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
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!)
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
My Sunken Sunglasses and Other Possibly Jinxed Items.
A few weeks ago, we made a trip to Monticello for a family occasion. When we returned and cleaned out our van, I found a pair of Sun glasses that had been missing since, well, the last time we had taken a trip to Monticello. Actually, they might have been missing for the time between multiple trips to Monticello. I remember having them when we arrived, but not being able to find them since that time. They were inexplicably located below the driver’s seat in a manner that hid them for this lengthy duration of time.
Any time an item is lost for that amount of time, it begins to form a dependency on its inability to be found. The act of finding the item only serves to aggravate its situation and it begins conspiring immediately how to regain its status as missing.
1 comment June 8th, 2008
And thus we proceed to the summer.
Well, with Friday passing, our kids are now all at home for the summer. Here are a couple pictures from the last few days of school:
Scott is quite adept at the monkey bars. He’s just finished 1st grade.
Tim get’s to start Pre-School in the Fall. He’s very excited about getting to go to the same school that Scott and Dallin have been attending.
Anyway, we’ve already started to from a few things in our mind of what we’re going to do with the boys to keep the busy during the summer. 1st of all, they’re definitely going to have a few jobs so things get done around our home and yard. Or course, we’re going to have some time to play too. Here is a picture of a hike we took over last weekend to see the wing from the B-52 that crashed near my home town of Monticello in 1961.
The Felon 22 crashed on January 19, 1961. I found that information here. I’m assuming it’s accurate but don’t have any other sources.
For those that are curious, here is an interesting article that debates whether or not the Felon 22 had nuclear weapons on board.
Add comment June 1st, 2008
Motorcycle riding basics
We had a little outing Friday where we practiced the basics of good motorcycle riding. We also had a some hot dogs, played in the dirt, hiked up some rocks, and ignored the wind that blew all afternoon. Gayla read a book too. Anyway, as for the important stuff. Here are the basics:
1) Start Early
Matthew was sure to get a ride when he saw the other boys playing with the bikes.
2) Stand up
I had Scott riding all around our camp standing up any time he went over any bumps. He was actually not doing to bad.
3) Lean Forward
As long as we were working on standing up, we might as well make sure we sit forward on the seat lean forward too.
Well, we had a pretty good time playing around in the dirt. Seems like we get to do a lot of that since we have lots of little boys to entertain. Scott didn’t master all the motorcycle riding basics yet but that’s OK. We still need to work a bit on the braking and going down hills. I need to get him some gloves and boots too.
2 comments April 20th, 2008
Matthew’s Climbing Abilities
For any who have had a chance to visit our home in the last few months, you’ll already be familiar with Matthew’s ability to climb on pretty much anything. You’ll also be familiar with the upside down kitchen we’ve become used to. For everyone else, I’ll have to first mention that turning the chairs upside down seemed to be able to keep Matthew off of the counters and kitchen table. Lately however, he’s become a little more brazen in his efforts to get things. Now, in addition to being able to climb on upside down bar stools, he is able to drag them and use them as ladders. Here is Matthew using his newly acquired skills:
You’ll notice that Matthew is using his ability wisely to get something good.
Matthew also uses his ability to climb on things to entertain himself. As I looked over all our pictures, I noticed that most of them that were of Matthew were also of him climbing on something. Here are another couple:
Matthew likes to do what his brothers do and that includes playing the piano.
Speaking of things his brothers doing things, it didn’t take long after Scott parked the motorcycle before Matthew was right on it.
1 comment April 20th, 2008
The word of the day: Tannerite
Saturday some of Ben’s friends and I went to shoot guns across from Utah lake. As we waited to figure out where we were going to meet with the rest of the gang, some other people that were there asked us if we wanted to check out some of the fun things they were shooting at. One of them had some tannerite. This was something we hadn’t heard of before. The effect was highly entertaining and provided much enjoyment to all around. I found this video on Youtube to show what this stuff can do. This isn’t us, but we were doing the same thing.
Anyway, in addition to the explosive stuff, they built a fire and placed cans of spray paint around. Each time you’d hit one, you’d get the explosion from the can and then all the paint would catch on fire too. It was quite a show. The tannenite blew everything around it a fair bit into the air and a fair bit down the trail a bit. Other items of particular enjoyment for shooting were the propane bottle and the bottles of gas that had flares taped to them. We also shot quite a few bottles and skeets with shot guns. I’ve been thinking it’s about time to get a shot gun.
We ended up shooting 45 rounds with my rifle. It was a bit warm by the end. Now, I’ve got to do some research into where to get tannerite.
Update: Just go to http://tannerite.com!
1 comment March 24th, 2008
The Quest for HDTV
For a while, we’ve had our eye on a larger TV set. The old 21″ tube that we received from Gayla’s parents was just a little out of date. We decided we’d spend some of our tax refund on a new flat screen LCD TV. For the last while, I’ve been researching all the different options for receiving digital content and I thought I’d write it down for whomever is interested.
We ended up getting a refurbished TV instead of purchasing one locally. After the shipping costs, we still saved about $160. Pretty much any flat screen TV you purchase these days is going to have a wide screen ratio of 16:9. Most older TVs have a 4:3 ratio. When you rent a movie formated for 4:3, it usually says “This movie has been formatted to fit this screen” or something similar. Now, since all of our movies and TV are still being played in that ratio, we have black bars on the sides instead of on the top and bottom!
DTV Options
If you’ve seen standard definition programming on a high resolution screen, you might have noticed that it doesn’t look as good. You can see fuzzy edges and the whole picture looks slightly blurry. To get a nice crisp picture, you have to have high definition programming. As soon as I started looking around at different options for HD programming, I was dismayed at the costs. We currently have Dish Network. To upgrade to an HD receiver and HD programming, we have to pay extra for a nicer receiver, extra for additional channels (they don’t offer the family package in HD), and extra just for having HD. The entire cost comes to around $77/month. I’m unwilling to shell out $77/month for a bunch of crappy channels that I don’t care about anyway so I kept looking. I found out that the other options for purchasing HD programming are pretty much similar in price to Dish Networks. You can’t be fooled by Comcast’s triple play or any of the other offers out there. They give you a nicer rate up front but in the end, charge an arm and a leg.
The good news is that in most areas, you can get the local channels for free over the air. You may have heard about the February 2009 deadline for TV stations to broadcast digital signals instead of analog signals. This means that if you use an antenna to watch TV and you have an old TV, you’ll have to either upgrade your TV or purchase a set top box for around $40 that converts the new digital signals to analog that your TV can understand. If you think that stinks, the government will give you a $40 rebate toward the purchase. Many people are opting simply to upgrade their TV.
I want to distinguish between DTV and HDTV. Many stations are broadcast digitally but they are still in a lower resolution. The only difference with HDTV is that it is broadcast at a higher resolution. Usually, HDTV also has an accompanying 5.1 surround sound audio track being broadcast too. Either way, DTV or HDTV, you have to have a new TV or a set top box to receive it over the air.
Back to Bunny Ears
I decided to give the old bunny ears a try. Most of the shows we like are on locally broadcast channels anyway and we could get a Tivo to record them. (You can plug the antenna into a Tivo too.) I first bought a $15 pair of bunny ears at Best Buy. We seem to have a dead spot in our house around where the TV is. We could pick up a few channels OK but none of the digital channels. I took that back and picked a $30 version at Walmart that has an inline signal amplifier. It worked a lot better. We could pick up a few digital channels. They look great! We still have the receiving problem by our TV and I had to move them by a window to get results so I decided to go all out and by a bigger $60 antenna that you can mount inside your attic.
I had more trouble finding a spot to mount that antenna than I ever thought the result was worth. We could pick up 18-23 digital channels depending on where I could position that antenna but I couldn’t find a good way to route a cable from the attic to where our TV is. In addition, we should have been able to pick up more channels. I could find some in some places and other positions would get different ones. After cutting two holes in different walls (I still have to repair those), and trying different indoor and outdoor positions, I decided it just wasn’t worth it and took that one back too. I think we’ll just buy a nice outdoor antenna that mounts on the roof and hook it to the cable that our Dish Network satellite is currently connected to. We still have a few more months on our Dish contract so we can’t get rid of that just yet. I guess in the mean time we’ll have to deal with a not as high quality TV picture.
On the bright side, Wii games look great with component cables!
4 comments February 10th, 2008
Happy Birthday… to me.
Well, this week was my birthday. Back when I was a kid, having my birthday pretty close to Christmas was always fun. Right when I had had just enough time to play with whatever Santa brought, it was time to add a few more family presents.
Now, having my birthday this close to Christmas makes it really hard to decide what to get. Gayla always seems to do a pretty good job of finding me something fun for Christmas. This year, I didn’t even know what I wanted really. Having to make the same decision a couple weeks later was too overwhelming. I couldn’t think of anything new so I still haven’t got a birthday present. The kids did give me some candy and some jerky though. Gayla’s parents came to the rescue and gave my a remote control helicopter.
Jed always shows a picture of his latest plane. Here is mine. You can see that Scott was excited about this as well. He made me a landing pad.
We’ve had lots of fun flying this around the house and have only had to rescue it from the chandelier once.
The birthday crowd.
1 comment January 13th, 2008