August, 2017

We headed to the Antioch Fairgrounds to watch an old friend play drums with his band, Contraband. We have known Danny since high school days and it was our first time seeing him play.

Karissa’s date this month was lunch at Primo’s followed by kart racing at the local Sunsplash. We had the track to ourselves and Karissa drove Pops around the track, chasing me and actually passing me up! She loved it, whooping and hollering around the turns with Pops. We topped it off at Coldstone for cotton candy ice cream and were joined by Michelle and Max who had made a trip to the mall. Later that week, Max and his Dad went on a camping trip with his scout troop so Karissa came to spend the night while her mom worked. We did the usual hot dog roast with s’mores but Pops was at an ARD event so it was just Karissa and me. We watched Frozen and had a great gals night.

Max and Karissa both started school again and love their new teachers. Good to see them excited and raring to go.

This was the month of the big US solar eclipse. The track for the total eclipse started in Oregon and travelled southwest to North Carolina. Here in California, only about ¼ of the sun was eclipsed but we did watch it.

This was definitely Karissa’s month. Her birthday was on the 25th and she had the whole family over for dinner and pumpkin pie. The next day, she had some friends join her in the park for another party.

Michelle has to work in a Loomis preschool for one of her classes so Pops and I get to see the kids every Tues and Thurs morning to take them to school. We also watched them for Back to School Night. Amazing how self sufficient they have become. No nagging needed to get things done and they do everything on their own. Easy job! We also got to spend a weekend babysitting Princess Zeke while Ryan and Beth went on theor annual camping trip to Rollins Lake.

We closed escrow on our Fortune Ct building and have joined Ryan and Beth in purchasing a new home that we will use for rental. We are now in escrow for a 3 bedroom 2 bath home off of Lonetree.

We finished off the month with a trip to Medford so that Rog could go to the Rogue Valley Model Railroader’s Open House. They open their displays to the public on the 2nd and 4th Sundays of every month and we had tried to see it on our trip to British Columbia last year but had forgotten our passports so had to make an unscheduled trip back to Rocklin to get them. It took us over a year to finally find a free weekend to get back up there. It was a little anticlimactic as they did not have the detail Rog would have liked, but it was interesting. They have 5 separate clubs with train displays ranging from large trains to ride on, through O scale, down to HO. We spent the night in Shasta City at the Koa we had stayed in once before and had a nice relaxing afternoon.

Whitney Blvd is in the midst of a huge PCWA project. This month, they removed the curb and installed a pipe so that all of the spring drainage would go directly into the pipe instead of keeping the curb wet and slimey all year. The tractor they used to trench destroyed the sidewalk so they had to remove the sidewalk and replace that. Once this is all done, they will resurface the street and we will be back to having cars using Whitney as a raceway to Sunset. Oh well. It has been nice while it lasts.