Blog Links

If anyone reads this and wants me to put their blog as a link on the side, let me know what the link is and I will add it. I had a couple other links, and then I lost them. Oops.

She Said Yes!

I helped one of the guys in my bible study with this elaborate plan to ask a girl to Prom. It all went down today. Here's the play by play. First, we had a quiz in my calculus class and I made a little mark in the corner of one of the quizzes. When we were done with the quiz we graded them and I told the kids that I randomly put a mark on one of the test and whoever had it would get to play hangman for extra credit. Cassie had the mark on her paper because I made sure of it. The setup was already on the board and so she started to guess. She only got three letters wrong and people were giving her ideas and everything. Then she figured out that it said 'Open the Blinds'. She said, "Can I do it." I said sure and she went over to the window. As she was getting there she said,"I feel like there's going to be a secret message" She was half joking but then she opened the blinds to find papers on the window that said, "Cassie, Will you go to Prom with me?" There was a note attached without a name and it said she needed to be ready at her house by 2 O'clock for someone to pick her up. Everyone in the class was in awe and thought it was soooo cute. At 2 O'Clock a friend picked her up at her house and drove her down to the lake. Then another friend picked her up in a boat and drove her over towards the bridge about a half mile away. As they went under the bridge, AJ repelled down with climbing gear and flowers right into the boat. When she saw him she laughed a bit in amazement and was smiling pretty big. She said Yes!

Wolf Scout

Josh received his wolf rank in cub scouts today. He finished his last requirement today as we went around the neighborhood picking up trash. It was a knight theme and so he was knighted a Wolf. Now he gets to work towards his Bear badge. He earned another belt loop for ultimate Frisbee, 5 arrows for doing electives, a bunch of totem rounds for various activities, and a perfect attendance pin. He really enjoys it and is signed up for day camp this summer. Last summer he had a great time and I'm sure he will again.

It's a Boy!!!

Here are the pics they gave us today at the ultrasound. The upper left is your chance to see if you can tell if it's a boy or girl. The upper right is his two feet. The lower left is an arm and hand. The lower right is obviously a profile. We don't really have any name ideas yet. Enjoy the pics.

Finished!

I finished off the fence this weekend and I am very happy about it. Already, after 2 days with a gate we've really enjoyed not chasing Levi around the yard. The dog can also go out to the bathroom by himself and also stay out for a while and enjoy the fresh air. The only downside is that the gate is easily opened from the outside. The youngest neighbor boy opened it and Levi and Carmelo escaped. I plan to add a bar type latch on the inside so that won't happen. He just wanted to play, and got more than he bargained for when the dog bowled him over on the way out.

The toughest section of the fence was the 6 feet nearest to the house. I had to dig through the concrete. I used my circular saw and 4 masonry blades to cut a 2 inch deep square boarder and then went to work with a pick ax/matax or whatever you call that thing. I also utilized a cold chisel. It was really tough to get it all cut out and the patio was 4 inches deep. The dirt was nice underneath however and the holes were the easiest to dig. Even though it was difficult, it was rewarding because it was the last section I needed to work on to finish the fence. Then I built the gate, which was easy, but it was hard to make a decision on where I wanted to hang it because the fence runs parallel to the ground and the gate was level. This makes it look like something is crooked and it was really bugging me. I decided to make a the gate a little bit shorter, so that it wouldn't line up with either side of the fence.
I still have to stain the fence and put a flower bed in the corner by the end of the driveway.

Another Happy Day Homeschooling!

Josh takes a break from reading to cuddle up with Levi. What a great benefit of being at home during the day. Josh is still reading a ton and Levi is cruising around everywhere. He can climb onto anything and he can run fast. He pulled his whole eating chair over today by pulling on the chair next to him. Did I say he's also strong? So, tonight we ran out and bought a highchair that he can't tip over. I joked before went went about a five point harness being an important factor in the purchase. We actually found a couple that did have a 5-point harness and ended up getting one of those. We'll need it for the next baby at some point, so it's a good purchase. More importantly, Levi will be safe.

A Wrinkle in Time

Joshua, Joanna, and I have all been reading A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. We all really enjoyed it and are reading the other books in the series. There are four books and they all have the same characters. I would suggest them. They are very interesting and get your imagination going. I'm on the second book called A Wind In the Door.

Creation Station

Today Joanna took the kids to a place in Lynnwood called the Creation Station. The kids have been to the place once before and really enjoyed it. Here are their creations:

Mackenzie made a creation that is an animal. It's name is Coward Octagon. He's always messing up his work and copying other people's work. It's a boy and it's scared of swimming because it thinks that the water might gobble him up. He leaves his momma and daddy right when he's born and he has hair on half of his head and not on the other half. He's also always late for school. He never eats his lunch. He throws it in the sea because it's always seaweed. He doesn't throw his breakfast or dinner in because it it's always rolls with butter and jelly. His desert is always the same and it's always his favorite which is octagon soup with dog poop on top. He's an animal that eats dog poop. He always laughs when someone says dirty dog. He always always is nice to his friends. He never goes down the slide because he always is scared of heights. He thinks that little slides will try to tickle him. Coward Octagon says,"My favorite soup is coward octagon berry soup." Octagon always says his mom is out there and his dad is out there somewhere. Goodbye Mackenzie and Coward Octagon. The End.

Joshua made three robots that are from Mars.

#1 The littlest one is always the same as all the other little ones. This particular one is named Mini-Mario of Mars. He looks exactly like all the villagers, except he is the smallest of them. He gathers sticks for bon-fires when festivals arrive. Here are the names of the four festivals: Spook Day, Clown Day, Weird Day, and Big Boss of Mars Day(well you'll learn about Big Boss later.) At home, Mario's work is to bring out the garbage, polish his dad's armor(just in case), and last of all cleaning his boulder room(just to let you know, they live in a crater on Mars). He saves boulders in his room for holidays. He brings them out and shows them to Big Boss. Do you know how he gets chunks out of boulders? He goes on special missions to Earth. Have you noticed that on his picture his arms are kind of weird? On the back they are shooters and on the front they are grabbers. He turns around, shoots with the back sides of his arm, turns around grabs the chunks of boulders and flies back to Mars. That's all their is to Mario.

#2 Now let me tell you about Policeman of Mars. His job is to inspect Mars and make sure nobody is stealing or breaking Big Boss's boulder palace (because boulders are very rare on Mars, they're considered very valuable.) Policeman of Mars goes down to Earth with Mini-Mario and his friends to get boulder chunks.(By the way, that's how Big Boss got his castle.) After a long work in the day of inspecting the castle to make sure that no one scratched the castle and that no pieces where missing, he goes home and takes a looong, loooong, looooong nap.(And by the way that's two days.)

#3 Big Boss of Mars. How does Big Boss kill his enemies? Well I'll tell you... He shoots his eyes out at them which have razor claws on the ends. It shoots into their head if he does it right and it goes all the way through. Then, a whole bunch of blades come out of the eye. There are wires coming out of Big Boss's head now connected to his eyes and he pulls the eyes back in and his enemy's head gets chopped into pieces. His enemies are in Jupiter. He wants peace, in all the universe so he only fights when he needs to. His favorite subjects are Policeman of Mars and Mini-Mario of Mars. And that's about it with Big Boss.

Picture People

It was an interesting day. I went down to the lumber yard and purchased my boards for the fence. I knew a kid who worked there and he said he would cut the six foot boards in half for me. What a time saver. I brought the trim 1x4's home and put them in the garage while Joanna took Josh and Mackenzie to swim lessons. I made lunch and left as soon as they came back to pick up the boards. When I got to the lumber yard I found out that I made it 10 minutes before closing. That was lucky. They close at 1:00 on Saturdays. Then I unloaded the wood into the garage and AJ, a kid in my bible study came by. We put up one section of the fence and then we had to stop. It was starting to rain and I didn't realize that Joanna had scheduled the picture people before Julie Elenbaas's birthday at Chuck E Cheese. We rushed to the mall and dropped by Gymboree and found some cute matching clothes on clearance. Then we rushed over just in time for our appointment. They were running late because they let someone who dropped in 5 minutes before our scheduled time go even thought they didn't have an appointment. Then we bugged them about getting the pictures ready quicker, like they would have been if we were seen on time. They complied of course, I have Joanna on my side and she doesn't often lose. The pictures were great. This one is a huge picture and what you see is what would fit in the scanner. I think you can imagine what their feet would look like. Josh thought he should do some crazy faces in some of the pictures and they were pretty funny. We didn't buy those however. Then we made it to the party just in time. Whew. What a day!

42 inches

The city says that fences need to be 42 inches if they are within 5 feet of a street. I don't think that they will ever come and look at my fence, but I'd like to be in compliance. So, today I removed most of the top rails and moved them down ten inches. I have 3 more to do and I need to get a few more hangers because the old ones are hard to remove and keep them in usable condition. I'm really glad that I went downtown before I put the boards on. I actually like it a little better at the lower height. I hope the dog can't jump that high. Anyway, the great picture below is no longer valid.

Sprin Break Memories

I have most of the fence done, and I'm ready to put up some boards when I get some time and the rain stops. My only concern is the height. It's 50inches and 1 foot from the alley. I'm checking into the ordinance on fences in Lake Stevens to make sure it's fine before I finish it off. I'm not sure why I didn't do this before I started, but probably because I lived on 5 acres and if we wanted to build something we just did it. I'm worried that it will have to be 42inches and I'll have to remove and reattach the top rails.
Here are Joanna and Mackenzie on Easter looking beautiful as usual. We had a great time together. On Saturday we made Easter eggs with a kit from Grandma Cathy and also made Jesus in the tomb with croissant rolls and marshmallows. It was cool.
On Saturday we went to the zoo for the egg hunt. There were eggs everywhere and no one had any trouble finding an egg. Josh helped Levi out by holding his bag. Levi found a few eggs and thought it was great. Josh and Mackenzie came out with their bags full. They stood in one spot basically to get all the eggs. That's how many eggs there were. On Sunday Grammy Dee had a egg hunt of her own at the farm and Mackenzie found a bunch of eggs their too. Joshua only found a few, but he was focused and found the golden egg with the dollar inside. It was a great end to a fun Spring Break.

Time to shave!

Ridiculously Hairy. Here's a before and after. I can't stand shaving, but I also can't stand my face getting hairy. What a dilemma. So, I decided a week before spring break to not shave for awhile. Two weeks later, it's a Saturday and I just can't stand it anymore. It's itchy and I don't like it. Goodbye, it's gone! I definitely need a haircut as well.

Spring Break!

This week we are off for spring break and I'm building a fence. Here's the low down so far. On Saturday I dug holes from 6-8 after I got a post hole digger. I found out that our ground has a ton of rocks in it. It should be good for the cement to form around but it really is horrible to dig in. We were busy all day Sunday and so I finished the holes on Monday. Monday we woke up to two inches of snow??!! It was melting and I finished half of the holes by noon and then came in for lunch and watched it hail like crazy for about half an hour. I went back out after it cleared and finished off the holes. There were some big rocks in a couple that I cleared out as the came up on Tuesday. Tuesday morning I got up at 7:00 and woke up Josh. We were at Dunn's lumber by 8:00 and bought the posts. We got the 4 1/8 post because we think the larger ones look better. It's not that much more cost wise. Then we went home and unloaded and picked up Mackenzie to get some cement. It took two trips to get it because I didn't want to overload the van. On the second trip I took the kids into the mini-mart for a Slushie. We were home by 10:00 or 10:30 and I started putting in the posts. I got really lucky that I dug the holes where I did because the post all lined up perfectly on my string when I dropped them in. Sure I strung it out, but since I dug out my holes by hand they were not very wide. The posts had no wiggle room to sit firm at the bottom and I had to get them level and in line. There were only two holes that I had to slightly enlarge. I bought this post level at the store that was amazing and saved me a ton of time and headache. It straps onto the post and levels in both directions. Anyway, I finished off the posts by 5:00 and we went to Subway for dinner. I do have one problem. I have a ten foot span from one of my posts to my house over our patio. It's all cement. I have to figure out how to put a post into the cement. I'm thinking about renting a cement circular saw. I would just chance it and run one ten foot span next to the house, but I need to put a gate in on the patio. If anyone has a brilliant idea that reads this I'd love to know. I'll post pictures when I'm done. Or at least more done that a bunch of posts sticking out of the ground.