Why the farm is so fun!

Who wouldn't want to spend a fun day at the farm each week when you have awesome activities to do like...

Riding on Opa's mini bike

Practicing in the arena for your next horse show

Smoke Reaches Lumby

Three forest fires rage on within the Okanagan Valley, all of them are within a few hours of our home in Lumby. Saturday we were in Vernon and noticed the smoke from the first major fire in Kelowna as the wind blew it up the lake into the Vernon area. While lots of smoke has affected the region, Lumby has luckily been left out of the haze till today.
Today however, the weather patterns changed and Lumby is now fully socked in with smoke from the fires. Air quality is bad and I hope the smoke doesn't linger too long in the little valley around us.

Our best wishes go out to the people and families who are much closer to the fires and having their lives and homes put at risk.

Happy Birthday to me...

It's my birthday tomorrow, but the party is today. Kelly has been planning an awesome meal and a small group of family is coming over for dinner (just the way I like it).

I did some finishing work on the wall and garage door this morning, so everything is now closed in to my satisfaction. After a shower and shave I went back out for an hour and shot targets from the little range I set up a few week ago. The new Crosman pistol is more accurate than the Gamo, but both are fun to shot at pop cans and small paper targets. Molly came out and sat with me for a while and looked very goofy in her safety glasses. But it looked like she was having a great time.

It kind of sucks that I have to work on my birthday, but I get my cards and presents a day early, so I guess it all balances out :)

Another Wall

Thanks to Dave for his help today, another wall is completed on the workshop and the garage door is finally mounted and operating correctly. For anyone interested, a garage door is a death trap and I suggest that only the truly stupid try to install these things on your own. I apparently fall into this category, but have blind luck as well.

Stupid + Luck = No Death (this time)

Another big blog update

Last night I updated the 24 Bloom Blog and worked with my domain host to update some redirects as well.

1. Come visit the blog and check out the new look and feel.
2. Sign up to a RSS Feed if your interested.
3. Join up and become a Follower of the blog if you want.
4. MOST IMPORTANT - Update your browser bookmarks so your pointing to the new site and not the old one. The correct new address is http://24bloom.com/ OR http://24bloom.blogspot.com/

Thanks - AJ

A week of holidays comes to an end...

Today is Sunday and a week of holidays is coming to an end. It's been hard work but we got a lot accomplished, and took care of some fun as well.

On the work side I installed a solid wood overhead garage door in the back of the shop and did LOTS of landscaping and clean-up back there so more walls and fence can be built. I want to close it all in and be finishing the interior walls this fall. By snow fall I should have some carpentry projects underway in the newly completed space.

On the fun side I spend the last few days gaming with Dave and we covered some solid ground. Just a few minutes ago we finished Gears of War 2 on Insane difficulty. It took lots of concentration and swearing to get past some of the fights but the satisfaction of earning all the gamer score at completion was worth it. I finally passed 19,000 after being stalled on gamer score for months!

I'm puttering away at Fallout 3 again and plan to finish finding all the Bobbleheads in the next few days as well.
Molly spent the week with her aunt Karon and cousin Rachel at Vasauex Lake with friends of their family from England. Molly had two little British girls to play with and it sounds like she had a blast. Kelly and her mom Darlene joined them at the lake mid-week after Kelly was able to get a few days of work under her belt. YES, Kelly is feeling better, healing better, and just taking it easy and letting the healing happen without over-doing it (a bad habit she has the moment she feels just a little bit better).So here we are, halfway through Sunday already, and the entire household is getting back to normal tomorrow.

• Aaren and Kelly head back to work.
• Molly is back on her regular schedule of Oma's, Nana's, daycare, and some fun summer programs.
• Jill is also back to the summer day progam and catching rides to Vernon with Kelly each day, so she doesn't have to ride the bus (she hates the bus)

As we enter July we have a blitz of a month with family visits, company picnics, hot hot weather, and continued construction on the shop.