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Maintenance Day

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Meagan and the kids went to the park for a home school group meet up. I took advantage of the time to get a little monthly maintenance done.

First up was cleaning out the lint on the washing machine. The model that we have, a Splendidie combo, has a procedure for washing out the lint filter. If you don’t do it periodically, it will block the dryer vent and throw an error code.

The maintenance cycle is to use an Affresh washer tabs (available at hardware stores or online), put the washer on cycle 11 until it stops filling, cancel the cycle, start it on cycle 12 until it fills (more) and stops spinning, then stop it, and drain the water out. There will be lint and other yuck left behind, which you wipe out.

The process takes 3 cycles to be done.

Wash cycle in progress.
Lint balls wiped out of the washer after two cycles. A fair amount of trapped lint was caught.
I also took the opportunity to remove and clean out the dryer hose. It’s not blocked, but there is a fair amount of buildup.
I washed out the dryer exhaust hose and got a fair amount of lint out. As a bonus, one of the kid’s Nerf darts came out, which is mildly concerning.

I also did black tank maintenance, which normally happens every 3-4 days with our usage.

I cleaned the AC return filters and the bathroom exhaust fan with the mini shop vac. The fan tends to collect a lot of dust/lint and if not regularly cleaned, will get blocked and not vent the humidity from the bathroom.

I also took the opportunity to replace a broken seat latch on the van (2016 Sienna). This is one of the rear seat latch handles, used for stowing the seats. Some time ago it broke, so when you pulled up on it to stow it, nothing would happen.

The part was actually fairly cheap, about $30 online and took about 5 minutes to replace – 2 steel cables and 2 screws.

The broken handle. I used a spudger to pop the access panel off to reveal the screws.
Close up of the broken handle. The two cams on the back had broken, so when you lifted the handle no force was applied to the cables, and thus the release mechanisms.

Kiddo update

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We did one of Jarek’s Cub Scout adventures, cast iron cooking. The requirement for him was to cook a meal over a fire. We started the fire using a flint and steel. Jarek learned a lot about building a fire and having the fuel ready to go. It was a good introduction to fire basics.

We made an impromptu stove with a couple bricks.

While waiting for the wood to burn down, Garrett came over and, being super cute, asked “Can I join?”

Arya got in on the cooking as well.

Burger cooking underway.

Randal got the first part of his third tooth out! We will be very happy when it’s all the way out, as the teething process has been a bit frustrating for all involved. Randal has been sitting up and crawling about now. He’s working on pulling himself up to a standing position. He’s done that once or twice so far.

A happy Garrett at Fox Meadow park during a home school meet up play session.

Garrett went with Meagan and Arya to dance class. While waiting for Arya to finish her dance lesson, he picked up a book and said, “This is my book” and took it inside to read.

New Jackpads for the RV

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Parking the RV in the sand has always been an interesting prospect, as it tends to sink into the sand on one side or the other. This gets frustrating as the RV starts torquing itself as one corner sinks.

I had previously attempted to make a platform for the RV out of a 2×12, but it didn’t work out that well. Not to mention when we set it up, we were rushed at night after a long day of driving to get back to Florida. This led to a suboptimal setup. The boards weren’t really long enough or wide enough to accommodate the RV if it wasn’t perfectly lined up. Of course, as soon as I backed the RV onto the boards, they moved, and the RV was carving channels in the soft sand which complicated it further.

This was one of the metal feet for the hydraulic jacks that bent when the 2×12 board gave way under the weight of the RV. It was a less than stable platform.

I replaced the jack pad and placed my new footers for the jacks.

The new jackpads are constructed out of two 2 x 10 segments with a second layer of 2x10s running the opposite direction. This gives the rig a little elevation boost as well as greatly increasing the surface area the weight is spread over. This should, hopefully, reduce the sinking effect in the sand.

A Ducky Moment

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Ducky was working hard on his Legos. He took the napkin, and after cleaning his hands and face, wore it like an ascot. Then it fell off and he said *oh shi(p/t). Our neighbor, Jill, lost it laughing and I told her she was feeding the monster. A few moments later, Duckie roared, “I dragon – roar!”

Randal – 4 Weeks

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Randal is 4 weeks old now! He is eating and sleeping a lot. He has recently started standing/pushing off his feet. He has been holding his head up a lot more as well as wiggling a lot.

2022 In Review

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Dear Friends and Family,

Welcome to our 2022 year in review letter! We are trying something a little different this year. We have decided to start a new blog for our new family adventures.  The old blog, if you were familiar with it, is still up for now, but will probably go into archives before long.

This year’s letter is a bit later than we would have liked.  The story starts at the end of 2022 when we sold our home in New Jersey and hit the road in the RV.  The last few months have been very busy and some unexpected family issues came up which contributed to the delays. Then, after the family matters were handled, it was on to the move.  I spent February back on the road moving our household goods out of New Jersey. That took pretty much all of February and we had some other affairs to settle in early March.  That is all done now, and so without further delay, let’s get to 2022 in review!

We took over 10,000 pictures in 2022.  Below is a small selection of them and some notes about events that occurred.

For each of the below pictures, you may click through to a higher resolution picture.  Click once to go to the picture comment page, a second time on the image for the high resolution image.

This post may contain affiliate links.

January 2022

 

Jarek and Arya standing next to their tower
Jarek and Arya standing next to their tower

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A Pressing Matter! – Making homemade cider

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Today we processed some apples into homemade apple cider.  We combined the event with a Cub Scout requirement for the Bear Den.  The kids had a lot of fun sorting the apples and removing the bad apples from the bunch.  This was a smaller batch than what we did last year, due to the upcoming move.  Last year I made 15 gallons of cider which I fermented into hard cider, on top of some additional regular cider.

Once the apples were washed and sorted, then it was time to grind them up.  I don’ have a picture of them using the grinder, but you can see it on the ground in the pictures below.

The grinder, known as the “maximizer” grinds the apples into chunks which increases the juice yield.

Our friend and fellow Cub Scout, B, pressing his apples.

Garrett enjoyed some frozen blueberries for a snack before his nap.

Evan took a turn cranking down the press, followed by big brother.

Out of the three bags of apples, we got about 4 gallons of juice.  The bags of seconds were $8 each, so not a bad yield.  The kids asked what we were going to do with the rest of the apples.  I said we were going to convert them to eggs!  The chickens were quite thrilled to get the pile to pick through.