Rusty are you aware of any third party manufacturers that make good blowers that will work on a Conquest?

Hi Charlene, Welcome home from your "trip"! Great story! I bet that honeymoon suite hasn't seen too many couples there with their kids! LOL And glad you're safely back home. I feel so sorry for all the people that are still at DIA---and probably will be for days yet! I'm a flight attendant and had been getting really down because I've been stuck down here on the ground for over a month now because I had surgery on my elbow, but when the blizzard started for real, I was so happy to be "stuck down here on the ground!" It's WAY better than having gotten stuck at the airport and winding up sleeping on the floor up in the domicile---which happened to a whole lot of people (not me) during the March blizzard of '03! Here's my Thornton blizzard story! Since I'm off I didn't need to worry about going out in it, so on Wednesday I just watched the people at DIA on TV all day. Then late afternoon I went out to try to shovel the 12" of snow off my sidewalk thinking (mistakenly) that it would make it easier to shovel the next day. Since I'm not supposed to be lifting anymore than 1 lb. with my left hand, I shoveled it 95% using just my right hand. Never knew you could do that, but you can! Except---one time when I got the shovel full and bent over to pick it up to empty it, I got too much "twist" in it and did something BAD to my back, so I decided to go in the house for a little bit to rest, but when I tried to take a step it hurt too much so I just stood there till it felt a little bit better--and I could move again--and started shoveling again. On Thursday I discovered that blizzards are no respecters of shoveled sidewalks, and when the snow finally stopped around noon, there was 14-16" of snow on my "shoveled" sidewalk, so I put on my eskimo suit and went back out to do it again. My back and the muscles in my right arm were so sore from the day before, that I decided whether I was supposed to or not, I was going to have to use my left arm. The city requires that walks be shoveled within 24 hours, so I was planning to shovel a one shovel wide path down the walk---and that was all. Right after I started, the neighbor across the street who was shoveling his drive started talking to me, and I mentioned that I had had surgery and wasn't supposed to be using my arm---and he went in and got his BIG 15 year old son out and told him to shovel the walk for me. He had it finished in less than 10 minutes---it would have taken me at least an hour like it had the day before! The neighbor asked if I needed the (hip deep) snow on the driveway shoveled, and I told him I didn't--that I didn't need to leave for a week and was just going to wait for the sun to melt it off---this is Denver, after all, and my driveway faces south! Then, early this afternoon I was at my kitchen window--which faces the front of the house--when I noticed that the snow on top of my roses didn't look "smooth" anymore. I can't see my drive very well from inside the house, but I went in the living room where I can see part of it, and the whole drive had been shoveled! I couldn't believe it--and started to cry! I waited until I was sure they were home this evening and went over to verify that it was them---they have two BIG teen boys--and to thank them--and started to cry again! It was so-o nice of them, and was the nicest Christmas present anyone could have given me. It means so much when someone does you a random act of kindness! This summer I'm going to take them some perennials and some produce from my garden. I can hardly wait! I'm sorry you didn't get to Mazatlan, but it's great that you were able to have a fun time anyway. I hope you are able to get your trip refunded--I know United is offering full refunds to anyone who had their flite cancelled. Merry Christmas, Skybird/Dee

SE Wisc: Someone turned of the "snow switch" at 3 pm this afternoon. The forecasters are predicting 4 to 6 inches. I know it will be more than 4 inches becasue we have that much right now. Its messy to deal with, but we need the gound moisture. It'll be good for the winter wheat and hay grasses planted last fall. My backyard deer herd appeared early this evening to brouse. They usually come around at midnight or later. Today, they apeared at 5 pm - it was almost dark and snowing. There are 7 in this herd and all came out tonight. Often, only a few at a time apear in the open with the others staying under cover.

Nancy, We moved here following prolonged drought that really still was an ongoing drought. The drought continued for another couple of years. We had a lot of dry years, a couple of kinda wet years and then flooding in 2007. It was incredible. It was unreal. We thought we'd never see that sort of thing again. Water, water everywhere and all that. The last time the flood had been so bad here was, I believe, 1980, and I believe that was its first really big flood ever in modern times. So, you know, it seemed logical to think we wouldn't see that sort of flooding again. People flocked both to the Red River bridges and to Lake Texoma to view the mass of water. A lot of people took tiny children so they would have a chance to see it----in case it never happened again in their lifetime. Ha. The joke was on them. We had the Red River and Lake Texoma's 3rd big flood ever in our area in 2015, and also its 4th, 5th and then I believe its' 6th in the fall. We thought that was our river flood quota---all filled up, never gonna see that again. And we didn't. Until 2016. (sigh) You know, a once-in-a-lifetime, or twice-in-a-lifetime flood event isn't quite so impressive if it happens 3 or 4 times in one year. We had multiple river flood events in 2016, and I am officially over it all. I absolutely hate crossing over the Red River I-35 bridge between Love County, OK, and Cooke County, TX, when the water is so high that you feel it hitting against the bridge roadway. I'd rather go all the way to western Love County and cross the Tayovayas Bridge there when the river is high because that span sits so much higher above the river bed than the I-35 bridge does. The wide raging river is a more incredible sight further west, but you're higher up and so it somehow feels safer. I don't like any flooding at all, but we sure seem to have had a lot of it in the last 10 or so years. If it isn't in one part of OK, it is in another. In some horrible years, like 2007 and 2015, it is almost everywhere. Any more, it seems like we swing from drought to floods back to drought again, though maybe that is nothing new. Growing up in Texas, we had this old saying "it takes a flood to end a drought" and I never gave it a whole lot of thought because Fort Worth didn't flood often. I came to understand that phrase a lot more after moving her. Amy, You could put Mosquito Bits or broken up pieces of a Mosquito Dunk in the kiddie pool and that will take care of mosquitoes. I imagine the stores soon will sell out of both products, but I usually see them in the pest section of stores like Lowe's and Home Depot. The active ingredient is Bt 'israelensis', and as a bonus, if you have fungus gnats. a little bit of Mosquito Bits dissolved in water in a watering can and used to water the soil containing fungus gnats will bring them under control too. On the news yesterday, they were talking about the giant flood mosquitoes we often see after floods. I never knew they had a name. They're called gallinippers, and when you first see them you think they are mosquitoes and then you convince yourself that they aren't mosquitoes because they are so big that they cannot possibly be mosquitoes. Well, they are real. I have a feeling some of y'all may be seeing some of them soon. We had them in both 2015 and 2016, but they didn't last as long in 2016 because the rain stopped in June and the flooding slowly dried up. Gallinipper Mosquitoes I don't think we'll have them down here this year unless they like to bathe and lay their eggs in dust. Dawn