For What It's Worth...

Things here have been quiet...just getting things done. :) In case I'm looking back later and trying to remember...

Yard/house work. We're still waiting for the schedule to open up for some exterior house painting and replacement of gutters from the hail storm at the start of July. In the meantime, the sprinkler system in the backyard has been lovely.

Mid-summer we noticed a leak in the backyard. We've had the same issue before so knew where the valve was. Got someone out to look at it and discovered that it wasn't the valve it had been before but instead was a leak probably under our paver patio (which had previously been a wooden deck). Awesome. Rather than have them dig around under the patio to try to find the leak or re-routing the lines around that (which was estimated to cost more than $1000), we opted to have them install a master valve so that it only leaked when the sprinkler system was running. (We'd basically been doing that anyhow by shutting the system completely off manually between times when the sprinklers were going...but, because we water in the middle of the night, it was still leaking more than we wanted.) Got that done and all seemed good.

Then. A few weeks ago I realized that the sprinklers weren't actually running when they said they were running. After some investigation, Nathan determined that the leak under the patio had sprung such that all the water was coming out there when the system was running. Not good. 

On the plus side, the leak turned out to be just at the edge of the patio, not all the way under it. Whew! But the weight of the patio was definitely contributing to the leak, meaning that the valves and pipes had to be rearranged. So. After numerous trips to Home Depot and Lowe's and lots of measuring and remeasuring, Nathan is now more familiar with our sprinkler system than he'd like and our leak is finally gone. Hooray!

Horsetooth Reservoir. Surprisingly, though we've lived here for seventeen years, we'd never been to Horsetooth Reservoir (beyond just driving by). Over Labor Day weekend, Micah and the demo team organized themselves a water gathering and we finally visited the swim area. The teens had a fabulous time and even let me take a quick picture at the start of the day. One of them brought a bunch of fun water "toys"...kayaks and paddle boards and such...and they had a blast. 

That first picture might as well be a poster for how karate and demo team will keep you fit, lol. The second picture shows Micah and Naomi having a balance battle on the inflatable kayak. Micah didn't win. ;) 

(Incidentally, that big umbrella in the backyard picture came in very handy at the reservoir. Yay for remembering that we even had it...we got it back in the days when boys were playing soccer and hadn't used it in ages.)

Jury duty. So. Noah got a jury summons last week. :D

(I've only ever been called for jury duty once. We were living in Eugene at the time and I was almost immediately excused on account of being a nursing mom and working for the City Attorney's office at the time, lol. Nathan's actually served on a jury here in Fort Collins. The trial lasted a few days.) 

Fortunately for Noah...given the timing of the summons and of midterms...he was able to get it postponed until during winter break. 

Climbing. Yup, we're still climbing here. Micah and I get to Ascent about three times a week, though now that the school year is going we only actually climb together one of those times. Micah has class two nights a week that he's been enjoying and learning from. Last weekend, we convinced Nathan to climb with us for a bit, as he hadn't been in awhile. :) 

Children's Hospital. Yesterday, Micah had another follow up appointment down in Denver. Everything's going pretty well! We've managed to get the arthritis under control over the summer and have stopped medication altogether in the past week. The pediatric rheumatologist recommends we just keep doing what we're doing. (For those who are curious, mostly we've switched to a gluten and sugar free diet with limited dairy and added some specific supplements.) So, we're just sticking with how things are for the time being. Micah will have another follow up in about six months. Whew.

And that's some of what's been going on around here... :) Happy Friday the 13th to you!