Mialkowski Family News

Geez, it’s been MONTHS since I last updated this thing. Not to mention the 500 or so spam comments I had to moderate through. I’ve upgraded the WordPress software to its current version and have activated an anti-spam function so that should help. Lots of backblogs to come. Katherine’s camera died (too bad, it’s a Canon and I had high hopes for that brand) so we’re kinda low on pictures from the Holidays.

See, I always try to catch up with past activities! Anyways, so we met up with the same friends as from the Labor Day picnic and we all went to the fair. They have a boy within a month of Lily’s age. Below is Katherine taking Lily on the carousel. Lily likes carousels, she’s been on them at the Mall of Georgia and Dollywood.

And now, it’s daddy’s turn to take Lily in a circle, except this time, it’s going to be on a real live pony!

Let’s see, we ate some pizza, italian sausage sandiwch, corndogs bbq sandwich, Ah, I remember last year, the Krystal‘s (like White Castle) trailer was there and they were having contests all day long for who can eat the most Krystal’s in 120 seconds. Katherine and I entered. I ate 8 of them little burgers and I came in 1st for that heat!!! That’s only because I had pizza shortly before I knew they were doing the thing.

On the day before Labor Day, we had a nice picnic and cookout at Stone Mountain Park with some friends. We grilled burgers (91% fat free [a little dry]) and fat-free hot dogs. They actually have a special fenced in area where you have to grill so naturally the cops came and told me to move my grill. Luckily, it was a Weber Smokey Joe so, with the help of a glove, I moved it waaaaaay over to the fenced in place. Lily kicked a soccer ball around and played in their playground.

Yes, it’s true, we found a new great repair shop and they said that the motor is vibrating due to the transmission mounts needing to be replaced. So…just $120 later and the wagon is whisper quiet. We never imagined it even had the ability to drive so quietly, I actually have to turn the radio down instead of up! I also mentioned that the blower for the A/C had gone out and he got it working by smacking it with a hammer. He told me where it was located so one afternoon I proceeded to take it apart to see if I could get a replacement part myself. Well, I got it out and learned how it worked (and didn’t work). I put it back in and banged on it until it came on. So until I get to the junkyard to find a replacement blower, I’ll just teach Katherine how to play Whack-A-Mole with the car’s blower so she’ll (and the baby) will get some A/C blasting through the wagon (which does have more volume of air to cool since it’s a wagon). To finish things up, I have a longgggg weekend since I took tomorrow and Tuesday (Monday’s a Holiday) off. I’ll post some pics of whatever we end up doing – weather permitting as usual. Later…

Oops, I forgot to add in two great pictures from the Gatlinburg vacation. The one below was taken at DollyWood while Katherine and I were riding on the Tennessee Tornado roller coaster.

And then the one below was taken in Pigeon Forge on some kiddie ride:

We sure had fun up there in the Great Smoky Mountains. Since we had cabins, we grilled out like every day. For the trip up I bought a cassette adapter that one end you stick into a cassette deck in your car and the other end fits into your MP3 player. It worked, but the Volvo rattles and roars so much that you couldn’t really enjoy the audio books and short stories that I had piled onto it.