Last night I acted all cavalier that we could have a quick day at the lake and just head on out to KC. But that is not as easy as I made it. Nothing went wrong, and we are here in KC, but it all takes time, and it was 10:30 by the time we got home.
If you remember several days ago, we had the air conditioner man out here to service our AC and he added a couple of pounds of freon. Well last Thursday just as we were ready to leave for the lake, the AC began to refuse to start. Too much freon is my guess, but then I am not a refrigeration guy.
I called the service people, but they were all booked up and said Tuesday was the day. The first day they could come. So that is tomorrow, or as you read this it is already today. I have my breath held because this could get expensive rather quickly. The AC is only 5 years old, but things aren't made like they used to be.
We did have a nice time on the lake this afternoon with the boat and the new jet ski. Today was in the mid 80s but the wind had kicked up and made the lake rough. We went North up into the Gravois Arm, and it wasn't as bad up there.
We didn't get on the road until almost 7 PM, as we knew it was without AC back here in KC. No sense arriving any too early. But tonight it is about 78 outside and threatening rain. The wind is still with us, and we seem to have a good cross ventilation going with the windows open.
Neither of us remember opening the windows and doing without the AC since we have lived here. I wonder how quickly it will become hot in the morning. The AC guy did not give us a specific time when he would arrive, so it could be later in the day.......Ugh..
Retired Rod
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Monday, May 30, 2011
The Sun Came Out!
This Sammy, our grand dog. He visits and is the most laid back doggie. He takes the kids for a walk, LOL.
Down on the dock, the new Jet Ski was never parked!
Chris is backing the ski into the dock slip to finally park it.
The grandkids try to tame the new tube before being pulled by the Jet Ski.
And not a single one of them is strong enough to pull themselves up onto its top.
Some hours later, it was Happy Birthday to Abby, who is now a whopping 2 years old.
And another big Memorial Day at the lake comes to an end, with the kids totally killed and out like a light.
Tomorrow we play for a while in the early part of the day, and then its back to KC in the late afternoon.
Retired Rod
Down on the dock, the new Jet Ski was never parked!
Chris is backing the ski into the dock slip to finally park it.
The grandkids try to tame the new tube before being pulled by the Jet Ski.
And not a single one of them is strong enough to pull themselves up onto its top.
Some hours later, it was Happy Birthday to Abby, who is now a whopping 2 years old.
And another big Memorial Day at the lake comes to an end, with the kids totally killed and out like a light.
Tomorrow we play for a while in the early part of the day, and then its back to KC in the late afternoon.
Retired Rod
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Cabins
Folks have wondered how three families can fit into the lake home here and still get along. The answer is that we are tight. When we built this house, we only had one grandchild, and at the time it was hard to envision that we would have five someday.
This is a two story house with the upstairs on the parking lot level with an attached garage. The upstairs has the living room and the master bedroom. The kitchen is an alcove off of the living room.
The lower level is walkout and has a second family room with surrounding bedrooms. One side has a large guest bedroom with an attached bath. The other side has two bedrooms with a center bath. So one family has the large suite and a bath, and the other family has two bedrooms and a bath.
It works for now, but as the girls grow, they will kick the oldest boy out of the bedroom, so we have a sleeper sofa in the family room for him. Still four girls in the small kids bedroom will be an all night party waiting to happen. But given the cost of housing down here in Lake Ozark, I don't think we will be trading houses anytime soon.
We only have a 60 foot wide lot and lake frontage, so the house is small by some folks standards, but then we don't actually live here.........it is just a lake cabin.
When I was a boy, we used to go to Clear Lake up in Northern Iowa and the cabins were 2x4 framing with lap siding on the outside of the walls. The wiring was just stapled to the wood on the inside in plain sight. No wall board at all.
The plumbing came up out of the floor from underneath, and the entire building sat on concrete blocks. They did paint the interior walls and frame work with a kind of lime green paint. The windows were single pane, and there was no insulation at all.
In my college years, we went to school up there, and I remember working for one of the owners of the cabins blowing the water out of the plumbing and sealing up the windows with plastic for the winter. The buildings had no heat.
So by those standards we are really lucky to have drywall interior walls with heat and air conditioning. This is a year round home, but it does not become nearly as cold in Missouri as it did up by the Minnesota state line in Northern Iowa. Winter was brutal up there....
Here in Lake Ozark today, we spent the day under overcast conditions, and I think it might have made 70 degrees late in the afternoon. My son Chris and I ran the power washer and scrub brush all afternoon on the dock. The trees here give off a green sticky pollen, and it was thick on everything. The water ran yellow green on everything we washed.
It was a ardous task, but by late afternoon, we decided to put the new jet ski in the lake. So once on the back of the pickup, we headed over to the public ramp. Chris hopped on and I backed him into the water. I finally got deep enough that he was able to just back it off of the trailer.
I came back with the pickup, and he rode around for a little while, but was back and on the lift rather quickly. I guess he took a drenching out in the main channel and was cold. Not a good day for jet skiing........
He reports that the new ski has waaaay more power than the 15 year old one we traded off. He says it is almost frightning. He of course had to see how fast it went wide open, and it indicated just a little short of 60. Say 57 to 59, but that changes as you bounce in the waves. But perhaps it will suffice to say it goes like heck!!
I am sure that I will never try that one out, as it beats your insides when it bounces on the waves. No one has had the machine out again. They thought it might be warmer tomorrow, and at least the sun might be comming out then.
Of course I was teasing them that in their younger days they wouldn't have let the thing set for more than a minute, and would have run all the gas out before they put it up for the night. The grandkids moms wouldn't let any of them put their swim suits on as they said it is just toooooo cold, so they could only watch.
Tonight we are hard at it telling more stories and doing what families do when they don't get together as much as they would like to.
Retired Rod
This is a two story house with the upstairs on the parking lot level with an attached garage. The upstairs has the living room and the master bedroom. The kitchen is an alcove off of the living room.
The lower level is walkout and has a second family room with surrounding bedrooms. One side has a large guest bedroom with an attached bath. The other side has two bedrooms with a center bath. So one family has the large suite and a bath, and the other family has two bedrooms and a bath.
It works for now, but as the girls grow, they will kick the oldest boy out of the bedroom, so we have a sleeper sofa in the family room for him. Still four girls in the small kids bedroom will be an all night party waiting to happen. But given the cost of housing down here in Lake Ozark, I don't think we will be trading houses anytime soon.
We only have a 60 foot wide lot and lake frontage, so the house is small by some folks standards, but then we don't actually live here.........it is just a lake cabin.
When I was a boy, we used to go to Clear Lake up in Northern Iowa and the cabins were 2x4 framing with lap siding on the outside of the walls. The wiring was just stapled to the wood on the inside in plain sight. No wall board at all.
The plumbing came up out of the floor from underneath, and the entire building sat on concrete blocks. They did paint the interior walls and frame work with a kind of lime green paint. The windows were single pane, and there was no insulation at all.
In my college years, we went to school up there, and I remember working for one of the owners of the cabins blowing the water out of the plumbing and sealing up the windows with plastic for the winter. The buildings had no heat.
So by those standards we are really lucky to have drywall interior walls with heat and air conditioning. This is a year round home, but it does not become nearly as cold in Missouri as it did up by the Minnesota state line in Northern Iowa. Winter was brutal up there....
Here in Lake Ozark today, we spent the day under overcast conditions, and I think it might have made 70 degrees late in the afternoon. My son Chris and I ran the power washer and scrub brush all afternoon on the dock. The trees here give off a green sticky pollen, and it was thick on everything. The water ran yellow green on everything we washed.
It was a ardous task, but by late afternoon, we decided to put the new jet ski in the lake. So once on the back of the pickup, we headed over to the public ramp. Chris hopped on and I backed him into the water. I finally got deep enough that he was able to just back it off of the trailer.
I came back with the pickup, and he rode around for a little while, but was back and on the lift rather quickly. I guess he took a drenching out in the main channel and was cold. Not a good day for jet skiing........
He reports that the new ski has waaaay more power than the 15 year old one we traded off. He says it is almost frightning. He of course had to see how fast it went wide open, and it indicated just a little short of 60. Say 57 to 59, but that changes as you bounce in the waves. But perhaps it will suffice to say it goes like heck!!
I am sure that I will never try that one out, as it beats your insides when it bounces on the waves. No one has had the machine out again. They thought it might be warmer tomorrow, and at least the sun might be comming out then.
Of course I was teasing them that in their younger days they wouldn't have let the thing set for more than a minute, and would have run all the gas out before they put it up for the night. The grandkids moms wouldn't let any of them put their swim suits on as they said it is just toooooo cold, so they could only watch.
Tonight we are hard at it telling more stories and doing what families do when they don't get together as much as they would like to.
Retired Rod
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Family Arrives
Loyce cleaned and cleaned all day, but the outside was way too cool to go clean up the dock or the boat, so I stayed inside. Mostly out of the way of the ongoing cleanup. She of course said I was lazy, but then I wouldn't do it up to par if I helped much. At least that's my excuse, and I am sticking to it...
We did head on out to do some power shopping at the outlet mall here in the lake area. They call it the premium outlet mall, because it has all those same stores that most of the manufacturer outlet malls have. Loyce likes the children's store Carter, and I ducked over to Hagar, but didn't find anything that tripped my purchase impulse. Anyway she was done, so I had to rush back and get her.
We went thru the Wendy's drive thru for me, and she had a salad that she had made at home, and then it was off to Wal Mart for some more items for the larder. Our fridge here is bare empty, as we haven't been here enough to let things build up this summer.
We tend to buy stuff as we come down and then not take a lot of it back to KC. By fall, it is full of condiments and non aging stuff in jars and bottles. Then once we close up shop for the longer haul of winter, we take it all home all at once. Or, if there isn't much in a bottle, we just toss the stuff. Same with the freezer, it collects a lot of half used packages, and they get tossed in late October.
Any way we had our oldest son and his wife and two of the five grandkids arrive tonight about 8 PM. Claire the six year old, had to play Angry Birds with grandpa on the smart phone. She sometimes can play it on her mom's phone, but mom can be quite protective of the phone as well. So we used grandpa's phone, together. But then she had to go to bed.
Tomorrow we are having the second family arriving, which will add three more kids, so we will have all five running at once. The youngest is now two, so she can run with the best of them. Pandemonium will be the best description. Loyce was putting things in the bedroom that she didn't want to be played with, but the kids will find the stuff in there too. Good luck!!
Chris our son, said they stopped in Sedalia to eat on the way down here, and that the parts of town that didn't have damage were open as usual, and that the highway was back open. Unlike Joplin, where they have a much larger area that is damaged including the downtown area.
It still rained off and on all day long and the temps were never more than 60, so this may be a really cold holiday. Perhaps fishing on the dock will be the best activity for the weekend as the water is really cold for swimming.
Let the chaos begin!
Retired Rod
We did head on out to do some power shopping at the outlet mall here in the lake area. They call it the premium outlet mall, because it has all those same stores that most of the manufacturer outlet malls have. Loyce likes the children's store Carter, and I ducked over to Hagar, but didn't find anything that tripped my purchase impulse. Anyway she was done, so I had to rush back and get her.
We went thru the Wendy's drive thru for me, and she had a salad that she had made at home, and then it was off to Wal Mart for some more items for the larder. Our fridge here is bare empty, as we haven't been here enough to let things build up this summer.
We tend to buy stuff as we come down and then not take a lot of it back to KC. By fall, it is full of condiments and non aging stuff in jars and bottles. Then once we close up shop for the longer haul of winter, we take it all home all at once. Or, if there isn't much in a bottle, we just toss the stuff. Same with the freezer, it collects a lot of half used packages, and they get tossed in late October.
Any way we had our oldest son and his wife and two of the five grandkids arrive tonight about 8 PM. Claire the six year old, had to play Angry Birds with grandpa on the smart phone. She sometimes can play it on her mom's phone, but mom can be quite protective of the phone as well. So we used grandpa's phone, together. But then she had to go to bed.
Tomorrow we are having the second family arriving, which will add three more kids, so we will have all five running at once. The youngest is now two, so she can run with the best of them. Pandemonium will be the best description. Loyce was putting things in the bedroom that she didn't want to be played with, but the kids will find the stuff in there too. Good luck!!
Chris our son, said they stopped in Sedalia to eat on the way down here, and that the parts of town that didn't have damage were open as usual, and that the highway was back open. Unlike Joplin, where they have a much larger area that is damaged including the downtown area.
It still rained off and on all day long and the temps were never more than 60, so this may be a really cold holiday. Perhaps fishing on the dock will be the best activity for the weekend as the water is really cold for swimming.
Let the chaos begin!
Retired Rod
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