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.

Hitch em' Up! - Molly Style

It's obvious that Molly's been watching Opa and Oma hitch up their horses. This is the harness she worked up alone in the dog room for 30 minutes. When she came out with Jessie I was impressed at the collection of items strung together and the fact the key elements of a proper harness seemed to be represented.

What a little teamster.

It's a little better then we thought

So KJ and I walked into the hospital expecting a PICC line and we walked out with a 3 day home IV. I had some training and we did the first injection at the hospital. Kelly did have a reaction and almost passed out, but after 15 minutes of lying down she was back on her feet and only a little dozey.

With a big brown bag of new pills and syringes we headed for home. Kelly is back in bed and we'll have a VERY quiet weekend at home with daily injections. KJ's back into the doctor Monday morning for followup and the next phase of treatment.

Kelly goes for a PICC Line Today

Kelly's infection from her recent surgery is not going away. Today our GP and her surgeon decided to escalate the treatment with the insertion of a PICC Line.

Some of you are aware this is the treatment that Pat her dad had when his knee infection got out of control a few years ago. He was on the PICC Line for months and it was not a fun experience for him or Darlene.

Essentially a PICC Line is a catheter inserted into your arm and fed through a large vein to a location near your heart. It's then sutured in place and bandaged so it won't move or come loose. Then you get a very stylish fanny pack that contains a battery operated pump and an IV bag.

In Kelly's case the IV bag will contain an even stronger antibiotic that will now be fed directly into her blood stream and not a pill that needs to be injested and absorbed.

It's a bit scary that it's gone this far, but it reassuring that the Doctors are united on the decision and treating it more seriously than over the last 4-5 weeks.

I'm heading up to the hospital with her in about 30 minutes for the insertion and training.


On a happy note Molly and her nana Darlene left for Calgary today. They are visiting Karon and family until the middle of next week. Darlene had a bit of excitement at the airport early this morning when she discovered that her 8:30 flight was scheduled for PM and not AM. WestJet was nice and moved her onto a mid morning flight (no charge) and they should be landing in Calgary around noon.

A New Floor and Two Cripples

Vanessa's husband Rick and his brother Bob came last weekend and did a hardwood flooring blitz. We had purchased the wood a few months ago and were eager to get it installed. Now that the work is done KJ and I are really pleased with the change in appearance but not without it's side effects. Kelly got a staf infection from her recent surgery and needed all of last week to stay home and recover. I'm still healing from my rotator cuff injury and seem to always re-strain it the moment I feel better. For me this injury is going on months now. It sucks in the busy spring season to feel so useless and have to endure the ongoing discomfort.

Super duper thanks to Rick, Van, & Bob for their incredible quality of work. Also thanks to all our friends who showed up to help on Sunday as we tore up the floors and prepped everything for Rick and Bob.

Lino! We pulled up the carpet and underlay to find a lovely layer of lino as well? Apparently at one time our whole house must have been lino.
Thank goodness the lino wasn't glued down very well. It came up pretty easy and only took a few hours to completely remove.
Molly of course found a house free of furniture to be a wonderful new playground.
Doug and I doing what we could to help. Yes, I can sort boards...
And Molly can line up screws for Bob. Yippe no more squeeks in the floor.
Doesn't it look nice!

Kelly's Surgery

For those of you who are "out of the loop" Kelly has been waiting five years for a surgery to eliminate back, neck, and shoulder pain. The surgery is performed by a plastic surgeon and reduces some weight off of her chest. Those hints should be enough to make your own educated guess.

We went to Kamloops last week for the surgery and here are some pictures of the event. Kelly is home for the next two weeks recovering and healing.

The first waiting room. Time to put on the headphones and watch a movie.

The second waiting area complete with the backless gown.
Is my ass showing?

"Ok Kelly... the surgeon is ready for you now"

Post-Op - the recovery room is good!

We've been back home since Friday and Kelly is doing great. She is very pleased with the look and feel and her pain is less than she expected (thanks pharmaceuticals). She is trying to keep moving around and help the healing process. Today she went shopping for a few new tank tops, it seems her old ones don't fit as well anymore. :)

AJ's Arcade - Nintendo's R-Type 1987

I just spent the evening clean and reprogramming another arcade machine I purchased for my home arcade.

Manufacturer: Nintendo
Year: 1987
Genre: Space

Monitor:

• Orientation: Horizontal
• Type: Raster: Standard Resolution
• CRT: Color

Number of Simultaneous Players: 1
Maximum number of Players: 2
Gameplay: Alternating
Control Panel Layout: Single Player
Controls:

• Joystick: 8-way
• Buttons: 2

Sound: Amplified Mono (one channel)

This is a fun side scroller with a good degree of difficulty. I reprogrammed it for Free Play, 5 Lives, Bonus Lives, and Normal Difficulty. I serviced and repaired the joystick and two buttons that were sticky, they are working fine now. I may still order some replacement buttons as the current buttons don't all match and a few of the colors are not correct for this game. That aside it's working great and that's all that matters when it's the new game :)

Tonight Molly offered her toy room (which is more like a storage room) for me to turn into an arcade room. I might take her up on her offer if she doesn't change her mind. She likes playing these old games as much as I do so it's not like she won't be able to play in that room anymore, it's just the "toys" that are different.

AJ's daily Twitter updates.

• 08:09 Early day, started at at 5am. We went into V ernon to help with the People Place garage sale. A nice family event we all participated in.
• 08:10 Now it's breakfast at Denny's with free Wi-Fi. Another awesome netbook moment.

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