Post-It #35

It's been awhile since I posted kids quotes. I usually forget them, so I only have the things that I put on facebook. So if you are my facebook friend, you've probably already seen this stuff.


What if I actually went to crab heaven? Then God would turn me into a crab. ~Owen

Morgan: "know why I'm so good at catchin' flies? Because I'm like a Venus fly trap!"

When I asked Morgan to help me with something that was contrary to his plans, he said, "I am so destructing mad!"

I was talking to the kids about when they are older, and Morgan was saying he would visit me everyday, but he didn't know if his wife would. I said "you don't think your wife will like me?" William piped in and said his wife would like me, then Owen said, "my wife likes you." William and Morgan told him he didn't have a wife. He adamantly disagreed so I said, "then where is your wife?" he looked around then patted his chest and said, "right here. My chest is my wife."

Me: "where did you get that gum?"
Morgan: "under the bench... It tastes good still!"

Twenty-third Passage

David is super duper talented and amazing in a dizzying number of things. One of those areas of talent are woodworking. He built himself his own electric guitar! And it's awesome! He did most of it before we met, but I stole some pictures of the process from his facebook page and I'll show you here what he did in less detail. I'll use his FB picture descriptions though, since I don't know a thing about this.

Theres my new guitar. Lets call this phase one.

Heres the neck getting glued up. Now I have to wait :(

Here's a rough plywood template of my guitar. It took forever to cut this out on a 9" bandsaw. I sure wish that I had a jigsaw.

Here's the outline of the guitar body, ready to be cut out.

Got the body cut out. It doesn't look like much now but once I get the top contoured and the 1/8" bloodwood stripe around the outside to frame it all in it will look so sweet!!!

routed out the slot in the neck for the truss rod to sit. Everything looks good. It's sitting perfectly flush with the surface.

Whew! after about 2 hours of sanding the neck is finally shaped the way that I want it.

 Here we go. Gluing and clamping the body together.

I had to make a jig to clamp down the binding around the edge evenly

 Here is the bridge Installed. Those two little chunks of metal cost more than twice as much as anything else on the guitar.

Put in the tuning machines this morning. I have the kids with me so I put in a movie and did it in the living room. Now I have plenty of wood shavings to vacuum off of the floor

I contoured the top and cut the holes for the pickups.

Got the frets in this evening.

I shined up the finish, put all the hardware on, the strung it up. You're looking at the finished product. Now I have to make tons and tons of little adjustments to make it play right.

But then he wanted to add the little dots to the side. I don't recall what they are called. So he bought a metal stick thing, (which has a more technical name, but, eh, I'm just Melanie.) And he sawed little pieces off. Which was very difficult. But then he got some clamps and it made it go much easier.

 Here David is using a stone thing to shine up the metal and make it nice and smooth.

 Now the scary part. Drilling holes into his pretty guitar neck. I'm so glad it didn't crack!

 See? Look at that! The little dots. Now you know what I'm talking about, right?

 Now he's sanding it down to make it all flush.

 After putting on a finish again, he is done! Isn't it pretty?

 I'm constantly blown away by David's abilities and talents. I'm so glad I have such a brag-worthy husband!

And here is the video of David playing his new guitar for the first time.

Twenty-second Passage

Morgan and William are due to start kindergarten. Both will be six in October, and both know the basics of reading and arithmetic. Both are smart and we think both would benefit most from a home education. David and I were homeschooled, so it's what we know and want for our kids.
Happily, all parents involved consented to us schooling them at home. Yay!
We have been doing some preparation for school to start. Their toy room now doubles as a school room. I had the boys help me hang posters and charts on the walls, and we let them all pick pencils, scissors, pencil boxes, and general supplies. We got their school books and had them write their names inside. And they are excited to start school!

The boys helped me cut out letters and words that will aid in teaching them how to read.

I'm pretty excited about school to start too. This year we are going to focus on reading and writing and basic math, of course, but we are also going to learn all the states and a little about them all. We have body books where they get to color a body part, (heart, brain, liver, etc) and then cut them out. I'll trace their bodies on butcher paper or something, and they can attach the body part to the right area of their own body tracing.
We'll also do science projects and crafts, and field trips with other homeschoolers. This is going to be fun!
. . .Right?
I'd much rather it be fun than a fight every day to get the kids to do their work, to please focus, to stop being distracted by the toys in the room, to not fight over chairs, or poke their brothers with pencils, and not to worry that Lydia gets to play when you don't, and yes, yes, you can read that word, you've done it lots of times before, and why are you ripping the pages out of your books?? and I'm sorry you don't get to do the craft, but you still haven't done your addition, and we have been sitting here for two hours, and all you've done is draw circles on the corner of your page, and the house is a mess, I haven't showered, I can't seem to teach you that you always start at the top when writing the letter I, I haven't seen another adult in three weeks, and how did you lose your pencil again? and no, we are not doing the body book just so you can talk about peepee's, and stop eating your crayons, and remember your inside voice, and get out from under the table, and didn't I tell you to stop poking your brother with your pencil? And PLEASE CAN IT BE THE WEEKEND??!?!

So, yeah. We are excited. Should be fun.

Post-It #34

Owen has some serious love for David's mom, Nana Sugar.
Here are some things he has recently said about her.

Morgan: when I grow up I'm going to live in an apartment.
Owen: I'm going to live with Nana Sugar!

We were having a family prayer, and it was Owen's turn to pray. He's still learning to do it, so David and I were prompting, "How do you start the prayer?" Shrug the shoulders. "Well, who do we pray to?"
"Nana Sugar!"
And you better believe that once the prayer was started, (to the proper recipient) the first thing Owen offered thanks for was Nana and Papa.

We have been teaching the kids the Articles of Faith. The first one goes like this: "We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost."  It was Owen's turn to repeat it.
I helped him start, "We believe in...."
Owen: "Nana Sugar!"

Does it seem like this is bordering on idol worship? Haha.

Twenty-first Passage

We took our family to the Canyon County fair last weekend. It was hot, water was pricey (we didn't think to bring our own) and the kids were often whiny.
They liked the 4H animals. Most of them complained about the corndogs we all got. (Which was like, $30 just for our family for one corndog each!!)
We watched a magic show. That was fun , though I wonder if most of the kids really understood how cool it should seem.
At the carnival side, we let the kids have $5 bucks each to do with as they wanted. Morgan and William got to ride two rides. They had a hard time picking, but ended up doing the Fun House and a big slide.

Here's William. He said that at first, going down the slide, he was going to cry. But then he didn't.

And here's Morgan.

 

We put Owen and Lydia on this little ride. Owen scowled the WHOLE time. In the picture he's half-heartedly playing with the gun on the plane, but that was rare. He was kind of a grouch the whole day. 

  Lydia had fun though. She spent most of the time trying to find those of us saying "hi" to her, and getting excited when she saw us.

Owen and Lydia also did a little kids game, prize every time, where they just pick a floating rubber ducky in a pool, and get the size prize of whatever letter was on the bottom of the duck. They were just the little blow up pool toy type things, but the kids liked them. 

We were so ready to be done and in the air conditioned car, and where there was plenty of water. We spent about $10 on drinks while there, but it was not close to enough.

Post-it #33

The crayons and scratch paper are kept in a drawer of this little bench thing. Lydia loves to color, and knowing where the materials are to do it, she often gets them out and sets to work.
The other day she was wearing a fireman hat while coloring. It was so cute, I had to take pictures. I don't think she could actually see what she was doing.

Post-it #32

I had this convo with Morgan the other day.

Morgan: I wish families really did stick together, like this.
(Morgan scoots right up next to me and our arms were touching.)
Me: You mean, sticking together on our skin?
Morgan: Yes.
Me: That would be inconvenient. What about when we had to go to the bathroom?
Morgan: Oh yeah, maybe that's why Heavenly Father made us like this.

In a recent family prayer, Morgan said, "help us to be prophets OR missionaries when we grow up..." One or the other. :)

Twentieth Passage

More destruction from the boys.

One night, while they were in bed, supposed to be sleeping, Morgan and William instead ripped up tons of their books. This is just mindless destruction. Some of the torn up books are board books, so they really had to try hard to rip them to pieces. This one actually makes me pretty mad. So much waste, and deliberate waste, and from the two that should know better the most. They had all their books (which is many) out of the bookcases and on the floor, and when they were cleaning them up in the morning, they put the ripped books and pages on the bed. The huge pile of them is dismaying.

 And then on Thursday morning as I was trying to finish up the dishes before taking William and Owen back to their mother, the kids were playing in the living room, ready to go. I don't think it was more than a minute after I told the them to stop rough housing that Morgan attacked the closet door, and pushed it against its hinges, putting a nice hole in the door. He gets to do extra chores to earn the money to pay for a new one.