A pretty great day.

We all had a wonderful 4th of July yesterday!

At the parade.  Uncle Matt's parents' car.

He got a lot of candy and even an Otter Pop!

Burgers on the grill.

Fresh garden tomatoes on the burgers!  Our patio tomato aptly named "4th of July" lived up to its name.

Make mine a double.

A lunch on the patio.

F-35 flyover!!

"It fits perfectly Dad!"

Said Skyler as he took out a new Salsa Timberjack kids 24" plus bike yesterday at the bike shop.  Sadly, he's almost tall enough for an XS 27.5" wheel regular mountain bike!

3" tires with front suspension!

Note how far out the seat post is, the bike is almost too small!

I had a hard time getting him to stop riding.  We didn't come home with the bike...

"Can we go to the blue park?"

He's been asking to do so since Monday.  This morning it finally happened.

He made it to the top this time.

He told me he was practicing for "Ninja Warrior".

We had the place to ourselves.  The only way to experience a playground.

The hound came along and got lots of exercise too.

Salt powered robot.

Skyler assembled his "salt powered robot" that his friend Artemis gave him for his birthday.  It uses magnesium plates, copper plates, carbon powder, and salt water for the electrolyte.  It took some adjusting but we got it going!

Adding the salt water to the battery.

Building some sesame seed cookies.

Or benne wafers as they're known worldwide.

Nothing like a 95 degree day and Mommy decided to use the oven! 😲

Wild Kratts creature power suit.

Skyler asked me to order him a "creature power suit" from Amazon this week.  He's obsessed with the PBS show "Wild Kratts" and can retain almost any fact they talk about on the show.

Now he wears his power suit every afternoon when he watches Wild Kratts.  :)

Daily reading.

Skyler has to do his daily reading as part of his summer contract.  I found him reading to Eddy cat this morning.

The cat seems to enjoy his reading.

The perfect Spring.

The wetter then usual Spring has made for some great flowers this year.

Poppies and delphiniums in the front yard.

Amtrak train!

Since the California Zephyr was running 6 hours late, we got a chance to see it in the daylight yesterday.  Skyler was beside himself excited!

Catalpa blossoms.

They're really prolific this year!

And they smell incredible!

The hunt for trains.

Skyler and I loaded up our Fat Bikes Friday morning and headed out West of here to see if we could view some mainline freight on the Union Pacific Shafter sub.  We waited, and waited, and waited!  Nothing.  On our way back to the truck, I spotted an Eastbound.  Skyler was convinced we could catch it in time and if the gravel road had been in better shape, we would have beat the locomotives to the crossing!  He rode SO fast attempting to catch it!  In the end we did catch up and got to see about half of the cars go through the crossing.

Waiting.

Checking out the crossing arm mechanism.

Dark signals.  :(

Racing back towards the train!  He was really moving!

We made it!  Look how flushed his cheeks are!

Lots of (presumably empty) high fructose corn syrup cars marked ADM (Archer Daniels Midland) headed back to the midwest.

The train was cruising along pretty quick, probably 45-50 mph.

Happy!

Headed back to the truck on the gravel.  He was pretty happy about spending the morning out there.

At the baseball game.

Mommy's work hosted us at our local baseball team last night.

We rode the train downtown much to Skyler's delight.

What a $9.00 4 piece pizza looks like.  Note the jacket, it was cold!

We had some great seats!

$8.00 of Dippin' Dots ice cream beads.

More trains!

We got to watch even more trains Wednesday afternoon after Skyer's appointment!  Frontrunner is  his favorite train to watch probably because it is predictable.

Waiting.  Note his overalls!

We crossed the tracks to see if the U.P. mainline had any approaching traffic.  Dark signals.  :(

Headlights!

Getting closer!

Southbound cab car in push mode.

There it goes!

Train day.

Skyler and I headed out to watch some freight trains first thing yesterday morning.  We got to see one train parked on the road for over an hour!  Sigh...

Locomotives were just East of 4400 W.  One would think they could have stopped 1,000 feet earlier and not blocked the crossing for everyone.

Stack train.  Think of all the places these containers have seen!

Sitting on my tailgate waiting.

If you look closely, you can see a multi-engine geneset from Los Angeles.

As we were headed home Southbound on Bangerter, we were rewarded with a local U.P. switching loads on the local.

All that rain...

Leads to a beautiful yard!

Pic taken on Father's Day.  Note the dark clouds...

Stormy skies.

It was quite the rainstorm here Thursday afternoon!

If we were in Nebraska, we would probably have been looking for a basement to find shelter in!

WANT!!!!!

Now available in "Astro Turf Green"!

Summer contract on the porch.

Mommy returned home from Detroit yesterday morning after a week away.  Skyler was unable to have 2 adults around him yet again so we made him work on his contract.  He requested that he could work on it outside so he did.

A new pair of Dickies overalls made the day even better.  :)

Finally!

Skyler got to build his Vestas wind turbine this week that he received from Grandpa for his birthday.  It's quite the kit, he took 2.5 days to finish it.

The blades are motorized and the lights come on in front of the house at the base.

WOW!

We rode along with Grandpa to "The Train Shoppe" here in town to check out the model railroads and model railroad supplies.  What a neat place!

We were greeted by a gorgeous HO scale layout.

Skyler got to run the model trains thanks to Grandpa buying him some tokens.

Running another train.

Yet another!  Note the controller that allows the kids to control the speed, lights, horn, and bell on each train.