Icebreakers hockey

this last weekend I had the honor of being invited to McCall for the icebreakers hockey tournament, by my nephew Jake. This is him in the locker room before the game, it is 6:45 am on Sunday morning and we are all still a little sleepy. We stayed up too late playing in the pool.
The team that we were playing was the Sun Valley team, they are good! Sun Valley has two teams and we played the other team on Saturday, Both teams have at least one kid that should have been on the Olympic speed skating team, Them boys was fast.


Here is a picture of the 'mites waiting for our game to finish, they are up next, and were taking turns punching each other in the face. Number 4 put number 21 on his rump and then pounced on top of him and proceeded to wail away until mom pulled him off. He is 3 and spent more time face down on the ice than he did chasing the puck.
We lost 6 to 0 but it was early, we were all tired, we hadn't had breakfast yet, no more excuses, they were just better than us. Everyone had a great time any way.
Here is our goalie running from the barrage of snowballs that is about to assail her. This was her third time playing goalie and she did an great job. Her name is Erica.
Here is Jake again that is my brother behind him, see the fuzzy hand on the right? That was Brogan's hand just before he hit me in the face with a snowball. He spent the rest of the day going face first into snowbanks, I think I may have missed one or two snowbanks, but I made sure that the imprint of his face was in everyone he got close enough to.
Winter in McCall, can't say that I miss it, but it sure is pretty. I had a wonderful weekend, and am glad I made the drive. Thank you for inviting me Jake.

OH POO!

The bathroom remodel is almost done, not our bathroom someone Else's. How do people live like this? The toilet had been leaking for quite some time and the stick on tiles were falling apart. The sub floor was the consistency of corn meal mush and came up rather easily with a 4" putty knife. When I pulled the toilet out the lady of the house asked me "How did all that mud get under the toilet?" my response was "That's not MUD". After a few seconds of bewilderment she said "Oh? poo!", "right" I said and went about cleaning it up.

Well 3 weeks later the finished product is amazing, new vanity and sink, toilet, and tub with surround. Totally rebuilt floor with new vinyl and base molding.

2 things that I learned from this job are 1. If you think you are cross threading a bolt or pipe you probably are, don't force it, and 2. flush the waterlines before you connect the faucets. Large tap and die sets are expensive and faucets clog easy.




This was a good practice job for me so now it is time to do my own bathroom, we really need a new tub. Aarin wants to do a tile surround, so that ought to be a new challenge, by new challenge I mean fun.