I got an emailed newsletter from my old high school (Lorne Park) the other day, and on the front page was my old auto shop teacher - Mr. Art Cuthbert. That made me reminiss enough to go out, buy a cartridge filter and 5 quarts of 5W-40 Synthetic oil. I spent last evening giving the Jetta (65,000 miles) it’s 6th oil change - and the first one I had done on it. As far as everyone (except Kate) knows it went smoothly, and in this day and age of computerized vehicles it felt good to still be able to perform some form of maintenance on it.

Sam and I took to the trees today - to begin construction of our tree house / fort. The initial plans called for the floor to be mounted 14 feet above the ground; however, the 2”x10”x10’ boards were far too heavy for the two of us to muscle up into the trees (and support while we secured them). So, we scaled back a little and now have an initial frame built (of the same boards) at 8 feet above the ground. We haven’t quite decided yet as to whether we’ll just drop the plan down, or whether we’ll use this frame a scaffold to let us build higher!

With a little (lot) of help from Meg I gave the lower gutters a much needed cleaning today. It was no wonder we had ice dams this past winter - they were a mess! Thanks for your help Meagan.