Beautiful Weather and Removing a Dying Tree

 Last Sunday while Kim was at a meeting I took the kids to Falls Park. We checked out the falls. They had lots of water moving through them with the dam fully open.

This is what they looked like with a fast shutter speed

And this is with a slow shutter speed

The kids always like exploring there

It was a beautiful afternoon

Here is a video of the falls

Henry playing in the sand box with his friend

Our neighbors' new puppy

We had some warm days this week

We also had some crazy thunder and lightning storms. I should have tried to get some lightning pictures earlier in the storm when conditions were best but I didn't. This is the best I got.

Henry helped me take some dirt and debris to the dump

Another dog

Nixon made dinner Friday night

Kim got some beautiful flowers this week from a friend

This tree in our front yard has beetles and needed to be removed

We had someone come out bright and early yesterday morning to take it down

Meanwhile Mason was teaching Henry some origami

He climbed up and started dropping the branches

We told him we would take care of all the branches (cutting them up and hauling them to the dump) so we could keep the costs down. There was a lot of looking up in amazement.

Our neighbor Mick helped with his chain saw

Kim borrowed a dump trailer from a friend

We had all the muscle we needed to get the job done

We found out that the tree guy (our first Bishop when we moved to Post Falls) is actually afraid of heights

The most exciting part was when he dropped the top 20 or so feet of the tree with all the branches still on (you can see it in the videos)

Then he had to start dropping the trunk

When those pieces of the trunk hit the ground they hit really hard

This was all the wood that we didn't take to the dump. We put it on Facebook Marketplace for free firewood and it was completely gone in a couple of hours.

Mick also pulled the trailer to the dump because my truck doesn't have trailer brakes and the weight of the empty trailer alone (4,800 lbs) is near the max towing capacity of my truck. We dumped 2,800 pounds of branches at the dump. It was so satisfying pressing a button and seeing it all fall out of the trailer (compared to all the work loading the trailer)

Here is a video of a few clips of the tree removal

Here is the whole process as a timelapse. It took just over three hours to get the trailer loaded and ready to take to the dump. The dump went fast since it was a little rainy.

After that we were exhausted and I took the three boys to see the new Super Mario Brothers movie

Where was Lyza during all of this excitement? She and her Math is Cool team got to go to Moses Lake, WA (2 hours away) for a math competition.

 Her team placed 4th overall. Good job Lyza!

We finished off the day playing a couple games of Monopoly Jr. and Mason CREAMED us!

I am excited for a day of rest. Have a good week.