Nate's pinewood Derby

Nate's had his pinewood derby this weekend. I spent the last weekend putting his car together and let me tell you that my skill with a coping saw has ALOT of room for improvement. Fortunately I had an ample supply of wood putty to cover all the gouges.

The easiest part was the weights. The cubscouts are very particular now on how much they should weigh. Originally the only rule I heard was it could not weight more than five ounces but when I saw the written rules it stated it had to be between 4.75 and 5 ounces. I got some cylinder weights and drilled holes in the back, slid the weights in and puttied up the holes. At the time of weigh in it was exactly 4.75 ounces.

After wards I had Nate sand it until he got bored (with all the putty there was a good bit of sanding to do) and then he primed and painted it.

The hardest part was the wheels. I made a classic first timer mistake and took on more than I could handle. One of the things you can supposedly do to make the car go faster is to move the axles closer to the ends. So I cut a new rear axle slot at the rear. The result was a little.... disasterous. Fortulatly I was able to get the rear axle fixed.

Nate actually won two rounds but he lost out on the next two rounds. I was real impressed at how good of a sport he was.

I posted pics of his racer on the photo album. Enjoy.

:)

Every book ever written - except one

I read this comic Mister Bookseller a while back and found it again this morning. Overall the story has a sad ending but I loved the thought of having a magical bookstore that has everybook ever written - except one.

Nate gets his report card - Lexi gets a haircut

Nate got his reportcard today. He got all A's (eight of them) and the teacher commented on his report card that he is "Respectful of Authority" and "works well in cooperative groups". We are really proud of him.

One thing that was interesting is that he came back with coupons from Cici's, Beef O'Brady's and putt putt for free meals/games. I don't know if that's for his grades or if its innovative marketing.

Well we have been planning on getting Lexi's hair cut for a month now as she has a habit of chewing on her hair but yesterday Lexi decided to do it herself. Fortunatly Chris caught her early.







So Lexi got an time out and a trip to SuperCuts

Why you should never give a four year old makeup for Christmas

Oh well. At least its not on the floor this time. Once again - Thank you Grandmoo.

;)

It was a very merry Xmas

The kids had a wonderful time Nate got several lego sets (star wars and mars mission) a chemistry set and a remote control bat car.

Lexi got a bratz convertible car, a barbie head makeup set, and a makeup kit (grrrrr, thank you grandmoo, we already have glitter all over the bathroom and playroom) a Dora flying pegasus, and several barbie dolls.

The big thing we got this year was a Wii and several games. Nate played the tank battle and cow race from the Wii play all day.

Hope everyone had a happy new year.

With the freeze we get an icicle tree

So I was picking up the mail after work Monday and I looked up and saw the above.

Now all the other bushes looked normal so there were two possibilities: Chris is decorating the trees and only got one done or there is a BAD water leak somewhere. So hoping against hope I went in and asked Chris if she had decorated one of the bushes. After getting the expected answer (no) I went out and sure enough there was a hairline crack in the outside faucet. Which was shooting a fine mist of water about 12-15 feet and with the cold it was pretty much freezing on contact.

I showed it to the kids and gave each of them a small part of an icicle to munch on. It was pretty easy to convince Lexi that icicles grew on trees but Nate (being seven) was skeptical but did not connect the spraying water to the ice until he asked why I was not letting them get their own icicles.

So I called the plumber and ran up to work and grabbed my laptop so I could work from home Tuesday. Chris filled up a bunch of buckets, pans, containers with water and when I got home I shut off the water. The plumber showed up around noon and fifteen minutes and $125 later we had the faucet fixed and the water running. Luckily it was only the faucet that was cracked - I was deathly afraid that the connecting pipe had cracked too.

More than the campout did this experience teach me the simple pleasures that running water brings: a bath, hygiene, drinks, flushing toliets. Though we had plans for all of them except the last one you still miss the ease in which having water on tap can bring. Fortunatly it was only for a day.