller really made some noise on the slag!

2 steel drum rollers, 2 rubber tired ones were used to compact the slag into the tar.

He was rather fond of the rubber tired rollers.

Rubber tired roller.  What's supposed to be used to press aggregate into the tar.

Roller parade!

Tree update.

The City finally got the dead pine cut down in the park.  We scoped it out Monday and counted the rings on the stump.  I got 62, Skyler got 65.  Since the neighborhood is only ~42ish years old, we think that a light and dark ring count as one year.  That makes the tree 32.5ish years old.  Not too bad!  Hope they replace it with a new one.

Counting rings.  They did such a nice job cutting the stump.  Not really!  I hope they grind the stump off...

Cousins. AKA, Best of buds!

We got together on Sunday afternoon with Altair's family up in Farmington to have photos taken and  enjoy a barbecue.  More importantly, we got to see her Sister and her 2 kids who we haven't seen for a year.  Skyler got to play with Zach and Dahlia and it's kind of a shame that they live so far away.  Zach and Skyler picked up right where they left off a year ago and the 5.5 hours we were up there were worth it to see how the two of them played.

Zach has had a bit of a growth spurt!  They were about the same height last year.  Zach is only 9 months older than Skyler. 

Photo time.  :)

Skyler, Jaina, Devon, Dahlia, and Zach pose for photos.

Saturday night tradition.

Nearly a year ago I stumbled upon the weekly B movie show "Svengoolie".  We're really enjoy making it a Saturday night tradition and Skyler absolutely loves to see what "horror" movie is next.  We even ordered matching Svengoolie t-shirts for the entire family!  Skyler got to wear his after his bath on while watching 1939's "Son of Frankenstein".

Fresh haircut and a bowl of Costco popcorn, what could be better?

Trainspotting.

We drove up to the new North Temple JRP bridge on Friday morning to see if we could spot a train.  After about 40 minutes, we did!

Informative sign.

Curious boy.

"Let's go!"

Old bridge closest, newer bridge farthest.

The power plant was running one of the three units.  Probably because everyone is running their air conditioners!

Here comes a train!  He was thrilled to see that it was a BNSF instead of a Union Pacific!

Eastbound!

There was a ton of boxcars!

The Flashing Rear End Device or F.R.E.D. wasn't flashing...

Friday means "Summer Brain Quest"!

One of his favorite workbooks!  Yesterday, we worked on language arts.

Montessori carpet all laid out and working hard!

Oil pastels.

We used some mineral spirits to "paint" with oil pastels this week for art.

Two paintings!

Presenting my favorite Sesame Street segment of all time!

Watching "Classic Sesame Street" with Skyler this week brings back all of the feels and memories of my childhood.  I was floored when we saw this segment from the late 70's / early 80's the other day.  Also, you're welcome now that you have the song stuck in your head!!

Montessori Math at home with Mommy.

Skyler worked on his math work Monday evening after Mommy got home.  He has his carpet, and Mommy improvised Montessori counting beads by substituting dried beans.

Just like at school, he's working on the floor.