Kiddos

Well we are well into week two, week one with the three kiddos was crazy. Kari got really sick the day after they arrived, I freaked out and Mom and Dad and Angie and Justin watched them for us while we were at the hospital last Sunday. We placed them in another home while Kari recuperated and picked them back up. We have a schedule down now and things are calming down. They are great kids. Still no pictures though. Sorry we can not post pictures of them on the web. Thank you for all of the help.

The babies are coming, the babies are coming

Well we have some finally, three at one time. Girl C, 2 1/2, boy J, 15 months, boy D, 5 months. Can you say insane. This will be so much fun having three little ones running around. They have already had their first baths, had dinner and are now lying down ready to sleep. What if I don't hear them at night? I am waiting for that morning when I wake up and see a small pair of eyes looking back at me. Yee haa! Three under three, man this is going to be INSANE!! We have only had them for a few hours but we already love them. So cute and well behaved. Sorry but no names or pictures on the blog, you will just have to see them to believe it. Love ya. Thanks for all of the support.

Utah trip

So Kari and I took what will most likely be the last prefamily vacation. I am so looking forward to toting around several kiddos with us. We will most likely do much of the same stuff. We started off by spending several days in St. George. We stayed with Kari's brother. We just chilled and had a bunch of fun. We went to their community center, awesome. They have a water park there that in the summer is part inside and part outside, and in the winter they have these big garage doors that rolled closed so the park is opened all year round. We also went to the Washington County fair. We went into the petting zoo sponsored by FFA. My niece got to ride the pony a couple of times. We took he to the rides and she had fun. Kirk and I went on the zipper, his first time, we giggled like school girls and had so much fun.

On Sunday we changed locations from St. George to Mapleton. On the way up Kari and I noticed that we were getting sick, by Monday we had full on chest colds. I was a little worse than her. That really jacked up our plans. We got to see some friends, brothers and sisters. Great to see the Mechams, they cut their camping trip short to see us. Theresa stayed up late to catch us, she hooked us up with some fruit, Melanie waited until the last minute to go to a doctors appointment to hang with us for a few extra minutes. On Monday, Tuesday, and part of Wednesday we just bummed around taking it easy. Wednesday night there was no doubt I was going riding after missing out on Mondays riding. I love riding the canyons in Utah. We went to the Hogle zoo on Thursday with Natalie and the kids. I think it was a lot of fun even though we got rained out. I was just really bumbed because they cancelled the bird show due to weather, and we missed the train ride because it was raining, man I really wanted to ride through the bison exhibit. SUCK!!!!!! Oh well some relaxing time, 2 days of riding, seeing some animals, which included ones in cages and at homes, hehehehee, I love hanging with our families. Thanks for the accommodations.






Oh yea, on one of our chill days we happened into a kitchen store and we purchased our own ebel skiver pan. The picture below. these are yummy little balls that are some where between a pancake, angle food cake, and a doughnut. I filled some with cooked apple pieces and some with Nutella. My sister in law said it was awesome to have chocolate filled yummyness for breakfast. Later she pointed out that the powder sugar shaker I was using was actually flour, man did I fill stupid. So she retrieved the powder sugar from the pantry and I just dumped a bunch on to fix the problem. Great to see you all.

Pine wood derby part 2

So the derby went awesome and all of the participants had fun. Sweet cars, check out the plain block of wood on the left, just put that in the back of your mind for a minute. Boy and girls had fun, although one girl did not really want to race but she kept on winning so she had to keep racing, funny! We had about 35 people bring cars to race some legal some not so legal. This is about the only mutual activity we had where we had nonmutual folks show up from the ward and a couple from other wards.

Here are the cars, yes cars I made. I was relatively sure that I would have people show up that needed cars to race. The pickle/watermelon/zukini/cucumber car was the fastest car that I made. You can put your vote in for what you think it looks like. I had fun making them.

So check out this sweet ride, yeup challenger, yeup General Lee. My friend and scoutmaster made this and believe it or not this is one of the legal cars. And did you notice it has working doors.





My two buses are my favorite, I made the double decker for me to race.



Yes, I actually built little bench seats to put on the top of the double decker.



So I was really impressed with how well this cars ran. They were competitive with full BSA legal cars that were similarly built. So remember the car on the left, you know the block of wood. Our second counselor brought his son that will be 12 in a month to watch. I didn't have any more built cars for him to race but I had a couple of unassembled kits. So we took the block, put on the wheels, and let him race. He beat some very well built cars including my watermelon, the bishops sweet blue demon, and one of young women's leaders car(who took second). That's right, he won it all, a plain block of wood wins. He's not even in mutual yet. Fun time. It was a blast. Thank you Jeff for loaning me the track and to Mom and Dad for the use of tools and stuff, I will explain the stuff later.

pinewood cars

So my priests and I thought it would be really cool to have a pinewood derby race for combined mutual one night. I got to looking and the cheapest I could get a car kit for was $2.86 on line, for 50 cars that would be around $140. That is kind of pricey for a mutual activity. So I decided I could make them for cheaper, both in price and quality....hehehehehehe. He is what I came up with, Regulation size cars cut down from 2x3 lumber, 3/16th fender washers for wheels and 1" roofing nails for axles. These seem to roll pretty good on the floor, almost as well as my official pinewood derby cars. We will see when I get them on the track.

Here are my 50 kits ready to hand out. Each car was weighed and marked, the weights ranged between 3.3 ounces and 4.1 ounces. I grouped them in 4 categories, 3.3 ounces, 3.7 ounces, 3.9 ounces, and 4.0 + ounces. The heavier ones I will hand out to kids that want to do some carving. The wheels, spacers, and axles weigh 1.5 ounces. The kits cost about $0.82 per car, that makes it with in my price range for an activity.

Here is one of the cars assembled before body selection begins.

This is my demo car to show the young women and young men.

I will let you know how it turns out.

I suck

I know, no pictures how lame. I have been horrible at taking pictures of what I have been up to lately. June I spent a week with my Varsity scouts hiking the 3 tallest peaks in Arizona, Escdilla, Baldy, and Humphrey's. They were some tired boys when we were done. Two of the three hikes involved hiking in snow half way up the trail. I have spent some time working on my street bike. It is getting closer to getting done. I am working on some wiring problems before I tear it down. We have finished our classes for foster/adoption and are waiting on a reply from the state. While we are waiting I have been putting doors in our house, crazy boy says what. Didn't you have doors before? Yes, but back in June of 07 right after we bought the house I took them all out and my wife has been very patiently waiting for 3 years for new doors. Now all I have to do is remodel one bathroom and replace that door, and put in base boards, and paint, and put in some cabinet doors, and do some land scapeing, and finish the shop, and put the addition on the house, and work on the garden........... you get the idea. I will try to get some pictures on here soon.

Garden time

So Kari wanted a garden, so with out telling her I went and built her one. At our house if you want a garden you either have to fence it in or hope you can kill all of the bunnies, birds, and lizards. So I came home from work Wednesday morning last week and built this for her. She helped me finish up some of it and lay the walking stones.

Getting Started

Here we go, I go? It was kind of a pain to do this part by myself.
Framing done.

Kari laying pavers and walking stones. Check out that sink! It is the one I broke trying to put it in my house. Now we have a matching set on in the kitchen and one in the garden. The sink base is from a treadle sewing machine.

I still need to put sunbrella fabric on the top for shade/ top closure.

We hope the animals will leave our veggies alone, if not I will have to go get a pellet gun!