Litter Patrol Update

John got off the truck on Jan 27 and moved back up to Bend OR where he is being mentored by his son, Byron, about parking lot sweeping. Tomorrow will be one month since we officially started working. I went up to Bend over Valentine's day weekend. Took Amanda's yellow dressers up to Michelle. The kids were so excited to see me and John. They had posters ready and gave us "heartbeats" Tate's word for Valentine day heart cards. They are so cute and we miss them more then we knew. Unfortunately we could not stay for the whole Valentine day because we had to get back and fix the sweeper truck. Two bearing had exploded on the truck so the fan that makes the sucking wasn't working. Gavin, John's son in Portland, purchased the part and drove it over to Wilsonville at the DeVries. So he got to have some breakfast with the family. When we took off early to go back to Bend, little did we know the pitfalls that lay ahead. We were stopped in the middle of the canyon for an hour because of an accident. I'll tell you about an almost accident. I had been sleeping and woke up to tell John that I needed a pit stop then a mile up the road, instead of a pitstop, the whole road was stopped for a mile or two of traffic. Times like this might be a good reason to be a guy... But I endured. We got back to the ranch expecting the repair to take less than an hour.. NO the bearing got stuck. John tried everything, compressor screwdrivers, holediggers, propane torch...prayer. Finally, he improvised the pressure he needed to push the bearing on with a hydraulic jack. 6 hours later!

ARGHHHHHHH

That night went fine except that I'm not a night person who likes to go around in circles while sniffing gas. I had heartburn and puked. The next night I would like to say that I did better, but while John was blowpacking the parking lot, I managed to ram the sweeper head or rather the vacuum up against the curb. Not a good idea. The vacuum is made to be snugged up to the curb, because there just isnt' any give to go over anything that is not a flat surface--ei parking lot. I managed to snap the chains, crack the exhaust pipes, tweek the vacuum, crack the welding, and at the time we thought I damaged the drive shaft too (but now, John thinks that was already having problems). Thank goodness John is a loving understanding, non condemning husband. He didn't guilt trip me or anything! We just went to a liquidator outlet and purchased some steel which he used in a welding project that I never saw. Found some muffler bandage and later went to a specialist to fix the drive shaft.

So this first month was a wash. Yeah, we're rolling in the money...

I don't know how long we can do this. It was actually okay having him home on the weekends and playing hard together. Typically during the week I was so busy with work that I doubt we would have had the quality time together that we got when he came home on Fridays and left on Monday mornings. It was always weekends full of projects and fun. I am missing that immensely right now.

I knew that Becky and Chris were going to get engaged. Congratulations. We are going to do all that we can to come in June! Okay, so, well, I'm projecting its in June. She will make her official announcement for herself.

Love to all and thanks for our webcams so that we can now Skype. So far, I've skyped with Tressa and Becky. Tried to contact Michelle, but the video and sound was funny. John still has to fix his C-drive in order to run the Logitech program. And...he has to find good places for an internet connection.

Kimberly..


Wish mom happy birthday!