In case of animal reports, try this

Jared has an animal report due on Thursday. He chose to do his on the gray wolf. He has to give a short speech about it in front of his class, and visuals are encouraged. Knowing it would be another crazy busy week, I made him start on it yesterday after school. Last year in kindergarten he had to do a diorama for his animal project. We made an origami penguin and he was so excited about it.


When he suggested an origami wolf for his visual this year, I was all for it. Luckily we found a simple one online. Origami fascinates me, but it's hard to follow the instructions/diagrams when they get too complicated. Here is what we finished up tonight:

He helped color and fold the wolves, and colored all the background. As you can see, he's pretty happy with it too.

Another Saturday project

Sometimes I amaze myself. About this time last year, I took it upon myself to build a sandbox for my 2-year-old. It took most of one Saturday, but I did it and I was pretty proud of myself. Yesterday I did it again. The antenna on our roof blew down in a windstorm several days ago. The hardware it was mounted to just completely broke.

We don't have cable or satellite (old-fashioned cheapskates that we are, yes), so this was a crisis. What will we do if we can't watch cartoons?! Jeff wasn't available to fix it, so I knew if it was going to be taken care of, I'd have to do it. My first plan of attack was to try to find a new mounting kit. Ace, Radio Shack, Home Depot, Wal-mart. Nothing. I could buy a whole new antenna with mounting hardware for $70, but why spend the money when the old antenna works just fine? I was getting frustrated by this point, but unwilling to give up. So I climbed back up on the roof to look at the old set-up and headed back to Ace (the helpful hardware place!) to try to find some pieces to make my own mount. $24 of aluminum, nuts and bolts later, I had what I needed. I started measuring and cutting and drilling. It was slow-going and aggravating until Jeff helped me figure out that I needed to reverse the drill. Arrgh! Eight hours later, this is what it looked like:



And this is what my hands looked like:

I can't get it off. I guess aluminum and Gorilla Glue are not a good combination for lovely, feminine looking hands. Any suggestions? Oh well, I'm not vain, and the cartoons work now, so I can stay sane. :-) And so I amaze myself again. The mount is probably no stronger than the original, and it won't last forever, but at least it's not broken. Except another storm is blowing in right now. I think I'll cry if it breaks again.

My Saturday Project

I haven't been very motivated to blog lately. Sorry about that. Today though, I started--and finished!--a project that I am pretty proud of, so I thought I'd brag a little bit. By way of explanation, my little Dallin loves to be outside. Even more, he loves to "work in the dirt." I think he saw his daddy digging holes last summer and decided that was a cool thing to do. So Dallin digs in my front flower bed. This has not been a huge problem, since there are no flowers in it at the moment. However, it gets Dallin very dirty and tends to get dirt and sometimes mud tracked in my house. It's also in the front yard where I have a hard time keeping an eye on him unless I am outside with him, which I just can't be as much as he wants to be out there. Last Saturday he rode his big wheel all the way down our street and into the busier cross street. A neighbor's daughter-in-law stopped her car and, not knowing who he belonged to, brought him back to the neighbor's house. In the meantime, I had gone looking for him up at the park east of our house--the opposite direction from where he had gone. Not finding him there, I started to panic. I was very relieved to find him in my neighbor's arms in my front yard when I got back. I wasn't so relieved to hear he'd been found in the middle of the street, but my prayers for his safety were answered, and I didn't have to panic for too long.

Okay, so that was the long explanation for why I spent most of today building a sandbox. I'm hoping to trade dirt for sand, and to entice him to stay in the backyard where I can fence him in and keep an eye on him out the kitchen windows.


I bought the sand at a local landscaping company--six 5 gallon buckets full for $5. Then we trekked to Home Depot where I actually had an employee ask if I needed help. Then he actually helped me--unusually good customer service for that store, in my experience. I got treated 2x6 boards, cut into four foot lengths, and weed-blocker fabric. Then we went home and got to work. Adam sanded the ends of the boards. Then we all got our painting clothes on and painted them the same color as the trim on our house. While the paint was drying, we dug out some sod by the back fence under the maple tree and covered the area with the weed-blocker fabric. Then I screwed the boards together and put them in place. My only regret is that I got 2x6 boards instead of 2x8's. It would have been better if it was a little deeper. Except for the painting, Dallin was not excited about this whole process. But when we started dumping the sand in, he was all over it. I think he played out there for close to two hours--until I carried him kicking and screaming into the house for dinner. Success! We'll see if it keeps him out of my flower bed though.

Here are a few more pictures of my project and my boys:








And, just for fun, a picture of Jared in the middle of his haircut tonight. If his hair weren't so curly he would have wanted to keep the mohawk. Glad I didn't have to fight that fight!

Digging to China

I promised Jeff I'd blog about his latest project. Plus I've had requests for pictures. (Thanks Nathan.) I even figured out how to post a video. (Yay me!) We have two cracks in our foundation that resulted in some flooding in our basement earlier in the summer. After a little research, we decided the most effective way of repairing the cracks is to dig out the foundation and patch with tar paper and asphalt emulsion (tar). Jeff bought a heavy pick-like tool, called a San Angelo bar of all things (interesting what you get when you Google "San Angelo bar"), to break up the clay-like dirt. Then he digs it all out with a shovel. He's getting some good upper-body work in. We calculated he probably lifted and threw down that 17 lb. bar more than 1500 times in a four hour period the other day. He finished the first hole a couple weeks ago. It's probably 4' x 4' square and about 6 feet deep. He's now working on the second, but got slowed down by school starting. Hopefully we'll get it all done and patched before the snow flies.

Starting the second hole

Jeff in the finished hole


Dallin "helping" in the second hole

P.S. The $2.00 I spent on plastic tools for the kids was totally worth it!

P.P.S. By the way, have you ever wondered what would happen if you actually dug a hole through to the other side of the earth? Assuming no air friction, no spin of the earth, and no hot magma in the middle, here is a NOVA podcast that shows you what would happen.

How firm a foundation?

I'd rather be blogging about something else, but this is the issue that has been consuming our lives this week. Anyone ever had to repair a cracked foundation? We knew we had a small but long crack that leaked water into the laundry room if we put the sprinklers too close to the house, but the laundry room is unfinished and there is a drain in the floor, so we hadn't worried about it too much (other than keeping the sprinklers at a safe distance). At some point while we were in Idaho for four days, the tubing up to the swamp cooler on the roof popped off and watered the back lawn for who knows how long, flooding not just the laundry room but parts of the bathroom and bedroom too. (Note to selves and anyone else with a swamp cooler--turn the water to the swamp cooler OFF! if you are going to be out of the house for any extended period of time.) Turns out we have at least two cracks that let all that water in. I sucked a couple gallons of water out of the bedroom carpet with my steam cleaner before deciding just to rip it out completely. We had planned to replace it at some point anyway. Now we are debating the merits of digging out the foundation from the outside and patching with an asphalt emulsion ourselves vs. hiring a foundation repair company to fill the cracks from the inside with polyurethane for $865. At least the estimate was free. Anyone have any expertise, experience, or suggestions on this one? And once the leaks are taken care of, then we have to replace the carpet and some drywall, plus we are considering remodeling the bathroom while we're at it. As long as we are taking on home improvement projects, we might as well, right? So much for starting on our garage this summer.