Damage Assessment

Following up on my earlier rain/basement flood post, in the end, we did have to cut out the drywall directly below the windowsill.  It was clear that while most of the water came down over the sill and onto the carpet, this area had wicked up some of the moisture into the drywall and was feeling a bit spongey.  I got some help from my friend/neighbor on how much to cut out so we made sure to get everything that could be compromised.  We dried this part out and made sure to mitigate any future mold growth in the area and could then work on figuring out how to patch this newfound feature in our basement wall.

Peak 2 Peak

 

Now this was a great day of cycling together!  I had always wanted to take Tara down one of my favorite stretches of mountain road to ride.  The hard part it usually to get here involves about a 2.5 hour climb up to ward and then traversing over a bit via Peak 2 Peak.  We had climbed to Ward once before, but Tara wasn't in for a ton more after that portion.  So, for this ride we actually parked at the base of Lyons where this loop would normally dump out and road up the canyon just past Raymond for a loop and then turned around for the amazing winding ride down next to the river.

As you can see above, we were both in good spirits just before the turn around point and then ready to enjoy the amazing descent.  Overall, the ride was a still a solid three-hour ride, so we got our money's worth.  Tara was also rocking my other pair of glasses to ensure she looked "pro enough".  Hopefully we get to do this ride again some time!

Pasta J's w/ Grandpa T

Soon after the guys got back from Washington, Grandpa T and Sandra were visiting from Arizona and took us to a great lunch at what Tara calls "The Garlic Factory" or by its formal name Pasta Jay's.  This also happens to be one of my favorite restaurants in Boulder, so I was clearly up for it.  

We got this nice front table with a view of the walking mall straight behind the me, but this picture is looking inward toward the whole crew.  It's always awesome to see these guys and we never seem to run out of stories to share.  All sorts of things that we never quite knew about either Tara's childhood or her Dad's former adventures seem to come out.  Thank you for lunch and the great company!

Washington Trip for the kids

Never to stay put too long in once place over the summer, Gavin and Gage headed out to visit Grandpa and Grandma Mike in Washington for a week in the middle of July.  They had quite the agenda and were actually joined for much of the trip by my Aunt Crista.  Here they are picking berries at a farm.  I am wondering how many berries made it directly into their mouths vs. into the buckets...

This is a picture from in front of the farm with this really cool, old Firetruck.

Another one of their favorite things to do while up there is to go island hopping and jump around on the various ferries to places like Widbey Island.  This picture is from the ferry on one of the days.  You can see them rocking their Uncle Adam's old football sweatshirts from his High School football days.

This is another picture from the benches on a ferry but was taken on a different day with Grandma Mike and the boys.  These guys came home with great stories of adventures and jokes.  They also always come back from a stay at Grandma and Grandpa's and let us know how good the food is there compared to what we have at home.  All good fun and I am grateful that they could spend the time up there making memories and having great experiences!

TK & GK

If there is one thing that rises to the top of Tara's value list, it is quality time.  This picture is from a rare lunch date with Gavin and Tara getting to spend some top-notch time together.  Times like this are becoming much rarer these days as both of our guys get older and are surely treasured!

Jokesters

Over the years, these two have had a love-hate relationship with each other.  The sometimes just love being together and then something will go south, and it moves over the hate side for a bit.  Perhaps that is just the normal brotherly love give and take.

However, we certainly enjoy them together much more when they are cracking each other up.  They always seem to have some sort of inside joke rolling and sometimes we can't even tell what is so funny...but at least they can.  It's awesome to see these two grow up together and have each other to lean on.

Rainstorms & Flooding

 This is the start to an unfortunate saga with our basement.  In the end, it was likely my fault for not doing a good job of clearing the rain gutters above this basement window.  We had some torrential down pour just after the 4th of July and with the gutters backed up, there was a literal river being dumped straight down this window well.  Eventually it was too much water to be contained by our old windows and it started flowing through...though it could have been much worse.

The carpet was super old and gross that had been down here so rather than trying to dry it out at all, I just decided today was the day we are going to make a move towards recarpeting down here.  So, I grabbed a knife and just cut out the old, wet carpet and assessed how bad it was.  It turns out that it wasn't that bad and with a few fans blowing overnight, we were mostly dry within 24 hours.  Unfortunately, there still would be a bit of work to do to clean this up besides just drying out the sub-floor a bit...

Grand Lake Trip

This was a full great day trip up to Grand Lake to visit my sister, Jackie, and her family, as well as my dad who was in town visiting.  With July 4th just around the corner, the weather is perfect up in these parts.  They had a nice campsite right next to the water where they were staying with all the water toys and fancy camping gear.

Here is Tara and Gavin taking a quick spin in two-person kayak.  I think this mostly went well, but sometimes the backseat driver has a bit too much advice for the person in the front of this kayak!

Karl grilled up some burgers for us all and here we all are getting ready to eat a nice lunch.

As you can see the view isn't terrible!  

Our guys always have a great time when we can extract them from the city life and turn them loose in the wild.  Here is the whole crew together shortly before an afternoon rain and windstorm moved in.  With the change in weather, we wrapped things up and headed back home for the evening.  Thanks, Jackie, for inviting us and sharing all of the things!