We got there right at 6, but Santa was a bit late…

Sitting in Santa's Chair.

The kids were really excited while we waited in line.  But as soon as they got up close to him… that was a different matter.

So I showed them that Santa was nice.

Then Joshua told Wesley that, THIS was his chance to tell Santa what he wants for Christmas.  But he was pretty nervous and a bit terrified.  But he really managed to pull it together an conquer his initial fear and sat with Santa like a champ.

Drying his tears...

This is right before he said he wants a FISH TANK from Santa.

We really wanted to try a picture with Jillian too…

I was really surprised that she even sat with him.

This was after about 10 seconds, she had really calmed down. If only we had 10 more, she may have even smiled.

I promised the kids cookies, to try to get them to cooperate with Santa, so we went over to the rec center and had cookies and hot chocolate.

Enjoying their snack.

Yummy!

He just did not want to smile for me!

Time to go home.  But first, a few more pictures…

It was about 50 out tonight.  It felt pretty good.  But we (When I say we, I mean the kids and Joshua.  Of course I was in a jacket.  I even had a scarf on too.) were the only family without jackets on.  And most kids had on mittens and a hat!

It was a good night.  We are looking forward to walking along the trails tomorrow and looking at the luminaries and the Christmas lights.  The tractor train will be out tomorrow, so I can’t wait to get photos with Joshua and the kids!

We made Wesley’s old room into the “sleeping” room.  I was calling it this to the kids, because it was a bit confusing for them.

Jillian and Wesley were pretty excited about all the changes.  They helped me take down the crib.  It is hard to believe we used it for 4 years!

View from the door.

Jillian Bed

We will have Jillian on the floor for a while, so she can get used to not sleeping in her crib.

Wesley's Bed

Window with big basket of blankets... we don't really need them too much here!

Sharing the closet space.

Then I turned Jillian’s room into the “play” room.

View from the door.

Game table and train table.

Toy bins, books and blocks.

Doll house.

And now with all the shelves in this room, we have a ton of room for our games!

I am very hopeful that the kids will do well in one room.  It will make our bedtime routine so much easier.  It will take a couple of weeks for it to really sink in – but should be worth it!!

Now normally, swapping out a toilet should take maybe an hour or so. The steps are pretty simple:

• Turn off the water to the tank
• Drain the tank
• Unhook the hose
• Undo the bolts
• Remove the toilet
• Cleanup the wax ring
• Reverse for install

We got right up to undo the bolts on the first toilet when we ran into problems. Turns out the thing wasn’t bolted down.  In fact it was missing a couple important components like the closet flange and a decent stand pipe. Anyway, to make a long, boring story somewhat shorter, the free toilets ended up taking me a month to put in (well two of them, the last one won’t fit) which included $100 in tools and supplies, multiple trips to the hardware store and pouring concrete (twice).

Under our toilet: Missing closet flange, screwed up pipe, eroded concrete. Nasty, eh?

The best part of the whole experience? One of the requirements of getting the new toilets is that you disable the old toilets so they can’t be used again.  Our method? Let the kids whack the heck out of them.  Fun was had by all.  Notice the safety glasses.

Wesley smashing away with the 3lb hammer.

Did I mention they loved this a lot?

This is why we wore safety glasses. Look at that potty fly!

Once Wesley got done with the first toilet we brought out number two and let Jillian have at it. We started her off with the same 3lb hammer Wesley used, but on the first swing she tipped over and fell onto the toilet.  So we swapped it out with a claw hammer (thank goodness again for safety goggles).

Preparing to smash her toilet.

Doing some hard core potty training. Bad potty!

She couldn't break the cover until we placed it on the ground. Then WHACK!

Once Jillian had gotten tired we let Wesley finish it off. He came back at it with the claw hammer, but quickly switched to the heavier one for its toilet-smashing powers.

Now that the toilets are in small pieces we have been slipping them 30lbs or so at a time into the trash. I think we’ll have it all disposed of in a couple of weeks.  This may have been the most fun we’ve had ever. The kids loved it. It was simple, easy, and you couldn’t help but laugh.  Made the whole nasty toilet problems worth it.  Even Amber and I took some swings. I highly recommend it if you get the chance.

Supplies:

• Scissors or knife
• Small glass jar (we used a jam jar)
• Cardboard
• A shovel or something else to dig a hole

Step-By-Step:

To begin we dug a hole in the backyard just big enough to fit the jar.  It needs to be buried completely level with the top lip of the jar.  The idea is that the bugs will walk across the dirt and just fall right in.

Digging the hole.

Buried right to the rim.

With the cardboard we made 5 pieces.  Four long strips about 3 inches by 18 inches and one top big enough to cover the jar.   Each strip goes up against the edge of the jar at a 90 degree angle.  Basically they form a big plus sign.  Effectively they funnel the insects into the jar.  The bugs are walking along, bump into the cardboard, and then follow the edge of the strip right into the jar.

Cardboard strips funnel in the insects.

Closeup of jar in ground.

Then you just place the last piece of cardboard on top to keep the jar from filling with water should it rain (thus drowning the insects).

Rain cover in place.

The next day we checked our trap.  I was surprised to see about 60 pillbugs, a sowbug, a few earwigs, a small spider and an ant.  The next day we found a similar number of bugs plus a small black beetle.   We’ve set the trap again and we’ll let you know if we catch anything really exciting.

Our first day's catch.

My wife is a genius. But we all knew that already. A few weeks ago she spent about $2 and made one little bedroom much more colorful and one little boy much happier. Here is how she did it.

Amber took a few thumbtacks, about 15 feet of embroidery floss and a some clothes pins and Voila!  Instant art gallery.

Wesley loves it. He puts his new pictures up on the wall and gets excited showing me his artwork.  He even uses one of the clothespins to hang Baby Bat upside down at night.

The bed went together pretty quickly, even though as you’ll notice in the video we had to spin it around a couple of times to get the pieces to all line up. The green “thing” towards the front of the video is, as near as we can determine, some sort of body pillow.  We weren’t expecting it, but it was in the box so it is ours now.

The frames are 10 seconds apart.  The first video is compiled at 6 frames per second.  So if my math is right, that means each second of video was one minute of real life.  If you don’t have 39 seconds to spare, take a look at the second video.  Same images only at 30 frames per second (or 5 minutes of real life to 1 second of film).

Right now I give the bed a rating of “Interesting”.  We’ll have to see how it feels after a couple of nights.  It is basically a couple of air mattresses with built in pumps (similar to the Aerobed) wrapped in some memory foam and zipped into what looks like a normal mattress cover.  The kids dig it for sure.  Up, down, click, blow, hiss. What’s not to love?  Even as geeky and techy as I am, I must admit I never thought I’d own a bed that needed to be plugged in.

Oh! And it stinks to high heaven.  It was manufactured on the 17th, the same day it shipped and it has that new petroleum product smell.  We had the windows open as long as we could stand the cold.  Hopefully this mellows out quick or we are going to have to go bunk with the kids.

If there is anything I like more than having to wait even longer for the bed to arrive it is finding out I’m just like everyone else. Apparently just about everyone is buying this bed. How mainstream.

Our new mattress. Matching stools not included.

After many years of sleeping on a mattress we hate we finally broke down and bought another one using some of our tax return. We’re doing our part to stimulate the economy. Our old mattress wasn’t cheap, but it did suck. And continues to suck in new ways all the time. First it was too firm and caused my arms to fall asleep. That lasted about 6 months. Then for about 2 months it was actually somewhat comfortable. And then it started to form pits where Amber and I sleep.  They have gotten so pronounced that we both tend roll toward the outside of the bed.  Basically we hate it.

So we ordered a new bed from Costco.  It was a good deal and the best part is that it I can return it whenever I feel like it.  Heck, they’ll actually come pick it up if we need them to.  It is an Infinite Comfort Memory Foam Sleep System. For those of you who don’t know that means Sleep Number Bed knock off.  It is of the type that you can adjust the firmness on each side of the bed with little remote controls.  I can honestly say I never thought I’d own a bed that required electricity to operate.  We’ll see.  Hopefully it is comfortable, else back it goes.

The trouble now is that the thing has not arrived.  Heck it hasn’t even shipped yet. And I know that shouldn’t be a real surprised.  We ordered it on January 30th and it says to expect 10-15 business days for delivery.  So we passed right on by 10 days and of course Monday (President’s Day) doesn’t count so 15 business days might not be until February 23rd.  But I have to admit I thought “It’s Costco.  They are just being conservative.  It’ll show up in a week.”  And so my body decided to wait.  For several nights I basically didn’t sleep at all. It was as if my body decided that it had had enough and was not going to take this old bed any more.  Now I’ve returned to my normal lousy sleep, but at least I am getting some (When the kids allow.  Jillian, I’m looking at you, miss 5 am this morning).

In my impatience for the bed to arrive I’ve taken to checking Costco.com several times a day eagerly looking forward to seeing the tracking number that will tell me when our bed will finally show up.  Akin to the way some people press the elevator button a thousand times or continuously press the button for the cross walk I’ve decided that Costco ships their beds based on how badly someone wants it.  So I keep checking their site, many times a day, letting them know I want it more than anyone.  If I click that “Order status” button often enough I’m sure I can get it to ship.

Apparently when the thing does arrive we’ll have to assemble it.  It comes in a box and you have to put together all the pieces and of course inflate the air bladders that allow it to adjust in firmness. I’ll post some pictures of that when it finally happens (If I can be bothered to get out of bed to use the computer).

Luminaries

Santa was visiting from 6-9.  We got there right at 6.  Good thing, because this Santa was a talker!  He was really sweet with the kids, but the line moved VERY slowly!  When we were done, there were about 50 people in line.

Once it was our turn, we started with Jillian.

Not a happy girl!

As you can see, it did not go well.

I like Daddy much better.

Joshua rescued her and then it was Wesley’s turn.

Say Santa!

He knew exactly what he wanted to ask Santa for.  Two books – one about dinosaurs and one about penguins and Candy.

Talking to him about books.

Then we wanted to try to get a picture of both of the kids with Santa…

This time was not any better.

Santa gave each kid a small candy cane.  Wesley and Jillian were both very polite and thanked Santa for the yummy treat.

Next it was time to ride the “train”.  It is a sweet man who drives a tractor around that pulls 7 “cars” that are made out of 50 gallon drums.

Goodbye Mom

Both kids enjoyed the ride.  Jillian was very sweet at the end of the ride and was giving Wesley hugs.

After the train ride we went over to the community center where they had hot chocolate, cookies, and a few snacks.  We ate them outside at the playground then walked back to the stroller.

Still eating their cookies.

We then walked around the trail to see the luminaries.  We also walked around a couple of houses that had a lot of decorations.  There was even a sweet man, who had a ton of decorations in his yard, outside in his driveway passing out yummy hot chocolate and cookies.

Looking at the snow globe with a penguin inside.

Wesley was so sweet – he said goodbye to all of the decorations.  It was a good thing we were on a short block.  He made us laugh when we were on our way out of the neighborhood and Wesley said, “they even had bats!!”

Wesley sees a bat - we see an angel

It was a wonderful way to spend a Saturday night!

But then we sold our extra sod and pieces for $50. This was a good deal for the guy who bought it. It would have cost considerably more at Lowe’s or Home Depot. Plus it was awesome to see his Subaru Forester loaded to the gills with, just my guess here, 1000 lbs of sod. (The good, full pieces weigh in at about 14 lbs. He had 40 of those. Plus he had 50 or 60 less perfect pieces.) It was a great deal for us. For a few minutes of work posting to Craigslist and then helping him load up we saved $50 and the problem of what to do with 1000 lbs of sod.

Oh yeah.  Along with the 20 or so rusted nails, the couple hundred pounds of rock and concrete, and the one red brick we found a 1980 quarter as well.  So total cost for the project (not counting the free labor and what will probably be a small fortune in water) is:  $368.75