David, Carla & Boys

Free-to-air (FTA) satellite TV fun

2011-02-10T13:04:00.002-07:00

Hey, boys and girls. Another one of my hobbies is TV. Not just watching, but finding different ways to get programming without having to shovel out more $$ to a service provider. Yeah, there's some cost in hardware but it often comes in cheaper than what we pay in a year to someone like BellTV (our current satellite TV company).

I download quite a lot of our regular programming using a Mac Mini hooked to the TV, but in doing some research for another satellite reason I learned about some newer recievers capable of picking up digital signals using the big C-band dish we happen to still have in the back yard. Even more interesting is that they can pick up both standard definition and high definition channels. Looking at this page tells me there's actually a lot of free programming being beamed around the world and everything marked with a "C" I could pick up!

So I started studying FTA (free-to-air) receivers capable of picking up C-band signals. I settled on the Openbox S9, an amazingly affordable (as in just $150Cdn) box capable of receiving HD signals and PVR functions (with a separate external hard drive). This box runs Linux software internally and is pretty snappy. It also blindscans satellites really fast so in just a couple of minutes I can see what channels are available on a satellite.

As this box doesn't directly control the motor out on the dish, I'm using our old Uniden Ultra receiver that we originally bought with the old 10-foot dish to move the dish and then we flip back to the Openbox to watch what's on the current satellite. I've ordered another little box called the V-Box 7 that will make dish moving somewhat automatic when we change satellites on the Openbox which will be nice, but it's not too big of a hassle to change inputs on the TV to use different receivers. I remember the days when we had to get up and turn the dial just to change channels!

What are we watching? Well, we're really into all the Retro TV channels on the AMC 3 satellite. I think there's almost 30 of them. Carla and I grew up with shows like The A-Team, Emergency, Knight Rider and now the kids are enjoying them, too! It's way better than all the reality crap on TV now! We've also watched a bit of FX but there's so much out there and I'm just learning the ins and outs of trying to get all the channels to scan in.

I've done a bit of "testing" in the past with hacked FTA recievers but this is so much better because it's legal so there's need to wait for a "fix" when the keys are changed. Just tune in and channel surf!

Techie update

2011-02-10T09:04:00.002-07:00

You may recall that I've been working on rebuilding my PC with new parts. I put the parts together a week or so ago and they went together without much hassle. The grate over the fan on the power supply made it a tight fit over a bracket but that was the hardest part physically and a little muscle made it fit!

Getting the machine to boot properly was a problem initially. The machine would power up, indicated by the fans spinning, but the screen remained black. At first I was terrified that I had a dead motherboard or a dead video card. After much testing and switching video connections I determined there was an issue with the new video card but it's caused by the power supply (I think!). I've installed a 400-watt power supply, which I assumed would be plenty as the old one was only 300 watts. But it appears that it's not supplying enough current to power the video card properly. This motherboard has on-board video which works fine on it's own but only if the other card is not installed. When the extra card is installed I get no video from it or from the onboard. So for now the new card sits in a box while I await a new Antec 550-watt power supply putting out a lot more current over the so-called 12-volt rails. I'm not too informed on how a power supply puts out power but it appears from reading online that that's what's needed here. The one currently installed only puts out 16 amps, but the Antec will put out 24 I think. I hope it works!

In the meantime the PC does seem snappier with the extra horsepower in the CPU itself as well as the newer faster hard drive. Windows XP boots much faster! I've got all my drivers and some of my games reinstalled. As my Mac Mini is my primary computer I don't have many applications to install but I did leave a separate 200GB partition free on the hard disk to install Linux at a later date, too.

About the same time as I've been working on my box the kids PC has quit working, too. It's an older 1.8Ghz IBM Netvista box. When it quit working properly I noticed the fans not working and now I'm worried heat has killed it. But it did boot a couple of times before I took it apart to test the power supply which I've replaced once before. It does power up on a different power supply but won't boot. The problem is that a generic power supply doesn't fit physically but I've got one sitting on top of the case powering it so I figure it should still boot though. I haven't looked at it for a few days so may next time I do it will magically boot...right?

Exciting new PC build coming

2011-01-24T16:06:00.001-07:00

I admit it. I'm a nerd. I love computers. That should be obvious by now. Though I'm somewhat mechanically inclined, I don't feel competent working on engines and the like. Give me a computer to work on and I'm (usually) happy. I'm mostly running Macs in day-to-day life but I do have a desktop PC for games and the occasional use when something doesn't run on a Mac.

My current PC is a homebuilt machine that currently runs an AMD Athlon XP-M 2200 CPU on an ECS K7S5A motherboard. With stock settings it runs at 1.8GHz but I usually run it overclocked at around 2.0GHz. I have 1.5GB of DDR RAM plugged into the board as well as a BFG Nvidia Geforce 7600 GS AGP 512MB video card. For sound I still use a venerable Soundblaster Live! PCI sound card. There's a collection of hard drives from which I boot Mandriva Linux, Windows XP and even tried Haiku OS (a derivative of BeOS). It's starting to show its age and has always had an occasional bit of trouble booting at the correct CPU speed. I think it's time to move on.

Now what's a bit funny is that I trace the history of this box back to a store-bought Pentium 166 machine I bought way back in 1997. Over the years I've replaced bits and pieces along the way until really there's nothing left of the original machine. I think the last piece left was the 3.5-inch floppy drive which I only just pulled a few months ago to slide in another hard drive. Yes, even the case and power supply aren't original.

I think the current configuration is nearing five years old now and it's time to rebuild. Now, I'm on a budget so some of the parts I've purchased are used bits from eBay. The heart of the system will be an ASRock N68-S motherboard fitted with an AMD Athlon II X2 240 CPU which is a dual-core chip running at 2.8GHz. Another used item will be the video card. In this case I've chosen an Asus Nvidia Geforce 9600 GSO 512MB PCI-Express video card. New products going into this build are a 500MB Seagate SATA2 hard drive, a CoolerMaster 500-watt power supply and 2GB of Corsair dual-channel DDR2 RAM.

Hard-core gamers would probably roll their eyes at this build but I'm not going for all-out speed. I'm spending the least amount of money to get something quite a bit faster than what I have. I don't play games that often and the games I currently have will keep me busy for a while yet so I don't plan to get any of the newer system-taxing games.

What do I play? I like my combat flight simulators and racing simulators, though I mostly tend to play the rFactor racing mods since it's easy to just jump into the game and drive, but then it's complex enough that I can still adjust anti-roll bars, spring rates and wing angles to get better car control and lap times.

So anyway, now that I know all my new goodies have shipped, I'll be keeping an eye on the post office! I can't wait to get started on building my new beast!

So we got the milk, what do we do with the cream?

2010-12-09T14:27:00.002-07:00

I'd like to nudge you over to Carla's blog to see how we turned cream from our milk (now that we have some) into butter! Click the link below to find out all about it.

Got milk?

Our milking has slowed a little as the Momma cow's calf became sick. I feared it was getting pneumonia as it was breathing heavy. I gave it a dose of Micotil (an injectible antibiotic for respiratory illness in cattle) and hoped for the best. Despite it getting quite cold out about the time Dot got sick (-23C one night) she seems to have recovered well. For now I'm leaving it all the milk Momma has and had an opportunity to milk Daisy the Dexter who actually cooperated quite well. So I might just stay with milking her instead. We shall see how it goes!

Revisiting Cow Milking

2010-12-04T17:52:00.005-07:00

Last fall when we purchased a couple of Dexter cows (a miniature dual-purpose breed) we tried our hand at milking. The experiment lasted only a couple of weeks when Daisy decided she'd had enough. A couple of weeks ago we had another cow have a late calf and Carla asked if it would be possible to milk her. After some thought I figured I'd give it a try as this cow has a very quiet temperament. We've had her from birth and she's a full size cow, half Angus (mother) and half Hereford (father). She has no name as we usually don't name our cows, but her tag is 4D15. As you might be able to tell from the photo above, her calf has been dubbed Dot. It's a little heifer calf.

The cow hasn't gotten quite used to the whole milking procedure yet. She began very concerned for her calf. When we began I was putting her into a so-called "maternity pen" designed for assisting cows at calving time which didn't quite work for getting her into a headgate properly restrained. Even with a tub of grain in front of her it was hard to convince her to cooperate. When I found an opportunity I setup our portable cattle handling system in our barnyard (it spends the summer setup at our pasture corrals). Look it up here. It's a big long green thing with wheels. This machine is specially designed for cattle flow and restraint and is working far better. Another thing which helps is that once the cow is in the headgate, she is looking at the corral she came from where her calf is, so I think she's less worried. Over time she will get used to the process I'm sure and remember she's getting a tasty treat.

Anyway, once she's in, she's happily eating her tub of grain and stands wonderfully for me to milk. So far I'm milking every morning and can usually get 2-4 liters of milk from her, depending what the calf has left me. It has usually cleaned out 2 of the four tits before I get there. During the short time I was milking the Dexter cow, we got very rich milk, at times probably 30% cream. This cow is the complete opposite. It's Milk Lite! Carla's a little disappointed as she was hoping to make butter and ice cream. Sorry, not for a while yet!

As a child my dad milked cows and we drank raw milk so I have no reservations about it. Is it healthier? I don't know, but there's a certain satisfaction to eating and drinking our own production whether it's dairy, vegetable or beef, that's for sure. I hope to do a Part 2 soon to show the milking and de-creaming and all the other fun household parts of the job!

Mitchell's new toy

2010-11-20T17:21:00.003-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, Mitchell bought a quad. This is something he's been dying to get for ages now. Last year he bottle fed a calf and at the time we told him when it was big enough to sell he could keep the money and buy something with it. Since then the only thing he's wanted is a quad.

A short time ago, we heard from my sister that they might be interested in selling their oldest boys quad, which was a small kids size machine, with an engine probably around 50cc. It's not a name-brand machine, just something made in China. Around here people call these machines Chondas (China/Honda). Their son was getting a little too big for this one so it would be perfect for Mitchell who's a couple of years younger. They only wanted $200 for it which was a lot less than we expected to be paying for something like this. As Mitchell got $550 for his calf he still had lots of money to spend on a helmet.

Before picking up the quad we went shopping at Canadian Tire, something of a department store in Canada, which sells auto parts, sporting goods, hardware, etc. Mitchell's "problem" is that he has a big head and we ended up having to spend $100 on a Adult Small helmet to fit his head. As you can see in the picture despite the fact he's only eight years old, it's definitely not too big for him!

Anyway, finally the day came to make the deal and bring the quad home. Mitchell went for a little spin and we promptly had a little problem with the brakes. It appears a brake pad broke and jammed up the rear axle. My sister's husband rushed out and fixed it for Mitchell and here he is roaring around. Thanks Uncle Tim! Mitchell loves it and happily spends hours cruising around the farm!

Sometimes I hate being tech support

2010-11-20T16:07:00.002-07:00

Those of you who are knowledgable about computers have been there before. Someone you know (friends, family, coworkers) is having trouble with their computer and ask you to fix it for them. I have had two recent occasions that have left me with headaches.

I should start by saying that I help family out without question or or monetary compensation. My sister and her family take our kids when Carla and I go to the annual homeschool conference And my mom, well, she brought me into this world and she can take me out! But for everyone else I usually charge something. If it's a matter of "My computer is running slow" and it's not infested with malware, I do the basic maintenance and send it back with a bill for $20-$30. These last two were something more, though.

The first one was a newer box running Windows XP that was thoroughly infested with malware and after beating on it with various antivirus and spyware apps, I gave up and reinstalled Windows. The previous scanning and deleting just couldn't get rid of everything and I tried AVG and Avast antivirus software as well as Spybot Search & Destroy and AdAware. I also ran an app called HijackThis which spit out a log for me to look for suspicious stuff. Unfortunately as I said, I was still getting detection warnings after trying to clean things up with those apps. So I backed up what I could and went on to the reinstall

Reinstalling Windows also turned out to be problematic as the installer wouldn't work properly so I had to create a custom XP install disk with both Service Pack 2 and Service Pack 3 built into it to get around the install problem. But once I got that figured out and Windows reinstalled the machine seemed to be nearly cured. I ran a couple more scans and cleaned out a couple more apps and files that were still infected and sent it back to the customer with a bill for $60.

A job Carla and I are both working on now involved a local business. Due to a staffing change, their office manager is gone and took some computers with him. We were contacted to get another machine into the office with the required apps and then Carla would teach them the software (I'm the hardware guy and Carla's the office software expert). They supplied us with an old P3-500 Win98 machine they hoped would work in the interim.

Well, after struggling at home for a while with this old box I came to the conclusion that it was DOA. Luckily I had a used 1.3Ghz XP box in the basement collecting dust. I dragged it out and it fired up right away so I set to work cleaning the drive and installing software. This consisted mostly of updating it for security and getting QuickBooks 2008 and 2010 installed. Most of the trouble here was with this old box being a little weak. Installs and updates took a frustrating amount of time to finish.

I did eventually get finished with that machine and Carla delivered it. She got it setup in the office and working with the printers. While there she was supposed to instruct the other workers on how to operate the machine and do the various office tasks including payroll through a conference call with the American head office. Unfortunately the never called so that has been put off for now. The local workers would rather Carla became an employee and do that work for them as they aren't computer fans and Carla would love to get back into an office as that was her career previously. That would be awesome if it did happen. Anyway, this job is therefore still ongoing and hasn't been billed but I expect to get a pretty good cheque out of it. Though the last job I did for a commercial enterprise, it took six months to get paid (a skidsteer snow clearing job for a construction company). Hopefully it's better this time!

I want to end here with a word about why I found these jobs to be headaches. I'm not a Windows guru. That's not to say I don't use it, but my day-to-day machine is a Mac and of the eight computers used in our home, five are Macs. I've been a Mac user for about three years and before that I main box was a PC running Linux for a decade. So when it comes to getting down and dirty with Windows and especially Windows malware the stress level goes way up. It's not something I encounter on my machines. I don't even run antivirus software on our two machines running Windows as they are mainly just for games (one mine which is rarely on and the other for the kids) not to mention that I don't mindlessly download crap.

Yes, Macs cost more than PCs. But I'd rather pay the money and never have to worry about malware while having a consistent and reliable operating system. One can also buy them cheaper refurbished from Apple's online store. If you still prefer a PC, please consider Linux if you don't have a requirement for specific Windows software. The Linux operating system is legally free for the download and some places will also send you a free disc. Heck, I'd even send you a free disc! On all the Mac and Linux boxes I run only software I legally obtained for free. For example, our farm accounting is done by Carla is spreadsheets using OpenOffice.

So, well, I'll get off my soap box and wish you all safe computing!

Needing a break

2010-10-15T19:58:00.003-06:00

October is half over already and I'm wondering where the time has gone. It's been insane around here this month. Both Carla and I have been working pretty steady both off-farm and on. By the end of this weekend Carla will have had twelve straight days working in town at either the restaurant or the gas station. Up until a few days ago I was helping our neighbor with his harvest and put in about ten days trucking grain from the field to the grain bin.

Of course when we're not working off-farm, then there's work to be done around here. We've been struggling to fit in hauling our hay bales off the hay fields and into the yard, harvesting our own tiny bit of grain and all the other usual house and yard work. Homeschooling has somewhat been put aside for now as we try to keep up with life in general!

Through this time we've let the boys either stay home with Carla or come with me to the field. The majority of my days helping our neighbor had them joining me in the grain truck. Earlier on it was fun, but after the days start to add up, being crammed together all day in a truck loses much of its appeal. There were occasions the boys could get out and run around, but when a combine was around it was time for them to get back into the truck, for safety reasons, to keep them out of the way and to keep them out of the grain dust. But I've been spending so much time with the kids lately (at home and at work essentially) that I'm looking forward to every spare moment to myself!

Harvest time does provide opportunities for learning, too. As our farm is more into beef cattle production, the boys don't get as much of an opportunity to see different grains. Helping our neighbor combine wheat let the boys see where flour comes from. Wack a few kernels with a hammer and it's obvious! Hammer some oats and you see oatmeal!

The pace of work this month has been quite a bit different that most of the spring and summer simply due to the weather being so much dryer now. It's has to be at least three weeks since we last had rain! We haven't seen such a dry stretch all year! There's even salt blowing off Chaplin Lake in the wind today. I didn't think it would dry out that much this year.

I hope the weather holds for a while as there's still so much to do...so many bales left to haul (both ours and our neighbor's which he hires me to help with), corrals to clean (again ours and my neighbor's which I help with, too)...I could use another two months of warm dry weather! Ha! Something tells me I'll be working in cold, wet slop before too long...

I'm moving like an old man today

2010-09-23T19:19:00.002-06:00

I admit it. I've got a bum hip. Well, sometimes anyway. My left hip sometimes is very painful and yesterday it started acting up again. I'm not sure why, but while I was standing around watching Mitchell pressure washing the semi, I felt it start to ache. It's not too bad standing and walking around, but certain movements are very painful. Yesterday evening I could barely get off the couch and rolling over in bed was a challenge, though once I got settled into place I wasn't too bad and was able to sleep...until I needed to move again.

It's been bothering me today again and I've been a bit slower getting in and out of the tractor. While swathing an oat field I wasn't too bad but as the hours passed I could feel it starting to hurt more, probably from bouncing around. Luckily (or not) I had a breakdown and quit for the day. Usually after a period of time it clears up and I'll be pain-free for a while. It's been months since it bothered me last and I'm not sure what I did to aggravate it. The day before the pain started I had a busy day hauling bales which required driving the semi and unloading with a tractor so plenty of clutch work with the left leg, but I'm not sure why it took so long to hit me if that's what caused it.

I am fairly certain I know the root of my problem. Many years ago (a dozen?) our cows were bred to calve in the late winter and as they came close to their due date, they'd be brought into the corrals so we could check them often in case they needed help calving. Several times a day I would climb a corral fence and jump down and go and check the cows. It was fast and convenient. Turns out I always landed on my left foot. I gave myself an achy hip that calving season and have cursed myself with it recurring from time to time. I'm much more careful now, always paying attention to what leg I land on when I have to jump and going through gates rather than jumping fences.

No doubt it'll turn into arthritis (if it hasn't already). I'll probably get it in my right thumb joint, too, since I injured that and it bothers me from time to time, too. That one got jerked in a rope when I was catching a calf that escaped into a neighbor's pasture. Come to think of it, cattle related injuries are taking their toll on me! I nearly had my nose broken by one of the Dexter cows last November when she hit a swinging steel gate which caught me right where my glasses sit. A few years ago I got kicked by a calf on my left temple which caused my glasses to go flying and get trampled under the feet of the calves in the corral. And once I broke a finger in an accident with the post pounder.

Maybe I should have stayed in the army. It might be safer!

Is monsoon season finally over?

2010-09-13T10:28:00.001-06:00

Finally our five-day forecast is saying no rain. I don't actually remember when we last had a forecast like that. It's definitely been a soggy year for us in Saskatchewan. Our nearest city, Swift Current, about 50 miles away, has had about 21 inches of rain since April 1. Their normal precipitation would usually be about 11 inches. So we're running about double of normal. No wonder it's been so hard to get field work done around here!

Coupled with that wet weather has been a cooler-than-normal spring and summer. April was the last month that had normal temperatures. Every month since has been cooler than normal. Only three days have been over 30 degrees Celcius (86F) when we would normally have a dozen or more. May had us suffering through snow storms while our cows were calving which was rather annoying as we moved calving later to avoid that sort of thing. September has been soggy and cold which is a complete reversal of last year when September turned out to be our hottest month of the year (after another abnormally cool summer).

Fortunately I'm not a large grain farmer so I don't have much to harvest and I'm pretty much done my haying for the year. Plenty of farmers are faced with a late and difficult grain harvest or perhaps don't even have one to harvest as they couldn't even get seeding done due to flooded fields. A news report yesterday said that harvest is about 18% complete this year when the average should be 61% on this date.

A couple of weeks ago a news report said this was the warmest year on record. Perhaps it was...somewhere! I know some of you suffered through 100+ degree days for weeks on end and as someone who thinks it's getting hot when it hits 80 I really felt for ya. But I think I'd have preferred to trade a few degrees for a few inches of rain!

First steps into our second year of homeschooling

2010-08-12T10:48:00.002-06:00

This week we mailed in our notification and education plan to begin our second year of homeschooling the 3 Ms. This year we're having Michael and Matthew start Kindergarten level work but as they don't fall within the mandatory 6-17 age group they are not officially registered though we are entitled to have them registered. So this is the first year we've got all three boys homeschooling "full-time."

We've been asked numerous times if we're sending our children back to Chaplin School. Some of you may recall the reason we started homeschooling was because there was a chance our local public school would be closed due to low enrolment (less than 50 kids K-12). It managed to survive but had Grades 9-12 moved to another town leaving just K-8 which turened into K-5 as all the older children either followed siblings to the other school or their parents sent them that way by their own choice. But due to numerous reasons realized over the course of the past school year, the school division decided to restore Chaplin School to a full K-12 school. That's when people started asking if we were sending our children back. We have our school back so why not? Well, we've come to enjoy the freedom of homeschooling too much! Yes, we have our challenges, such as Mitchell's aversion to math and writing, but there are also times we have plenty of fun, too!

So anyway, we're trying a few different things this year. We picked up several Singapore Math books at the last homeschool convention's used book sale which we'll use to replace Miquon which just didn't work for us. We'll also be using Modern Curriculum Press's plaid phonics to replace Learning Language Arts Through Literature (LLAL).

We'll be continuing to use Story Of The World which we started this spring. I plan to add REAL Science Odyssey but continue with Evan-Moor's Daily Science which Mitchell enjoys very much. I also plan to continue our study of Canada with Donna Ward's products from Northwoods Press, perhaps with a geographical study of the provinces and territories as Mitchell seems to quite enjoy geography, especially maps.

Matthew and Michael will be kept to the basics for the most part. My goal this year will be help them learn to read and do very basic math. I think that Michael will find it a breeze as he seem to be picking up skills already, especially math. Matthew on the other hand will need more help. Despite being twins they are quite far apart in development, both physical and intellectual. Matthew also gets frustrated easily and his patience suffers. I'm expecting them to eventually be running a grade level apart but we'll see how it goes this year.

I'm not sure of an exact start date for school yet. It's super busy around here with Carla working her two jobs and me trying to get through haying season which has been frustratingly slow. Last year I started on August 17, but I can't see that happening this year. I might be able to get started around September 1, which is what I put on the notification form. I expect a really busy fall, though, as we begin hauling hay bales with the semi, as I do custom hauling for a few other farmers, too. Because this year was an excellent year for hay, there is a lot of bales to haul. I might try to put together some things for the boys to do in the truck as we zoom around. There's plenty of room back in the sleeper for them to hang out. The trouble is keeping them on track if I give them work to do. Maybe I could even just have them read books before we put on the portable DVD player.

Anyway, that's my thoughts for now. I can't wait for us to dig into our new homeschool goodies this fall!

Yet more truck fixin'

2010-06-19T18:33:00.002-06:00

I had to repair our 1990 Chevy 1500 truck today. Again. I've had soooo much trouble with trucks over the past several months. It started last fall when this truck and the grain truck, a 1973 GMC 6500 both just quit running. I left both until spring as I didn't really need either one over winter. I also had plenty of trouble getting our 1997 GMC Sierra 2500 started most of the winter. As the weather warmed up in March I started work on the trucks to get them all running properly again.

If I remember correctly I started with the GMC Sierra. It has a 6.5L turbo-charged diesel engine that has glow plugs that preheat the combustion chamber to help start the engine. When you turn the key on, a light on the dash says "Wait To Start". When that light goes off, then you turn the key the rest of the way to turn the engine. Well, in our case that wasn't doing what it should. I ended up having to spray starting fluid (ether) into the air cleaner to get the thing going, which isn't really safe for this truck, but it got it going. I had changed the glow plugs last fall with some I found for cheap on eBay, but obviously that wasn't helping. I changed the glow plug controller after that is supposed to send power to the glow plugs, but that didn't help either. I then installed an override button in the cab that let me add more time to the glow plug warming time. No dice. So in March is when I dug into the engine and changed the injectors, which spray fuel into the engine. When they're worn out, it can cause hard starting, too. Well, much to my dismay after a hard two or three days of work (and building my own injector socket), I found that didn't help either. This is when I wanted to just push the thing into our garbage pit and set it on fire. But I started testing my 'new' glow plugs and found most of them didn't work! So rather than just buy eBay junk again I bought name-brand plugs from a diesel shop and lo-and-behold that truck fired up right away! I was so relieved! Now on to fixing the next truck.

The 1990 Chevy has a 5.7L gas engine (the venerable Chevy 350 cubic incher) so it has spark plugs and I came to discover it wasn't sparking. I started with changing the ignition coil but nothing improved. She'd turn over but not fire. After a bit of research I learned there's an ignition module under the distributor cap. Changed that and away it went. Thankfully a little simpler fix! But I found that I had a fuel leak on the back of the throttle body. I figured it was a little nylon washer that was wrecked from me checking for fuel before I found it was an ignition problem. Apparently GM will only sell me a whole kit for $60 just so I can get an five cent washer. No thanks! I checked all over for this washer or something like it until I learned that a place called Fastenal could order just a washer for me. Cost me $2.33 for two of them. But...it turns out it wasn't just the washer that was screwed. It was the threads on the back of the throttle body where the fuel line attaches that were messed up because I cross-threaded the line. Ooops. Well, luckily my neighbor wrecks trucks for parts so I got a used throttle body from him and everything was just fine and I didn't even need to use my $2.33 cent washers!

So, next was the grain truck. Holy s**t, what a pain in the a** that thing turned out to be! This truck has a 366 cubic inch big-block gas engine. Again, it had no spark. This being an older engine it had the old-style points in the distributor rather than electronics. I had a huge amount of trouble getting enough spark to the spark plugs on this engine. I changed the point set twice, cleaned up or replaced corroded wires, changed the ignition coil. To make it all an even worse job was having to climb up into the engine bay to do most of this work as it's a big truck. Anyway, I ended up giving up on the old distributor and points and took an electronic ignition from one of my retired trucks and put that in, thankfully not before discovering that the oil pump drive on the bottom of the distributor shaft was different and swapping those parts from the original shaft. The last think I needed was to get the thing running only to wreck the engine because of no oil pumping around inside it! Anyway, after getting that distributor installed (and getting new plug wires that fit this distributor and engine combination) and wiring it up, which by the way turned out to be easier than I thought it would be, the truck was up and running again! Yay!

Now you'd think I had three trucks up and running again! Ha! I'm not that lucky. One day while checking cows with the diesel truck I heard a bit of rattling under the hood. As I turned and wondered what it could be, it got worse for a couple of seconds and then the truck stopped running. Uh-oh! Well, what turned out to have happened was that the positive battery cable between the two batteries (one in each front corner of the engine bay) had come loose from it's clips over the radiator and dropped into the fan, gotten wrapped up and shorted to the point of melting the connections out both batteries. What a f***ing mess! After some contemplation (and removing the fan to unwrap the cable) I came up with a plan of action. I always buy batteries that have both side posts and top posts because I never know where either one might come in handy. The truck used side posts, but both positives were melted out, so I would buy a length of bulk welding cable and clamp on some top post ring terminals. One complication was that the started cable used the same post on one side so after cutting that I put a ring terminal on that cable that would attach to the tightening bolt on the top post clamp. The other side had a smaller wire that came from the fuse box so I did the same to that one and got that truck back in action.

Now I ask myself what more could happen to these trucks! Well, a couple of days ago checking cows again the 1990 truck started hesitating or cutting out for a fraction of a second as I drove. I stopped once and checked the battery connections which were tight. Hmmm...well I drove on and not two minutes later it quit completely and smoke started coming out from under the hood. That's not usually a good sign. I took a peek and guess what? My battery cables are melted! You gotta be kidding, you say! Well, I'm not! We had a couple of days of rain so I let the truck sit for a while and got back to it today. I got a couple of cables from one of the neighbor's wrecks and headed back to the pasture. It appears that the positive cable was resting against the exhaust manifold and melted the insulation shorting the electrical system and melting the cables. It didn't take long to get it back running with the 'new' cables.

So...I'm thinking I need to just give up driving these trucks so they don't break down again! I've come to learn that things only break down when I'm using them so as long as they're just sitting here in the yard they'll be fine. :)

My long awaited photo opportunity arrives!

2010-06-15T20:29:00.003-06:00

You may recall that the last time I posted photos I mentioned waiting since last year to take some particular shots involving morning dew. Well it happened. Let me share a few with you.

This is the first shot I took that morning, probably about 6:45am. We're looking east along a fenceline buried in caragana trees. In the distance is our neighbor's farm. The air is hazy and moisture-laden. The grass shines with the dew laying on it. I pumped up the saturation and contrast more on this one to bring out the green in the trees.

This one is from a slightly different angle and I left it with a softer look. I also cropped it for a "widescreen" format.

As I walked back to the house I took note of the drops of dew hanging on the long leaves of the grass I was walking through and thought it would make a good closeup shot. This is as it came from the camera - no editing.

I'm not sure which of the three I like best, they all have good points and bad points. The top one is the best for color and light I think, but I like the angle of the second one better of those two. The third is a different sort of picture so perhaps I shouldn't try to compare it to the others, but I like the color and to me it's a simpler picture...less going on if you know what I mean.

I hope you enjoyed my latest pictures. It was fun making them even if I did get wet feet!

Daddy's not-so-little helper

2010-06-12T10:24:00.002-06:00

A few days ago I wanted to go replace some posts on a pasture fence and noticed I had a flat tire on the post pounder, a tractor-towed implement that literally hammers posts into the ground. Mitchell asked if he could help and since I wasn't in a big hurry I figured it would be fun for him and he could do a few things within his abilities. I took a few pictures as we worked.

In this photo Mitchell is raising the hydraulic jack so that we can pull the wheel off the hub. If you look closely you can see he has already got the wheel bolts off.

After we had the wheel off Mitchell rolled it into the shop. Please excuse the mess. Shop cleaning isn't my speciality, but I hope to take a day this year sometime to clean it up. Anyway, we patched a hole in the tire tube and replaced the tire as well as it had a crack through the sidewall. I keep worn out 15-inch truck tires as they work well to replace implement tires.

In this photo Mitchell is filling the tire with air. This was one of the more difficult jobs for him as it was sometimes hard for him to line up the air chuck with the tire valve stem so that it sealed properly to allow the air to go in. Once I helped him line it up he was good to go!

Once we had about 35 PSI of air in the tire Mitchell rolled it back out to the post pounder and we hung it on the wheel hub again. I started threading the bolts for him and then he turned them in with the ratchet as you can see here. I made sure they were tight and we let the jack down. We're done!

Mitchell is doing more and more jobs around the farm now. He's done a bit of lawn mowing with a push mower on small areas and yesterday he picked a few rocks with his brothers. I ran the skidsteer while they threw the rocks into the bucket, or rolled them on if they were too big to carry. On a couple of occasions he's also driven a truck by himself around the farm. He's driven often with me beside him but a couple of times I had to walk behind some cows or needed a truck moved through a gate or across the yard and I trust him enough now to move small distances at low speed by himself.

Good work Mitchell!

Photography

2010-04-30T12:51:00.005-06:00

It's a lovely rainy day here, which means I won't be spending the day outside. I realized I have't made a blog post in a while and decided to put something here. It took a while to think of something but I figured I'd write something about my not-quite-hobby of photography.

Now I don't consider myself a real photographer. I haven't played one on TV either. I never even stayed at a Holiday Inn Express (you have to see the commercial to get the joke). But since we got a Canon Rebel XS last year I like to play around a little bit. So here's a few of my most recent shots and my thoughts behind them.

This photo I called "Wishing For Spring." It might be hard to tell, but that's a wooden wishing well lawn decoration buried in snow. It was taken soon after a February blizzard.

This shot I called "Waiting For Spring." It's a lonely leaf blown from a Manitoba Maple in the middle of winter.

This next photo is part of my Star Trek inspired series. I call it "The Doomsday Machine." I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to find out why. It's just a tulip...or is it...

Part two in the Star Trek series I call "The Crystalline Entity." Who knows what horrible death awaits on a frosty winter morning...

I have a certain other shot not yet taken that I'm waiting for the right conditions to take. I saw the opportunity one spring morning last year but was without a camera. I'm hoping the right conditions exist this spring for me to take that shot this year. I require a morning sun, dew and the plenty of green leaves in some caragana trees along a fence line. Wish me luck!

Calf in the bathtub - Welcome to calving season!

2010-03-11T08:13:00.002-07:00

As some of you are aware, we're farmers and primarily beef cattle producers. We've just gotten started on our 2010 calving season with three early calves so far.

Our third calf has had some trouble, though. It's mother isn't supplying much milk and after checking the calf one day, I thought I'd give it one more day to see how it was doing as it seemed to be not too bad when I checked it. It was able to get up and its mouth was warm. Unfortunately the next morning it was laying on its side, looking like it was near death.

I quickly got it to the house and put it in the bathtub. Carla put a blanket on it and turned on the bathroom heater. It's mouth was cold now so obviously it's body temperature was very low. We've had quite a few cold damp nights lately which couldn't have been very good for a possibly undernourished calf.

Luckily we had a bit of colostrum stored in the freezer that I had milked from cows in previous years, so we thawed a bottle and I tube-fed the calf to get something warm and nourishing into its belly. After a couple of hours, I started tube feeding Revibe HE, which is high-energy electrolytes. I mixed a package of that with two litres of warm water and fed it over a period of about two hours. She also got a shot of Micotil in case she had a touch of pneumonia. It was about this time we started to see some improvement in the condition of the calf. I think it was about 6pm that I was starting to feel confident that it would survive as it was looking more alert and it's mouth was warming up.

I next mixed up some milk replacer powder with a liter of warm water and fed with a bottle with a nipple on it. When a calf can suck on its own, it's so much easer and a sign that the calf is feeling pretty good again. I did this again at bed time. By now the calf looks almost normal, holding its head up on its own and looking quite alert. But we kept the calf in the tub overnight as I didn't want to send it out in the coldest part of the day.

The next morning I fed the calf milk replacer again, a full feed in two liters of water and then took it out to the field for a happy reunion with it's mother. It's doing fine now, but I am supplementing her with milk replacer once a day and hoping her mother will boost her production over time.

I'm hoping the rest of the calving season goes better. The weather is warming up nicely here, but it's kind of sloppy right now with the melting snow. I wouldn't mind if the rest of the herd waited a bit until the ground dries a bit more. But we've got a start. 3 down, about 65 to go!

Our experience at the 2010 SHBE Convention

2010-02-21T11:31:00.002-07:00

Hi, everyone! We're back from a couple of fun and interesting days spent at the 2010 Saskatchewan Home-based Educators Conference. This year it was held at the University of Regina in Regina, Saskatchewan.

This year's keynote speaker, Andrew Pudewa, presented a couple of talks on the importance of reading, writing and speaking. He also led several workshops on more specific topics. Those we attended included "Humor in Teaching", "Reaching Reluctant Writers" and "Teaching Boys and Other Children Who Would Rather Build Forts All Day." If you ever get a chance to hear Andrew speak, please try to attend. He's an amazing speaker who makes a lot of sense and at the same time makes his subject entertaining and often laugh-out-loud funny! A friend told us that she overheard another person say that in the ten years they've attended this conference Andrew was the best speaker they've ever heard.

Andrew's first keynote was about the nature of the public education system and how it was originally designed to produce better workers and not better people. He then went on to talk about what we could do as home educators to ensure our children turned out to be the opposite - people with character and the knowledge to pursue their passions.

The first workshop we attended was "Teaching The Way They Learn" and our instructor was Carol Krahn. We learned some ways we can help children learn depending on which side of their brain is dominant. The next workshop was somewhat related and had to do with neurological brain development - "OK, Now I'm Teaching So Why Aren't They Learning?" This workshop had to do with children who may have some sort of glitch in their brain that may make it difficult to learn, possibly signals from eyes or ears not being processed by the brain properly. We were given suggestions on what to look out for and suggestions on how to deal with these possible problems. These two sessions were important for us to attend as Matthew is behind his twin brother Michael in physical and intellectual development and we want to be prepared for educational issues. So far we're hopeful he's just "behind" and he'll just learn at his own pace but it's better to be prepared, right?

The next two workshops were both Andrew's and as the two above were somewhat related - "Reaching Reluctant Writers" and "Boys and Forts". Andrew asked us if we had children who would rather clean all the toilets in the house for a week than write and I immediately thought "That's Mitchell!" In the first talk he gave us a process to follow to get these kinds of children writing. This involved taking a short passage (his suggestion was an Aesop fable) and have the child underline three words from each sentence that were important and write them in an outline. Then the child can take those words and recreate the passage. Andrew also suggested concentrating on the composition and not the spelling and neatness and went so far as to suggest allowing them to use a pen to enforce this as correcting their writing would distract them from the important part of the exercise which was the composition. The "Boys and Forts" talk expanded on this above by suggesting ways to encourage children who may have difficulty writing and suggested ways to provide an environment for them to excel. We learned boys prefer a cooler room than girls and it also might be good to make chairs optional for boys as they have a hard time sitting still to work (boy do I know that!).

Andrew's closing keynote was "Nurturing Excellent Writers and Speakers". This talk emphasised the importance of reading out loud. It didn't matter who did it. It could be the child, the parent, or even audiobooks. He also spoke on the importance of memorization as a way to build a child's brain. All these would help to counter the negative/improper language of the media and peers as well.

Those of you wishing to learn more about Andrew, his Institute For Exellence In Writing and their products, you could visit the web site at http://www.excellenceinwriting.com/. Their Canadian distributors are at http://www.excellentresources.net/.

Although this was a homeschooling convention it had a bit of a physical fitness component as it was a bit of walk between the main exhibitor display room and the rooms and auditorium where the workshops were. I guess walking isn't a bad thing but when you're carrying bags of goodies from the used book sale and shiny new books from the exhibitors it's a bit of workout. Good thing there was a room for checking coats and our bags of goodies...upstairs! We were also supplied with a couple of tasty meals. Friday supper was salad and pasta with a couple of trays of awesome treats for those of us with a sweet tooth. Saturday lunch was salad and cold cuts for sandwiches as well as those trays of goodies again! Sooo yummy...

My only complaint is that they should have added another day so I could get to some of the other workshops I couldn't attend as they were scheduled at the same time as the ones I did attend. I'd have liked to attend the one on unschooling and another on digital creativity. But hey, there's always next year! I'm looking forward to it already!

10th Annual First Responder Conference

2010-01-31T18:24:00.011-07:00

Well, it's been a busy weekend away from my boys. I spent the weekend renewing old friendships, starting new friendships and of course, recertifying my First Responder status.

It was the 10th Annual weekend gathering of nearly 200 First Responders, EMTs and Paramedics from southern Saskatchewan. We had a few newbies, with less than a year since becoming certified. We also had some seasoned veterans, with over 25 years experience as "pre-hospital personnel".

The weekend began Friday evening with registration and a couple sessions and then a game of Survivor, EMS style.

Saturday morning began bright and early, with coffee & breakfast at 7:30, with opening remarks at 8:00. The morning had 2 sessions with a break for lunch until 1:00. Pete Lazarra, Paramedic in Charge with Chicago Fire Department, gave his first presentation "Resuscitation of the Rich and Famous". In this presentation, Pete reviewed the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Abraham Lincoln (gunshot to the head), Julius Caesar (multiple stab wounds to the back), Princess Diana (violent car crash) and Jimi Hendrix (suspected drug overdose). If modern-day emergency procedures were available to these celebrities at the time of their deaths, what procedures would have been performed, and could they have survived their injuries.

Of particular interest to many of the participants, one of the afternoon sessions involved a hands-on exploration of the respiratory organs from a donor pig. (Thanks to Drake Meats for the donation of the specimens!) We were able to examine the tongue, trachea, esophagus, heart, aorta and lungs.

An intubation tube was made available and we were able to intubate the specimen and see exactly what takes place when a ventilator bag is used.

We also dissected the heart muscle and inspected the 4 chambers. We inspected the aorta and the aortic chamber, tracing the direction of blood from the heart to the lungs for oxygenation and back through the heart for delivery to the rest of the body.

Upon dissection of the lungs we examined the bronchial tubes and discussed their function. Thankfully, a pork stir fry was NOT on the supper menu.

Supper was still delicious as always, as provided by the Heritage Inn. Roast beef and roast turkey were on the menu, along with seasoned oven roasted potatoes, salads and, of course, decadent desserts. Following supper, guest speaker Roger Aldag of the Saskatchewan Roughriders, spoke of his Career with the Roughriders. Roger is now employed with Trans Gas and has been at most (if not all) conferences as a sponsor and supplier.

Off Beat, a 5 piece band from Regina, provided the evening's entertainment. They performed hits from Loverboy, Neil Diamond, Johnny Cash and Meatloaf, to name a few. The dance floor was busy most of the night as was the cash bar ;) The band shut down just after 1:00am and a few diehard partyers were heard roaming the halls of the Heritage Inn till almost 3:00am. (and we wonder why the Sunday morning sessions were short on attendance!)

Tim Hillier (MD Ambulance, Saskatoon) and Pete Lazarra wrapped up Sunday afternoon with a joint presentation "Looking Back". They touched on a few highlights in the history of emergency medical response, with a few clips from the 1970's show Emergency (starring Randolph Mantooth and Kevin Tighe). They explained how Johnny and Roy heightened the public awareness of Paramedics and brought more people into the profession than any other medical related show.

Many pictures were taken, many friendships were renewed and everyone took home memories they'll keep for a lifetime. Mark your calendars for next year's conference, January 28-30, 2011, Heritage Inn, Moose Jaw. Hope to see you there!

~Carla

It's a good old fashioned blizzard!

2010-01-24T16:14:00.005-07:00

The past couple of days have been pretty rough around southern Saskatchewan. We've had quite the blizzard. Usually the area around our town doesn't get a lot of snow, at least not in the past dozen years or so. Usually a blizzard meant an inch or two of snow and howling wind. Not this time. We've probably gotten six inches or more this time.

It started snowing a couple of days ago with just a breeze, but it piled up a couple of inches of snow that drifted a little. I brought out the skidsteer and cleared the trails yesterday morning. It wasn't done, though, because the snow got somewhat heavier throughout the day. Carla was able to get to work at the gas station but we were starting to wonder if she'd be able to make it home when her shift ended at 9pm.

The roads did get treacherous and there was some vehicles getting into trouble on the Trans-Canada Highway that runs by Chaplin. Hopefully that wouldn't happen to Carla! But she did make it home...though she did get stuck at the end of our driveway into the farm yard. I walked out and helped get the van back on the trail and up to the house. We're all home safe and sound! But the storm wasn't over.

That evening we did have the power go out of 20 minutes or so. We were lucky. Some communities would be out for more than a day due to the snow and wind pulling wires off some poles south of the town of Assiniboia.

We woke up the next morning to the snow still falling and the wind really blowing. You wouldn't have known I cleared any snow yesterday. So I fed cows in the morning but held off clearing snow hoping the storm would ease off. Well, it was still going pretty strong after lunch so I went out anyway and pushed a snow for a couple of hours again. The yard was pretty full again, but the wind had actually blown away all the snow that Carla got stuck in last night. Go figure.

So I'm sure I'll be out again tomorrow building my snow piles even higher. The boys love playing on them. Mitchell lost a boot in one this afternoon which I had to dig out. It's a bit of pain in the ass to deal with all this snow, but the land desperately needs it, both to replenish topsoil moisture and to fill dugouts for cattle to drink in the summer. We've had a pretty dry few years. The last time I remember having a really good dump of snow was more than a decade ago.

By the way, the picture above shows my hay bales buried in the snow and in the distance is our neighbor's farm yard half a mile away. Below are a few more of the fun and frivolity of our blizzard!

My geekfest weekend

2009-12-27T18:33:00.003-07:00

So how's your weekend been? Mine's been quite nice. Carla and the boys took a little trip to visit her Mom down at Coronach while I stayed home to look after the cattle and pets. So it's been quiet around here. And thanks to my sister needing work done on her laptop and Space (the Canadian sci-fi channel) showing all the Star Trek movies this weekend it's been a geekfest for me!

Saturday I sat down with the laptop in front of the TV to watch a day's worth of movies starring the original Star Trek series cast. This ailing laptop is a big HP machine. After Staples failed to fix an overheating problem my sister discovered the machine wouldn't boot anymore. Her husband cleaned it out himself but it still refused to boot. Being the 'computer guy' of the family, it often falls to me to try to fix things. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your viewpoint) I'm more of a Mac and Linux guy. I don't do Windows much.
This laptop had XP Pro installed and couldn't find "NTLDR" so I knew it was a boot problem. Now was it just Windows or the drive? I booted off the XP CD and tried to repair the master boot record and boot sector but got nowhere. Next was an attempt at a reinstall.

Now it appeared that a reinstall might work. The CD booted and began the process by copying the install files to the hard drive. Unfortunately when it came time to reboot to continue the setup the computer would reboot before Windows would finish loading. I tried this twice and got the same result. Now what...

I have a copy of the Windows 7 Release Candidate. Maybe it would work. So I boot that DVD and begin trying to install Win7. Huh...it can't even see the drive. I'm beginning to suspect the drive is screwed and order a new one online just in case.

My next try is trying to boot my Linux disks. These fail, too, but I sometimes get an error message that I search for online. I try again with a Kubuntu 7.10 disk and add the 'noapic' option to the kernel boot options and the disk boots. Well, let's try an install. It works! I get a working Linux install that boots perfectly off the hard disk! The only problem I have is I can't get wireless networking to work. I know this is an older version of Kubuntu so I setup a download of the 9.10 version and go and visit my dad up in the care home in Central Butte.

When I get back the download is done and I perform an install of Kubuntu 9.10 using the same option as before. I download packages for the wireless networking and get it and running! This is when I call it a day and just relax with my Trek movies and some Christmas goodies.

The next day I work on getting the right software packages installed so my sister can do what she needs to do with the laptop (which is really just getting Firefox installed so she can Facebook right, sis?). Using the package management software on Ubuntu machines makes software installation pretty easy. There's very little of the dependency hell we used to experience in the old days. So while I watched the TNG cast in their movies, I fine-tuned the laptop and wrote out a page of things to help my sister get up to speed with Linux.

So I'm pretty happy that I was able to fix the laptop and just as pleased that it was Linux that came to the rescue. Perhaps if I knew Windows better I might have been able to work out why Windows failed in this case but having been a Linux enthusiast since 1997 I just know it better. If the hard drive keeps running happily I'll put the replacement I ordered into an external case for backup purposes. We should probably clone the laptop drive just in case.

Anyway, that's how I spent my weekend. It made for an enjoyable weekend for a geek like me! :)

Is unschooling in our future?

2009-12-21T14:42:00.002-07:00

Lately I've begun to think that we need to consider altering our homeschool method. Mitchell has little enthusiasm for any kind of school work and doesn't seem to want to put any effort into it. It's really quite frustrating to have to struggle for an hour to get through something that should take 20 minutes if he just tried. Lately Carla has taken over some of it and gotten some better results with getting him to do his math worksheets. Perhaps shaking things up a bit might help - a different teacher (mom), some different content.

But it got me thinking that maybe he's not suited to what I was trying to do. When I thought about it Mitchell might have a more comfortable learning environment, that being home instead of at public school, but maybe not a more comfortable learning style. Am I doing a little too much "school at home"? Would he do better following his own learning path? Could that even mean unschooling? Mitchell is quite intelligent and reads above his grade level. He can even tell you which aircraft have variable-geometry wings. He just hates having to do learn what I tell him he has to learn.

Right now it seems the boys prefer to just play computer games or watch TV. They do enjoy going outside to play when it's nice outside. But when I suggest doing some homeschool work all I hear is whining and it's the same battle every day. We had a lot of time off from schoolwork during October and November but I am fearing that that ruined things rather than helped. We got out of our groove.

Anyway, for now Carla will be able to help out more now that she doesn't have as many shifts at the gas station in the next little while, and I plan to start teaching some different things in the hopes that Mitchell will take more interest in his work. But at the upcoming convention I plan to attend the workshop on unschooling and perhaps take some ideas home that may help us out. And if anyone reading this has any ideas, please share!

SHBE convention details

2009-12-12T06:56:00.003-07:00

A couple of days ago we got the registration form and information regarding the upcoming Saskatchewan Home Based Educators convention. It takes place February 19 and 20, 2010 and this year it's in Regina at the University of Regina.

Last year's keynote speaker, Dr. Brian Ray, was an excellent choice as last year we took in the conference as homeschool newbies. In fact we hadn't actually made the choice to homeschool until the drive home from Saskatoon last February. Dr. Ray's studies had shown that anyone could successfully homeschool their children. As one-step-beyond-newbies this year, this year's speaker Andrew Pudewa will give us some guidance in writing, something we can apply directly in our lessons at home. I know we could definitely use some help here as Mitchell is a reluctant writer.

Mr. Pudewa is the director of the Institute for Excellence in Writing. He's also a father of seven homeschooled children. He will be giving two keynote sessons and leading five workshops over the weekend. I've picked out a couple of the workshops to attend, "Reaching the Reluctant Writer" and "Teaching Boys and Other Children Who Would Rather Make Forts All Day". With three active boys at home I know we really, really need that last one!

The other workshops cover a wide range of topics of course. We have a couple by the HSLDA. There's three lifestyle workshops - health/nutrition, budget, inspirational (I assume that's nonsecular). And for workshops more directly related to homeschooling, there's one on teaching gifted children, one on unschooling and a couple on homeschooling issues that are somewhat related "Why Aren't They Learning" and "Stress Free Homeschooling". There is also a "Teen Convention" with its own set of workshops and activities.

Now that we know what to look for we also plan to take more advantage of the used book sale this year. I plan to make a list of what to look for, unlike last year when I wandered around clueless. I plan to make some changes in math for sure and am tossing around ideas in my head regarding ELA as well. The exhibit hall is obviously a must-see as well. And since a lot of exhibitors give special convention pricing it's a good place to stock up on curriculum, too.

Something really nice to see during convention is the Homeschool Completion Ceremony. Grad for homeschoolers! I'm hoping someday my three boys will be up on stage for this.

Convention registration costs $85CDN for one adult and $135 for an adult couple. Teens are $35. Friday supper and Saturday lunch are included for that price. A number of hotels are giving special rates to those attending the convention as well. Hopefully this year Prime Minister Stephen Harper will not be staying at our hotel like he was last year so that we can check in at a decent time. It was cool to see him, though. Unfortunately he had to turn down a request to say a few words at the conference.

So if you're reading this and you're a homeschooler in Saskatchewan I hope you can attend. It's a great time and you can learn so much. Seeya there!

My obligatory H1N1 post

2009-12-05T18:49:00.002-07:00

Hey folks. I'm spending a quiet evening watching teevee and surfing around on the netbook. I've been watching some Aussie V8 Supercar racing I downloaded a while back. Speedchannel used to carry these races in the winter but don't any more so I had to find some torrents to download. It's really fantastic racing.

Anyway while sitting here I got to thinking I should write up a blog post about my thoughts on having our family vaccinated for H1N1. Up until a week ago it really wasn't possible anyway because the province of Saskatchewan was only vaccinating health workers and those with higher health risks. But a week ago they opened it up to the general public finally so I started thinking about it more.

I think Carla is the most exposed to infection of all of us due to her work at the gas station and Canada Post. She deals with the public and handles money and mail. In our discussions we've agreed that she could probably use the vaccination more than the rest of us, but for now she's uncertain about whether she would bother getting it.

The kids are not exposed very much being homeschooled now. Public school used to mean Mitchell was brining home a new cold or flu every couple of weeks. Thank goodness that's not happening now. Gymnastics finished last week and won't start again until February so they that's a little less exposure.

What about me? Well, I'm a hermit at heart and tend to stay home most of the time. I get into the city now and then but that's about it. Our family doesn't go out very often for social reasons. It's seven miles to town and there's not much there anyway. So we tend to just stay home.

So I guess what I'm saying is that we really don't feel the need to vaccinate ourselves. Even if we did get H1N1 it appears it's not much different than getting the regular flu. I even heard someone say their doctor told them the same thing. So far in Saskatchewan 12 people have died from H1N1 and all have had an underlying health issue. So I feel rather safe due to our lifestyle and overall health.

By the way, we do have our children vaccinated for the usual diseases through our provinces public health system. We've just never bothered with the annual flu shots. We're exposed to so many germs around the farm that there's probably little that could knock us down anyway!

Perhaps a breakthrough?

2009-11-18T17:16:00.003-07:00

If you've read a previous post you know we've been super-ultra-mega busy around the farm the past month...so busy that homeschool has kind of been pushed aside. Sometimes we go a week between lessons and even then it might be just a short lesson. A couple of days ago Mitchell asked if we were doing homeschool that day. I told him that we had to go haul bales with the semi for another farmer. So he said "We should do homeschool tomorrow."

Now, this is a kid that at times gets rather mad if I tell him it's time to do homeschool work. And if I suggest he could go back to public school he says no to that, too. Might this mean that his attitude is changing? I hope so.

But when we did do some lessons today he wasn't so happy to work...so maybe he's just being a typical 7-year old boy.

A step in getting away from BellTV

2009-11-18T15:49:00.002-07:00

Back in the spring I bought myself a refurbished Mac Mini from the online Apple Store. It's a great little machine with a 1.8Ghz Core 2 Duo, a couple of gigs of RAM and an 80GB hard drive. I put together an external hard drive with a 500GB Hitachi drive and a MacAlly case to plug into the Mini's FireWire port. I've used it since then as my main machine...until last week.

I watch a fair amount of video on it, like YouTube or other goodies I've downloaded. So I got to thinking that it couldn't be too hard to hook this computer up to our 42" Samsung plasma TV in the living room. So I did! It was really quite simple. I just needed a DVI-HDMI adapter and HDMI cable to get the video into the TV, and an audio cable with a 1/8" stereo plug on one end and dual RCA on the other to take the audio to the TV. The Mini, which is running MacOS 10.5.8 (Leopard), required no tweaking and treated the Samsung as just another monitor.

I recently discovered the joys of Miro, an application that can make use of RSS feeds of shows to automatically download new episodes of almost anything. It's available at getmiro.com. Using a list from ezrss.it I was able to add shows like NCIS, Mythbusters and V. I even have a feed of classic cartoons for the kids. Of course it can also get online-only things like shows from Revision3 such as Techzilla. There's also hundreds of feeds to access at miroguide.com. Much of it is in HD even!

One can watch videos in Miro, but most of the time I just use FrontRow, an app that comes with Leopard. It makes for a nice full-screen menu system that gives you access to all the content on your Mac. I've even used it to watch DVDs I've ripped to the drive and I've been downloading Australian V8 Supercar races to watch since Speed Channel no longer carries those. Carla has also enjoyed being able to use iTunes on the Mini to play her music through the stereo (which is hooked to the TV of course).

My main goal here is to try to get away from satellite TV subscriptions, which keep going up in price but which don't really cater to our families viewing habits. For the most part we don't watch regular network TV. We despise so-called reality shows. For me sometime like Survivorman is what reality TV should be, not Survivor. If I can get what I want online, why should I pay BellTV? So far we're still subscribing but hopefully not for long. Our internet access is only a 1Mb satellite connection which seems to work fairly well so far, but it's kept pretty busy downloading our shows. Hopefully someday something better will come along but for now it's this or dialup!

Now off to watch some quality TV on the Mini! The kids can't wait for Alf to finish downloading!

Help, I haven't fallen but I don't want to get up!

2009-11-01T15:35:00.002-07:00

Well, friends, it's the beginning of November. The weather is pretty decent the past couple of days. Not that crappy weather has slowed things down either. October and November are proving to be the most exhausting months for our family this year.

I guess it kind of started a month ago when a fellow employee of Carla's at the gas station had some health problems and has been off work. The other workers are picking up the extra shifts, which means mostly Carla because she's the only part-timer with the time to take extra shifts. We're happy for the extra money but since she already has a second job she's pretty much working full-time now.

That leaves me with the kids a lot more which has presented some issues. We recently added to our livestock. A few weeks ago we got ourselves a miniature goat. It's a cute little African Pygmy nanny, about three or four years old and really just a pet (for now). Last week at an exotic livestock auction we bought 16 layer hens and two Dexter miniature cows (not too small, about 3/4 size I'd say). We're milking one of the Dexters, too. That's twice a day, around 9am and 5pm. They've been a bit nervous so I've tried to avoid having the boys around when I'm working with them. I almost got my nose broken a couple of days ago when one of the cows hit a steel gate and the top bar hit me in the nose where my glasses sit. There was some blood but it turned out alright. Carla was there luckily and checked me out. I held a tissue on the cut while one nostril bled for a while, then I got back to milking. But as you can see it's sometimes better if the kids are off playing by themselves while I work with the cows.

At the same time as dealing with our new animals, I've been trying to get my other work done as well as get in some work for our neighbor. That's mostly been hauling bales with the semi, cleaning out some barns with the skidsteer, or helping with cattle. I had my mom out to watch the kids on Saturday so I could finally do some of my own corral cleaning. Today they rode around with me while I fixed some fences. Carla's home most of the day tomorrow so I hope to be back in the skidsteer cleaning corrals and barns again, both mine and the neighbor's. At least it's dried out a bit. One day last week I had to give up cleaning barns at the neighbors because even the skidsteer couldn't get around after some rain and snow made the ground too sloppy.

Homeschooling has been kinda getting put aside more often so we can get work done. I had kind of expected this, though, which is why I started early (August 17 I think). I briefly entertained the thought of having some to do in the semi since it has a big sleeper cab but two of the three boys spend most of their time up front fighting over who sits in the passenger seat while the other is quietly sitting in the back watching the portable DVD player. There wouldn't be much hope of getting much work done if I brought school work along. I was happy to get peace and quiet, rare as that was. But once winter sets in and all I have to do is feed and milk cows I hope to catch up. I think in the grand scheme of things I'm not too far behind. I even got an hour or so in with Mitchell today after lunch. Having seen a copy of the Chaplin School newsletter we found he's keeping pace in Math which was a relief as that's what gave us the most problems earlier. As November is here I'm going to try and get something together for Remembrance Day so the boys can learn a bit about what it means. It's an important day to me and I hope it will be for them, too. So still plenty of work to do!

As the old saying goes, you can rest when you're dead. :)

Homeschool School Photos

2009-10-19T18:54:00.004-06:00

Well, it's that time of year when schools all over do the school photo thing (well, I think it's around now...). Despite the fact we're homeschoolers we're allowed to take part in the public school photo thing, but we thought why don't we just make our own?

A few years ago while I was on my training course to get my Class 1A drivers license Carla took some really good photos of the boys on a nice fall day. After lunch today she pulled out her fancy new camera and headed out with the boys to try to get some nice shots suitable for hanging up on the wall to replace those aging 2006 photos. The boys have grown up a little since then!

As you can see in the "class photo" above, there were a few other customers trying to steal the limelight. They were a bit of a help by distracting the boys from the camera. By the time everyone was starting to get cold they had quite a few nice shots, both as a group and individually. Thank goodness for digital cameras. It's not hard to shoot a lot of photos to get one good one when shooting kids.

To have a look at a few more shots of our boys head on over to Carla's Flickr page. Let her know what you think!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/carla_k/sets/72157622622136776/

Letter writing as a homeschool activity

2009-10-12T19:45:00.002-06:00

Last week Mitchell got a pleasant surprise. He got mail! His former school's secretary sent him a letter! She had asked our permission of course and realizing the value of letter writing we agreed. Mrs. Gleim was always a good friend to the kids of Chaplin School.

It was a nice little two or three page letter, printed so that a seven year old could read it talking about the usual things that a seven year old boy would talk about. Mitchell was very happy to get it and read it several times. I think he's excited to have a penpal. Remember those? I had a few when I was young, too. If I remember correctly I wrote to people from Singapore, Australia, Germany and England. I remember how happy I was to get real letters in the mail.

So today Carla helped Mitchell get started on his reply while I was out working. I think he's about half done. There are a number of important things he'll be learning and practicing when writing his letter. He'll be learning a bit about formatting a letter of course. He'll be practicing punctuation and sentence structure. He'll be learning how to compose his thoughts and how to put those thoughts down on paper. He'll also be practicing his printing skills. He's had a bit of trouble in that lately and have had him practicing that a bit more, too. I'm not sure he could even read his own writing sometimes.

I think it's important to learn how to write by hand. It's an exercise of the mind in so many ways. And practically, one doesn't need electicity to power a pen and paper. When the electromagnetic pulse comes and wipes out our electronic gadgets (which I will admit I'm addicted to as much as my kids are) that's what we'll be left with!

Front summer to winter in the blink of an eye

2009-10-08T18:38:00.004-06:00

September is long gone and October is starting to show it's teeth in Saskatchewan. September was a very warm month for us. Many communities set record highs several days in a row in mid-month. I recall seeing a 32C the odd time and a couple of towns hit 34-35C. David Philips, senior climatologist at Environment Canada, said on the news at the end of the month that September could turn out to be the warmest month of the year for Saskatchewan, the first time that has ever happened. It's no surprise because most the year was much colder than normal. The grass really didn't start growing until about mid-May.

But now it's October and we're getting arctic weather pushing down. Last night we had our first real hard frost. When I got up at 7am it was -6C. When I went out at 8am to start the semi truck I had to give it a shot of ether (starting fluid) to get it started. She was a bit stiff! At least I didn't have to worry about muddy trails because the mud was all frozen!

At lunch time I had to take the boys into Moose Jaw as Mitchell had his first swimming lessons with fellow homeschoolers. The weather was cool, but not too bad. We did some shopping and then went to swimming lessons. After lessons we went to Dairy Queen for a snack. Blizzards are yummy but only if you eat them and not drive them. That's what we hit about halfway home.

Moose Jaw is about 60 miles away from our farm. We saw the odd little snow flurry in the first half of the trip home but I'd say around Mortlach we were well into the snow storm. We got past Parkbeg and headed down Secretan Hill and that's where I started to get nervous. It was starting to stick to the highway. As I went back up the other side I felt the van wiggle slightly. Now there are some ruts in the highway and it was quite windy out so it might not have been slippery but I backed off anyway, from about 100kph (which was down from the 110kph I was doing when I left Moose Jaw) to about 60 by the time I got through the twisties which weave through the hills around Secretan area. Once I was out of that I sped up a bit, maybe 80-90 until I got to Chaplin. It wasn't sticking on the highway quite as bad here, but we're lucky to have a gravel road from Chaplin to the farm which I took. Yeah, it's muddy but it's not going to be nearly as slippery as a slushy highway!

Anyway, we're home safe and sound and I'm curled up by the warm glow of my computer monitor with Rush pounding from the speakers. Life is good. :)

Gettin' there

2009-09-30T18:35:00.002-06:00

Well, I thought this would be a good time for an update on how our homeschool is going. It's been a while since I filled you all in.

We've been at this almost six weeks now. At first we went fairly steady. That was for about two weeks. It's been a bit more intermittent since due to farm work but we still manage to fit in a few learning sessions every week. Sometimes I can fit in a whole morning, sometimes I get in an hour.

Lately Mitchell has been working on adding and subtracting larger numbers and we've just introduced working with numbers that require tens to or from the ones column. Mitchell is starting to be able to do simple calculations in his head. Progress in math? Imagine that!

ELA has us working on nouns and adjectives, various vowel sounds (as well as the various 'y' sounds) and combination sounds (such as 'ck' as in 'sock'). We studied the book "A Tree Is Nice" and we read the Dr. Suess book "There's No Place Like Space" just for fun.

In science we've just finished a unit on life cycles where Mitchell learned about the life cycles of mammals, insects and plants, and learned about marsupials, too. He's going to grow some pea plants to see the life cycle of that plant. I guess he kinda saw that in the garden this year anyhow, but why not get up close and personal with a pea plant?

In our social studies class we're learning about Canada. We're exploring it's various geographical and political regions. Mitchell can name almost all the provinces and territories on an unlabeled map. He's only having a little trouble remembering the various smaller maritime provinces (like most of us did when we first learned them). We've also been learning how to use a map generally.

Although we don't have a health class, Mitchell has also taken an interest in a book about the human body for kids. He's spent a fair amount of time looking at it by himself and asking questions. I don't know if there's an invisible switch that's been flipped in me but I notice these child directed learning moments (did I just invent an acronym? CDLMs?) more often and pay more attention to them.

Matthew and Michael have been doing some work, too. I've been working on getting them to learn their alphabet and numbers, which includes learning how to write them. So we've also been working on how to write their names. I've also done a very small amount of basic math with them. They've recieved some homework from their speech therapist and we've been doing that, too. That's mostly been about learning bigger/smaller, full/empty, etc. They also take part in extra activities like when we went for a walk to look at different kinds of seeds in the trees and grass. They all do art projects together, too. The last project was leaf rubbing. Yes, of course, those pictures are hanging in the kitchen!

How about extra curricular activities? The boys are two weeks into their fall gymnastics session. And starting October 8, Mitchell's in swimming lessons with other homeschool kids in Moose Jaw. He gets a one-hour lesson once a week for five weeks for $25. Good deal! And best of all we can finally meet some other homeschool families!

I've been considering moving our 'classroom' upstairs, too. Lately we've been doing more of our work on the main floor (and sometimes Mitchell takes it to his room upstairs, too). Some of you have seen our little classroom in the basement. It's a nice cozy corner sometimes, but also a bit of a dungeon. But to do that I have to find a spot for stories our materials. Piling it in various corners isn't the greatest idea. And where do I put the whiteboard and maps? Oh well, we'll get it figured out.

So how do I feel about our progress? Well, I think we're coming along fine. There's time's I've felt a bit disappointed that I can't fit in classes more regularly but I know I can make it up on weekends and holidays. And I know that we're getting more learning done in the shorter periods we're working than the boys would get at school anyway. Besides the boys are spending more 'quality' time with me, too, if having them fighting over the front passenger seat of the semi is considered quality time! But seriously there was a day last week that I took them out with me to finish baling a field of straw and we saw a moose wandering up the field so we followed it a little way and had a good look at it. Moose are kind of rare around our farm, although not so rare in other areas of this region of Saskatchewan. There's a family of them about 15 miles south of our farm apparently. But this is only the second one I've ever seen. We all thought it was pretty cool!

So ya...homeschool's going alright...no matter where it's taking place!

Ready to work! (I hope!)

2009-09-18T19:19:00.003-06:00

Last winter after becoming dissatisfied with farming as a career I sold of a couple of quarters of land. Carla and I had a business plan in mind but that dream had to be let go, too, after some things beyond our control made that proposition a little too risky. Instead I bought myself the toy pictured which is a 2003 Caterpillar 246 skid steer loader. My idea is to pick up some work with it to make up for the money I wasn't making farming my land. I made sure I didn't borrow any money to get into this business, spending only what I got for the sale of my land. Debt scares me these days. This machine cost me around $24,000 with a little more than 900 hours on the hourmeter. Fairly low for its age.

Anyway, this machine came with a straight bucket only so at a Richie Brothers auction I picked up a hay spear (for picking up large round bales) and the manure grapple pictured, which I'm hoping will be the core of my business. A couple of years ago I rented a Bobcat S185 and quite enjoyed operating it cleaning my own corrals and barns so I have a bit of experience running these kind of machines. This one is even better than the Bobcat as the Cat doesn't require the use of pedals to operated the loader and bucket. It's all on joysticks. The left stick controls movement forward, back, left and right. The right stick controls the loader and bucket. Each stick also has a switch to control extra hydraulic attachments. In this case the right stick's switch controls the claw on the grapple. Another bonus is that I have heat and air conditioning. Yes, I'm a big suck! I need my air and heat!

Of course I had to get a trailer to haul this thing around. Carla and I went to a farm auction that had a used Dumenceau 8-1/2x20 gooseneck triaxle flatdeck on offer. It was in average condition, nothing special but quite usable. It sold for $9500! And no, not to me! It definitely wasn't worth that kind of money to me. So we made our way back into Swift Current and visited JayDee AgTech, a dealer for Trailtech trailers (and obviously John Deere farm equipment!). Anyway, we left there towing a shiney brand new Trailtech 8-1/2x20 gooseneck tandem axle flatdeck and it only cost us $8800 taxes included! Yeah, it's got one less axle but even with two I've got plenty of capacity to carry the Cat. My neighbor has actually borrowed the trailer a lot to haul stuff so it's obviously a hit with him!

I also have a set of brand new tires on the Cat. The ones that came with it had very little traction in wet manure. It's possible to get tracks that fit over the tires but they're very expensive - $3500 for one set I saw advertised in the Western Producer newspaper. I checked into chains but Brake and Drive in SC quoted me well over $1000 which seemed odd because I've seen them online for a lot less, but I didn't feel like ordering from the US. Anyway, I got a set of Trelleburgs from Fountain Tire in SC with an extra wide sidewall to protect the rims and spent just over $900. No fussing with chains and they seem to perform quite well in my own barnyard after some testing today.

Anyway, what it all comes down to is that this coming Monday I have my first "official" job cleaning corrals for Hughes Farms south of Chaplin. Hopefully I've worked out all the kinks at home and have a good, trouble-free day!

Road safety matters

2009-09-08T19:37:00.002-06:00

A number of recent incidents on the highway around this part of the world have me thinking about why some motorists aren't taking more care out there.

The first one I'll deal with is seat belt usage. There have been two single-vehicle rollovers this week, one of which killed a two-year-old girl who was allowed to sleep in the back of a vehicle without a car seat. Nobody else in the vehicle was wearing a seatbelt either.

Less than 24 hours later another vehicle rolled when the driver fell asleep at the wheel in the middle of the night. Nobody was killed but at least one passenger was ejected from the vehicle because, again, they weren't wearing seatbelts.

I'm a racing fan. I see drivers walk away from horrendous crashes because of the safety equipment which obviously includes seat belts. An airbag won't do you much good when you are ejected from the vehicle and it rolls over you.

The second issue I want to deal with is respecting heavy trucks on the road. It seems like every few weeks I hear on the radio about an accident involving semi trucks. And guess what. It's almost always some dumbass has attempted to cross the highway without looking and is killed when his vehicle is struck by a truck. It happened again today at Moose Jaw. It's almost as suicidal as trying to beat a train at a railroad crossing. I drive a truck sometimes myself and sometimes weigh as much as 50,000 pounds with a load of hay. I've come over a hill to see cows on the road and luckily had the distance to get slowed down and stopped but it sure scared the crap out of me. Now imagine my brother-in-law who pulls Super-B grain trailers for a living with a gross weight of 120,000 pounds comes across someone attempting to cross the highway immediately in front of him. What's he going to do? He's going to spend the rest of his life reliving that nightmare that 'someone' gave him. Thankfully that hasn't happened to him and I sure hope it never does.

Please take a moment when you head out to do up your seat belt and those of your children. And when you come to that intersection, take an extra look before you cross.

The Fun And Frivolity of Canning

2009-09-06T20:32:00.002-06:00

Well, I think we're starting to see the end of our canning for this year. There's still a four liter pail of juice extracted from apples to turn into jelly but that won't be too hard. It's sitting in the fridge waiting for another day to deal with. Today I did up a pail of chokecherry juice and made six jars of jelly and three of syrup (all pint jars).

I've always struggled with making chokecherry jelly, but I learned this year I probably wasn't boiling it long enough. There are some recipes that say boil hard one minute. Uh-uh. No way. Won't work for me. Carla asked a few people this year that are boiling 15 to 30 minutes. So I tried 30. Yay! It worked! Went back to 20 and ended up with thick syrup again. Now this is with liquid pectin. We got a slightly different recipe that uses pectin crystals and after 30 minutes of boiling, I ended up with some sugar crystals in the jelly so my next batch went back to 20 minutes. I'll hope it's better.

Carla's also made some dill pickles with 20 pounds of cucumbers she got from the Hutterites at the farmers' market last week (from my brother-in-law's sister as a matter of fact). Some were jarred in quart sealers but she also made a batch just in pails. She got this recipe from my sister who made up a batch in a plastic cat litter pail (so of course I had to bug my sister about getting the litter box recipe). We haven't tried them yet, but the kids love pickles and have been bugging us to try them.

But the biggest canning issue this year has been the demise of Carla's beloved smooth-top stove. I was sterilizing jars one morning and heard a funny noise. Wasn't sure what it was...maybe just a jar with a snap lid sealing? Anyway when Carla got home from work I went baling. Later she sent me a text message saying "OMG the stove top is cracked!" Luckily this was already a 15-year-old stove but it still worked fine (well, except for the oven light but that's nothing). Guess how much to fix it. No, higher...Keep going...Right, $500! So we decided to get a new stove. For $699 plus tax (regular $849) we got a new Kenmore with coil burners since we're not giving up the canning. It was probably the heat and/or the weight of the large canner that cracked the smooth-top, something that will not affect the traditional coil burners. Plus the oven is bigger, which might be a bonus sometimes.

Hopefully we can get 15 years and more out of this stove. We replaced the dishwasher this year, too, so hopefully that's all for now! Having cloth-diapered all the kids, I ended up having to replace some plastic couplers on the washing machine between the motor and transmission several times over the years and it's kept going. Crossing my fingers!

Carla's Photographic Fun

2009-08-27T18:48:00.002-06:00

Carla's turning into quite the photography enthusiast lately. She's always had an interest in it and for the past few years has used a Kodak Z740. It's a five megapixel device that resides somewhere between the simple point-and-shoot and the DSLR. She's taken lots of good shots with it. But we recently invested in a real DSLR, a Canon Rebel XS, a ten megapixel camera with an 18-55mm lens.

Carla studied long and hard before choosing the XS. She did a lot of research online getting reviews and specifications. At first she fell in love with the Nikon D60 after looking at one at Wells Camera and Sound in Moose Jaw. One of the things shes looking for is faster focus and shooting and the D60 was far faster than the old Kodak. But then she held the Canon XSi at Walmart and she forgot all about the Nikon. It slipped into her hands perfectly and just "felt" right.

So she spent the next few days studying the differences between the XSi and the XS. While the XSi had 12 megapixels and the XS 10, some reviews claimed the XS experienced less noise at higher ISOs, less red eye and fewer blurred shots. Plus it's cheaper! It sounded like a good camera for a novice photographer. It shoots blazingly fast, which was the main reason for a new one.

She ordered online from Henry's, a shop in Toronto and had the camera a few days later. She also ordered a Lowepro backback that can swivel around to lay horizontally in front of you for easy access to equipment. Carla almost looks like a pro with all this gear! It might be a while before she gets it but she's now lusting after a long zoom lens. Let's learn to use the camera first, 'kay? She's joined a Rebel Yahoo group for hints and tips and loves hanging out there now.

For those that would like to see some of her work, she's set up a Flikr page:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/carla_k/

I can't wait to get my paws on it next time I go to the races or air show. :)

If it ain't broke you're not trying hard enough

2009-08-26T13:18:00.003-06:00

I remember hearing or reading that saying somewhere. Maybe it was a bumper sticker. If it's true, I must be trying real hard because I've got broken equipment all over this farm. Last Thursday night around 10:45pm I broke the other axle on the baler. I had a shop in Swift Current make me a new one but it wasn't ready until Monday. So over the weekend I started swathing an oat field that I'll be baling, too. Well, I broke a canvas drive roller on there! It's getting to the point I just want it to be winter so I'm not working in the field breaking stuff!

Anyway, the baler's fixed and I've done a couple of night baling sessions because it's been hot again. Hopefully this evening after supper (and after it cools off a bit) I'll get the swather fixed and finish cutting that oat field. Then I'll hop up on the baler tractor and bale the first bit of that field that I cut a few days ago. At least being a cultivated field it will be a whole hell of a lot smoother than that old hay field I just finished. No wonder I'm breaking stuff! I'm going to have to break up a few old hay fields and start fresh. Gophers, moles and badgers do not make for smooth hay fields.

Oh, and to make matters worse we're having a problem with the hard drive in our BEV (or BellTV now I guess) PVR. I suspect corruption because we've lost a lot of recorded programming lately. Maybe this weekend when Carla's working I'll pull the drive and reformat. I had to replace the drive a year or two ago and still have the instructions on how to remarry a virgin drive to the 5900 reciever. This is almost more important than fixing the farm equipment. Must have PVR!

I must say I have a lot more fun digging in the guts of computers and satellite recievers than I do turning into a greaseball fixing my farm equipment. Sometimes Carla wants me to put lotion on her feet. I think "Ick." Didn't my hands feel like this a few hours ago...

Math Mayhem

2009-08-22T19:55:00.003-06:00

Well, it's been a fun and exciting and frustrating week of homeschooling. Yep, all that rolled into one. I love seeing my kids happily learning something new. I love to see the joy of accomplishment. It's not always that much fun trying to keep three young boys on task. I'm sure those of you with several young children know exactly what I'm talking about.

But the past couple of days the biggest problem I'm having is getting Mitchell to work through his math problems. I helped him often enough with math homework from public school last year to know that he knows what to and how to do it. This year it's like he's afraid to try even the simplest problems. At first it seemed like he was just being distracted by what Matthew and Michael were doing (which is their preschool level worksheets usually). Today we worked alone and I could see it was more than that. He really didn't want to do it. We took a break from it and moved onto some science stuff (marsupials!) and some online animations of thunderstorms. Then we came back to math and I "talked him down" by offering to reward him with some big red check marks in his work book if he just tried. I told him that I didn't care if he got the problems wrong or not. That got him started so we finished one page then we moved onto an earlier page where we'd really run into a roadblock. This page had four small sets of problems (10 total) and I promised one check mark for each section he finished. He breezed through them with minimal fuss with only one error I think. Good job Mitchell!

We've been using Miquon for math, by the way. We had looked at Saxon and Singapore and thought Miquon might be a happy medium between the repetitiveness (so we've heard) of Saxon and the more advanced level of Singapore. We have the counting rods but Mitchell seems to have trouble wrapping his head around how to use them usually and prefers to count on a ruler or his fingers. That's fine, as long as he finds a way to solve his problems I'm happy. I think the biggest problem is confidence and initiative. Perhaps I'll continue with rewarding effort and hope for the best as we move along.

And two days later...

2009-08-18T15:53:00.002-06:00

Anyone else out there like Whitesnake? Listening to 'Ain't No Love In The Heart Of The City' from "Live: In The Still Of The Night".

As most of you, or some of you, or you over there know we began homeschooling the three Ms yesterday and now we've been through two sessions. We've had our ups and downs but overall I'd say we're doing well and enjoying ourselves. I've covered all our subjects so far.

ELA we're doing pretty well with and moving along nicely. Math is still an exercise in patience for Mitchell but with some calm coaching and encouragement he easily works out his problems with Cuisinaire rods or fingers. It's just a matter of getting him to try.

Science has been fun. We're learning about lifecycles of animals and plants and we're in the process of cutting open peas after a period of time soaking in water to see them germinate. Social has us studying Canada and maps. We had a good start on that but Mitchell had a little meltdown and I knew it was time to pack it up and go look at our peas instead. Then it was lunchtime!

Matthew and Michael have been working on coloring and gluing alphabet and number worksheets. I'm also having them work on spelling their names. Michael is doing pretty well with these projects. Matthew needs some practice with printing his letters so I had Carla print off a bunch of worsheets for tracing letters.

I would say I've learned a couple of things myself the past couple of days. First is that it's a challenge to work with all the boys together. The first day I didn't have enough for M&M to do while I helped Mitchell, the second I had enough but they required more attention than I expected so I found myself working with all three boys and once. Mitchell is easily distracted, too.

The second thing I learned is that I'm trying to fit too much into a morning. I'm going to have to cut back my expectations and perhaps just do two subjects instead of three. If I have time for extra, great. If not, there's time tomorrow. Or maybe do some kind of project in the afternoon. We'll see what we have time for. I know the first hour we do well, so maybe I'll save that for what we really need to get done and leave hour three for fun stuff that doesn't matter so much.

Anyway, I'd just like to say I'm having fun learning along with the three Ms. And special thanks to my "staff" Carla for finding online worksheets and the copying services! I can compile a Linux kernel but I'd be lost on the multi-function printer. :)

I'll send you out with "In The Still Of The Night"...love that interlude...

A Grand Adventure Begins

2009-08-16T19:16:00.002-06:00

Tomorrow morning, if all goes according to plan, we will begin our journey in homeschooling. I spent an hour last night going over books and making a bit of a lesson plan and having Carla copy worksheets. I know, I know...the best laid plans of mice and men...but as I just wrote on the SecHS forums, as a newbie I feel some comfort in having a plan.

I'm going to start with ELA from LLAL (the Red Book for Grade 2). This course is nice in that it's an all-in-one ELA curriculum and nicely broken down into days. It even has us cutting out stuff on the first day so that should be fun for Mitchell. All my boys love to cut stuff up.

Next up is Science. We'll be studying life cycles first with Evan-Moor's Daily Science and Read and Understand Science. I've also got some pages marked in the Giant Science Resource Book and Usborne encyclopedia to fit in with the first two exercises.

I'm going to finish the day with Math from our Miquon books. This is a very hands-on course. I think Mitchell is good at math, but lacks patience staring at books and worksheets. Miquon has the Cuisenaire rods to play with so maybe that will help him visualize problems better, plus I'm going to start a little back into the Grade 1 stuff. It's worth a try anyway.

Matthew and Michael will be starting with coloring some alphabet worksheets. We'll start with "A" tomorrow and do some A words on the whiteboard. I also plan to let them play with the Cuisenaire rods. I hope to get some basic math in with them soon. Matthew tends to be several months behind Michael developmentally (both physically and academically) despite them being twins so it will be a learning experience for me as well as them this school year just trying to find what works for them.

I'm getting excited about starting our homeschooling and the boys are, too. They've been asking for a while when we can start and that day is almost here! Yay!

I sold my pride and joy

2009-08-14T20:22:00.002-06:00

Today is a sad day. Well, sort of anyway. I sold my old 1980 Chevy Camaro today. It was about time though. I hadn't had it registered since November, 2000 and usually only started it once a year or so. It wasn't in great shape anymore. The body itself was pretty good, but the paint was awful. The interior wasn't much better, with the headliner having fallen off. But I still loved it.

I'd had the car since 1989 and used it to run back and forth to university in Saskatoon. After I gave up on that enterprise two years later my sister used it for the one year she tried university. It only had a little 3.8L V6 engine so it did pretty well on gas. I guess it would have been around 1994 I changed that to a 5.0L (305 cu. in.) from a 1984 Chevy truck. Now it had a bit of power!

It was a fun cruising car. I loved how I was almost sitting on the floor. It didn't have a great stereo but it had a reasonable Pioneer cassette deck and speakers, two 6x9s on the back deck and two 5-inch round speakers in the doors. I later put on a used Pioneer amp and a 10-inch subwoofer. We were rockin'!

I courted Carla with that car, too. It made a few trips to Regina in 2000 to visit her and I recall one rather hot afternoon baking on the way home while Carla slept in the passenger seat. Did I mention it didn't have air conditioning? But we had fun. Unfortunately that was the last year I used it regularily.

Now it's no longer going to sit and rot. A young fellow from Waldeck has bought to use as a project car for his autobody class at the Swift Current Comprehensive High School. I'm glad it's going toward someone's education and hopefully someday I'll see it on the street again looking like a brand new car.

The bussing mess for Chaplin kids.

2009-08-13T19:42:00.002-06:00

Carla was talking to one of the bus drivers for Chaplin School tonight. It sounds like the new routes are a real mess. By the way, Carla herself drove a school bus for a few years so she knows something about it. Anyway it turns out Ross will essentially be running his route twice every morning. His first trip south will be to pick up the older kids. He then meets the bus headed to Mortlach at Valjean. He then heads back south to start picking up little kids. He works his way north of Valjean, then to Chaplin, and even up north of Chaplin.

There's a bus running from up north of Chaplin, too, but Michelle's job is to pick up the high school kids in Chaplin. She's the bus stopping at Valjean to pick up Ross's high school kids, then motoring east on the Trans-Canada to get them to Mortlach.

Living where we do, seven miles west of Chaplin and the only family with school age kids out west, if Mitchell was attending it would add at least 20 minutes to somebody's route. Thank goodness he's attending M3 Homeschool this fall!

Sadly, even though our school is still K-8, kids are still leaving in droves. Some are following older siblings to Mortlach, some families without older kids are sending them elsewhere anyway, and some have picked up the whole family and moved away. The last numbers I heard had 19 students left at Chaplin School. It's kind of sad really. The class of 1989, the year I graduated, had nine students. That seems like a lot now.

Chaplin School celebrated it's centennial this year. It could be closed before it's 101st birthday. So much for School of Opportunity.

What's in a name?

2009-08-12T20:18:00.002-06:00

It's my understanding that some jurisdictions require a homeschool to have a name. And I'm sure some families like to name their homeschool anyway. Saskatchewan doesn't require a name but we've come up with a name anyway just for fun. We call our homeschool M3 Homeschool. It's quite simple really because our three boys' names all start with M: Mitchell, Matthew and Michael! 3M is already taken of course, although since we're not making adhesives we'd probably get away with using it. And M3 isn't too much different than M5 Industries, which is the business the Mythbusters work out of. Gotta love Adam and Jamie and the gang!

I'm not sure how we ended up naming all our boys with Ms. There are times it's a curse. It's not at all uncommon to go through all three names before you hit the right one for the child you're trying to talk to. Heck we even come up with combinations like Mithew and Machael. Maybe it would be easier if we just numbered them. :)

Happy Birthday Mitchell!

2009-08-11T11:15:00.003-06:00

Seven years ago today our firstborn arrived into the world! I remember that day very well. Mitchell didn't really want to get born that day!

Sometime between 7am and 8am Carla's water broke. Not much else happened but we toddled our way into Swift Current (a 50 minute drive) and checked into the hospital. We got settled into our labor room and waited.

And waited.

Obviously things weren't advancing too quickly. Carla's always suffered from a bit of high blood pressure and it was getting a little too high for the doctor's liking so he induced her with prosteglanden gel.

By the way, this is about the time we learned that the anaesthiologists were both on holidays. By unfortunate coincidence they happened to be married to each other. The nerve of some people! I realize some people prefer to go without the epidural but Carla had wanted it. Instead she got some Demerol which from her reaction during the next few hours didn't work too well at all.

Carla's labor went from pretty much nothing to full blast. I think I might still have bruises on my arm from where she was squeezing! Once she reached a suitable dilation we were taken to the delivery room. After some more pushing it became obvious Mitchell still didn't want to be born yet so the vacuum was attached to convince him it really was in his best interest to come on out!

So finally, at 1:52pm, 2002, Mitchell Ryan Candler arrived into the world!

And there was much rejoicing!

Happy Birthday, buddy! You've grown up so much!

When to start?

2009-08-09T20:11:00.003-06:00

Hello again friends and neighbors. I'm sitting here listening to Metallica's cover of Diamond Head's "Am I Evil" and wondering what to write about tonight. It's a great song by the way. Look it up.

Oh I know. How about I discuss when I plan to start homeschooling the three Ms. Mitchell turns seven on Tuesday and would be starting Grade 2 in a couple of weeks if he was returning to school, but he isn't so I really should start thinking about when to start this adventure.

Oh here's another great cover by Metallica. "Whiskey In the Jar" was done by Thin Lizzy back in the 70s and The Dubliners in the 60s. Metallica's version is pretty good, but I prefer the TL one.

Yeah, yeah, we'll get back on track here. Where was I now...oh yes, I'm considering starting homeschool instruction on August 17, a week from tomorrow. That's a week before the public school starts here. I'm looking to get an early start to allow for getting comfortable with our learning environment and materials. I guess I'm also expecting the unexpected and want to allow the time to adjust things.

I've also given thought to working six days a week, but I should add that I also only intend to do homeschool work in the morning unless we're on a roll on something. I have to think of the attention span of a seven year old. Come to think of it, though, I might consider doing hands-on projects in the afternoon when time allows. We might be able to keep attention on those.

Because Carla works on a rural mail route for a couple of hours weekday mornings, I'll be starting with the boys each morning, hopefully around 9am. Perhaps I'll give Matthew and Michael a preschool worksheet to start with and then begin with Mitchell on something. For some reason I always imagine starting with ELA. I don't know why. I'm a science and history geek myself so I'll definitely cover those, but may leave Math for Carla's return. Grade 2 Math shouldn't be a problem for me since I've always done well at it, too, but Carla's got more of a math history in her previous career and I do have to leave something for her to teach, don't I?

I would expect all three boys will do the hands-on stuff like science. Matthew and Michael won't need to do it but I'm sure they'd enjoy it and they will be that much more prepared when their turn comes for the real thing. Of course I would only expect Mitchell to do the written parts of those projects. We also plan to do some arts and crafts which they'll all participate in equally. Last week Carla spent some time in a Michael's store and picked up a bunch of stuff including a kids pottery wheel. That should be...interesting!

We've set up an area in the basement which will be our "home base" for schooling. There's a whiteboard, a couple of reclining chairs, three lap desks, some shelves for materials, and a rolling plastic cabinet with three drawers to keep our curriculum books dry in the event of a basement disaster! We also plan to keep Carla's old Apple G4 iBook laptop down there for looking up stuff on the internet. Arts and crafts will likely be upstairs projects though, close to the kitchen table and sink for cleaning up.

Anyway, I think it's time to end this and find something on teevee to watch...almost time for ST:TNG!

A guilty pleasure

2009-08-06T22:10:00.003-06:00

I'm sitting here with Carla watching golf. It's Golf Channel's evening repeat of the first round of the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational PGA event. I'm not a golfer. I haven't held a club since a high school phys-ed class back in 1989. I used to ridicule golf because it wasn't violent enough. But at the ripe old age of 38 I'm starting to appreciate the skill involved I guess.

I'm not a big sports watcher anyway. I watch my F1 and sports car races and I watch Saskatchewan Roughrider football. Most stick and ball sports bore me though. I used to play hockey but can't watch it. NASCAR is auto racing but it's like watching cars go by on the highway until they have a big pileup with four laps to go. Australian V8 Supercars is what NASCAR should be. Now that's racing!

But yeah, golf is more entertaining these days. I think it was Sergio Garcia who's ball was tucked in beside a tree. He didn't have much room for a back swing but still managed to get the ball close to the pin. Pretty cool shot.

One rule change I thought of though would be to have a group all tee off at the same time and race down the course. First one to sink their ball wins that hole. Allow body checking. You could even have hockey referees running down the sidelines calling penalties!

Well, maybe not. I must be getting tired. Night, all!

The Great Indoors

2009-08-05T20:56:00.002-06:00

Anyone else out there think spending time outside is overrated? I'm just not a fan of hanging around on a patio or going for a walk. Maybe it helps if I'm doing something else while I'm outside. But add some heat and you can count me out. Maybe that's what really turns me off. Once the temperature gets into the mid-20s I really start to feel it. Am I just getting old?

I think the main reason I don't appreciate playing outside is because I work outside. Yeah, I often spend hours on end in a nice air-conditioned tractor cab, but I also use older equipment that breaks down often enough. Then I find myself greasy and sweaty and tired. When I get home finally the last place I want to be is outside again. I want to get cleaned up, get a cool drink and crash on the couch in front of the TV.

When I was talking to my neighbor about this once he said he's the exact same way. His wife would ask him to come on out to their deck for a while and he'd say "I just spent the day outside. Why would I want to sit out there?" It makes me wonder if I worked all day in an office if I'd appreciate the outdoors more.

Usually once a year I find myself moving equipment between fields and having to walk a mile back to the truck. And the past two years that day has been 37 degrees Celcius with a strong wind. It was like walking in a convection oven. I almost drained my water bottle by the time I got back to the truck 20 minutes later. People do this for fun?

No, thanks I'm going to stay on the couch with my iced tea!

Mitchell's job

2009-08-03T18:41:00.006-06:00

Back this spring we had a first-calf heifer decide she didn't want her calf (first-timers sometimes do that, perhaps they don't have the motherly instinct yet). We tried to catch her to put them together as sometimes if they spend some time confined together (a couple of days) they will bond and all will be well. Well, she didn't want to be caught. We got her close to the corral but no way was she going though the gate. Back over a fence she went and that was that. I decided if Mitchell would feed the calf he could keep it as his own to sell when it was big enough to market.

He named his calf BlueJay. I'm not sure why, but it's his calf, right? It's a male calf (with the appropriate work done to make it a steer). When the calf was smaller I'd make up a two-litre nursing bottle but now that it's bigger and the weather warmer I mix up more milk-replacer powder with more water to fill the calf's needs and that necessitates a nursing pail. That's a little too heavy for Mitchell to carry when it's full so I carry it down and start feeding until the weight goes down. Then Mitchell can hold the pail.

Mitchell enjoys feeding his calf (most of the time!) and Matthew and Michael enjoy tagging along to watch. They sometimes like to help by carrying the empty pail back to the house. Poor Matthew has trouble with an empty pail! A couple of days ago Michael wore sandals and experienced the misfortune of having the calf step on his foot when it stepped sideways. Ouch!

Hanging out with Geddy, Alex and Neil.

2009-08-02T20:26:00.002-06:00

For those curious about the previous post check out the Aug. 3 post on http://homeschoolinitaly.blogspot.com/

Anyway, I'm sitting at my computer and listening to Rush's "Hemispheres" an 18-minute epic from the album of the same name. This song is a sequel to "Cygnus X-1" an 10 minute song from "A Farewell To Kings". I'd have to say that Rush's epic songs rank near the top of my list of favorites. There are quite a lot of them, too. The full "2112" (from, obviously, the album "2112" weighs in at 20 minutes. "Xanadu" and "The Camera Eye" are both 11 minutes long. "Natural Science" is nine minutes, as is the exquisite instrumental "La Villa Strangiato". There's over ninety minutes of music in just seven songs!

Speaking of instrumentals, how about we go over those. Neil writes some pretty deep lyrics which say a lot to me, but the guys in Rush are award winning musicians for a reason and sometimes it's nice to just sit back and enjoy the music. Although they don't write epics anymore they do still crank out those mighty instrumentals. Their latest disc "Snakes and Arrows" boasts two, "The Main Monkey Business" and my personal favorite of the two "Malignant Narcissism" (Geddy's bass really kicks ass in this one). Two from the '90s with whimsical titles are "Where's My Thing?" and "Leave That Thing Alone". And who can forget the classic "YYZ" from their classic album "Moving Pictures". You do know that's the airport code for Pearson International Airport in Toronto, don't you? And Neil plays those letters in Morse code at the beginning of the song! When the Foo Fighters played in Toronto on March 22, 2008 drummer Taylor Hawkins ended his drum solo by having Geddy and Alex join him for a suprise performance of "YYZ". I saw the YouTube video of it and must say it was a damn good performance!

Aw, well, I'll leave you with some meaningful lyrics from one of my all-time favorite Rush songs, "Entre Nous":

"...the spaces in between
leave room
for you and I to grow."

To help out someone in need.

2009-08-02T20:21:00.001-06:00

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Vacation/Staycation

2009-08-01T20:18:00.003-06:00

Carla and the boys left for their vacation today. They're visiting her brother and his family in Coaldale, Alberta. It'll be a lot easier to catch up on my farm work while they are away since I won't need to come home to watch the kids which I do when Carla's working. Some things I can do with them, such as checking cows, but it's not a pleasant experience to spend too many hours with the three Ms in a tractor cab. One hour is usually fine but by the second hour somebody is ready to go home. Unfortunately I often have to spend a whole day out there so it's sometimes better just to stay home until Carla's done work. I often have plenty enough to do around the yard and shop. The boys can watch me or ride their bikes or play in the sandbox or even "help". And Dad can stay sane!

While the rest of the family is on vacation I'm having my staycation I guess. I don't mind going places with my family but I'm just as happy having quiet time at home tonight with my computers and the Roughriders on TV. And Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie is on later. What more could a nerd like me ask for?

Where would I go if I could go anywhere and do anything I wanted to? I think the top of my list would be touring First World War battlefields in France and Belgium where Canadians fought. There's Vimy of course, but also Ypres (where Canadians stood up to one of the first gas attacks), Beaumont-Hamel (where the Newfoundlanders bravely went over the top and were slaughtered), Passchendaele (if Hell was cold and wet, it would look like Passchendaele in November 1917).

My second choice would be completely different but also in France. I'd love to attend the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the famous auto race. I love sports car racing and Le Mans has it all from the diesel-powered prototype monsters like the Audis and Peugots to the thunderous Corvettes and screaming Porsches. I'd love to be at the end of the Mulsanne straight at night watching the lights coming at me at over 300kph!

Anyway that's enough rambling for now. Time to see if the Riders can hang onto this lead tonight!

Mobile kittens!

2009-07-31T20:43:00.002-06:00

The kittens are starting to travel from their nest today. For the past little while Carla and I have had a couple of mother cats and their swarm of eleven baby kittens under our bed. They started in a couple of boxes but one kept dragging her babies into the other's box. The other started dragging babies under the bed. Now they're all there! But now that they're growing up and getting to know what their feet and legs are for, they're starting to appear just past the edge of the bed. It certainly makes it easier to play with them much to the boys' delight!

Will I ever get haying done?

2009-07-31T14:52:00.003-06:00

Hi there. Dave here.

You know what boys and girls? I'm getting frustrated a little. I should be outside baling hay but last Saturday I broke an axle on my baler. It took until Tuesday to get a new one back on the baler. I did some hay cutting that day, then it rained again. I put the new axle on my baler Wednesday, but too wet to bale still. I got some bales made Thursday but it rained again that night just as I stepped out at 9:30pm to go do some night baling. I guess it didn't rain as much as I thought because the hay wasn't too wet by midmorning Friday so I made a few rounds until 12:30pm when showers stopped me again. Maybe, just maybe the wind today will dry things out quicker than expected so I can try night baling again.

Carla and the boys leave for a little road trip tomorrow. Hopefully while they're away I can get caught up. I sure hope so anyway. I'd for her to think I was slacking the whole time they're away!

Living Room Renos March 2008

2008-03-27T20:45:00.008-06:00

Well, it's been a busy month. Since the beginning of March, Dave & I have been redoing the living room, from top to bottom, literally.

We started with enclosing a heater vent to the upstairs. (our house was built before the age of central heating or electricity) We covered it in with wallboard scavenged from the basement.

Then we started ripping out wallpaper in my office/sewing room. It was applied directly to the drywall and plywood. It wasn't an easy task to remove it cleanly, so we just ripped out drywall, deciding to replace instead.

After ripping out drywall, we found more wallpaper beneath. Would you believe the walls were made of cardboard? Plain ol' cardboard boxes!! One was from Evan's Florist in Moose Jaw. Our walls were put up with cardboard, wallpaper, drywall and then more wallpaper! Oh my goodness!!

We had a bit of electrical work to do, to mount an outlet securely to the studs, instead of to the wall itself (yes, it was screwed onto the plywood directly). Then we built a false wall, to facilitate drywall installation. There was originally no studs in the corners, so what would we fasten the drywall to? It was just an easier option this way, rather than trying to retro-fit studs into a wall cavity that wasn't built with standard sized lumber.

Drywall finished off the office walls, then onto mudding & sanding. Such a dusty job.

We did a bit of sanding on the ceiling, but after consulting with Mom, we decided it was probably just flaking primer that had never been painted (primer will do that after a few years). So then onto priming....ceiling, walls, trim.

Our first coat of red (aka terra cotta tile) was an eye-opener. WOW, such a change. We were able to paint both coats of red in one day, ending about 9pm that night. An exhausting day it was. Like most have been.

After paint was the flooring to install. March 22/08 saw the foam underlay go in. We also started the laminate then, too, not expecting it to take as long as it did. We quit about 5:30, went to town to pick up the boys and Gramma then headed out for supper. We were only about 1/2 done the floor at that point. A LOT of cutting to fit around the doorway, stairs, heater vent, etc.

Easter Sunday saw the boys finding their loot in the kitchen. Really, there wasn't anywhere else for the Easter Bunny to hide it. This photo also shows how cramped our kitchen has been, with a table dismantled behind the 2 couches piled in there.

We finished up the floor on Easter Sunday, for the most part anyhow. We still have doorways to finish up. Baseboards are about 1/2 done, too. Once we finish up the doorway to the porch, we can finish up the baseboards.

Here is a final photo, so far. Nothing on the walls yet, I might do some rearranging of photos, etc. (or perhaps I don't want to put nails into my new walls!!)

It has been a long tough job at times. A few times I just wanted it to be over. I was tired of the mess, the furniture ALL over the house (kitchen, bedroom, porch) and the dust everywhere. But, the worst is over. We just have 2 doorways to finish (bedroom & porch) and then we're done. OH! We have to finish the white trim on the doorways. I forgot, they're only primed. I wanted to get walls & floors done before painting took us all year long. LOL

So, I guess we're not as done as I thought. The closet door and door trim in the photo above, as well as our bedroom doorway (and door) need to be painted. Right now, they're primed only. We can't decide if we'll rehang the existing bi-fold door (painted, of course) or buy a regular passage door. All depends on cost, unfortunately. The doorway isn't a common size, only 30 x 77". Not sure if a standard door comes in that size.

Now....the porch needs a new floor, the bedroom needs a fresh coat of paint, the bedrooms upstairs need drywall & paint. Oh, the list goes on and on and on and on...

Trick or Treat

2007-11-01T10:55:00.000-06:00

HALLOWEEN 2007

The boys had a blast last night, out trick or treating. David & I took the boys out before supper, about 5pm. Mitchell wore his Spiderman costume while the twins were Thing 1 and Thing 2 (from Dr. Seuss). I didn't see any other Spidermans out there, nor did I see any other Thing 1's or Thing 2's.

The twins didn't want to wear the hair at all before going out. But once we were ready to start, I told them if they didn't wear the hair, they stayed in the van. Well, I tell ya, they were quite willing!! Afterall, candy was at stake!!

This bottom photo of the twins was taken with my phone. Not the greatest quality, but my best photo of their faces. Really shows how excited and happy they were to be out on Halloween night. We had just started about 20mins prior to these photos, so they still had lots of energy.

We got home about 7:30, with 2 exhausted parents and 3 boys full of sugar. They started in on their loot in the van. Lots of potato chips and candies all over the seats & floor this morning. I had a dustbuster along with me this morning, so when I had the chance, I cleaned up a bit. Could use more vacumming, but it's a start.

They'll have enough candy to last them at least until Halloween 2008, I'm sure.

But most importantly, we all had FUN!

Outside while the weather lasts

2007-10-27T10:03:00.000-06:00

Fall Photos

2007-10-21T16:33:00.000-06:00

Here are a few pictures we've taken around the yard.

Mitchell and Sheba out by the shop. Mitchell is now riding his bike without training wheels. YAY!!

Umm, Mitchell. Where IS your helmet?!

It's been a busy day I guess. Matthew is napping hard on David. It was a sunny afternoon, spent in & outdoors. This was taken during the Nascar race at Martinsville. Jimmy Johnson (#48) won the race.

Also this afternoon, Saskatchewan Roughriders beat Hamilton Tiger Cats, 38-14 (or so). Go Riders!!

Mitchell & Michael were out playing in the sunshine, on an old snowmobile and other bits & pieces. In the background you can see the old farmhouse where David's father lived.

Long Overdue

2007-10-21T09:20:00.000-06:00

Well, this is long overdue. Thank you Todd for reminding me it's been almost 1 year (!) since I last posted here. Let me think...there's been a few changes around the ol' homestead.

Everyone is 1yr older I guess. Some of us are feeling every bit older, too. I've had to pull a few more grey hairs, a bit more often lately. Guess I haven't been keeping up with my hairstylist often enough. LOL

David is busy on the farm as usual. He did a bit of custom work this year, baling for a neighbor and hauling bales for another neighbor. He's out doing some of our own fall work today, hauling bales of course!

The boys...well let's say they'all growing like weeds!!

Mitchell is in Kindergarden this year. He loves school and everything that goes with it (school bus, lunches, recess) He gets on the bus about 8:35am and is back home around 3:35pm. Not a long day riding bus. He's also starting Speech Language Therapy this fall. He has a bit of difficulty with comprehension and some pronounciation issues, as well. Mitchell got a new 2-wheeler bike for his birthday. Training wheels didn't last long tho, and the same day David removed them, Mitchell was riding on his own. At first he complained his legs hurt! But after a bit more practise, his muscles are getting stronger and he can peddle up hills.

Matthew & Michael are almost 2 1/2 yrs old. And acting every bit their age. Into anything and everything, tantrums, fights, exploring, climbing. If it's possible, you know they're thinking about it or have done it already. Michael is kinda-sorta potty training. He'll be good for a few days, letting us know he needs to pee in the potty. Then other days it's the last thing on his mind. I just remind myself he's only 2 1/2 so it's early. Matthew has absolutely no interest in the potty, other than flushing the contents down the toilet. Again, he's about a month or so behind Michael on accomplishments and so it's still early for him too. They won't stay in diapers forever!

Gramma & Grampa Candler and Gramma Kupper bought the twins mates beds for their 2nd birthday. Transition went well. The first day they were assembled the boys didn't nap too well. But that night, after a day without a nap, they only needed to be put back to bed once. Since then, it's been clear sailing. They go to bed without struggle and fall asleep on their own.

The twins still aren't talking. It's not so much of a concern to us, but more of a hassle. Especially when they're insistent on something but we just can't figure out their grunts & gestures. About 90% of the time we can understand what they're communicating to us, but ya know, it'd be nice if they could talk too!! They understand us well, tho. We can ask them or tell them something and they quite often do what we're asking. They're smart, that's for sure. Just have no need to talk I guess.

We became Minivan owners in January!! I can't believe it either!! I never thought we'd do it, but since having it, I'd never be without one. The truck was just too cramped for 3 in carseats. And shopping was a nightmare!! Our purchases would have to go in the box, so we'd be praying for nice weather. And travelling was another nightmare. Again, we could only travel in nice weather, or we'd have to package everything up in garbage bags.

We bought a 2005 Pontiac Montana SV6. It has seating for 7, a wonderful DVD entertainment system (includes 2 wireless headphone sets) and can handle any of the latest & greatest game consoles. It can also handle 2 additional wired headphone sets, so the twins get their wired sets and Mitchell gets a wireless set. Parents can listen to the radio while the kids listen to the DVD movie (or play video games) with the headphones. Everyone is happy.

Myself...well there's been a couple changes I guess. I started part-time with Canada Post effective April 1/07. I am now a Rural & Suburban Mail Carrier (RSMC) for the Ernfold rural route. I work approximately 90mins a day, sorting & delivering mail and collecting any outgoing mail for return to Chaplin. I'm based out of Chaplin, and drive about 15mins west of town to the thriving metropolis of Ernfold. I deliver the mail into the community mail box (CMB). I then return any outgoing mail to the facility in Chaplin. I love this job and have no regrets taking it.

I gave up my School Bus position the end of March of this year. Between bus, mail, farm & family, my time was getting stretched too thin. Although I'm busier now than I ever was, the decision was the right one. Payday is the only time during the month that I miss that extra job! David is now able to get a bit more work done around the farm. With bus & mail, he was limited to just a few hours each day, since he was usually home with the boys while I was away at work. And now, if necessary, I can take the boys with me while I do my mail run (remember, DVDs!). The CMBs in Ernfold are adjacent to the community park, so when they're with me, the boys are usually in the park getting fresh air & exercise.

While I can't promise I'll keep this blog current, I'll give it a try. I've been a member of Facebook for awhile now, and I'm not quite to the 'addict' stage, but it's close as it can be while on dial-up internet.

There is hope in our near future that wireless high-speed internet will become available to the rural communities. If so, we'll be sure to getting it installed.

Take care. Formula 1, Nascar & CFL Football are all on today. Should be a busy television afternoon!!!

Sheba

2006-11-10T15:51:00.000-07:00

Meet Sheba....our newest addition to our family. She was gratefully adopted from one of my bus students. She's about 6mos old now, female, and quite content living inside (she was a farm cat, lived outdoors) with her human servants. LOL

She's a Siamese Tabby cross, a breed that I've always loved. I had another, Caesar, back in the day. They're a rare find, not too many of them around.

She does quite well with the kids, even lets them pull her tail on occasion. Michael has a few battle scratches, but nothing too serious. She scampers upstairs when she's had enough of them.

Her most active time is about 8pm, right when the twins are headed to bed. She can tear up those stairs lightening fast, louder than blazes I tell ya!!

But we love her, she's adorable and yes, she generates a lot of cat hair around here, not what we need.

(btw, her pic was taken with my new Kodak Z740 digital camera!!!)

At long last....an update!

2006-11-10T15:27:00.000-07:00

Okay, it's been awhile....a long while. We've been extremely busy around here this new school year. I'm back driving bus again. David's been busy helping out at the neighbor's doing fall harvest chores. I swear there's a million bales to be hauled home this fall. Between David & and the neighbor, they should be done right around seeding time in the spring. :)

Both David and his neighbor have met the Highway Patrol this fall. The men ended up donating a few $$ to the boys in blue. Next time valid licenses, seatbelts and strapped cargo, right?

It was a cold halloween night here, good thing costumes were made to fit over winter coats. Mitchell was a cute but scary dragon while the twins were adorable, yet cold & cranky, pumpkins. Like a good mother, I forgot pictures, even had the camera with me. When I get a chance, I'll dress them up again and take a few snaps.

We spent Thanksgiving at Mom's house. What a houseful!! Me and my family, my brother and his family, my brother's kids as well. Counted 2 children, 2 spouses and 7 grandchildren. In a 3 bedroom house. With a dog. And the grandchildren were 10 and under, including twins at 18mos. I believe Mom was most thankful when we all left. She slept the afternoon in her big chair, recovering I'm sure.

It's mid-November now, David is in the middle of a training course, for his 1A driver's license. Once he passes his road test, he'll be able to drive semi-truck units, legally (see note above re: a donation to the boys in blue). Between myself, Mel (our preschool teacher and beloved babysitter) and Gramma C., the boys have been left in good hands. I never realized just how much I depended on David's assistance with the boys, and the convenience of having him home during the day while I drove school bus. He & I really are a good team when it comes to these kiddos.

I'm attaching a picture taken at Thanksgiving. Starting from the left: Mitchell, Katie holding Michael (in red) and Matthew, Nicole, Chelsea & Jordan.

Good looking bunch of grandkids Mom & Dad!!

Busy busy busy

2006-09-09T17:36:00.000-06:00

I've been busy these past couple weeks. School is back in, so I've been driving school bus twice a day now. David's work-day has diminished, partly due to my driving, and partly due to the fact he's basically done harvest. WUHOO!!

Only 500+ bales left to haul home. Avg 20 bales per trip. Approximately 25 trips to go. Maybe 5 trips a day, during school bus days. I wish it would only be 5 days to do.

Our local MOMs group (Moms of Multiples) in Moose Jaw is holding a garage sale in a couple weeks. I've got so many articles of clothing and equipment to sell, I've been busy sorting and tagging and organizing. It's quite a big sale actually, with all vendors' sale items being sorted by item, rather than by vendor (ie: all pants on one table, all tops at another table, etc.).

I have 4 tote bins and 1 large box of clothing items, along with a stroller, carseat, infant tub, bouncy exersaucer to sell. Good thing I have a big truck, the box will surely be full when I get done loading up all my goods.

I hope to take advantage of the sale as well, I need a few things for the boys. Some more slippers for the twins, a couple halloween outfits and perhaps a snowsuit or two. Any mother (or parent, I would presume) can sell clothing, so it's not necessarily a parent of multiples.

It's nice to have everything sorted and ready to haul to the sale. Next weekend is Mitchell's kid birthday party. All his preschool classmates have been invited, and so far about 1/3 of them have said they'll attend. I'm sure all the parents will appreciate the afternoon away from their preschoolers!! If all invited do attend, I'll have about 9-10 kids here, around the age of 4. OMG, I sure hope it's a nice afternoon, so they can play outside!!

Michael's Molars

2006-09-09T17:31:00.000-06:00

Well, Michael sure has been busy this summer. Seems all those crankies and attitudes were a result of teething! He cut 3 molars this summer, none of which we knew about until just last week.

He has one on each side on the bottom and one top molar. Once we noticed them, his attitude started to improve and he's back to his ever-happy self. He's still clingy after naps and when he's getting tired. Or when he wants to be a momma's boy. LOL

Now he's sleeping at night better, and, most importantly, longer! Both twins go to bed about 8pm and usually wake around 7am. When Michael was at his worst (read: cutting molars), he'd wake around 5am. Unfortunately, both mom & dad got woken up then, too....along with Matthew, if we didn't get Michael out of his crib in time.

All in all, everyone is enjoying more sleep ;) and life goes on.

Kickin' back

2006-08-11T21:08:00.000-06:00

This picture was taken before everyone came down with the flu. But I'm happy to report that all 3 boys are pretty much back to their old selves. Michael (in yellow) still has issues with gagging and throwing up. He's too eager to eat sometimes, and takes in more than he can handle. You know the result.

The twins are 15mos old today and Mitchell is 4yrs old. My how the time flies when you're busy!

Tub full of trouble

2006-08-11T21:02:00.000-06:00

This picture was taken a few days ago. All 3 boys were in desperate need of a bath, and not a lot of time to get it done before bedtime rolled around. So in all 3 went. It was a bit cramped with lots of fighting for toys. But in the end, 3 dirty boys became clean.

Happy Birthday Mitchell!!

2006-08-11T20:48:00.000-06:00

Mitchell is 4 today!! We had a small celebration for Mitchell as he turns 4 today. His paternal grandparents and aunt and her two children came over for a bit of cake. With just 3 kids, aged 4, 5 & 6, it was a noisy house. The twins were asleep during the visit, they just couldn't handle being awake any longer.

He got lots of good booty....the Star Wars Racers game for his N64 from his cousins in Alberta, a Hummer and some cold hard cash from gramma & grampa, a Sponge Bob tshirt, SB computer game and a learning cd-rom from his parents & twin brothers, and a personal mini fan from his cousins.

He'll be having his big birthday bash in September, after school starts up again. But I couldn't let his birthday go unannounced for over a month yet. So I made him a cake and decorated it this morning. Nothing too fancy, but I did get out my drafting paper to draw up a 4. I can't freehand for nothing!!

What a week...

2006-08-08T20:32:00.000-06:00

Well, it's been a long week, since last Wed. Mitchell woke up sick about 6:30am. Continued to throw up most of the day. Thankfully he's old enough to ask for a pail (most of the time). That night, David & I were asleep for about an hour when Matthew woke up sick, throwing up in his crib. Unfortunately, he's not old enough to ask for a pail. Both of us were up most of the night, one comforting and one cleaning. Mitchell woke up during the wee morning hours, sick again. Finally got to sleep about 5am, only for Michael to wake up at 6:30, after a full night sleep!!

All 3 boys continued their illness through the weekend. I had Matthew into a doctor in Moose Jaw, considering he was the weakest looking, and smallest to start with. Just a virus, can't do anything but wait it out. Come back in a week if he's not improving.

Mitchell was 100% recovered late Sunday. Matthew is almost 100% tonight (Tue). Michael has a bit to go yet, perhaps he's about 75%. The twins are playing more, and drinking and eating almost as usual. Not necessarily the usual quantities, but almost the usual selection.

This has been a good time to take away their bottles, too. Up till their flu, they had still been getting a bottle at bedtime. The rest of their day, they drank milk and water from sippy cups. So, without having a bedtime bottle for a week now, they are put away. I don't think they miss them, tho. This afternoon was the first time in a week they've had milk. And tonight they drank about half a sippy cup of milk before falling asleep in my arms. I'll be praying to any God that will listen (LOL) that they keep it down all night and that they truly are on the road to recovery.

Sickness all over the house!

2006-07-22T10:36:00.000-06:00

Last weekend we visited in Coronach, to attend the wedding of Devin & Lindsay Giraudier. Congrats!!

And I think we caught a cold there, too. All 5 of us are sick with colds, Mitchell even has an eye infection. That isn't fun, when you have to pin him down to put in his eye drops.

We had a good visit at Mom's, slept in the cold basement which was a treat considering the outside temps were running above 30C, hitting 35C I think one afternoon. Sunday afternoon we enjoyed the local pool. It was Matthew & Michael's first time in a big pool and after a bit, they rather enjoyed themselves. It was refreshing and they love being outside, even if it was hot. Coronach does have a wading pool, but it hasn't been filled with water for quite a number of years, so we had them with us in the big pool.

He's walking!! Part II

2006-07-22T10:31:00.000-06:00

Well, Matthew has caught up to big brother Michael. He's started walking these past couple days. Just this morning, he was doing quite well, standing on his own and walking across the living room. The balance thing is still new to him, sometimes he leans too far back, forward and other times he just plunks down on his butt. But he's eager to get up again and get going.

I fear what my life will become now, with all 3 boys quite mobile. I can't wait till Matthew is more confident walking, so I don't have to carry them both all over. Shopping will still be a chore and a half, the only store that has carts for 2 kids is SuperStore. Walmart and the other grocery chains only have 1 kid carts, so either I pull them in their wagon, or put on in the top, one in the bottom and shop sparingly.

Mitchell walked at 15mos, Matthew 14mos and Michael 13mos. And our latest visit to Mom's, Mitchell weighs 42lbs, Matthew 20lbs and Michael 26lbs.

Right now is naptime, although I still hear them cranking on the monitor.

Swimming Lessons

2006-07-07T21:12:00.000-06:00

Mitchell just completed a week of swimming lessons, through the Red Cross. He was in the Sea Turtle level, one of 8 swimmers in the 3-4 yr age group. The first day, Monday, they had the entire 8 swimmers in one grouping, but the lifeguard/instructor realized she could not teach all 8 swimmers at the same time, while offering sufficient one-on-one instruction. Starting Tuesday, the group was split into 2 sessions, with Mitchell in the 11am session, along with 3 of his preschool classmates.

Monday was interesting, he clung onto Laura (instructor) for 15 of the 30min class!! He was terrified of the pool, since he's never had much experience in it. (with 13mo old twins, there isn't much time in a day for personal enjoyment, especially at a pool!) But he did good, considering.

Today was the last day of lessons, but he did not pass the Sea Turtle level. I'm not disappointed, as I was quite sure he wouldn't last one day of lessons. He has to practise getting his face wet (he hates this even in the bathtub) as well as his kicking. But for a kid that's never had any pool experience, I'd say he did quite well.

There is another session next week, and one more week of lessons beginning of August. I'll be registering him for lessons again, but I'm not sure when. Next week might be too soon, but then August might be too late, he'll have forgotten everything.

We have not purchased a season pass at the pool. The 'locals' are not being allowed to purchase daily swim passes, they must purchase a full-season pass if they wish to swim at the pool. Apparently the swimming pool board is trying to encourage the 'locals' to support the pool by purchasing a season pass. Well, this is not sitting well with the 'locals'. Many residents are very angry that visitors to our town can swim with a daily pass, while we cannot. As a result, very few local residents are swimming, which results in decreased income.

I cannot justify the $150 season pass fee, when I know I would not be swimming enough to pay for the fee. With 13mo old twins and a 4yr old, which child/ren do I swim with and which child/ren do I ignore? David is busy in the field most of the summer, so if he's home, that means weather is bad, and we won't be swimming. If weather is good for swimming, that means weather is good to be in the field.

So, for now, Mitchell gets to swim during lessons. It's unfortunate he won't get to practise what he's learned this week, but until the rules change at the pool, I just can't justify the extra cost.

Okay, enough rant :)

Preschool is off till September

2006-07-07T20:58:00.000-06:00

Well, Mitchell is done preschool for the school year. He had a blast this past year, learning crafts, interacting with other children his age, and listening to an adult (other than mom or dad). It's been a challenge, with ups and downs.

They had a graduation ceremony for the 4-5 yr olds, as they go off to Kindergarten this fall. There were 3 second year preschoolers and just 2 first year preschoolers. Mitchell and Skie will return to preschool in the fall, along with newcomers Benjamin, Nathan, Zachary, Jasmine (sp?). There's possibly one or two more children as well. It'll be a class of at least 4 boys and 2 girls, a change from this past year, 1 boy (Mitchell!) and 4 girls.

He's walking!!

2006-06-24T10:42:00.000-06:00

Michael is walking!!

At 13mo & 2 wks, Michael is walking at the earliest age. He beat out big brother Mitchell, who started walking at around 15mos.

He still prefers to crawl everywhere, it's a faster mode of transportation. But he loves to stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down, well you get the idea. And the giggles and smiles to go along with it.

It was Thursday when he took his first few steps, usually just 1-2 steps before he'd plunk down on his butt. Then Friday afternoon he took more, across the living room. He was showing off at the pool on Friday night (the pool just opened for the season and they had the 'big splash' kickoff bbq). Today he hasn't walked as much, I guess it's something he's reserving for afternoons & evenings. LOL

Matthew isn't walking on his own yet, though he does quite well hanging onto furniture, pantlegs, or even their chairs or toys. He'll spend lots of time pushing a chair or toy across the living room, turn around, and walk back. It won't be long till he's walking independently.

It's such a relief actually, to have Michael walking. He won't be running for awhile, that whole balance thing.

And they're sharing a room now, too. Daytime naps aren't going that great, they think it's great fun to jump in their cribs, laughing at each other. So to assist them in falling asleep easier, I'm trying to keep them up a bit longer before naptime. They can usually go 3hrs before showing signs of being tired. But if I can keep them up a bit longer, perhaps they'll be less inclined to play and more inclined to sleep. We hope.

Mitchell's new room

2006-06-24T10:37:00.000-06:00

We moved the boys' beds around this past week. Mitchell has his own big-boy room now. He loves it!! We moved his computer up there (the main reason for the move, actually). Matthew & Michael wouldn't leave it alone, always pushing the reset button. Well that gets annoying after the first couple times.

It was a big move, bed to move, cribs to move, dressers, and of course, the heaps and loads of junk that's been stored up there for years. Mitchell has his double bed, his computer, N64 and an old stereo of mine. It's a great room, one I'd love to have myself! He spends a lot of time up there now, when the twins aren't napping, playing with his toys away from pesky little brothers. :)

First Hair Cut!!

2006-06-04T10:54:00.000-06:00

Matthew received his first hair cut this morning. He was in quite desperate need of a trim for awhile now. I trimmed it myself, concentrating on the top and sides. I just couldn't bring myself to cutting the back just yet. He's just getting curls back there so I don't want to cut them off too soon, I need some pics!!

Oh, and he was having a cookie or two when I snapped this pic. So, no, those aren't molars in his mouth, but yummy cookie!!

More toofers!

2006-05-29T21:16:00.000-06:00

Well, it's been awhile since I last posted, things have been busy around here. It's been raining like never before, although the gauge only had about an inch in it over the week. Sure looks and feels like a LOT more, especially on my bus route. The roads are so muddy and slick, it's difficult to keep the bus heading in the right direction (down the road, and not into the ditches).

Matthew has 3 teeth now, two on top and his lonely bottom tooth. But he's got another bottom tooth coming in, should be in tomorrow or Wednesday. And he's showing two more on the top as well, one on either side of the two center teeth. He'll be catching up to Michael in no time.

Michael has 6 teeth, 4 top and 2 bottom. I don't see any more coming up on the bottom, so he might be done for awhile.

We got their first birthday portraits back on the weekend. Had I known our scanner was on the fritz, I would have gotten electronic copies of them, as well. We have a really good photo of the 3 boys, Mitchell in the center, boys on either side of him. Matthew is hugging him, and Michael is reaching out to the camera. So cute!! I have that one on my media centre, to prove my boys can be cute and adorable sometimes. LOL (lately, with the rainy wet weather, they're suffering from a bout of cabin fever.....and the crankies, omg!!)

Night everyone!

Mitchell loves N64

2006-05-20T17:35:00.000-06:00

Mitchell and I were in Moose Jaw today, and checked out their used video game store. Mitchell's been doing well playing games on the computer, so I thought it was time he got a console game system.

We picked up a used Nintendo 64 game system, with a couple games to go with it. He's racing across America in Cruising USA and hunting for items in Rugrats Scavenger Hunt.

He's a bit confused at times, when the computer plays it's turn, but he's getting the hang of it. Right now, the game system is hooked up on our main teevee in the living room. But our goal is to hook it up on his set upstairs in his room. For now though, we have to teach him how to use it. I'd hate to hook it upstairs and be running up every couple minutes to help him out.

So, off to ebay it is.....searching for more cheap N64 games.

Happy Victoria Day weekend Canada!

#2 and #6 are poking through!

2006-05-20T17:28:00.000-06:00

Well, Matthew is finally getting more teeth. His top tooth is poking through and it just might stay put. I think another bottom tooth is going to show up soon as well. So, he's got 2 now, and a 3rd on it's way.

Michael has 5 now and a 6th is also on it's way in. He'll have 4 on top and 2 on the bottom. Not bad for a couple of 1yr olds.

I'm trying to get them off the bottle, at least during the day. But they're bottle suckies, I admit it. They're down to 3 bottles a day, the rest of the time they drink from sippy cups or drink boxes. They can even suck from a straw now, so they'll be onto milkshakes soon!

Happy Birthday Matthew & Michael!!

2006-05-16T18:03:00.000-06:00

Well, the boys had their party, and it was a great time. Weather cooperated, most of the invited guests attended, and cake was enjoyed by all. Especially the birthday boys! LOL The boys had cake all over, and I'm sure very little was eaten. But they did good.

We spent the morning cleaning up last minute things. I took the boys with me, on a trip to the landfill, and the twins had a short nap, maybe 30-40mins. Woke up when we got back home, about 10:30. Perfect. They went down for their afternoon nap at around 12:30. Musta been tired, because we had to wake them just before 3pm.....party time.

We spent the entire party time outside in our backyard, there wasn't much breeze or direct sun, the clouds were just perfect. A few bugs, but hey, we're outside!! Our good friends from Regina brought their air-filled trampoline jumper (on sale this week at Walmart....lol). It fits about 4-5 small children and runs on an air-pump. Keep it plugged in and it'll keep kids entertained for hours.

We enjoyed snacks and watched the children play and run around. The swing was kept busy, too....switching between the toddler swings (for the twins and one other wee lil guest) and the bigger kids swings.

Cake was a hit....I had decorated 2 round cakes, in the shape of candy m&ms. One blue, one red. Matthew enjoyed his red cake, Michael enjoyed his blue cake. (btw, blue icing makes for blue-filled diapers the next day!) Here are a couple pics of the kids and their cakes.

The kids got lots of great things, toys, clothes and of course, money. I spent all their birthday money on summer jammies and tshirts and shorts. They don't have much for summer clothes that fit, so I bought lots. ;)

Sunday was spent relaxing and getting back on schedule. David spent a bit of time in the field, spraying weeds and otherwise getting ready to start seeding.

We had the boys in for their 12month checkup at the doctor's. Naturally, all 3 boys have a cold and Michael has an ear infection. Matthew is 18lbs 8oz and Michael is 25lbs 3oz. The doctor says they're both doing great, even with the weight difference. Matthew is just above the bottom curve on the growth charts, unadjusted. If the doctor adjusts his age, for the 4wks premature delivery, he's right in the 50th percentile. Doctor says no real need to continue adjusting, since he's doing well and steadily going up on the curve. Michael, well, let's say he's beyond the curve. :)

They get their 12month vaccinations next week.

Supper time.....night all!

Birthday Cakes! YUM!

2006-05-12T21:50:00.000-06:00

Well, it seems my boys are lucky little guys. Our local radio station, The Eagle, 94.1FM from Swift Current, SK, announces birthdays each weekday. You can call in or email them with your birthday greetings, and they'll announce them on-air. One lucky birthday person wins a free 1/4 slab cake from the local grocery store bakery. My boys won!! I made a quick trip to the city today to pick it up, as well as a few last minute grocery items. I had them write on their names, to personalize it a bit. Not bad for a freebie, eh?

I've also been busy decorating their M&M birthday cakes. I baked them in a 10" springform pan, one cake mix per cake. They took longer than usual to bake, almost an hour. And I spent about 1hr each, decorating them, from making the icing, to final touches. Of course, I had to take some pics of them, before we dig into them tomorrow!!

It's 10pm, I'm tired. A long busy day ahead tomorrow. I still have to clean house (yuck!). But my best friend is coming in early to help me get ready. She hasn't been here yet, to the farm, so hopefully she can follow my directions!! ;)

Nighters.....

Mother's Day 2006

2006-05-10T14:10:00.000-06:00

Mitchell came home from preschool this morning with a wonderful gift he made himself. The class hand painted ceramic flower pots and planted geraniums in them. I was so shocked!! The preschool teacher had warned me on Monday, that Mitchell was upset with her, she wouldn't help him with his Mother's Day gift. He's not too independent when it comes to crafts....he much prefers to be assisted. But it looks wonderful and I will treasure it always. Here's a picture of it. I'll keep it in my windowsill above the stove, hoping it gets a few flowers.

Mitchell has done really well this past year at preschool, he's really come out of his shell. He's talking so much better, with more complete sentences and better pronounciation. Preschool has been such a good experience for him, I'm sure he'll miss it during the summer months. His preschool teacher is getting married in early September, but will not be having a honeymoon till their 1yr anniversary, likely sometime during the 2007 Christmas break.....don't want to interrupt preschool, you know! He goes for his second year of preschool, then off to Kindergarten and on to Mommy's school bus! He'll love that for sure, although I don't know if I can keep it 'business' on the bus. It might be a challenge for me.

Almost done the yardwork, in preparation for the party on Saturday. Just have to mow the lawn and clean the patio furniture. However, the weather forecast isn't looking all that great....only a high of +14C for Saturday. So much for a comfortable outdoor gathering. And my house isn't big enough to accomodate all the invited guests. With 10 children, ranging from 6mos to 10yrs, and with assorted parents and such, it'll be a full house, that's for sure. Perhaps the bigger kids can play outside, and the younger kids & adults can hang out in the house.

Inside, I just need to clean floors (vacuum & swiffer them), dust furniture (ick!!) and bake & decorate cakes (yummmmm).

The only issue I might have with Saturday afternoon, is the twins' nap schedule. Lately, they've been going down for naps at 3pm, getting up between 4 & 5pm. Hmm, party is from 3-5pm. LOL

Must be going...it's close to 5pm and I should get Matthew up from his nap. Later!!

First of many birthday gifts....

2006-05-04T19:08:00.000-06:00

The boys don't look like they're enjoying their new wagon, but that's only cause I stopped pulling them for a moment, to snap a few pics. They are the proud new owners of a Step2 PathRunner Wagon. It can hold two sippy cups or drink boxes, and even has seatbelts!! Too bad it only moves under human power.....perhaps in a few years they'll get a motorized version.

The weather is starting to warm up again, it was only about +7C outside this afternoon, but a world of difference from yesterday. Yesterday we woke up to a blanket of snow. Lots of wet snow, good for moisture, but definitely hard to accept at this time of year.

Hopefully the weather stays nice now, the party is all planned, gifts are wrapped. I just need to bake and decorate the cakes.

Michael gets #4!!

2006-05-02T18:51:00.000-06:00

Michael has been busy cutting tooth #4. I noticed it just yesterday. Poor Matthew is stuck with just one tooth, the bottom right. They're getting around faster every day. They seem to know when something is within reach, that they really shouldn't be getting into. Like my laptop....Matthew just knows ;) when it's open, and I'm trying to use it. He scoots right over, eager to get his little hands on the keyboard, banging away. (not much gets done on it anymore, while they're awake).

But I keep telling myself, they're doing what comes naturally at this age.....investigating! We have so little space here, that there isn't much room to move things UP. We're really going to have to install shelves around the perimeter of each room, about 48" from the floor, to keep the boys from getting into everything. Guess they're not content with the two overflowing toyboxes.

Which brings me to their birthday party. It's planned for May 13/06 in the afternoon. I'm making them M&M cakes, one red, one blue. I've gotten them some toys, some clothes, and a new red wagon. Hopefully we get lots of use out of the wagon, spending a lot of time outdoors this summer. I have a lot of yardwork to catch up on, since I couldn't do much last summer with two newborns to care for. I hope to have nice weather in the afternoon, so everyone pray for sunny skies!! If everyone we invited shows up, the backyard will be filled with guests. Be sure to bring your lawnchairs!

I've started some flowers from seed this spring. Just over 1/2 of what I seeded has sprouted. I'm hoping at least 1/2 of the seedlings survive Matthew & Michael and make it into the ground in a few weeks. Each boy has already uprooted 2 seedlings, making me wonder if it really was worth my while. Oh well, there's always the greenhouse in town, if my seedlings don't survive long enough to get planted in the gardens.

Sounds like the boys are at it again, my time here is cut short, again.

What a weekend!

2006-04-23T19:54:00.000-06:00

I'm so glad this weekend is over. I have two boys with fevers.....Matthew has had a fever for a couple days now. Usually runs about 102F but thankfully Advil brings it down for awhile. Mitchell has also had a fever since last night, again in the 102F range. Again, Advil brings it down. YAY for Advil. LOL

Back to driving school bus tomorrow, after a very nice Easter break. 5:30am is gonna come early, since we're used to sleeping in till 7am (the twins don't let us sleep very long in the am hours). With the sun coming up earlier each day, I don't find it as hard to drag my butt out of bed at that hour. My bus is in getting safety check, so I hope it's done soon....I really don't care for the spare bus I have now.

David is busy getting equipment ready for spring seeding. And he's also busy bottle-feeding a spring calf. The momma has some issues with her milkbag, so the calf isn't too good at sucking. And the momma's not too good at being patient. ;) So we get to bottle-feed this calf twice a day. Just what we need during our busy season. Oh well, such is the life of a farmer.

The boys have had their bath, and are just playing for a little bit before we put them to bed. I'm relaxing here on the couch, and I think David is tinkering with his system. Matthew and Michael are playing with toys, and Mitchell is hard at work, driving race cars on his computer. Guess we're a very computer-oriented family!!

Have a good evening, take care!

Welcome!

2006-04-18T20:36:00.000-06:00

Tuesday, Apr 18/06, 8:36pm

Just set up my first blog....not sure what I'm doing, so bear with me. The twins are in bed, asleep I hope. Mitchell is wandering around looking for paper to write on. David is winding down, getting in a couple laps on his new autoracing game. We haven't had much time to enjoy ourselves this past year, so we take a few moments when we can.

The boys are 11months old now, I can't believe I'm starting to plan their birthday party. Where has the year gone? It seems like just yesterday when we brought them home from the hospital. And now Michael is crawling around, Matthew scoots after him. They both can pull up on furniture, and even take a few steps while hanging on. Won't be long till they're both walking & running around.

Good night everyone, I'll try to keep this updated as much as I can.