Buying a Blade for the Grader

Our Colorado neighborhood has its roads maintained by a John Deere road grader. This grader has the typical center mount blade as well as a wing blade to push snow back from the road edge and allow more snow to be plowed by the center blade.

The grader can also support a front mounted blade, but the one we currently have is better suited to plowing snow on paved surfaces rather than our unpaved roads. It was time to find another front mount blade that could be adapted to work with our grader.

To that end we searched the surplus plows stored at our local county yard and found one that will work.

Checking dimensions

We showed up with a flatbed trailer to take delivery  of the plow blade

It takes a pretty good sized piece of equipment to move a big blade

The County workers affixed chains to the blade

Heavy equipment operator did a good job moving that out of a tightly confined space

Loaded and ready to take to be fit to our grader

The welders did a good job of installing the blade

We'll get to see this winter how it does 

Christmas time 2019

We made it to Kansas to spend the Holidays with the family . What follows are some of the highlights of our time in December of 2019.

Greta and Wesley had Christmas concerts and we got to see them sing

Greta is wearing the red plaid skirt

Wesley is right in the center of this image

The Frank Lloyd Wright Allen House Christmas gathering had a harpist playing - beautiful music.

Table was set  for Holiday dining 

There is an Arts and Craft home at 2nd and Bluff in Wichita, KS that was having an estate sale. I was told to not miss seeing the lighting inside 

It was well done

We visited a few model train shows and captured a few images of interest

I thought this one captured the feel of a European vineyard quite well

A parade down main street in 1/160th scale

                                        

Hi There!

Mandy Wesley, Sean and Greta

There is one home in Rose Hill, KS that completely fills the yard and house with Christmas lights. It is now a tradition to stop by and see what all they have done.

Emery, Betsy Blake and Bennett

                                         

Wesley by the tree

Emery awaiting gift opening

Waiting to see what someone else received

Lighted necklaces set the mood

Sean and Mandy

We went to the Augusta KS playground to let the kids burn off some energy

The big hit is the zip line swing

Here goes Grandma

...and she's off...

Bennett enjoying himself

Greta taking off

Mandy being pushed up to the launch platform

Wesley on the bars

Nifty Nuthouse is a Wichita tradition for nuts and candy. We had to make a stop there

The shoppers

                                 

Jelly beans and candy korn were the big hits

Downtown by the tracks are some buildings sprayed with graffiti. We took the grands there and told them to strike a pose... 

The boxcar also has interesting (and a bit disturbing) tag art

Mandy joined in for a pose

Me too!

I as able to give Julie and Betsy a tour of the Frank Lloyd Wright Allen House located in the College Hill neighborhood

Had a great time watching Blake, Emery and Bennett show us their skating skills and hockey moves