3/10/10

Set in Stone


We've had a small problem for the past few years. Along the side of our house was a small sand box. It was a fun area where the kids could dig and play with some of their toys. I know there's nothing wrong with that. The problem was the neighborhood cats also saw the sand box as an area where they could "play" and leave their business. Tara has hated that area for the past few years, but we've never done anything about it. Until we had left over concrete from the bathroom project...

Since there was plenty of extra cement, we poured a new little pad of concrete along the side of the house. The kids and the cats probably won't be too happy with our decision, but Tara and I are ecstatic about the new area. With newly poured cement we couldn't help ourselves and took advantage of the space by creating a fun little homage to the kids, complete with handprints, footprints, and names. It's something that really puts a family touch on the project.

3/3/10

One Eyed Alex


For the past year and a half we've known that Alex had a problem with one of eyes. Each time he turned his focus in a different direction you could see that his right eye was slightly behind. Finally, a few months ago, we took him to a specialist to examine Alex's "lazy eye". He told us there was a good chance Alex would need to have surgery to correct the eye, but we should try patching it to see if we could strengthen the muscles. Several hundred patches later the inevitable finally happened. Last week during his visit with the eye specialist surgery became the best option. So, the date was scheduled and we headed up to Primary's this morning.

Alex did great! As we prepared to go into surgery he was pretty calm - I wish I could say the same thing for his parents! As he went in for surgery he didn't cry and was actually pretty excited to get this over with. Perhaps it was the sedative he was given, but Alex typically deals with things pretty well. We sat in the waiting room for about an hour until the nurse called Tara back into Post Op.

Everything went as well as we could have hoped. We spent about an hour in Post Op with Alex. He was pretty groggy from the anesthetic and slept for much of the time. When he did open his eye I couldn't believe how good it looked. A little swollen and red, but I expected things to look a lot worse. He really looked like someone had simply poked him in the eye.

We took our little guy home and he spent much of the afternoon sleeping. We kept trying to force liquids in him to keep him hydrated, but he quickly threw up whatever we gave him. The best medicine was rest. Around 5 o'clock Alex bounced out of bed and declared he was ready to eat. And he did. Two entire waffles. Ten minutes later, the waffles came back. Still Alex was back to himself. The rest of the evening he was energetic and playful.

He still has a bit of pain in his eye, but things are going great! Alex's eye is healing and he is our fun loving little boy once again.

3/2/10

Bathroom Project: Day 2


Tonight we engaged in some more grunt work. There's nothing glamorous about making a trench in a concrete floor. It involves and lot of pounding with a sledge hammer, breaking up concrete with a chipping hammer (thanks Hilarie), digging with shovel, and hauling in a bucket. Sam, Jason, Evan, and I spent two hours tonight using that routine but we make a hole, a really deep hole. I didn't realize that to get down to the waste pipe we would need to dig about 18 inches deep. Wow! You should have seen all the dirt we took out of the floor (and the worst part is I'm just going to put it back in again in a couple of days).

Our house really looks like a construction zone right now. Dust is everywhere throughout the house. We have big mounds of dirt in the basement. And now, there's an trench in the basement floor - 32 feet long, 2 feet wide, and 18 inches deep. My favorite part of this project so far is watching the kids play around in the trench. Can you imagine having access to something like that as a kid? This is heaven for them!

half truths and mild tales: the novel


Each year I write this blog and hope that what I say will mean something down the road. I know that Tara and I are probably the only ones these for which little stories matter, but I like writing down our adventures and a few of my thoughts. One of my favorite aspects of blog writing is blog publishing. It seems like each spring I finishing compiling the previous year's blog into a book. Well, I finished 2009 a couple days ago and it arrived from Blurb today.

It looks really good. After four previous books I'm starting to get down a format I like and I can knock it out pretty quickly. This year I did something kinda fun. Since we had some extra pages at the end of the book I created a photo montage to the last decade of our lives. It was cool to look through photos of our little family, starting with the two of us from 2000 to 2004, and the family years from 2005 to the present. I know it's just for us, but the blog books are a big reason you keep seeing my thoughts in type.

3/1/10

Bathroom Project: Day 1

About a month ago Tara and I got serious - about a bathroom. Having grown up in this house, one of my biggest frustrations was not having a bathroom in the basement. Now you need to remember, I slept downstairs. No one likes running upstairs in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. In the morning, no one liked running downstairs to get dressed after taking a shower. It is too inconvenient and I didn't want to repeat the same pattern for my kids. Tara and I knew we wanted a bathroom in the basement. The biggest trick was the fact that the basement wasn't plumbed for a bathroom.

Well, we started addressing that issue today. Over the weekend I reserved a concrete cutter from Diamond Rental. Not a little hand held job. No, this was the walk behind. A 300 lb. behemoth, sure to inflict some damage on the floor, and on my back! Two weeks ago my cousin Chrys came out and marked the trench he needed cut to lay the pipes for the toilet, sink, and tub and tonight we made the trench. My friend Sam didn't realize the task he signed on to last week when he volunteered to help, but I'm sure glad he was there. Between hauling, cutting, and pounding Sam and I are off to a pretty good start. Let's see how I feel in the morning. Where's the ibuprofen?!



Check out this video of the cutter in action!