King's Highway: What I Did This Summer…….

Or, why didn’t we travel and do blog postings???? It has been a little over three months since we posted! In that time period, we only made two ‘three-day’ weekend trips. In late August, we took the grandkids on an ‘end of summer’ vacation before school started, but our camera was broke……….. so no pictures! We have since replaced it.

We took the kids to the Children’s Museum of Houston for a day, and then to the Boardwalk at Kemah and the beaches at Galveston. They had a great time

Our oldest, six year old Matthew, started regular school this year, so traveling with him will become more restricted. We will still be able to travel with five year old Aubrey.

The other trip was to the Labor Day campout of the Texas Boomers RV Group who celebrated their 10th anniversary of the club. I had my new camera, and took a few pictures. The best were of the ladies of the group making a 20 foot long banana split…………..

Of course, when you put RV’ers together with weapons, like a can of whipped cream, things can get out of hand……..

Most of the summer, we stayed around Victoria to help our son and daughter-in-law get moved into their new home in the country. They began building in Dec 09, and it was finished up in mid-June ‘10. Concurrently, my son is working on a project to build and start up a new facility at the Formosa Plastics plant which began around the first of June. That is when he started working 7 days a week from about 6:00AM to around 9:00PM. He is still on that schedule, and expects to be complete around the middle to end of November!!

So, being the good Dad and Mom that we are, we have been helping them get moved, including helping to haul all of their furniture and stuff from various storage areas to the house and unloading. It is important to note that they had a buyer for their old house, but had to move out about six weeks before the new one was finished. Their family of four moved into our home…. which was the driving force for our early June trip documented above!!! Our son, Rick, did manage to get two full days off to help with the move…….. the only days that he has had off in the past 75 days.

I have also been doing the things that Rick would have normally done after moving into a new home. I have made pegboard frames and hung them in the garage, and set up his workbench, shelving, and storage. I also helped his father-in-laws crew lay 20 pallets of grass around the house, set up with a local contractor to finish paving the driveway (after Rick and I laid it out one night), mowing and clearing the property to get the grass growing in places where we did not sod, and deciding what kind of “zero-turn” mower to buy, and then making the purchase.

Here are some pictures:

Pouring the Driveway………

The following picture shows the 10 one inch PVC pipes that we laid under the driveway for future electrical and yard sprinkler piping access……..

The following was my view from inside the garage, the only shade in the hot summer heat……

And the finished project with the grass having some time to grow……….

To get to the last picture from the one before it, a lot of work was involved. In the beginning, I used Rick’s tractor and shredder…………

As the grounds got smoother, and most of the debri was picked up, we purchased a “zero-turn” commercial lawnmower…….

The zero-turn does a great job of cutting the lawn, and it is a lot of fun to operate!! I recently hauled it into town and cut the ditch behind my house with it…. in fact, I mowed mine and both neighbors beside me!!!!

On one of our trips, in the Fall of 2008, we purchased an Amish porch swing for our daughter-in-law. She chose to store it (in my Bus storage garage) until she had her new house. A couple of weeks ago, I put it up on her new porch. Here is a picture of Patsy sitting in it in Pennsylvania, and the install on her porch…..