Leila Turns One (and a Day in the Life of Jon the Power Worker)

Well, Saturday was Leila's first birthday. Hard to believe that it's already been a year!

As you can see, Jon finally let me trim the bangs that were always hanging in her eyes. Two snips of the scissors took care of the problem.

We celebrated quietly at home. We'd been expecting John and Jim to come over, but they had to postpone their visit till next weekend.

The "weekend" started Thursday night, when Jon came home. We ate at Little Italy that night, and it felt so much like a Friday I accidentally let the kids stay up past nine (forgot it was a school night!). Of course, they don't remind me of their bedtime, if I happen to overlook it...

Here you can see how Leila's toys have started taking over our living room:

On Saturday we had cake and ice cream for Leila, and opened her presents. More toys! The bristle blocks I got for her were a big hit with Emma, who immediately started building little mechanical structures. Bristle Block technology has really made strides since Mikey and Emma's toddler days; now there are circular blocks that rotate on axis so your little Einstein can build a moving vehicle.

Leila just likes sticking them in her mouth, at this point.

Leila received several birthday calls that day, including a call from big sister Susan in West Virginia.

Emma surprised us by raking this trail up to her "hideout" on Saturday. I was pretty impressed. Emma's very creative and industrious. She's always finding ways to personalize her world. I told her, "We should call that Emma Road!" so she made a sign with that name on it. Jon helped her put the sign up by posting it on one of my old free-standing thrift sale signs. He also helped her move a couple of benches up to her hideout.

Here's a picture of our house, taken from Emma's hideout.

The two of them also made a couple of trips up to the farm this weekend. Remember Emma's chickens, Dot and Pumpkin? Well, it turns out Dot's a rooster.

Jon bought a Burley bike trailer, so the whole family was able to go for a bike ride this weekend. Leila really liked the ride. The rest of us were preoccupied with noticing how out of shape we were, pedaling against the wind and up and down our Colfax hills. We're going to have to work on that...

I wanted to post a few pictures from Jon's work site in Tower, Minnesota. One of the guys has a small remote-controlled airplane that he's attached a camera to. So he was able to get some interesting aerial shots of where they're working.

The land they're working in is pretty remote and rather swampy.

The red equipment below is a shoring box. They use this to prevent the surrounding earth from caving in when they dig a hole for the powerline pole. In wet places like this, the box fills with water.

One environmental precaution they have to take is driving their heavy equipment on wooden mats. You can see one of the mats in the photo below:

Jon usually operates the cranes and other heavy equipment. Look carefully in the photo below and you can see him operating a crane boom. He says he spends a lot of time on this particular machine.

Jon says that the "rock stars" of the power line world are line-men. They're the ones who climb the poles and even travel precariously along the wires to install bird deflectors, among other things.

Look closely: there's a lineman on top the pole pictured above. He climbed the pole with cleats. He's attached to it by a small tether. Suppose it's windy up there??

Here's a lineman traveling across an electrical wire. He sitting on a moving seat that slides across the wire while he pedals.

In the photo below, you can see the bird deflectors he's hung up. The idea is to make the line more visible, so that birds don't fly into it and injure or electrocute themselves.

Well, thought you might enjoy a glimpse into Jon's working world these days! I found it interesting.

I better sign off for now. Take care!!