California, Santa Clarita Mar 19-30, 2015

Santa Clarita, California  This is where our daughter Michelle and her family have lived for several years.  It is fun to visit her, for she always has a Daddy-Do list that is longer than my arm.  But I do enjoy doing the work for her.   This visit was very productive.

Kiah and Bridger in the backyard.   They are all growing up way too fast.

Our beautiful daughter Michelle

Kaden, the oldest of our California grand kids,  taking a snooze before going back to work on the shower in Michelle's bedroom.

My first project was to relocate the plumbing in the shower. 

They had me redesign the shower from a two handle system to a single handle one.  

Sam is inspecting my work.  It did not leak when it was finished.

Michelle also had to see the finished plumbing job.  The wall system they used, I had never seen it before.  Michelle and Kaden did all the work of cutting and attaching the wall system.  Kaden would get on the computer and watch videos of how to put this system together for hours.  He would send me pictures of what he had done.  Both Kaden and Michelle did an awesome  job on the shower and I'm so proud of them.

Bridger has a new hobby of making jewelry out of old coins.  So I got him a new set of files to help him do his work. He is the only kid that I know that has a 20 lb. anvil in his bedroom.

Michelle loves her Daddy.  Well and her Daddy loves her too xoxoxoxoxo

Pizza lunch break

Bridger and Zoe taking a break from a heated Phase 10 game.

Kaden and his dog Toby.  Toby is a fanatic when it comes to tennis balls, even worse than Zoe.

Nap time at the Harrison's - A dog at rest, is a quiet dog
 Toby - Tanna - Maxwell

Zoe has to rest on her pillow because she think she's a princess.

Michelle's next project for me was to replace the fan and light in her bedroom.  I enlisted the help of Kiah to do the job with me.  What a smart girl.  She kinda took over the project and had me as her assistant.  Here she is taking down the old fan and light.  

I just kinda stood there and watched her do her thing.

Here I am helping Kiah put together the new fan.  She is just like me,  don't have to read the instructions just look at the picture and do the job.

Here it is, running and the light works.

I am so proud of this girl.  She is soooooo smart.  I had such a good time being her assistant on this project.

Kay and Michelle decided to make some BBQ sauce.  They made two batches of it and ended up with 22  pints,  Where are the ribs?

You will have to ask Kay what all went into this mixture.  All I know it sure did taste good when it was done.

I think Kay is cutting up the bacon for the BBQ sauce

This is the first batch cooling on the counter.  Eleven pints out of the first one.  I marked it hot, but it was not that hot, in fact it was quite mild.

Here are the cooks.

All I did was help Kay hot pack the jars.  Kay and I love to can stuff together.

Michelle's dog Toby, what a sweet dog.

Michelle's dog Tanna.

Kiah at the kitchen counter.  She hates when I take pictures of her.

Now for the next project, to fix the kitchen sink.  Let me tell you the story about this sink.  When Michelle had her new granite counter put in,  The sink was held up by two little wooden wedges.  The seal they used for the sink did not work,  so after time it rotted out and the sink started to fall.  What I had to do was design some wooden brackets to hold the sink into place.  First I put a good bead of sealant around the edge of the rim of the sink.  Than I got my hydraulic jack from the truck and forced the sink up into position, that way I could get my brackets up snug.  I let that set over night, and the next day I put the final bead of sealant around the sink and the granite counter top.  It worked out very well and Michelle was happy.

Kaden doing something for the shower remodel

These two roses were growing outside of our RV at Valencia Travel Village

Kay and I and the Dogs drove east of Santa Clarita to the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve to see the poppy's in bloom.  The following pictures are from this trip.  Hope you enjoy them as much as we did taking them.

We came across this little bug as we were hiking the tail.  I have no idea what it is.

We also found this Desert Spiny Lizard hiding in the bushes.  You'll have to look real close to find it.

One can't have pictures of flowers with out some kind of bug, or worm in one of them.

The purple flower is Owl's Clover.

It sure was a nice day to visit the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve.  I guess there would have been many more poppies if we had come here a few weeks earlier.  But we enjoyed it anyway.

 .

Kay and I did a big fish fry with some of the fish I caught while we were at Port Aransas, Texas this past fall.  

We cooked a lot of fish, Sheep's Head, Red Drum, Spotted Sea Trout and the Harrison's ate all of it.  I did keep some for when Kay and I get back to Denver.

All my work is done.  Time to relax and try to get my Itunes loaded from Kay's computer with a little help from the boys.  Was a good stay at Michelle's home.  I wish we could have stayed longer to help her with some more of her projects.  Guess there is always next time, and I am sure she will have another long list.