Ally is really cute
That’s all:
5 comments August 31st, 2008
The laundry room cabinets
Gayla is a little spoiled lately. She got new laundry room cabinets. Last week on Saturday we went to iKea at 6:30 or so and got home at 9:30 with enough cabinets to hang around two wall in our laundry room. At 1:00 am Sunday morning, I had the molding, a corner cabinet, and some other hanging stuff worked out. Sunday, I was too tired to write any news letters/blog posts or anything else.
After patiently letting our children play all over the boxes in our living room, and Matthew turning the office floor pink, we were able to get the rest of the cabinets hung by about 11:00pm Monday night. I still need to put some knobs on and apply painters caulk along the molding but it didn’t take long at all for all those cabinets to be stuff clear full of all the junk that used to be on the floor, shelf or wall. It truly is a nicer place in there. Gayla told me in return she’d do some ironing now and then.
2 comments August 31st, 2008
Matthew is taking pink too far.
Having all boys for the last 8 years has taken it’s toll on the color scheme of our house. It was blue. With Ally’s arrival, we’ve finally introduced a bit of pink into the mix. Matthew must have got the pink bug too, he’s taken it upon himself to help bring even more pink into our household. Here are a few of the things that Matthew has helped to turn pink.
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The office carpet.
Last week while trying to get our office straightened out after we had piled up all the laundry room stuff in there while installing laundry room cabinets, we were sidetracked long enough to let Matthew find the ink refill kit for our printer cartridges. He somehow managed to open the incredibly tight capped red ink container and made it half way across the office floor before we recognized the problem. Our special spot remover, the carpet cleaner, and Grandma’s special spot remove weren’t enough to help all those little spots go from red back to our carpet’s yellowish color. Instead, it’s now pink there. I suppose I’ll have to cut up some carpet chunks and replace them with spare carpet we have kicking around somewhere. During the mean time, we’ve placed the office chair over the biggest pink spot.
I should add that while we were attempting to clean the carpet, Matthew found a way to wash his hands with wood polish. That wasn’t pink though.
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Food
For whatever reason, Matthew decided to react to something by throwing up his food last night. This morning we found two large pink spots by his door. There were a lot of peanuts mixed in but I managed to clean those up pretty good. I got most of the throwup out but the carpet there is still a little pink. I’m more hopeful for this area though. Perhaps a good carpet shampoo can turn the rest back to the correct color.
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Pink Marker
Of all the markers in the other boys color kits, why would Matthew pull the pink one out. Luckily, we caught this before it went too far. He only managed to turn some of his face pink before we ruined his color party.
If they ever invent straight jackets for two year olds, we’ll be getting a hot pink one for Matthew.
3 comments August 31st, 2008
Scott is our scientist.
Today, Scott decided to make an ice-bowl. He used a balloon to freeze water until it was about 1/2 inch thick. Then the boys enjoyed their frozen water treat.
Scott’s ice bowl
2 comments August 10th, 2008
I got a new job.
Tomorrow, I start work for Ubixum, Inc. I’ll be writing software to run on little circuit boards that help control the flow of data for digital sensors that can be used in cameras and other applications. I’ll also work on software to connect to those devices and manage the images etc.
Anyway, I’m excited to begin this new adventure and I think I’ll have a lot of fun and learn a lot in the process.
4 comments August 10th, 2008
Matthew made me buy new shoes.
I’ve written before about Matthews amazing ability to get into stuff, make messes, and otherwise keep us busy. He’s something else. We haven’t had a kid like him before. Even Ally Marie, our new born, is not near the work Matthew causes us to endure.
Anyway, a couple weeks ago I found one of my shoes by the back door. The thing is, I don’t just leave my shoes in random places. Well actually, I do sometimes, but if I do, I always leave two shoes together. I can say with a pretty high degree of certainty that I didn’t take off only one shoe by the back door.
This was the week the boys were gone so we didn’t have any suspects besides Matthew. Unfortunately, he hasn’t quite gained the ability to tell us what he’s thinking yet. We were left to our own abilities to try and discover where my other shoe was. We searched all the bedrooms, all the main rooms, and even our basement. We searched behind things, under things, in and around things. We eventually decided that if it was going to be found, it was just going to have to want to be found, because we were out of ideas.
Two or three of the days my shoe was missing, I wore some nicer dress shoes to work and job interviews. By Friday however, we decided that I needed a pair of tennis-shoes and if my other shoe was to be found, I’d just have to have two pairs for a bit. I got myself a new pair of Nike Air Running Shoes that were on sale for $20 off or so. They’re comfortable.
Well, about Tuesday this week, Gayla called me up and said she found my other shoe. It was inside a dresser drawer. We only use that dresser for decoration and to put a lamp on in our main entry way. The drawers are somewhat hard to pull out and we never suspected Matthew could get a shoe in there. Go figure. Now I have two pairs of tennis-shoes!
1 comment August 10th, 2008
How a bear almost ate my kid.
That sounds like a funny headline. We can laugh now if we want but it’s actually kind of serious. Here is the story, as told by my parents. I made minor edits to context is all.
Tuesday, we wrapped up a bunch of errands and got ready to go camping for a couple of days at Foy Lake. It took until mid-afternoon to get there and get set up. The kids and Jim went fishing that evening and rode Scott’s CRF50 and shot their bows and arrows at the target and in general had a good time.
The excitement level picked up a bit that evening at about 9 when we were all ready to go to bed. Jim stepped out for a minute and promptly stepped right back in the trailer, saying something to the effect, “Crap-a-mighty, there’s a bear out there!” It turned out to be a fairly good sized black bear. He wandered all over camp completely unconcerned about the flashlight or the porch light on the trailer and spent most of the time trying to get in the trailer. He stood up and looked in the top bunk window where Scott was and Scott said, “That bear is looking in my window,” but we thought he was imagining things at that point. It only took 10 seconds longer for us to realize Scott wasn’t making anything up when the bear went around the corner and started investigating the bathroom window, where Jim happened to be. We hurried and closed all the windows, Jim grabbed the gun (unfortunately we didn’t have the bear sized one), and we started yelling and banging on things to scare it away. He wasn’t a bit afraid of any noise we could produce, except the eventual gun shot to scare him away. That worked for a few minutes and then he was back again. This time Jim shot right over his head and he ran away for the rest of the night, we think. I certainly didn’t sleep. Lydia slept through the whole commotion, amazingly, and Scott refused to sleep in the top bunk. He slept on the floor in the center of the trailer, not a bad position.
We debated whether to stay another night, not wanting to spend it all wide awake, but figured it was all a fluke thing the next day and decided to stay for the meals anyway and maybe then go home. So we went on a little hike starting up the Robertson Pasture trail and then looping back to the camp. The boys shot their arrows at imaginary beasts all along the way and Lydia walked “by myself” the whole way. We were lucky to have Fred along, thinking back to the rest of the day’s events. We spent the rest of the morning around camp riding the CRF50, playing in the meadow, mud puddle, etc.
About mid-afternoon, Jim, Scott and Dallin took the CRF50 and their fishing poles down to the lake to try that out. Fred, who loves to lick fish, went with them. Tim, Lydia and I stayed in the trailer where we’d been coloring pictures earlier. Tim decided to go outside and get his shoes which were by the mud puddle, the source of several sets of “tar baby” toes!
Tim saw the bear probably as soon as he stepped out the door. I heard him say, “Grandma, there’s a bear out here,” and I jumped to the door and grabbed him back in. The bear couldn’t have been more than six feet away. I had time to shut the screen door, but couldn’t get the main door unlatched from its open position. We started yelling and screaming, but, as before, the bear was not worried about noise. He acted like he was headed right in the door. I grabbed the gun again from the closet, but was too rattled to realize you had to take the safety off before you could cock it. In the seconds I took to figure it out, I managed to jam it and had to eject two of the three bullets left in it. So there I was with bear paws on the screen door and a too-small gun with one bullet.
In the meantime, Jim had heard all the commotion and came racing back on the CRF50, which goes pretty fast after all! When the bear heard the motorcycle, he moved away from the door over by the pickup and then into the bushes. Fred chased it all over the hillside for the ten minutes it took us to throw everything in the pickup, hook up the trailer and leave. Had Fred stayed at camp, the bear probably wouldn’t have come in. Jim said he had an uneasy feeling all day that it was up on the hill watching our camp. We put Fred in the pickup at night so he wouldn’t chase cows and bark all night, but probably not any more! He will be an outside dog.
Late Thursday afternoon, I realized that I hadn’t seen Scott’s glasses for a long time. After searching the house and trailer, we decided they must have been on the table outside the trailer and got knocked off in the grass. So later that evening, we took a little trip (with the big gun!) to find his glasses and we did, amazingly. We also checked out a camp next to us where a bunch of tents had been left, but no one was there. The DWR had a bear trap set there, but no bear.
On the way home, we ran into the DWR and a local hunter who has dogs. They had a bear treed just off the road aways which probably was the culprit. We talked with them awhile and learned more of the story. Earlier in the spring, two cows had drowned in Foy Lake and the bears discovered them and were eating off the carcasses. When somebody finally took care of the problem by hauling off the cows and burying them, one bear left the area, but this one came back and started bothering campers. It pretty well trashed the site next to us. This is where I am a bit resentful. I never would have considered camping in a known problem area, especially with all those children. Where were the warning signs?
Poor Tim. He said before he didn’t know that bears were real, but now he knows they are. Anyway, we have the souvenir paw prints on the side of the trailer and we hope the bear is deceased. I still wish I’d shot it!
2 comments August 4th, 2008
Introducing Princess Ally
Well, here she is. Princess Ally.
Ally was born the end of July, 2008. She looks and acts like a little princess. (I’m referring to the 8 hour intervals she sleeps at night!)
1 comment August 3rd, 2008
Plight of the Pictus
Well, a month or so ago, my kids got a lizzard from their grandmother. It’s an Anole lizard if you’re curious. What do lizards and Pictus have in common? Well, nothing really. Do you know what a Pictus is? Probably not. I didn’t.
A pictus is a little catfish for aquariums.
The association between lizards and pictus for our family is that when we got the Lizard, we thought we’d use our old fish tank for his home. This turned out to be a chore we didn’t want to tackle. We had so much fish junk and paraphernalia in there that we decided it was much more worth our time and effort to just buy a new tank for the lizard.
Anyway, this whole situation caused us to reflect on the extra space the fish tank was taking. We only stopped having fish in our old home because there was no place for the tank that our kids wouldn’t try to climb on. Now, we have a place that is relatively safe from their climbing weight.
Well, to make a long story short, we put the tank in place, let it sit for a week or so, and then added a few fish. First of all, we had a few tiger barbs that didn’t work out. One started nipping at the other two, one died, and the last two weren’t looking all that great. We took those ones back.
Next, we have a pictus and a plecostomus. We were more hopeful for these two fish. The pictus looked fine for a few weeks but eventually started looking groggy. He didn’t swim as fast as he should have. We got a new filter but that didn’t save him. It was only a matter of days until he was floating at the bottom. He took his final swim down our well plumbed toilet.
Well, we’ve had ammonia test kits, fish starter solutions, all different additives etc, but we just can’t seem to get rid of the ammonia problem in the tank. We still don’t know why it’s building up and not going away. Perhaps we need more bacteria in there that just isn’t coming like it should. We’ll work on that until we solve it and perhaps in a while I’ll have a picture of a tank full of fish that are acting normal and not dying.
We’re hopeful for the plecostomus still. He seems better able to tolerate the bad water.
2 comments July 14th, 2008
The Winning Catapult
We had a busy week. That is somewhat of an understatement. A more accurate depiction of our week would be to list all the things we were supposed to get done and then line item all the things we didn’t get done because of the activities we were participating in. Amongst all our business however, I was able to get the Webelos together to build a catapult on Tuesday, and then attend the Jeremiah Johnson Camp Saturday. I thought I’d mention a little about how we did.
Before I write about the catapult competition, I thought I’d mention that the boys had fun participating in a wide variety of activities and making progress toward a lot of activity pins. We learned things about planets and stars, slingshots, bows and arrows, BB guns, engineering stuff and even made some miniature catapults.
The leaders guide for the camp said if we wanted, we could bring a catapult to shoot a tennis ball. They said they didn’t want something too terribly big, but something that you could bring and generally not have to assemble when you go there. Here is what we built Tuesday:
Actually, Tuesday we got the frame and most of the work done to where we could launch something but I had a little touch up work to do Saturday morning. Saturday, I put some caps on the end of the axel and screwed a few more screws into the frame so it wouldn’t fall apart. I also added an extra bungee cord so we could get a little more distance.
We won the distance part of our competition by quite a bit. I think we were shooting around 40 or 50 yards but nobody was measuring. (That counts how far the ball rolled after it hit too.) One time, our ball hit some kinds of bump or ditch and bounced backward. It rolled backward for a ways and was still quite a bit further than the nearest ball from another catapult.
For our efforts, we won a bag of jolly ranchers that the boys enjoyed!
Add comment June 29th, 2008