Earlier this month we had seen an article in our local newspaper about the Sikorsky X2, the world's fastest helicopter, being on display this week at the Elliott Museum in Stuart.
The museum also has Leonardo daVinci's Machines in Motion on display and it has 40 operational actual-size working machines made from daVinci's drawings.
We left the house this morning at 9:30 and drove south on US-1 to Ft. Pierce to A1A and then south to the Elliott Museum on Hutchinson Island - a trip of 48 miles. We arrived at the Elliott Museum a little after 10:40 and paid $20 (senior rate for 2) admission.
Just inside the museum entrance was a display of bicycles and machines invented by Sterling Elliott (the museum is named for him and his son Harmon). Among many of Sterling Elliott's inventions was a bicycle designed for women and the egg carton just to name a few.
Our next stop was at the Machines in Motion exhibit which is a traveling exhibit and has been at the Elliott Museum since March. It was great to see
Monday we finally got our wish and had a really heavy rain - 1.3". Our new rain gutters worked great, but we found out that we need a few plastic extenders for the gutter downspouts.
Tuesday we went to Capital Cabinets to pick up the new countertop for the guest bath - it looks great and wasn't too expensive - $65. We also stopped by Home Depot and bought a few extenders for our gutters.
Wednesday Mike installed the new countertop, sink and faucet in the guest bathroom - they look great.
We have a couple of rose bushes in our back yard growing on an arbor and one of the roses has been blooming. I cut a couple of the roses and put them in a small creamer we had.
I also took a photo of the rose bush and thought I would include them in today's post.
This past week has been a busy one for us. Monday I called Dish Network and checked on upgrading our service to HD since we now have a TV that can show HD channels. We had bought the satellite dish and receiver that we have used in the RV, but we can't get HD channels with that set-up.
I found out we can get a new satellite dish and the Hopper with DVR and upgrade to HD channels for only $10 more a month. We're paying $10 a month for the Hopper/DVR and by signing up for Dish's autopay we get HD for Life (HD is normally $10 a month). We signed up for the upgrade and had our new Dish equipment installed this Thursday. We're enjoying watching our shows in HD - even with our new HD TV the reception with our old set-up just wasn't crisp and clear enough.
Tuesday morning All-Pro Gutters came out and installed our new rain
Monday we decided to have dinner at one of the many restaurants here in Sebastian and we decided on Sandy's Grill. I ordered the Reuben and Mike ordered a hamburger and we both had a couple of beers.
We had our next-door neighbor's yard man trim some of the low-hanging tree limbs on our oak trees last Tuesday.
We called a couple of rain gutter companies and had them come out and give us a quote on having rain gutters installed. The quotes were only about $100 apart and we selected All-Pro Gutters to do the work even though they were the higher of the 2 quotes. The owner of the company showed us the actual gutters they install and explained in detail the gutter installation. He said they should be able to install our gutters next week.
We're looking forward to having the rain gutters installed because when we have a heavy rain the water just pools in the front of the house against the dining room wall. When we had the house inspected before the sale, the inspector said his moisture meter registered a damp area along the front wall of the dining room.
Mike added to our inventory of yard tools and bought a leaf blower at Home Depot yesterday.
Last weekend we stopped by Shady Grove Nursery here in Sebastian to get some ideas of plants for our flowerbeds. Before we left the nursery we signed up to have one of the staff come over to our house and give us some suggestions about our flowerbeds.
Last Tuesday afternoon a couple of men from Shady Grove Nursery came to the house and we walked around the yard discussing the types of plants that are in our flowerbeds. They pointed out some plants that needed to be moved and which ones are invasive and needed to be removed. Their told us since we don't want to keep a majority of the existing flowers that it would be best to just dig everything out and start over - which is what we will eventually do.
This morning we ordered 2 lavatories and 1 faucet from Lowe's - a lavatory for the second bathroom (we already have the faucet) and a second sink and faucet for the master bath.
We didn't do much else this past week except work around the house some.
