May 5 -17, 2019 Pick up the new car and more work.

May 5
I signed up for a 10k race at the end of June so I'm starting my day with a 7km run. It's cool outside but that's okay while you're moving. Leslie is doing a 4k walk, some with the dog and some without. Margaret doesn't like long distance much any more.
When Leslie got back she enjoyed a nice long shower and I did the same after my run. We have water supply and it's so nice lol. We took our time getting ready and then hopped in the Mustang for a trip into Edmonton to Ryan's house. We're joining Ryan, Ashtyn and Sam for a couple drinks, dinner and our favourite Sunday evening event.... Game of Thrones! We had a fabulous dinner and watched another episode on Ryan's big TV. Love that 65 inch TV! The down side of watching G.O.T. is the late trip home. We got back a little before midnight and of course called it a night.
May 6
Leslie spent a part of the morning arranging paperwork for her car and some work stuff in Bonnyville. We are driving to B'ville in a couple days for Les to work and I'll get going on the lawn out there. Meanwhile I was doing a little yardwork here at Pineridge and getting things lined up for work in the garage. We had lunch at the clubhouse for a change and spent the afternoon packing stuff for the trip. We need to haul tools etc. back and forth every time. Not the best but we're not buying double of the stuff at this point. 
May 7
We have an appointment for 11am to pick up Leslie's car and bring it home. Pretty exciting! Our salesman, Victor, went through the orientation with Leslie but we'll need to read the manual and drive it a while to get everything figured out. She finally gets to drive her new car!!

The new Subaru Forester.

Pretty big smile :)

A car hug lol.

Where is the first place Leslie gets to take her new ride?? To the grocery store of course lol. We met at Sobeys in Spruce Grove and did some shopping and then back to PGR. We backed the Subaru into the garage and that's where it will stay until we get back from B'ville. We're bringing both the Mustang and the truck/ trailer with hopes that we can sell the Mustang while we are away. We spent the afternoon getting the rig ready to move and relaxing in the evening. 

May 8

We left PGR together but Leslie is stopping at Costco in St. Albert for some things we want in B'ville while we're there. I'm driving to B'ville with the trailer and Margaret. I was just on the other side of Edmonton when I got a call from Leslie. We have incredibly bad news about Smoky, our old cat that is living the best life imaginable at Leslie's sisters place. Lorin noticed that Smoky was breathing funny and very lethargic while she was getting ready for work. She contacted her vet and asked if she could drop him off. They will fit him in even though they have a full schedule. The vet called Lorin, who in turn called Leslie, that Smoky is in a bad way. X-rays showed that his lungs were full of fluid and that his chances to survive are not good. We were not expecting that news at all. Terrible news for all of us. You get so attached to your animals. Leslie is spending the night in Edmonton and her and Lorin have the awful task of putting Smoky to sleep. So sad but the choice is clear; he's suffering and no chance of recovery. You will be sadly missed Smoky, what a great life you had though.

Smoky .... all 20 pounds of him :)

His retirement life at Lorins. Super spoiled, awesome place for him!

That severely changed the mood of our day. Leslie is staying in Edmonton tonight with Lorin and they will likely have a couple glasses of wine and remember our ol' boy. Margaret and I continued on to Bonnyville and we'll cheers him later as well. Being at the acreage will bring back lots of good memories of Smoky in his country "hunter" days. 

Derek and Devan came over in the afternoon to load up the weights etc. that they have in the garage. It's a lot of gear and of course it's heavy, enough to fill both of their half ton trucks. I gave them a hand loading up but I stuck with the light stuff. I'm old, they can carry the big stuff lol. They were being responsible so we didn't even have a beer afterwards. They needed to get this stuff unloaded at Derek's friends place and then get some work done on Derek's house. I did a few trips into the house from the trailer bringing in the things I would need. There would be many more trips to the trailer in my future as I thought of more items to bring in. I had a couple beers with my supper and said a cheers to Smoky and then just relaxed in front of the TV. That was a long day.

May 9

After coffee and a quick breakfast I geared up to get to work outside. It's a beauty day for yard work. Leslie is moving a little slow this morning, they had a couple glasses last night, so she'll be here later this afternoon. I hooked the rototiller to the tractor and did the garden and as much as I can between the trees. Back on my Kubota tractor. Life is good! I unhooked the tiller and mounted the 60 inch mower deck then the rear bagger attachment. I like to cut it short and bag the first cut to clear off all the leaves and dead grass from winter. It's a lot more work and there will be a ton of grass but I'll just fill in a hole in the trees with all the clippings and cover it with dirt. Good compost in the future. I did one pass from the front yard down the fence line to the very back and all 3 bags are jammed full. This is going to take a while! 

Leslie got to B'ville around 2:00 so I stopped for a bit to say hi and help her bring stuff out of the car. She is going to work inside this afternoon getting the house stuff set back up. She is doing more trips to the trailer for kitchen stuff and she found some more stuff that Derek and Devan left behind. The house is nice and clean after the boys moved out but Leslie is wiping cupboards and arranging things back to the way we like it. Kind of odd being back in our house. It seems so big compared to the last 8 months in our trailer lol. 

I put in about 4 hours on the mower and I'm about half done. I'll catch the rest tomorrow. It's a slow process stopping to dump the bags every round but it's coming out great! I actually enjoy cutting grass. It just looks good when you're done. A sense of satisfaction I guess.

Before (left side) and after (right side).... plus the garden all rototilled.

May 10

We took our time having coffee and breakfast. There's so much room in the kitchen it took extra time to make breakfast haha! Leslie has a plan to do some laundry and a run to town for groceries. Derek is coming for supper tonight. Devan has other plans so he can't make it. We wanted to make a good dinner for the boys as a thank you for looking after our house all winter. Puts your mind at ease when you feel your biggest investment is being well cared for. Thanks guys!

I continued on the tractor/mower combo to get the lawn done today. The grass is thinner on the remaining part of the yard so it should go a little faster. I got a huge pile of dead grass off the lawn, probably 10 feet long by 5 feet high and 8 feet wide! More than I expected for sure.

Beside a dirt pile but the grass is easy to see.

More than I expected!

I have been contemplating selling the tractor for a while now and we agree that it's time. Sniff, sniff. I have a friend that is interested in buying it and he's willing to wait until I'm done the spring yard work, great deal! It's a 2005 that I have owned since 2007 when it had only 300 hours on it. While I was mowing the grass it turned over 1000 hours! We have used that tractor for so much while turning our acreage from a pasture to a residential yard. It was also my snow plow all winter for the driveway. Great piece of equipment but at this point I would really like a zero turn mower. Supposed to be so much faster. Would be great to cut my mowing time in half. On a good run I can cut my lawn in just over 4 hours so a little over 2 hours is huge.

A big milestone for my Kubota.

Leslie has done all the prep for our dinner tonight while I was outside. Derek arrived in time for a short happy hour and some great conversation and then we grilled some steaks and enjoyed a fantastic supper together. Great work Leslie! Normally a dinner like this would mean a sleepover for Derek with more than one after dinner beverage. Derek has responsibilities to take care of now and we should stay focused on our tasks as well. Look at us being all responsible!! So after a few glasses of water we gave big hugs to our boy Derek and thanked him again for looking after our place. Thanks to Devan too. Unfortunate that he couldn't make it to dinner.

Before we called it a night I got a text from our buddy Ailsa. She is competing in an Ironman Triathlon tomorrow in Santa Rosa, California and sent us a pre competition carb loading picture. Not shown in the pic but she usually has a glass of wine as well. Not all elite athletes agree with alcohol before a competition but she does just fine with it! Good luck tomorrow buddy!

Looks delicious :)  Have a great race Ailsa.

May11

Leslie spent the morning cooking up a storm. She made a batch of dog food and then got to work on her awesome pasta sauce. My favourite by far! She also made a batch of keto muffins so she gets a treat now and then. They turned out really good.

Of course one is missing, that's how we know they're good.

I kept busy cleaning up the tractor and mower for when my friend comes to have a second look at buying it. I also got a couple offers on the Mustang, stupid low ball offers which I instantly declined. Hopefully it gets better.

In the afternoon we stayed inside watching Ironman race updates on my phone and Leslie's laptop. Ailsa is doing really well at Ironman Santa Rosa and we are tracking her online. On the Ironman website Leslie found where we could watch live results at the finish line over the internet. This is awesome! It's like we are there cheering her on. Ironman is of course based on your chip time but at the finish it gets a little confusing because competitors left at different times at the start but they may not be the first to finish. That's what happened here, there was another female that crossed the line and they held out the ribbon for her as she crossed and everyone cheered and it seemed she was the female winner. We were waiting and watching for Ailsa to show up on the camera at the finish because we knew her time was really close. She showed up on the camera and finished really strong, running really great after 10 hours out there. We cheered like crazy and we were messaging Barry who was at work but in his room at camp watching as well. When the time was posted Ailsa had won by 19 seconds over the top female !!! What a crazy fabulous effort to pound that out. The swim is not her best event but she was flying on the bike and ran a really great race to finish first female in Ironman, Santa Rosa !! Way to go buddy. She completed the race in 10:16:05 as the first in her division and first in female competitors. What a blast!

Stole this from Barry's facebook.

Her chip time is 10:16:05.

We were super excited for her and we wish we would have gone to the race after all. We were going to go and then cancelled our plans, that's a long story. She did great anyway.

We of course had a drink to cheers her run and then made a good supper. So cool to watch the race finish live. A bit of TV and then we are off to bed. We're tired from just sitting and cheering, bet Ailsa is more tired. Good work champ!

May 12

 Happy Mother's Day to all the Mom's out there!!

I made breakfast for Leslie but the celebrating was over after that lol.

Keto breakfast, avacado, bacon, cheese and an egg with sliced tomatoes.

Ryan and Sam messaged and called her but she still got back to work on house chores after she chatted with them. It's not a statutory holiday lol. I had some items of my own to take care of and one of them was a big disappointment. On a rural well water system there is a pressure tank on the system that is there to smooth out the swings in pressure when the pump starts and stops. I had noticed the shower and the toilets were getting pressure swings so I suspected the pressure tank was shot. Yep, it sure is. I didn't know at the time but it turned out to be a $475 item. Wasn't expecting that little gem.

In the afternoon we decided to go visit some people and stopped in town at Ron & Shelley's place. Ron was at the gun range but we visited with Shelley until he got back and then enjoyed a small happy hour. They were going to Kent & Rachelle's for supper and Rachelle invited us over too. Thanks guys, very nice of you! Kent had brined and slow cooked a ham on his smoker/barbecue. The meal was fantastic and we had a really nice time seeing the boys and visiting with everyone.

The ham was incredible! Good job Kenter. The whole meal was fabulous.

May 13

Not much to say about today. We've been going at a good pace for a few days so we slowed things down a little. Leslie is making some freezable keto food with recipes she got from Rachelle last night. 

I'm doing another run with the mower/bagger over the thick part of our lawn. Got a few more bags of dry dead grass out. That was the highlights of our day.

May 14

Leslie is off to work for 9 am today so it's just Margaret and I. It's a tough day for me. My friend Mike has decided to buy the tractor. We agreed on a price and he is coming over with a trailer. I have mixed emotions whether this is a good idea but it's downsizing right? There are things all of us don't want to part with. Leslie will soon be saying good bye to the Mustang for instance, just not to the idiot that figured I should sell it for $10k. Yeah that's a great downpayment till you bring the rest. 

Mike came over and I helped him with learning some of the stuff about the tractor and mower. We hooked up the rototiller at the same time and loaded all the implements on his trailer and my truck. I followed him to his place and we offloaded everything and then I showed him how you can rototill with the mower still hanging underneath. It's a great tractor and I will miss it.

Last pic in my garage.

Following the tractor to it's new home. 

From there I drove to town and deposited the check. That made me  feel a bit better lol.

May 15, 16

Leslie worked both days and I just did more stuff at home. Got a couple more ridiculous offers on the car from Kijiji. Some people!! Really? You can't be serious. Frustrating task selling this car. We have a low but serious offer from our local Ford dealership and it's starting to look better all the time if I have to deal with all these low ball offers. 

May 17

We talked at length about the Mustang over the last couple of days and have decided to take the dealership offer. It's less than what I would have liked but they can have a check ready today. I just don't have the time or the patience to play the game. This way we can go back to PGR and put the plate on the Subaru and we're done. 

Saying good bye at the Ford dealer.

So with another check in the bank I can think of only one way to feel better. Let's go look at a new zero turn mower!! Leslie isn't quite as excited but she'll like it. You'll see.

We stopped at Extreme Power Products in St. Paul on the way through and didn't actually buy a mower but they are bringing one from their other store for us to "look" at when we come back to Bonnyville next week.

We continued on our trip to Pineridge with the trailer and backed into our site in the late afternoon. The highways are super busy with all kinds of RV's and trailers. We forgot that we are travelling on the Friday of a long weekend. The May long weekend is when all the RV's get dusted off. It was a little slower than normal but we're back safe and sound.

We have more projects planned for the coming week but we'll post them in another blog. Stay tuned.

Cheers everybody.