Member Missionaries

We had the a very fun primary activity on Friday. The presidency really put a lot of effort into this.

Two weeks before each of the children received an official-looking mission call in the mail. Emily was going to the Russia Vladivostok Mission and Josh was going to the Argentina Salta Mission. They were told to report to the MTC where they would catch the FUTURE MISSIONARY AIRLINES, FLIGHTS 2910 AND 722.

When they arrived they each had their picture taken and received a name tag. In the MTC they had to dress up like missionaries and make a peanut butter sandwich in a relay race.

Our chapel has a small upstairs with two classrooms. The kids were then told to go upstairs to board an airplane. They all croweded into a small room where they received snacks and watched a film of an airplane taking off, missionaries, and then the plane landing.


Afterward they all got off the plane and headed for their missions. There were four missions: Brazil, Argentina, Russia, and Oregon, and the kids were divided into four groups and spent 15 minutes in each mission. Graydon had a blast telling the kids all about the Oregon mission. Our friend Aaron told about his experiences in Brazil and then two sisters shared their experiences in Russia and Argentina. It was really neat. They then got a "Welcome Home" and almost listened to the actual missionaries in our stake, before devouring all the cookies and going home.
Russia
Oregon
Argentina
Brazil (He didn't have props, but his laptop presentation was great.)

These are the four groups as they reported to the Oregon Mission.

Sewer Problems, City Ordinances, and REALLY deep holes! Part 1

A few weeks ago someone from the city stopped by our house to inform us that they thought our sewer was connected to the storm drain in the area. Turns out they were right....

(that's the sewer in the middle of the road....our house somehow isn't hooked up to it.)

Now, when your home is built over 18 years ago, it's kind of hard to find the blue prints (Hint: They don't exist) and when your house gets connected to the wrong pipe, it's even harder to figure out where the sewer on the house meets the pipe that goes out to the road because the line it's hooked up to doesn't have a "clean out" on it. Go figure!

So, seeing as the city didn't want our "poop" going down the storm drain (and turns out neither did the county), we had to figure out where it was all connected and then figure out who gets to fix it!

How do you do this if you don't have blue prints? Why you get to hire some nice folks to come out with a really cool camera hooked to a long, long piece of wire/pipe like thing and they put it through your pipes and spray paint your lawn and street with where the pipes are!

(we had to take our toilet out in the bathroom and they stuck their camera down the hole...yes..eww, gross--But the camera was wayy cool!)

This is what the camera saw...

That would be the end of our "sewer" line out in our front yard dumping into the storm drain...not exactly where it's supposed to go.

So, they stuck the camera down the sewer lateral clean-out in our front yard (fancy word for "sewer pipe") that had never been hooked up to the sewer (stupid builders!) and lo and behold, out in the street look what it found?

The camera went through the pipe just fine until it got out in the street by our mail box and found a big, gaping hole. Turns out the "real" sewer line wasn't even hooked up! There was a piece of pipe missing (and a big cavern where the pipe should be). You can see the other piece of pipe in the shot above. This is the shot coming out of the pipe in the lawn.

So, out came the spray paint....

See that mark by the curb? That would be where the pipe is missing!

Here's a diagram of it... See the missing pipe?

Next came the fight with the city on who would fix the broken pipe. Thanks to my savvy brother-in-law lawyer who specializes in this sort of stuff, we got the city to fix the problem in the road.

Enter lots of big city trucks and big holes!

This is the truck that came to dig the hole

And that's the hole they started to dig.

 They dug it with a high pressure water thingy and a big vacuum. Quite impressive!

It got really deep! That pipe you see is our water main. The missing pipe was another 3-4 feet down!

So, they dug down to it, muttered a few "What in the world? I've never seen this before!", and fixed the pipe and filled in the hole.

 This is the finished hole. All fixed and ready to be re-paved.

The next day this showed up!

And, along with fixing our mess, they went about fixing potholes in the road as well.

I'd say they did a pretty good job!

So, now we have a sewer line all the way from the house to the road that's actually complete...but not hooked up to the house yet! That'll be part 2! You see, we get to dig an even DEEPER hole in our front lawn (7 feet to be exact) and unhook the pipe from the storm drain and hook it over to the newly fixed sewer line!

Have you ever heard the phrase..."A house is nothing more than a big hole in the ground that you throw money into!"?...well, we're living it! And it won't get us a single benefit! (well, except that now our poop ends up in the sewer instead of the storm drain...but hey, the storm drain worked perfectly well for 18 years. For some reason the city & the county didn't like it that way though....I sure wish the inspector for the city that "supposedly" inspected the sewer & land drain lines when the house was built  & said it was hooked up right was still around though! I'd love to give him a word or two!

Stay tuned for more big holes! They're coming soon to our front lawn!

Putting Things In Perspective

These images came from my dad in an email he received.
Kind of cool to see as it helps put our "monstrous" problems into a little perspective.

Earth in relation to some of the smaller planets

Now here's Earth in relation to some of the bigger planets

Earth in relation to our sun

Our sun in relation to other stars

Arcturus in relation to some other stars

Antares is the 15th brightest star in the sky. It's more than 1000 light years away but it's still in the same galaxy as earth.

Now, wrap your mind around this one....
This picture is a Hubble Telescope Ultra Deep Field Infrared View of countless 'Entire' Galaxies billions of light-years away.

Here's a close up of one of the darkest regions in the photo above. Each one of these galaxies contains millions of stars like our Sun, or larger stars like Antares.

Humbling, isn't it? Kind of puts things into perspective.

New Toys To Work On [Play With] at the Blairs

For the past few months I've been itching for a project to work on. In the past I've always had cars I could work on because they usually were so old that something always needed fixing.

However, in the past few years we've been blessed to be able to purchase vehicles that are new enough that they don't have anything wrong with them. I've also really wanted to start teaching Josh about cars so that as he gets older he'll know how to work on them.

With a project in mind to work on and play with, I started looking for older diesels so that I could tie the diesel part of it in with my business somehow as well (plus, I really like diesels!)

So, after a few months of looking at older Isuzu's, trucks, cars, and other diesels, I settled on getting an older Mercedes. The things are practically bullet proof and run forever.

Well, yesterday my dad went with me and I picked up my new "project" (toy). Josh is thrilled with it and already donned gloves yesterday when my dad & I started tearing into it. Now it just needs a name.

The toy has a 3 pointed star on it's hood....

Looks great from the front....

Has a fairly straight body (couple ding's & dents here & there)...

Has some lightly tinted windows....

Looks great from the rear....

Has a beautiful creme color interior complete with leather seats....

Back seat is in good shape too....

It comes with a very prestigious pedigree (S Class Mercedes were the flagship model)...

And best of all, it runs on diesel!

Josh & I are pretty excited to have it. Now it just needs some cleaning up, lots of elbow grease, and an inspection & emissions & we'll have a fun project car to drive around & slowly start restoring.

The car has very little rust on it, but does have 217,000 miles on it (that we can tell anyway, I tend to think it has even more than that from the Carfax, but hey, it's 25 years old & runs!). It has power seats, automatic climate control, rides really firm & smooth, and runs really well!

Let the work (fun) begin!