Hoping for interruptions...

PDPs are "Performance and Development plans", also know as year end reviews.  I lead a wild life...

2012 tree planting

I planted another tree this year, this time in the front yard.  We have a big old Japanese Maple tree in the front yard, it's a very nice shade tree.  It's not going to last forever, I figured this year it was time to plant one in front.  The city does a tree give away every year, you can get one every five years, so this Spring I went down, and got another Japanese Maple. 

It's decent sized now, about 7 feet tall.  We should get some really fantastic shade in that front room in about 10 years or so. (I am just making that timeframe up.  I don't know for sure.)  Looking forward to it.  Please ignore the tarp on the roof.  I have been...

I thought I was done planting trees now.  I am running out of places to put them.  If the ones I have planted really stick and thrive, we will have some nice shade in all the right places both in the front and in the back...  Tara went off and won a tree in a city services fair on Monday.  Haven't decided what to do...

Doughnuts!

A few weeks ago, Emma talked me into buying a doughnut maker.  We've used it a couple of times.  The doughnuts that come out of it are small, and baked, which generally means that they are healthier for you, right?

The first day, we made a pile of them for a ward activity. They got gobbled up pretty quickly.

For a birthday party at the house a week later, I tried two more kinds:  chocolate frosted, and peanut coated.  The chocolate frosted worked, the peanut covered, not so much.  sounds like I need a bit of a sugar coating for them before I coat them in peanuts.

We will try again.  It's pretty quick, a small batch can be whipped up in no time.  Crave some doughnuts?  Stop on by.

Shelving Part One

I've been left to my own devices for a few weeks, which means nothing is really different, except I am by myself, feeding my natural anti-social tendencies in the evening...  Tonight I am having pepperoni and a banana-strawberry-blueberry smoothie for dinner, which shouldn't surprise people.  What should surprise people is that I am cutting the pepperoni off to eat it, not just gnawing on the stick directly.

Anyway, one of the things that has bothered me in the back of my head was our shelving for our DVDs in the back room.  We have these 12 inch shelves, and had the DVDs stacked two deep, so at any given time, you couldn't see half the DVDs.  Additionally, we were out of space.  No room for more DVDs on the shelf.  

I decided to do something about this problem.  This is not a 'before' picture.  I'm not smart enough to get a 'before' picture.  This is a 'during' picture, where I put the first shelf in and stacked some DVDS on.  I decided that if I used 1x6 boards, I could offset the things, and we would be able to see all of our DVDs.

Here's the final thing.  You can see that we can now see all the titles of the DVDs, even if you can't directly pull them all off the shelf directly.  Also, we now have plenty of space for new DVDs and Wii Games.

Santa Stew

Every year for Christmas, Santa brings a pile of vegetables for us to make a stew for Christmas. It's the one time of the year the kids will actually eat a stew we make for them. It's one of our relatively new Christmas traditions. (Along with a big breakfast after the presents are all opened...)

Belated Christmas Pictures - round 1

This year for Christmas, I made the kids scarves. I started back in October, while Tara was out of the country.

They were pretty excited about them. Ruth and Lily were excited about theirs, they have been waiting for "Dr. Who scarves"...


Tara and Noel we jealous of the scarves, in the past week I made them scarves as well.

Neighborhood kids...

Last week, Tara was driving down the street to the kids school for a parent teacher conference. She heard a bang, the window in the van broke. Looks like someone put a BB through the window.



I taped it up with packing tape because it was late afternoon on a Friday, and I didn't want to deal with it right away. It turns out that packing tape does a pretty good job keeping the shattered window in place. I've been ignoring the problem since then. At some point soon, I will have to replace the window. For now, it's a non-stained stained glass window, providing an interesting blind spot in the van. Some of the kids seem to like looking at it.

Who sits in their yard waiting to shot out car windows?

Also, how does Blogger know which way to orient the pictures that are uploaded? Does my phone provide that information, or is Blogger guessing?

"The agitator turns at midnight"

AKA "A little torque makes the world turn round"

Our washing machine tried breaking down again. This time it was the upper agitator that stopped working. I've noticed lately that it wasn't rotating the clothes all that well. Last week, Kate stuffed the washer full, and the clothes didn't turn around at all. It took several cycles to get the soap all the way out.


The part that grabs the agitator and turns it had worn down to the point that it was basically useless. Options - fix the washer or replace the washer. I don't have the money right now for the washer I want to replace the current one with, so I explored repair of the washer, likely not for the last time...

Last week, I found a parts website - http://www.repairclinic.com - they made it very easy to find the replacement part. It cost me $10 plus $5 shipping, and the parts came in 5 days, including a public holiday where there was no mail.

While waiting for the part, we did half full loads, so the bottom agitator, which still worked, could move the clothes around in the water. With nine people in the house, laundry piles very fast if you are only doing half loads.


The part came, and I spent a good 45 minutes trying to get the bolt off the agitator, so I could replace the part. I was using a socket and a straight attachment to try to take it off, not a socket wrench. This clearly wasn't working, so I borrowed a long extender from my friend Chad. It took about 30 seconds to get the thing off with the extender and a socket wrench. (Thanks again, Chad!) Proper torque beats brute force any day.

Anyway, the washer works as designed again, even with a full load. Now I can make Emma take that jacket off that she wears every single day...

The front lawn looks better...

I guess I've given up on the front lawn for the year. I'll work on it some more in the Spring. I hadn't mowed it for more than a month, I was trying to get new grass going, and mowed a couple of days ago. I trimmed it up a bit today.

The lawn looks better, and some new grass came up, but not exactly what I was looking for. I'd like really think, sod like grass. It's not something I will obsess about, at least not obsess any more about for now, but at least it looks nice.

A Scarf for Sara

"A Scarf for Sara" Not the latest movie on the Lifetime channel. Not a best selling book somewhere. A scarf. For Sara.


Before Tara left for France, I made her niece Sara a scarf. Tara got there today, and gave it to her. Sounds like it was a hit...

Days 3 & 4: "A measure of normalicy"

Yesterday, we tried to enforce nap time, to keep things normal. This didn't work all that well, since the girls didn't actually take a nap. Adam and Noel took the naps they were supposed to.

Several times during the day, I thought it was Saturday. Then I remembered it was still Friday, and realized there was a bonus day in the week suddenly. It may have also factored into my not going into work, and not doing any from home as well... I also spent several periods of time thinking about painting either the back room or the kitchen. I decided against it.


Friday night there was a ward activity - a potluck dinner. We got there about 20 minutes late, all the tables were full, and much of the food was gone. We set up a new table, and the kids went through and got food. I held the baby until I realized that she was leaking through her pants again. (We discovered this week that the new kind of diapers we bought last week have containment issues. Noel went through three outfits yesterday...) After the dinner, they had a miniature golf course that the young men built. The kids scattered to go play. After a while, Noel was ready for another diaper change, but we didn't have any more diapers in the backpack. Since we already used the backup outfit, I figured it was time to bail.

Several breakdowns happened at this point, I think mainly do to sleepy children. Emma was upset because Mary took off with her friends and ditched her. Lily was very upset because Ruth ended up with a balloon, and Lily didn't. Sad times.

I thought about tired children for a while, and decided that they needed a darker place to sleep, both during the day, and at night. Tara had some thicker fabric that someone gave her years ago, we found it a couple of weeks ago, and was likely going to be given away at some point. I made blackout curtains, and put them up in the girls room today.




This afternoon, all the girls but Kate went in and laid down in their room for about an hour and a half for naptime. I don't think they actually slept, but they stayed in their rooms. Win for me. Tonight when I came home, you couldn't see their lights were on in their room, either. Win again.

At this point, I think things have calmed down just a little around here. Noel has been slobbering like a maniac lately. I just gave her a frog stuffed animal, and she is busy attacking it, trying to somehow get it into her mouth. I think she is either starting to teeth, or she likes the taste of fabric. I fully expect 'bad cop' to have to show at some point, but it looks like that will not happen today.

Tara made it to France, sounds like her flight went pretty well.

Another birthday party for Emma.

Around here, we try to only have 'friends' birthday parties at ages 8, 16, 32, and 64. (I suppose we would also have a discussion about one for 128. It is also possible that Tara is owed a 'friends' birthday party...) Other than that, we try to limit it to inviting the family over for each birthday.

Anyway, it's Emma's turn to have a party for friends. Her birthday was over a month ago, we put the thing off until today. She invited a lot of people, and most of them came.

I was the food committee. I came up with mini pudding trifles in little plastic shot glasses. I figured it was a nice little portion for little people. The kids seemed to like them. One of the little boys that came over seemed fascinated by the size of the little cup. He wanted to keep one of his, I gave him a clean one. If he has a drinking problem later in life, it's not my fault.


I also made almost 5 dozen mini cupcakes. Then they got frosted, and the tops were dipped in sprinkles. Also a hit with the party goers.


This is our third friends party. When it started, we let people mill around outside. Who would have figured on 90 degree weather on the last day of September? (Sorry about the focus in this video. Looks like a finger got in the way. I don't claim to be a great photographer/cinematographer...)

Emma wanted to do some carnival games for her party. For some reason, it was surprising to me how low a limbo stick can go when you are dealing with 8 year olds.

The nice thing about a party like this, is after about 30 minutes of play, then opening presents, and a little pizza and cake, and the party is nearly over. I think Emma had a good time.


Next up: Ruth in 2013. Then we have Lily in 2014, Kate in 2015, and Adam in 2016. We live a wild life.

Another little cupcake...

A lawn update

No new grass yet. Either I am not watering enough, I am not patient enough, or I got ripped off at the store. I will give it another week.


Sometime between Tuesday night and Wednesday afternoon, all the sticks (1x2's) I had roping off the bottom of the lawn got snapped off near the ground. I think some kettlehead must have been walking by, and thought it would be a good idea to kick the things at the ground to snap them off. It's silly really.


I am strongly considering getting a piece of rebar, cutting a channel down the 1x2's, placing the rebar in the middle, and making a 2x2 out of it. Then I would stick it in the middle of the bottom of the lawn, just so whoever it is can come by again, kick the thing, and break their toe. It wouldn't be my fault they broke their toe...

Reseeding the yard

Last Saturday, I decided to over seed the front yard. Our lawn looks ok when it's really long, but it's not so good if you look closely at it. The lawn is not super thick. I've started to get some weeds coming up out of it, and some crab grass. It's starting to get towards Fall here, the really hot is over, so I figured it was a good time.

I mowed the lawn really short. As short as I could get the mower to go.

After I took a thatch rake to the lawn, you could really see how bad things were. Here is the worst patch.

Most of the lawn looks pock marked. If you look very carefully, and stare at it long enough, it starts to look like a greenish version of the face of the moon...

It's kind of hard to see the scope of the thatch that came up out of the lawn, even after mowing super short. Between the mowing and the raking, I overfilled our green yard waste can.

After I got done, I threw seed down on the lawn, and roped the thing off. I figured I needed the rope to keep the mailman off. I think it also keeps the neighbor cat off, but maybe nothing else. When I was putting the 1x2 posts in to hang the rope, I tried to get one in over in the corner of the porch, by the little pine tree in the picture. I was using a rubber mallet to pound it in, and it started bouncing on something. I went and got a sledgehammer, and after one hit, the post shattered into 25 pieces at the bottom of it. At first I thought that I didn't know my own strength, but I started looking, and there was a knot at the bottom of the piece of wood. The rope is tied off to the pine tree.

I should know in a week or so how it went, if we can get the new seed growing before all the leaves fall off the tree. Stay tuned in a week or two for another update.

Also, it is now Tuesday, and my arms are still tired from using the thatch rake. Not something I would want to do for a career... Also, it started pouring down rain while I was trying to finish. That was kind of nice, because I was hot and tired by that point.

New campaign

Today was Municipal Primary Elections here. We had a primary in our City council district. The guy I voted for didn't move on to the general election. I'm not sure I care to vote for either of the two that are left. *Maybe* they will give me a reason in the next 2 months, but I'm not holding my breath. The incumbent decided to not run, which was too bad, because my motto would have been "Vote the bums out!" At least I can still use it in four years... (I don't understand why the City Council has argued with each other so much over the years. Just get along, and get to work!)

Tara and I ran some errands this evening, when we came back, Ruth had started a campaign of his own. She didn't use Twitter or Facebook, and does not have a blog, so she had to resort to putting up posters all over the house:

"I Want My Jacket"

"Ruth's lost Jean Jacket. Jean Jacket Ya"

"Ruth's Lost Jacket"

"I Love My Jacket"

"The Lost Jacket - Tues July 12 2011"
We assume Ruth had help with this one.

"The Lost Jean Jacket"

"My Lost Jean Jacket"

I vaguely remember a jean jacket. I do not know where it is. I don't even know if it would fit Ruth if I were able to find it. If anyone out there knows the location of Ruth's jean jacket, could you let us know? Also, Ruth appears to need a hobby...

Happy Birthday Kate!

Kate turns twelve tomorrow. I'm not sure how I feel about that. We are dangerously close to have teenagers in the house.

I recently heard from Tara that Kate has been complaining that I never made her a purse. I spent the better part of the last 3 weeks making her one in the evenings after the kids went to bed. It took longer than I expected, because Kate kept coming out of her room all the time. I would have to hide the thing, and wait to make sure that she was really back in her room.


Kate seems to have liked it, and she was plenty surprised by it. Grandma Oaks response? "No one ever made me a purse..."

If I had been faster on the draw, we could be saying "Drat! Foiled Again!"...

A few weeks ago, one of the guys on our team went on a vacation for a while. At some point early on in his stay away from the office, a small fund was put together, aluminum foil was procured, and we went to work wrapping his desk, his stuff, his pictures, everything. Lots and lots of people helped. We labeled it as a "team building activity", but I think we had people from all over the department eventually help. And they enjoyed it.


The final product looked pretty good. I folded up some fold creations with absolutely nothing in them, so he would open them up and not find anything. I was getting ready to do one when someone came in asking some questions, I used the foil to draw the picture, then I folded it up. (He opened it up, and wanted to know what the picture was trying to say...)


It was a fine foiling job, but the day he came back, I decided it needed just a little more, so I went to the store and got some of those large Hersheys bars, and took the other wrapper off, so they were just foil. Blended right in. Took him a while to find them.


Here he is, clearly enjoying the craftsmanship. We had our building dedication two weeks later, a few days after he came back, the department HR lady showed up, said "What happened to your desk?" They talked for a few minutes, then she told him to have it cleaned up before the dedication.

The dedication was last Friday, his desk looks really good, and not a lot of traces of foil. (They are there, we stashed some things...) No one really came through our area to tour the place after the dedication. He could have left his desk foiled.

Sunday night, at around 10pm, I realized that we could have come back in on Saturday, and refoiled all his stuff. That would had been funny. He gets foiled, he cleans it up, we immediately refoil... Too bad I didn't think of it sooner.

Tour of Utah

They have a bike race out here called "Tour of Utah". It's billed as 'America's toughest stage race', I think that's mostly because they have it in the middle of August, and we have lots of mountains...

Anyway, this one of the stages ended up going up the road half a block from our house. We took the kids down to see it. Here's the extent of our excitement for the week:

Clearly we are excitement deprived here. They had the road blocked off for almost an hour, for the 30 seconds of bike riding. I guess we should have watched from a few miles further up the road. The road goes on a pretty good incline from our house for another 2 miles or so, then drops fairly fast. It sounds like 10-15 riders wiped out in the transition from the incline to the decline. (They also said the riders were going 38 MPH at the bottom of the hill...)

In about a half hour, if we are still bored, we can go out back to the same street and watch the gridlock as everyone comes in for the BYU graduation...

Multiple Choice Quiz

Look at the picture above. Then decide which of the following is true:

1. Someone fed these flowers Gatorade
2. The dye from these flowers is flowing back into the case
3. Adam has started potty training
   

Stuff this!

My kids are clothes stuffers. You give them a pile of clothes, pre-folded and ready to be put away, and guaranteed, the clothes would end up stuffed somewhere. I suppose this is ok, but the dressers we had we $100 Sauder "some assembly required" dressers. The sides are press board, the bottom is a different kind of press board. This is perfectly fine for someone like me. I set clothes in, the drawers open and close, no problems.

For my kids, who can't stop stuffing, the bottom of the drawers inevitably fall out the bottom. The kids end up stuffing more until the drawer one below opens at the same time as the one that is stuffed overfull. For a while, I was taking broken drawers and using a liberal amount of Gorilla Glue to the drawer to hold it together. This generally works well until they stuff and break the bottom by breaking one of the sides of the drawer. That usually ends the life of that drawer.

With the baby coming, we needed another dresser. I had a plan to build a 'stuff proof' dresser, over engineering the thing to handle any amount of clothes they could try to throw at it. I had a definite design in my head, and I figured that I could make the sides of the dresser a little bit different for each dresser that I made. I planned to put a little bookshelf on top of the dresser with a couple of shelves for the girls to put books on.

At the end of May, I got side tracked by a project down the street. By the time that project was done, I didn't have time to make a dresser. Tara and I spent some time going to different stores looking to find a dresser to purchase, even if it meant the same kind of dresser we already had. We couldn't find any. Most 'some assembly required' dressers these days are only 3 1/2 feet tall, with three drawers in them. Not what we were looking for. Pre-built dressers were the same size, but three times the cost.

After wandering around for a week trying to find something, I had an idea. I got metal shelving, and some laundry baskets, and made a makeshift dresser. It's nice and tall, and has tons of space. The kids can generally see the clothes, which is nice for them, and as you can see from the picture above, they continue to stuff, but it doesn't matter. (The clothes in these baskets was nicely folded and put away two weeks ago, but it doesn't take long to end up all over the place, I guess.) They can stuff these as much as they want, I don't see them breaking the baskets any time soon. Each shelf is rated for 350 pounds, so they can stuff full of chain mail if they want, and it still should be fine.

I liked the thing enough to make four of these. We found the baskets at Walmart. We cleaned out three different Walmarts here in the valley of this type of basket, and still needed about 6 more. A week later, one of them had 4 of them. I took them. Then another had 10 of them, I only bought two. I took secret pleasure in screwing up Walmart's inventory system around here by creating a one man run on the product, then having Walmart over stock the things, and I won't be buying any more. (I bought 16 of them in total.) Now, any time I go to Walmart in the next two months, I plan to walk by the laundry baskets, and if they have 8-10 of these on the shelf, I will just laugh to myself.

I gave Drew three old dressers with the remaining drawers. Hopefully he was able to build one good one, and hopefully his kids are not stuffers...