01-31JUL20 - Sultan, WA

July 2020 started off with Dan in east Bremerton babysitting grandsons, so he could take Mason to see the eye doctor while Rebecca was at work.  Diagnosis minor eye irritation – drops prescribed.  After doctor visit Dan picked up Jaxson & headed back to our house.  July weather would swing from cool w/rain, to sunny w/almost record heat.  Looking back other than babysitting grandsons, not much done other than mowing between rainy periods by Dan, & gardening by Corrie.

Despite the corona virus we did have two excellent visits during the month.  The first was from a Coast Guard Academy classmate, Rich Formisano, & his wife, Jan.  Great time & al fresco lunch on the deck; & receiving a beautiful gift crafted in Rich’s wood shop.

Second visit was Dan’s sister Sharon & husband Time in their RV trailer from Texas.  In spite of the virus they have been traveling the west USA for the last month or so.  They could have parked on our property with water & electric hook-ups; but decided to stay at a local RV area to make it easier to visit the numerous old Washington friends & their kids/grandkids living in WA state.

As we noted in last months BLOG Dan built a moveable solar array to heat our above ground pool.  By tracking the sun (when out) our pool stays in the mid 80s.  So during one of Sharon & Tim’s visit we tested it outJ  After their brief stay in WA state, they hit the road to visit old friends in Montana.

Other July “events”:

>>>continuous gardening by Corrie producing plethora flowers & veggies

>>>grandsons & fire pit

>>>grandsons eating Oreos

>>>mowing the lawn with the grandsons

>>>adding bifold-door to bonus room w/Tim’s help

>>>lots of swimming by grandsons, & grandsons fulfilling bucket list item of swimming at night

>>>picking various berries (wild salmonberries, blueberries, loganberries, marionberries, strawberries & wild blackberries) from the garden & in the woods 

Too bad it looks like we won't see son Joe nor any of the Chiasson family this summer.

01-30JUN20 - Sultan, WA (definitely june-uary in pacific northwest)

After being spoiled by three summers of good weather (ie not typical Pacific NW iffy weather), we start this summer with the usual Seattle area June-uaryL  Most of June is low 50s, cloudy, & some rain during the day.  Very few stretches of warm & sunny days?  Combined with corona virus issues, this adds to the general feeling of what the locals call - June gloom.  Other than Fathers’ Day most of month was projects around the house/property.

First up was Dan continue building (& finishing) the outdoor workbench/potting bench for Corrie he started last month.

Then we had to deal with two major repairs (to us they were major?).  First up was replacing the mower deck to our Ariens lawn tractor/mower.  Mowing almost two acres of not very smooth grass, combined with Dan’s less than gentle treatment, caused one major weld to completely fracture!  Dan decided that finding someone to pound the distorted metal back into shape & properly reweld was probably wasted money.  A new one from manufacturer was reasonably priced; it was purchased & Dan swapped out all the remaining good parts.

Next up was our kitchen undermount sink completely separating from the counter & falling into cabinet.  Luckily none of the PVC plumbing pipes broke.  Turns out sink should have had metal brackets to hold it up, but was installed with epoxy only?!!!  Even though house was long out of warranty, we contacted original builder (Lexar), & they fixed it for free.  Repair cost was okay, but it took two weeks to get one hour repair done.

Knowing we will be grandkid sitting every other week thru the summer; we set up our standalone, above ground pool.  Since we have had pretty poor weather so far, Dan decided to look into solar heat for pool water.  He purchased a 4 ft high by 10 ft long panel.  Then built a “rack” to mount it on next to pool.  Next he decided the solar heat would be much more efficient if it was on wheels so he could track the sunJ!  So even with so-so June weather we observed: 2-1/2 sunny days raised our 56 degree well water to 74 degrees; & a later 2 days of sunshine got us to 80 degrees.

Corrie continuously works on the house landscaping & her abundant fruit/vegetable garden.  See is very pleased with the results of here efforts & posts many pics on facebook.

On Sunday, 28JUN, Dan takes the truck over to Rebecca & Raymond’s in East Bremerton, to help them pick up a pallet of laminate flooring.  They will be ripping out all their first floor carpet & replacing.  Then he took the grandkids (Jaxson & Mason) back to our house for the first week of grandkid sitting thru the summer (one week on, one week off).  They immediately checked out our “heated” swimming pool.  The last day of June Dan takes grandkids back their house, because Mason has doctor appointment the next day 01JUL.

The hi-lite for June was Fathers’ Day, 21JUN.  Rebecca, Raymond, Jaxson & Mason drove over for the day.  Our grand boys have a ritual of getting out of car at foot of driveway & racing up to the house.  Made for an amusing pic on our recently moved game camera🙃  Corrie prepared her delicious steamed mussels w/garlic dipping sauce for our al fresco dinner.  A great day😍

Here’s hoping for the start of the Pacific NW summer to occur on July 5th as is “tradition” for this part of the USA.