Oh Yah. . .

Did I froget to mention that school is out for the next two months. Woohoo!

Green

I painted our kids' bathroom.

Do you like the color?

Well. . . .

My kids do.

And that's what matters.

Score!

Driving past a garage sale last week, I found a nice dresser and a head board for $25. Not too shabby! Blake was in need of a new bed after all, so I got them. Unfortunately, we still needed to get him the mattress and rails, and I wasn't too keen on him having free reign with the dresser. It was great for an older kid or adult, but not so much for a three year old.

So, inspired by my good fortune, I decided to browse Craig's List to see what I could find. Most of the stuff was junk, either really ugly or not very good quality. But then I found something. Someone was trying to get rid of their old bunk bed and dresser that their eighteen year old had finally grown out of. And they were throwing the mattresses in too! It looked really sturdy, and the design was very similar to the new furniture I had my eye on. Price wise, they were asking for less then a typical dresser. I was interested.

Well, when I went over to check it out, I discovered that it was not only sturdy, it was one of the most solid beds I'd ever seen. Same goes for the dresser. Yay!!! I was sold.







It took me two trips in our SUV to bring it all home and all morning to assemble. The kids are ecstatic. Blake loves his new "room". The girls are jealous. And I didn't have to change the light! (Good thing we never put the ceiling fan back up!)

As for the headboard and dresser from the garage sale, we'll just keep them around for whenever we end up finishing the basement. They'll be perfect for one of the planned bedrooms down there.

Butting Heads

Sometimes life is rough. Sometimes you bring it on yourself. And sometimes, your mother is just plain more stubborn then you are.

This morning, while pulling out Bailey's math page, I discovered, to my chagrin, that she has been putting her incomplete papers away claiming to be done. I'll admit right now that part of it was my fault. I hadn't stood over her shoulder making sure that she did all her work, and I had not double checked her work for some time either. But she was still in BIG trouble. She had cheated. She had lied. And she hadn't done what she was told. BIG BIG trouble!

I found almost 12 pages of math work that she had not completed. Most only had a few blank problems here or there. Some had a lot. One of them, she hadn't done anything but draw pictures.

So, I decided that she had to do all of them. Plus todays math page. And nothing else until she was done. Harsh. But I was pissed.

It's now almost bed time. She's been sitting at the table all day, mostly griping that it's not fair. Honestly, if she had actually focused instead of played around, she could have been done in a little over an hour. But no. She was being stubborn and wouldn't do the work. Three simple problems of "what number comes before" took her an hour and a half. Then, when she thought I wasn't looking, she slipped some of her undone papers in with her finished ones and claimed that she was "almost done". The girl was not happy when I looked through her stack and found them, placing them back in her "not done" pile. She also got in trouble for lying again. No video games for a week.

Oh, did I mention that she didn't get to come with us to the store today? She also didn't get to watch a movie with Sierra and Blake, and she didn't get to have story time with daddy either.

As it stands, she still has two pages left, each with a lot of problems to finish. She'll be sitting at the table tomorrow until she finishes them plus her new page for tomorrow as well.

It's been a real pain. I feel bad for her, but I can't just let this one slide. I hope she learns from it. If she doesn't, she'll have an even harder time in the future.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1!!!

The countdown begins.

Five more days of school, and then we are off for two whole months! The reason for that long of a break is because I decided I wanted to start school around the same time that the school district in town was. That way there's less confusion, I can capitalize on the back to school sales, and I won't have to start using the Options curriculum part way through the year.

So what are we going to do with all of that time?

Swim.
Paint the house.
Camp.
Visit Family.
House projects.
Read.
Denver Science Museum.
Relax.

It's going to be a great summer!

2010-2011 Longmont Options

Well, Sierra and Bailey have both made it into the Longmont Options program for next year. They will be attending regular classes starting Friday, September 10, 2010 and continue most Fridays from 8:15-3:15 until Friday May 20, 2011.

Bailey's classes will include:
-Science
-Language Arts
-Math Skills
-Art
-Music
-Spanish
-Physical Education

Sierra's classes will include;
-Art
-Spanish
-Drama
-Science
-Piano
-Computer Skills

Both girls are really excited. We are looking forward to another fun year of Options.

He Did It!!!

Blake did it. He went number two in the toilet! Finally. And he did it all by himself. I only found out after the fact.

Way to go Blake!

Sierra's Baptism

Sierra was Baptized and confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (aka. the Mormon Church) on Saturday, May 1st by her father. Grandpa Rogers gave a talk on Baptism. Grandma Felt gave a talk on the Holy Ghost. Grandma Rogers and Grandpa Felt both offered prayers. Aunt Leah conducted the music, and Sierra's piano teacher, Kelly Meilstrup, played the piano. Bishop Haddock welcomed her into the Ward, and Sister Workman welcomed her into Primary.


Congratulations, Sierra!

Dad Saves the Day

I botched it. I really botched it, and I had no idea how I was going to be able to fix it.

A week ago, while we were getting ready for all of the family to come, I decided to replace the fan light receptacle in Blake’s room where my sister and her girls were going to be sleeping. The fan box was sagging into the room because it was no longer able to hold the fan up like it should. I didn’t like the idea of the fan possibly falling on my niece's head while she was visiting, so I set to work.

What I thought would take an hour or so ended up taking longer. Much, much longer.

I got a new receptacle box that attaches to a bar which wedges between the ceiling joists, just like I was supposed to. Then I proceeded to take the fan down. No problem. With Seth’s help, we had the fan down in minutes. After that was when the annoyances started.

There were four sets of wires (with one white, one black, and one ground each) that were all coming through different holes in the old box. I had to untangle all of those wires before I could remove the old box. OK. Only about five to ten minutes. Then I had to take the old box support out. Slightly annoying, but not too bad.

After that, I spent almost 20 minutes inadvertently knocking down bits of ceiling and insulation just to locate the ceiling joists that I had to attach the new support bar to for the new box. Then I had to install the new bar. Another 20 minutes with more bits of debris.

When I attached the new box, I found that, because I was threading the wires through the top holes, the wires ended up being really short and hard to work with. Fine. I decided to add splices (extension wires). Finally I was ready to attach the fan. I replaced the fan mount and Seth held up the fan while I tried to connect the fan wires. Yah, right. Those wires did not want to connect. I had all of the blacks in one clump and all of the whites in another. The wire nuts just didn’t want to screw on. Both my and Seth’s arms were getting exhausted, so we quit for the time being.

That night, Kristi and her girls showed up, needing the room to sleep in, so we waited until the next day to try again. Same results. Fine! We decided that maybe we should just get a regular light for the room instead.

Seth and I left the following morning for our anniversary vacation, apologizing to my sister for not having fixed the light. The day after we got back, I went out and bought a pair of flush mount ceiling lights. By mid day, I had everything hooked up and went to flip the breaker switch.

Zap! I somehow shorted out the circuit. I turned it off and tried again. Still no current. What had I done wrong?

Sigh. I tried rewiring again that evening. No luck. I was out of ideas, and was about ready to call an electrician. But there was still some hope. My Dad had come out to visit us with the others.

So, when Dad came home from his romp in Denver, I asked if he could take a look at it. Within a matter of minutes, he was able to tell me part of what I had done wrong. One of the white wires (the one coming from the light switch) was actually a black. So he separated that from the other whites and did something else before hooking up the light fixture. Yay! The circuit was working! I hadn't blown it completely! But when we went to flip the switch to the light, we got nothing. Absolutely nothing. The rest of the lights on that circuit worked, but not the one we were working with.

Dad undid his work and spent the rest of the evening (until the kids went to bed) trying to figure out the wiring, and explaining it to me, with no success.

He worked on it all the next morning too, until all of the other visitors were ready to leave for Utah. He had removed the new box and was testing all of the wires. No success. He felt awful that he hadn’t been able to fix it for me. I told him it was OK. I was the one who had broken it in the first place. It was my fault, not his. I could tell he still wanted to fix it for me, but he had to leave. Everyone was waiting.

Even so, Dad had given me hope. I now knew that one of the white wires had to be separate from the others and that I hadn’t completely fried the circuit. So, I thought I’d have one more go at it before calling in the pros.

This time, instead of threading the wires through the top of the box, I pulled them in from the sides. That gave me a good extra inch of wire to work with all around. Good. Then I separated that one white/black wire, hooked the remaining three whites together, connected all of the ground wires together, and connected all of the blacks together. Finally, I attached the light fixture, white wire to the clump of whites and black wire to the white/black wire. And what do you know. It worked!!!!!! It actually worked.

I was so excited that I had to call Dad up right then and there and tell him that we did it. I could have never figured it out without his help.

Thank You Dad.