I went for a run one morning and found that the belt of the treadmill was slipping quite a bit. Pulled out the manual, tried tightening the walking belt, didn't help. Put it on the back burner for a couple days (weeks). Eventually found myself bored and took off the cover, found quite a bit of black dust. The internet said that it could be the motor belt as well.
I marked the belt and roller to see where the belt was slipping, this confirmed that it was the motor belt. I called up the support center to order the part. He had me move the tension spring up to the next setting, which fixed the problem as well. This confirmed that the motor belt was failing, so I ordered the part, $40 for the a simple belt... Well cheaper than a new treadmill I guess.
You can see in the bottom picture where I drew a line with white out to see if the pulley was slipping on the roller. I also made a line on the axel from the motor onto the belt and I could see that move when the walking belt would slip.
As you could see we started clearing our land 2 weeks ago, when my dad brought over his new tractor. We have come a long way in 2 weeks. What started as clearing for a playset, turned into a destroy the lot while having fun on the tractor time. Yesterday we had to say good bye to the orange beast, but I think it has served us very well :)
On Sunday we hooked up the tiller attachment and it cleared the area, and made a nice bed for planting. It was pretty amazing how much we were able to get done in such a short amount of time. Now we have to get back to manually raking and seeding.
We continue to work on clearing the area for the kids playset.
I also cleared a path up to the road on the opposite side of the lot. We might be able to use that to drive down to the bottom, while we are working on putting grass in the back yard.
My parent bought honeycrisp apple trees for Nick and Maddy when they were born and we have those planted along the driveway. Last fall in October we purchased a bunch more apple trees, when they went to 75% off. We also picked up a flowering pear and a couple of pear trees.
I was worried about the trees, because of the lack of snow cover and occational cold temperature during the winter. But they are budding out and look to be doing just fine.
Received our property tax statement for this year and the estimated valuation for next year...
The value of our house:
2011 - 390k
2012 - 380k
2013 - 330k (est.)
Our taxes went up a bit in 2012, even though the value when down a bit. I am sure hoping that we see a big reduction in 2013 though. Pretty insane what the value of our home has done. When it was appraised for the initial loan it was worth 540k (the appraisal). When we refinanced in October it appraised for 430k; that hurt because we had to pay 60k to stay under 80%.
Oh well, it is in our best interest for the value to go down, because we have no plans to sell it for many, many years and our taxes should go down with the value. Only negative is that we would like to get a HELOC so that we can do some improvements.
Grandma and Grandpa came over and brought Grandpa his new toy :)
We spend the day clearing and working on cleaning up the area where we are going to be erecting a play set for the kiddo's!
It has been an eventful year for our family, starting last November I along with a 1000 others were informed that Lockheed would be closing its facility in Eagan. I started interviewing right away and in January was extended an offer to work for Trane in White Bear Lake. Working with Trane and Lockheed I was able to start my new job in March, but continue with Lockheed until my layoff date in April (it was a very busy month). Since then work has been good, no travel and normal hour, which has been good since...
We welcomed our daughter Madelyn Olivia in August! She came into the world in quite a rush. Jen woke up at 4am and Maddie was born a little after 6am! Life with 2 kids has been very different than life with 1, but very wonderful. Maddie is doing very well and really starting to develop her personality. She is very fond of her brother as well :)
Nick is growing into quite the "big boy," his biggest accomplishment recently has been to shed the diapers and start using the toilet.
- Why does Nick have juice? Because Nicholas needs juice.
- I no need nap. it's in here, it's in my body.
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Jen is taking the year off to care for Nick and Maddie, and loving it! She has become very strong from carrying Maddie around while playing with Nick,
Apparently I never got around to finishing this letter (shocking), but I thought I would publish it anyways :)
