1-8 June, 2012 Steve's Auto Repair Tent

Spring time in Montana??? It's been a week of rain, thunderstorms and freezing nights.  Our onions and peas are doing great but the frost burned the potatoes off to ground level.  Montana is definitely not the easiest place to grow veggies!

Our firefighter son gave us a head's up on a storm coming our direction so we set the solar panel on the camper down and covered it with a couple of sleeping pads and a section of plywood.  We also turned the solar panels parallel to the storm and put anything that could travel in one of the sheds.  Fortunately for us it went to around to the north and south of us.  We got some wind and rain but not in disastrous quantities.

 

We have had some pretty nice rainbows from all the stormy weather.  This one was much nicer in real life than it appears in the photo.

Scott looked adorable in his cammies so we posed  him for a photo shoot.

Now he's playing some Star Wars creature using his mom's shirt for a costume.

One of our other daughter's cam with her children so we got to play Grandma and Grandpa to them a bit.  Susan is holding Lincoln, our youngest grandchild.

This is his older sister, Hanna

And his older brother, Logan, (they both like pizza).

Logan and Scott decided to entertain us with some numbers on the piano

Becky needed some work done to her car.  I put a new caliper assembly on the passenger side a few weeks ago but when we were going to put new brake pads on the driver's side I found a broken CV boot.  We put the brakes on hold until I fixed that.  After Becky got the parts she brought them to me to install.  It was raining so I set up a tarp to work under.

I've installed the new boot on the outer CV joint and the axle is now ready to install.

My hammer and I got into it.  The hammer won.  This hammer has a history of attacks like this going back almost thirty years.  It once hit my thumb nearly breaking it and smashing the thumb nail in a most unpleasant fashion.  It's peeled some skin off a time or two as well since then.  I'm about ready to melt it down into a puddle of steel or at least mold it into something that's not so dangerous. Maybe a door knocker or something benign like that!

Time to grind some more chicken food.  We've been going through some outdated stored foods and grinding them up to feed the chickens.  Here we have old pasta, powdered milk, macaroni and cheese, Ramon noodles and who knows what to mix with rice, beans and wheat.  The chickens are doing well on it which is good since it saves us from buying regular feed for them. I ground about 25 pounds of feed before stopping.

Scott wants to run the mower but hasn't understood yet that you're supposed to push it to make it work.  By the time he's old enough to do it he won't want to!

Ya' gotta' love the exuberance of little boys.  We finally got a break in the rain so he wanted to go outside and check water puddles to be sure that they were filled to the right depth.

Three mornings in the last week we've been greeted by ice in the water bowls outside (for the critters)!

And this stuff on the windshield ...

And a thermometer that's telling us things we don't want to know!

Scot is checking out the contents of the package addressed to him.  On the 7th, we got two DVD's we'd ordered for him. (We ordered one and his mom ordered the other!) 

We found a two pairs of very nice cross country skis when we went to dump trash.  When people throw away something usable they'll often set it outside the dumpsters for others to find.  The pair on the left are light touring skis and the right pair are touring.  They're both waxless designs.

Another job for the rain tarp auto repair shop.  I don't know why it always seems to rain on the days I tell them to bring their vehicles for repair.

This is Stephen's car.  When he got the tires balanced they told him he had a bad ball joint so we replaced them yesterday.  We also did a little shooting.  They bought a .380 semi-auto handgun and wanted to shoot it a bit.  It's the first time I've ever shot a .380.  They're okay but I like my 357 magnum better.

I brought my office chair out in the dining area and at the first opportunity Scott commandeered it.  He's having buttered bread and chocolate milk for his second supper of the evening.  He has days when he eats enough for two kids and other days when he has no interest in food.  Yesterday was one of his hungry days.