Happy birthday Elizabeth! 12 years old

Saturday the 16th was a big day for Elizabeth, she turned 12.  One of the reasons why twelve is so exciting for her is because she gets to graduate from Primary (the children's classes at church) to Young Women's (for girls 12-18).  By becoming a part of the Young Women's organization she gets to go to a five day sleep away girl's camp this year and gets to go to weekly Youth Night activities.  It's a big step in the growing up process!

We had her birthday party for her friends Friday night.  When I asked her months ago what she wanted to do for her party, she chose to take her friends out in the boat.  It's nice to have a June birthday so you can plan water activities (this from a winter baby).  We've been having an extremely rainy June with it raining all this week but we had one nice day, Friday!  She invited six friends to come.  Our boat holds 8 so with her and Dode, it would be a full boat.  Then Dode told me that he'd like another adult along to help launch/recover the boat and to help with flagging.  Usually when you invite friends to a party there's someone who can't make it but not this time!  Dode took Isaac along as a helper.  There were a lot of nervous moms worried about their daughters drowning.  I assured them that they'd be safe and would be wearing life jackets the entire time.

We forgot to send a camera on the boat.

Here they are after the ride, cold and wet.

They blew up our three man ski tube and soon girls were having a blast riding behind the boat.  Once Dode got the girls onto the lake, they all starting demanding "faster! more wild!"  With all the nervous mom's in mind, Dode had to deny their daredevil requests.  We'd told the parents to pick up their girls at 9:00 pm.  In my mind, that meant Dode would be here by 8:30 to give the girls time to get changed out of their swimsuits and eat some birthday cake.  In Dode's mind that meant play until the last minute as long as you're home AT 9:00.  At 8:45, I was getting worried that nervous moms were going to be showing up and I wouldn't have a daughter to return to them.  Dode pulled in at 8:50 with all the girls safe and happy.  One of the parents pulled in right behind him and I breathed a sigh of relief!  The girls said it was the best party ever (but don't they say that at every party!).

Elizabeth and Dode went to Denny's Saturday morning for breakfast, where you can eat free on your birthday.  She loves Denny's and looks forward to it all year.  Dode tolerates Denny's because he loves his daughter.  Elizabeth got a healthy breakfast: cheeseburger, fries, large soda.  Dode stayed with the more traditional grand slam.

The plan was for them to canoe the Stillaguamish River after breakfast but it was raining.  Elizabeth had been looking forward to floating the river with equal parts excitement and dread.  She loves nature and the chance to spend a few hours quietly viewing it sounded wonderful.  What didn't sound so great was the chance of tipping the canoe.  Sitting in a canoe for two hours in the rain was out, so instead, they took her new indoor RC airplane to the church to fly it in the gym.  She just got it on Wednesday as a birthday gift from Boma.  She'd been down to the church Wednesday night to practice it and was eager to give it another shot.  They weren't there long before she got confused about her controls and drove it right into the ground.  Unfortunately, the propeller rod snapped and they came home early.  She was pretty quiet on the way home but perked up when she learned they could order parts and she'd soon be flying again.

Once they got home, we loaded up and headed out to Cama Beach State Park on Camano Island.  They were having "CamOcean days".  Several local organizations set up booths with educational information and games for the kids to play.  The focus of the event was educating the public about the ways the choices they make effect the health of the Puget Sound.  My dad met us there to spend some time with the birthday girl.

playing a game about the food chain

face painting: our state bird

learning about watersheds

I sure like spending time with this guy!

After playing at the park, we headed to Red Robin for dinner.  Elizabeth loves Red Robin because they sing to you and give you a hot fudge sundae with cherry on top (the best part of the sundae in Elizabeth's opinion!  We keep a bulk sized jar of them in the fridge just for maraschino cherry craving emergencies.).  It seems to be tradition in our family to stuff your face on your birthday.  Elizabeth had a cheeseburger for breakfast, leftover pizza for lunch, chicken strips, fries, a milkshake, and a hot fudge sundae for dinner.

A meal fit for the princess.  See the salt shaker?  She loves a TON of salt on her fries.

Let the singing begin!

I think Elizabeth had a good day.  She fell asleep in the car on the way out to Camano and again on the way back so that's got to be the sign of a youth having a lot of fun!

Woven Bracelet for Day camp

I asked my mom to keep an eye out for activities we could do at day camp.  She found this on Pinterest.

Source here

The link didn't have any instructions, just a photo, so I had to figure it out myself.  I bought some Craft Cord in the official cub scout colors: blue and gold.  I purchased a third color for the center string.  It's not visible in the final bracelet.  My core color is white.

I wasn't sure how much of the blue and gold to use.  Two feet was too short, making only a 3" bracelet.  Five feet was plenty with lots of extra on the ends (good for little fingers).

How to make:

You'll need three colors of craft cord, safety pins and scissors.

1.  Cut three pieces of craft cord.  Blue: 5 feet, Gold: 5 feet, white: 2 feet

2.  Gather all three colors together in your hand and tie a knot 3-4 inches from the end.

3.  Use a safety pin to attach the cords (go through your knot) to your pants, near your knee.  Use another safety pin to attach the other end of the white cord to your other leg.  You want the white cord to be somewhat taut.  This makes it much easier to weave the cords because you only have to hold on to the two cords that you will be weaving with.

Notice my short ends?  No way to tie the bracelet ends to each other around my wrist!  Oops.

white cord safety pinned from one leg to the other

You can adjust how tight the cord is by moving your knee farther from the other leg,

just don't tear your pants!

4.  Pick up the yellow cord and think, "over, under, over".  Wrap the yellow cord over the white cord, then thread it under the white cord and up through the loop you made.  Now do the same with the blue cord.  Continue alternating, thinking, "Over, under, over" until your bracelet is the desired length.  You want to keep the tension somewhat the same on your loops or your bracelet will vary in width.

5.  When your bracelet is long enough, tie another knot at the end.

Here are the two bracelets I made for my samples.  You can make it tight like the top one or more "lacey" like the bottom one.

6.  Tie it onto your wrist, cut off the ends and wear your cub scout colors with pride!

Indiana Jones Obstacle Course- Dangerous Passage

We've finished another obstacle for our Indiana Jones obstacle course at this year's day camp.  Here's the link to another part of it.

The idea came from the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Remember when Indiana Jones was in the passageway leading to the golden idol?  He had to step on certain stones or poisonous darts would launch at him.  We created something with a similar idea.    The boys have to walk down our "Dangerous Passage".   With a bit of make believe and some clever designing, a sheet of plywood and some pressure switches become the dangerous hallway Indy faced.  We follow the Guide to Safe Scouting at day camp.  There are no poisonous darts for this obstacle!  If they step on a dangerous square, a horn will sound.  Once they successfully complete the Dangerous Passage, they will have to successfully retrieve the golden idol (details to come!).

Here's how we came up with it...

I told Dode I wanted some kind of pressure sensitive pads that the boys could walk across.  He did a lot of brainstorming.  He originally thought of plastic Frisbees with metal foil underneath to make electrical contact when they get stepped on, but Frisbees were too expensive.  We went to Lowe's and he browsed the different switches to see if something would work.  It was a real struggle to figure out how to make a switch that could be set on the grass and be stepped on.  It would have to put up with dirt, grass and 120 kids stomping on it multiple times.  Once we decided all the "stepping stones" could be attached to a sheet of plywood, we were closer to a solution, but he still had to come up with a pressure switch.  Remember playing Space Invaders in the 80's?  You had to hit a button over and over to fire your guns.  Dode figured arcade switches would be built to take a lot of abuse a lot of times.  We got ours from X-Arcade.  They come in a 20 pack so that's how many steps are in our obstacle course.

I started the project by painting a grid of "stones" on the plywood sheet.  There are five rows with four squares in a row.  You can't tell from the angle in the photo below, but the stones are sponge painted to give them texture.  Together with the rough OSB board (a cheap kind of plywood), they make pretty good stones.  If I had it to do over, I would sponge paint on the "grout" to give it texture before taping it off to make the stones.  As it is, it's too flat looking to be convincing.

 a few steps into the project.

6/22/12: rain, rain and more rain!

1.  The board is painted into a grid of "stones"

2.  2x4's are installed along the edges and through the center to make room underneath for the switches (Dode still hasn't cut the middle 2x4 to length in this photo)

3.  Holes are drilled in the center of each square for the arcade buttons

Our supplies:  a car horn from amazon.com, arcade buttons, speaker wire from amazon.com, "3 way" light switches from the local hardware

wiring schematic 

Underside of the sheet of plywood.  We've attached the arcade buttons (very easy to do, you just drop them through the hole and screw on the nut that comes with them).  Each row has two "live" buttons and two "safe" buttons at any given time.  In order to make it a random pattern, I took pieces of paper labeled 1,2,3,4 and dropped them in a hat.  I drew them out and wrote my results down on a 4x5 grid on a sheet of paper.  You can see it in the photo.  We used it as a reference when we hooked up the wires.  Example:  in the 1st row buttons 1 and 4 are live, buttons 2 and 3 are safe.  In the 2nd row, buttons 1 and 3 are live, 2 and 4 are safe.

Then we wired the buttons together and soldered the wires to the arcade buttons.  Dode says you could also use little clips to attach the wires if you don't want to solder.  We don't mind soldering and we're too cheap to buy the clips!  

We wanted to make the dangerous passage adjustable.  Each switch controls one of the rows of buttons.  Remember that each row has two safe buttons and two dangerous buttons?  Flipping the switch attached to that row changes the safe button to dangerous and the dangerous buttons to safe.  That way, the boys can't memorize the pattern.  It's a new challenge each time!

I don't have electricity where we hold day camp.  The car horn is powered by our very well loved power wheels battery.  Car horns run on 12 volts, so any 12 volt battery will work.

Miriam is ready for the horn to sound!  

The horn is mounted underneath wich not only honks but makes the board vibrate under the kids feet.

She finds it absolutely hilarious when other people set off the horn and gives off a huge belly laugh when it happens.

William makes his way across.

gingerly stepping forward

June begins

One of the best parts of being a parent is enjoying the funny things your children say.  One of the best parts of having a blog is writing them down so you can remember them!  Here's some funnies from the past few weeks.

Some background is in order before this makes sense.  Dode does not wear suits.  In fact, he hasn't worn one since he returned from his mission twenty years ago.  When we got engaged, one of the first things he wanted to know was, "Are you going to make me wear a suit to the wedding?"  Nope!  So, the going to church outfit our boys are used to their dad modeling is slacks, white shirt, an tie.  Isaac had to get a suit to wear when he went to Olympia for his Youth and Government class.  A few weeks later, Isaac was getting ready for church.  He came to me and asked, "Is a suit coat appropriate for Sunday dress?"

I had to take Miriam to the doctor for her yearly well child check.  It's about a 40 minute drive to the doctor so I brought her MP3 player along.  This is what I heard, "mumble, mumble, mumble" delivered in a monotone.  Miriam, "Can you guess this song?"  me, "Sing a little more".  Miriam, "Blah-blah-blah" still in monotone.  me, "Why don't you just tell me?"  Repeat every 3-4 minutes.

Part way down the headphones come off her head and she says, "What's that smell?"  (something stinky from outside)  She continued, "Well, I hope our engine didn't just blow up!"  me, "If our engine blew up, we wouldn't still be driving."  Miriam, "Well, we're going pretty much fast so it would take a while for our car to stop moving."  You can tell we drive nice cars when Miriam smells a bad smell and immediately thinks our engine blew up!

A little later "Under the Sea" came on her MP3 player.  Miriam, "Mom, why don't you and dad like Little Mermaid?" me, "We don't like it because she isn't nice to her dad.  She doesn't listen to him but she still gets everything she wants.  That's a lie.  Life does not work like that."  Miriam, "Mom, she's just following her heart."  How wonderful that she's already bought that lie!

So for the 40 minutes down to the doctor, she kept up a pretty good conversation with me.  Challenging me to guess the songs on her MP3 player and discussing deep thoughts with me.  We get to the doctor, she gets shy, and she refused to say one word the entire time the doctor was in with us.  This is a pediatric doctor that is used to working with kids.  The doctor pull out all her tricks to engage Miriam, but she would not respond.  The doctor was pretty worried about her silence and even offered counseling.  I told her we aren't concerned.  The doctor walks out and Miss Chatty is back in business.  Silly girl!

It's been pretty grey around here outside.  It's June and it still feels like March.  We are still wearing jackets and the sun just refuses to show.  I was outside with Dode when the sun came out!  It was just peaking through a small hole in the clouds, but our bodies were actually creating shadows.  I looked at the sky and said, "Wow!  Look at that!"  Not 30 seconds later, Miriam and William came bursting out of the house, arms outstretched, faces raised to the sun exclaiming, "The sun!  The sun!"  It lasted less than a minute and we were back to the grey.  Us Western Washington people have to know to enjoy it while it lasts!

Field Trip
Tuesday Miriam and William had a school field trip to Camano Island State Park.  As noted above, we aren't having much of a summer yet, in fact the weather man reported that if you want to find worse weather than the Pacific Northwest is experiencing this week, you need to go to Aniak, Alaska.  Here's the proof!  So, I was dreading a day at the beach.  We bundled up in our winter boots and coats for our visit.  When you're in your own car and decide you're cold and have had enough, you just pack up and go home.  I knew that wouldn't be an option and tried to think of everything we'd need to help make the day a success.

So many parents volunteered to attend the field trip that I was only responsible for my own children.  We got to the beach and met my dad and his wife Cheryl.  They live just down the road from the State Park.  We got off the bus and were told, "You can just wander the beach and look for critters.  Be back to the bus at 1:30 (4 hours)."  The tide was pretty low so we were able to see a lot of sea life like: sea stars, crabs, sea urchin, small fish.  I'm sure the people going by in boats had to be wondering why on such a miserable day there were hundreds of people on the beach.

Miriam and William at a "fort" they discovered.  Miriam is holding a shell my dad wrote "Miriam and William" on, William is holding their "flag" of kelp and driftwood.  Miriam was pretty concerned because they'd been told they couldn't take anything from the beach (300 children can really clean a beach!).  She wondered if she should leave her shell or take it since it had writing on it.  I told her grandpa didn't have the same rules because he wasn't part of the field trip and it would be OK for  her to take it.

This is my dad posing for a photo.  He hates getting his picture taken.

(Does this look like a nice warm summer day?)

This guy was perched in a tree watching us.  

They aren't very rare in Western Washington.

Miriam with her teacher, Mrs. Janez-Bishop

There were 9 school busses there as well as parents who'd driven out to meet the busses.  That's a lot of people.  How many bathrooms were there? Two Port-A-Potties!  They have real bathrooms but the rangers had them all locked up.  We waited in line for 30 minutes to use the bathroom.  Considering that kids already wait until it's an emergency to go, it was a pretty tense line.  Then, just as we were getting to the front, a teacher came and said their district was leaving and they had three children who needed to use the bathroom before they left.  Could they cut in line?  How do you say no to that?  Well, that 3 children ended up being closer to 30 as more and more kids showed up needing to use the bathroom.  How do you explain to a seven year old who is dancing around trying not to wet their pants that it's ok for these kids to cut?

Day Camp
I've got just one month to go until day camp.  Thursday I had a training meeting for the volunteer staff.  The camp director is out of state on work business so I had to go it alone.  The two days leading up to the meeting were all about day camp.  At one point Elizabeth said to me, "I like it when you're not so busy."  Getting ready for the meeting was a big undertaking because I was handing out binders for each class to the person teaching the class.  I had to take all the plans I had for the day camp program from my head and assemble them into something where a person walking in with no knowledge could understand what I wanted to happen and have all the information they needed to teach the class.

I was wishing that life would just stop so I could focus on day camp.  It was a futile wish.  I still had to be a mom: helping get children ready for school, preparing meals, driving children around, refereeing fights, helping with homeschool.  We have three computers at home which means I had brainstorming documents scattered on all three computers.  The kids were doing their school work so we were sharing computers.  It was "fun".

The binder doesn't just say, "Teach this..." it also contains all the instructions, background information, photos, etc they need.  There are 24 classes this year.  That's a lot of information to drag out of my head and put on paper.  I'd bought an all-in-one printer at Costco on Monday and Dode set it up for me on Tuesday.  I gave that thing quite a work out on Wednesday and Thursday, scanning, copying, printing.   I spent two days going back and forth with computers and using all of our three printers (laser for black and white because it's the cheapest, our old color computer because I've got to use up the ink, and the new one for scanning and copying.)  By the time I spread out all the class and den leader binders, the island was pretty full.  Add in food the children and I were snacking on and it was quite a sight.  In fact, the entire house was a pretty big wreck.  In the middle of all the chaos, my Relief Society President (the leader of the women's organization at church) showed up unexpectedly to have a meeting with me.  Welcome to real life!

What a mess!

My "work station"

Computer, printer, laminator and lots and lots of paperwork!

It was a lot of work and at times I didn't know if I'd get it done in time.  I fantasized about a day when all my children would be gone to public school, or just gone somewhere so that I could work without interruption.    In the end, I made it to the meeting on time, prepared, and ready for the training.  Dode had to go somewhere after work so I ended up hauling five of the children with me.  We met at a library about 30 minutes from home.  Between my five and the children of some of the volunteers, we pretty much had every library computer monopolized during our 1 1/2 hour meeting.

Indiana Jones Obstacle Course- The Crank

Our day camp theme this year is Jungle Adventure.  When I think of famous individuals who've had adventures in the Jungle, Indiana Jones comes to mind.  We always have an obstacle course at day camp and this year I wanted to expand it and make it an amazing Indiana Jones type course.  One of our obstacles the boys have to get through is "The Crank".  It's built out of 1" PVC pipe.

It's handy to have a draftsman in the house.  I told Dode what I was thinking and we sat down in front of Autocad to draw it out.  That way we knew we'd get the dimensions right.

It's similar to an obstacle on the TV show Wipeout.  The boys have to walk across the balance beam while avoiding the crank.  If it touches them, they have to start over.  No ducking under either, that's cheating!  Once Dode built it, my children had a fun time testing it out.  A den leader will have to turn the crank.  We learned during testing that they'll need to be blindfolded or facing away from the youth.  It's too tempting to slow the crank down to help them succeed!

Miriam tries out "The Crank"

If you build this, you also need to make some sort of finish mark on the balance beam.  Miriam likes to cheat by jumping off early in order to avoid the crank.

The 2x4's will be planted in the ground at day camp, so they'll eventually be vertical supports, not horizontal like in the photo.  We didn't want to add three holes to the grass just for a photo!

In the drawing above, Dode specifies what size hole he drilled.  I wanted mine to be portable and reusable so we started with hole and kept a few joints in the PVC unglued.  After the kids hit it a few times and twisted it, we modified it with a slot and glued all the joints.  We used a bolt to keep the pipe in while turning it.  

Love that purple glue!  

I'm planning on painting it to look like bamboo, we'll see how it turns out!

Happy birthday Isaac! 15 years old

Tuesday, Isaac turned 15.  When he was born, he was the same size as my first baby Jacob, 6 lbs 13 oz.

As a baby, my dad nicknamed Isaac, Fussy Dickson.  You can see that he earned it!

A kind elderly woman in the ward made Isaac this outfit that he got blessed in.

Thankfully he got over the grumps around six months old and is now a pretty easy going guy to have around.  He had a full birthday.  He must have been tired, he took a nap on the couch before dinner!

His day started at 5:00 am when he and his dad went out to breakfast.  It's a tradition Dode started years ago with the kids.  They had to leave early enough to still get Isaac to early morning seminary at 6:20.  Isaac usually rolls out of bed five minutes before he has to go out the door so I thought he wouldn't be wanting to get up extra early to have breakfast.  When he overheard Elizabeth talking about how she wouldn't miss her breakfast for anything, he said, "Yes, I'm going!"  Isaac's seminary teacher brought him a treat, sea salt and vinegar chips.  Then, he did some homework before we headed over to get him his 1st professional haircut.  He thinks he's outgrown my haircutting skills.  I told him I'd pay for the 1st haircut but after that, he was on his own.  Well, he really liked the haircut he got, so he's already saving his money for the next haircut!

sporting his new hairdo

For lunch, we went to 5 Guys Burgers where he picked out a burger and large fries.  That place is expensive!  It cost me almost $12 for his meal.  We got home and he had time for some more school work.  He'd asked for homemade corn dogs for dinner with white chocolate raspberry cheesecake for dessert.  It's a good thing that his birthday only comes once a year because I think he ate over 3,000 calories that day!  I've been pretty strict with my vegan diet but I've chosen to not follow it a few times. One is any time I have access to crab, I'm going to eat it!  I also had a big slice of Sharon's carrot cake on Mother's Day.  I was doing pretty good with the corn dogs until we sat down to dinner and I started eating my sweet potato veggie burger (the same veggie burgers I've been eating for four days since the recipe made such a big batch).  When we go to the fair, freshly dipped corn dogs are always my weakness and pretty soon I was digging into one of ours slathered with mustard.  Yum!

looking stylish in his new shades

birthday dessert

The next day we celebrated his birthday with my mom and Greg.

Greg and Miriam played the accompaniment for our Happy Birthday song.

Gabe had a healthy carb lovers dinner

Miriam loves how she snuck into the photo

The kids are enjoying digging a giant hole in the flower garden.

My mom is a bit concerned since she just planted some flower seeds for me there!

Weekend fun
I was gone to a day camp meeting after finishing up with produce on Saturday morning so Dode was the single parent for the day.  He brought the crew to the church to participate in a car wash to raise money for their summer camps.  The three kids each earned $36 for 5 hours of work to go towards their $90 camps.  I'm surprised they made that much money because the day was dark and rainy!

In the afternoon, Dode took Elizabeth and William flying at the model airplane field East of town.  When I asked her if she had a good time, she told me that Dode's co-worker, our instructor/expert, kept taking over from her when she was flying.  I asked, "Did he take over because he was trying to help you or because he was having so much fun he couldn't give you a chance?"  "He took over when I was crashing."  I told her that was probably a good thing but she isn't convinced!  Dode thinks that is a good thing even if Elizabeth does not.

Dode's plane

He received it as a birthday present from my mom years ago and it's been taking up valuable space on my closet shelves ever since.  He's never flown it much because one: He doesn't have the skills, but more importantly, he didn't want one more thing taking him away from the family.  Elizabeth has really gotten into RC aircraft so he finally has a partner and an excuse to get his plane out of the closet.

Steve and Elizabeth

The wire between the two controllers allows Steve to take over if Elizabeth has a problem.

It's kind of like the brake they give to the driver's ed instructor.

What in the world is that?

You know how I've mentioned that I live with a bit of a mad scientist?  One of the projects Dode has been working on for a while is a laser beam maze.  Sunday afternoon, he got the 1st stage done.  He's able to have the laser hit a light sensor.  When the beam of light is interrupted,  an old door alarm from William's room gives a beep.  In order to make the laser visible, we used the fog machine we bought last Halloween.  It promptly set off the smoke detector in the hall.  Our smoke detectors all communicate together so pretty soon the whole house was quite noisy.  Miriam and William enjoyed playing with the laser trip wire.  Step two is to add more mirrors so instead of one line of laser, there will be several criss crossing.  Dode's plan is to create a laser maze that the youth will have to navigate before they get our candy at the trunk or treat our congregation has at Halloween.