Fun with Paint and Wood

Ladies, start your engines! Our local Girl Scout organization hosted their 3rd annual pinewood derby race last week. Which means that once again, I had to clean the sawdust from my tools from last year's car and help Sweet Pea create another wheeled work of art. Each year I let SP choose how she wants her car to look. I try to cut, sand and chisel her wood block into a reasonably similar shape to her idea. Then I let her work her magic with paint and accessories.

To view previous pinewood derby cars just click here and here.

This year SP decided she wanted her car to look like one of the minions from the animated movie, 'Despicable Me'. A minion is a cute yellow Tylenol-shaped worker who wears goggles and denim overalls. This design was actually much simpler for me because I only had to round off the corners of her block and glue a round, washer holding cup to look like a one eyed goggle. Did I mention that some minions have one eye and some have two eyes?

So, using the DVD case as a guide, SP created a very believable likeness with bendaroos used as arms.

SP decided that her minion would have a smug, contented look about him so she drew an eye with a half closed lid. You can't see from the picture but her minion has one black curlicue hair on top of his head.

Our cars usually are not made for speed, but this year SP won her first heat and got second in her other two heats. Not good enough for a trophy but still OK.

So when SP wasn't racing, I had plenty of time to view the competition. About 160+ cars of competition.

There was evidence of much creativity among the wheeled wood blocks. Some cars had better paint jobs than the van we drive.Each girl scout got to vote for their favorite cars. This walrus car won for 'Most Creative.'

Here is some more of the girl scout's artistic ability. Someone actually carved that panda bear riding a toboggan. We also saw a car with working headlights.

With all of the talent and creativity on display, SP got some good ideas for next year. I will have to look into how to install headlights and probably add a working radio too. Hmmm...a derby car in the design of an Ipod perhaps?

Lenny the Leprechaun Strikes Again!

Did anyone catch the leprechaun last week? Sweet Pea gave it another try this year. Last year she set up an elaborate trap involving string, bait, weights and triggers to ensnare the elusive leprechaun. This year she modified her efforts by rigging an alarm to wake her when the leprechaun went for her bait.

SP's bait was a trail of homemade paper coins leading to an upside down wastebasket suspended with yarn by her bed. The trail of coins started at the other end of her room next to a note placed on top of her alarm clock. The plan was for Lenny the Leprechaun to read the note (stating press here for gold), press the alarm button, waking SP just in time to spring her trap.

SP's enthusiasm even got her brother in on the action too. He left a trail of paper coins too, not leading to a trap but to a list of leprechaun questions. His letter started out by wishing the leprechaun a lucky day and that he left a cup of Granny Smith Sweet Green Apple applesauce for him. He later wrote that his mom took the applesauce and he would have to find it in the refrigerator. N1S also wrote that he will not be setting any traps. By morning all of N1S's coins were gone and his questions were all answered in green marker. The leprechaun also signed his name in Gaelic which he must have looked up on the Internet. I'm pretty sure Number One Son knew what was going on but he still played along for his little sister.

I guess the leprechaun was too wily to fall for SP's note. In the morning SP's paper money was gone, but the kindly Lenny left her a box of orange flavored Tic-Tac's in trade.

I'm not sure if SP really expects to catch a leprechaun each year or if she just intends to trick her parents into giving her a treat every March. Either way, I'd say we all are pretty lucky to have Lenny to entertain us.

Are You Game?

How many board games do you own? If you are a board game family you know that the number is probably in the double digits. If you are not a board game family, you have a lot more shelf space in your basement than I. I grew up in a board game family. Lady Di also grew up playing games and cards at the dining room table with her family. To this day I can only win 1 out of every 10 games of 500 against Lady Di.

Which brings me to my original question, 'How many board games do you own?'

I was staring at our wall of games in the basement last week and I wondered, "How did we accumulate so many long flat boxes of fun?

Most of the blame can go to our parents. They are the ones who planted the game playing bug in our brains. Somehow, we also got the bright idea that a new board game every Christmas was sane. That way we could play a new game every Christmas morning as a family. After the new video games got boring, of course. Which is the beauty of board games. They always play differently each time you play. And I'm not talking about the strange way the rules tend to change to fit the needs of the current rule keeper. And why does every game have a rule to gang up on Dad and send him back to Sorry land or make him Draw Four or force him to pay for multiple stays in a fancy Boardwalk hotel every time?

Anyway, our grand total as of last week was 53 games! Games with and without boards. Games with dice, cards, pop-o-matic die, money, tiles, spinners, letters, numbers, colors,blocks, clay, pencils, paper, sand timers, and buzzers. Games with lead pipes, revolvers, top hats, thimbles, pegs, pawns and pigs. Games that give us Trouble, Cooties, Ants in Our Pants, Mystery Dates and Free Parking.

That total doesn't count the multiple packs of playing cards, memory cards, flash cards, match cards,Uno cards, Star Wars cards, Old Maid, Go Fish, Crazy Eight, Bandits, etc.

I also didn't count the 14 games that are currently on our summer garage sale pile.

We currently have 9 games whose name ends with the letter 'O'.

We have 3 different Monopoly games. Original, Star Wars, and Wizard of Oz.

We have 13 Parker Brothers games and 20 games from Milton Bradley.


We have 4 games that require shouting something. Yahtzee, Jenga, Uno and Sorry. I don't think Jenga actually requires that you shout Jenga when the blocks topple but that's how I play it.

We have only 1 game with a large mat with large colored dots.

We have games for small children like Don't Break the Ice and Candyland. And games for big children like Taboo and Catchphrase. We have smart (N1S & SP) people games like chess and cribbage. And for the other people (Dad) we have Taboo and Catchphrase.

Do we really need this many games?

I don't think we will make it through this winter without them. Our weather has been so hostile that it's daring us to just try and survive it. So with no where to go and nothing on TV, we turn to our cheap family entertainment. A little bit of cardboard, ink and plastic to arm us against cabin fever.

So I'm back to asking, "How many games do you own?" "Is it enough to last the winter?" And which are your favorites?

Our Fifteen Year Journey

We have had some sad news in our family recently. Our 15+ year old puppy, Liberty, passed away last Monday morning. Based on the pain we are all feeling, she was truly a member of our family. I know some people will say she was only a dog, but Lady Di recently heard a wise saying stating "Some people love their pets, some people have pets."

Lady Di has had dogs as pets her whole life. Liberty was my first dog. We got her from a farm in South Dakota just after we got married in 1995. She has lived with LD and I in each of our four homes together. We house trained her in our first rental home when she was a little ball of black fur. I can remember tiring her out before bedtime just by running with her to the end of the block and back.

She was always a smart dog. She learned her tricks quickly. She had a basket of her toys that she knew by name. If we told her to get her rope, she would sort through her basket until she found the rope. We tried a few times to give her squeaky toys, but she was always determined to work on that toy until the squeaker was removed.

There were also many Christmases where Liberty would sneak under the tree, remove only her present and start unwrapping it. This last Christmas was the first one that Liberty started unwrapping one of N1S's gifts. She must have had trouble reading the tag with her poor eyesight. In 1998 Number One Son arrived and Liberty needed to stay with Gramma and Grampa for a few months while Lady Di was on bed rest and N1S grew in the NICU. When N1S finally came home, Liberty would take her naps under his crib as if she was guarding her new brother. Shortly after, Liberty's walking on the leash time decreased due to a new baby in the house. But she quickly learned that her table scrap opportunities greatly increase beneath N1S's high chair.

In 2002 Liberty finally got a little sister, Sweet Pea. Liberty's play time took another hit as the kids tended to monopolize most of our time.

So this is the first time in the kids' life when they don't have a dog. News of Liberty's death affected each kid differently. N1S was quite matter of fact about the whole thing. He woke up Monday morning and saw her lifeless body and came to tell us without shedding a tear. We found out later that he broke down once in school but luckily he had some great support there.

Sweet Pea was quite emotional. I woke her up for school on Monday and told her I had some sad news. She guessed what happened and we both sobbed on her bed for a few minutes. Now SP goes around the house finding things that remind her of Liberty. She also wants to make a scrapbook for her puppy.

Both kids however are handling it well in their own ways.

Lady Di and I are having a more difficult time of it. When you have a dog you treat as a member of the family for 15 years everything reminds you of her. Having crumbs on our kitchen floor for the first time in a decade and a half is one thing you don't realize will trigger so many memories. Each room in the house has it's own special moments that make them seem incomplete now.

Included among the many things I will miss is having a lap warmer on cold Minnesota winter evenings. I will miss her whenever I do yard work in the summer. She won't be contentedly sitting in the shade keeping one eye on me and the other on the neighborhood. I will miss the merest whisper of the word 'popcorn' making her ears prick up instantly from the deepest of naps.

She was what I call a low maintenance dog. She didn't eat much, didn't poop much. She didn't shed, didn't chew and didn't run. She could ride in the car for five hours at a pop without a stop. I can't say that for anyone else in the family. Even when LD and I brought up, on Sunday night, how we would decide whether or not to put her down, Liberty seemed like she wanted to take the burden of deciding from us and passed on early Monday morning.

We can find some solace in that we were with her until the end. With tears flowing I was able to feel her last heart beat.

Our brother-in-law, a multiple dog owner of many years, believes that you get one really good dog in your life. We were lucky to hit the jackpot with our first.

We will place her collar and a few toys in a box and bury it next to Grampa's lake up north where she liked to swim and where she just about drowned one summer trying to swim out to our boat in the middle of the lake.

Hopefully, she is being a good girl where she is now and can wait patiently for her family to come home.

Liberty Bell

7-4-1995 to 1-24-2011

All Hail the Plow!

Every year our favorite snow plow driver, Ronnie, pushes a large pile of snow in our cul-de-sac. Over the last few years the kids have delivered cookies and drawings to Ronnie on the job, which has probably led to our favored snow status. I have chronicled snow hills of the past, (click here, here, and here) but this year, Ronnie outdid himself. We were blessed with an early heavy snowstorm and our snow hill grew to about twenty feet high or so. The largest mountain we have ever had the privilege to be king of. The kids immediately took my best spades and started tunnelling. With this hill's size the kids were able to honeycomb their mound like a sponge.

Every year we have to warn the kids that our snow hill won't last the winter. The city usually leaves our cul-de-sac mountains for a couple of weeks before they bring in the dump trucks to haul all the fun away.

Well, last week Lady Di was in the kitchen when she heard the low rumble of trucks pulling into the street. "Uh-oh", she thought. "Better start warning Sweet Pea to avoid the meltdown."

But it was too late. SP heard the trucks too and ran to the window.

"No, no, no, no, no, no,...", repeated all the way up the stairs to her room. Her window over looks the front of the house so it has a direct view of our soon to be smaller snow hill.

LD then got on the hot line to our neighbor, Deb who also just happens to be friends with our plow driver, Ronnie. "Deb, you better call Ronnie on his cell or we're gonna have troubles!", relayed LD. Deb answered with, "I'm on it!"

About a half hour later, Ronnie shows up with his loader. We know it's his job and we know the snow has to be cleared for safety, so we can't really blame him. Plus, chances are we will probably get more snow this winter anyway. As Ronnie drove into our dead end, he stopped and studied our hill. Then he went to work. He carefully scooped as much snow as he could from all around the base of our giant snow cone. That filled one dump truck. Then with even greater care, he started slicing the sides of our snow like a sculptor shaving away layers of marble on his way to carving a masterpiece. When the last dump truck was filled, we were left with our honeycomb in it's entirety, but now it rested on a smooth round base. Much like an Easter egg drying on a ring of cardboard. Ronnie had filled his quota of dump trucks, but left the best part of the hill towering high.

Before he left, SP ran down the stairs and out the door without even putting on her coat in the cold 13 degree air. LD, caught unaware, quickly put on her boots and went out to retrieve SP. By the time she opened the door, SP was just returning to the front porch. She was carrying a large piece of paper. On the paper, SP had colored a large 'Thank You' and was holding it up for Ronnie to read.

Since then, the kids have dug a cave below their tunnels to give their pile an 'Old Man Winter' face. Hopefully, he will be able to stay around awhile longer.

Thanks again, Ronnie. We really appreciate it.

A Christmas Message

Merry Christmas to one and all. I hope that everyone enjoyed their celebrations as much as our family did.

Now since I'm sure you are all sitting on pins and needles, filled with anxiety about the happenings of our Christmas adventures, I will relate our entire holiday itinerary for your enjoyment and fullfillment.

Actually, I just have one small bit of interest about our Christmas Eve night. We started Chistmas Eve by going to our 7pm church candlelight service. We really enjoy our church. So much so, that two years ago, when our church needed new hymnals, we bought three of them and donated them to the church in memory of two of my grandfathers and one of Lady Di's grandfathers all of whom had passed in recent years. That was two years ago and we have yet to find one of those hymnals during service. It doesn't help that we always sit in one of two pews at the front of the church. But I still check the inside cover of the hymnals there just in case the ushers, for some reason, decide to rotate the stock every once in a while.

So back to our Christmas Eve service. It was much like past Chrismas Eve services. We sang carols and everyone got to light their little candles while singing Silent Night. This part is the kids' favorite and every year we recite the proper candle lighting procedure. Never tip a lighted candle! Then we view the reason for such a rule, a tiny spot of melted wax on the seat of the pew just in front of where Number One Son stands. This family tradition goes back about five years or so when N1S was less diligent about his flame.

Just as the service was wrapping up, Lady Di noticed that the 9pm service would feature a choir selection and a song by a quartet including a student home from college that we know to have a very good singing voice.

LD then said, "Oh we will have to come back for the 9pm service."


N1S and I both turned simultaneously and whispered with incredulity, "Not two churches in one night!"

Sweet Pea's face lit up because she would get a second chance to play with fire.


So we went home to relax a little before we returned to church. We couldn't even change out of our church clothes! The drive back to the church was a little grumbly from half of us. But N1S and I put on a happy Christmas face and made the best of it. Since we had already heard the sermon, we decided to sit closer to the middle of the congregation. We found a nice couple that we knew to sit with. We enjoyed the choir selection and were quite impressed with the quartet. As we waited for the ushers to start the candle lighting, I noticed the hymnals in front of us. I said, "What the heck.", and opened it. On the inside cover was placed an offical looking sticker stating, This hymnal donated in memory of Emery (Pete) Bell, my paternal grandfather.

I passed the open hymnal to Lady Di, who was so proud of herself for not tearing up during the 7pm candlelighting, and made her immediately well up with emotion and ask for a hanky. Then Sweet Pea saw her name (she is named after this grampa) and passed the hymnal down the pew to show the couple we were sitting next to.

What were the chances that we would attend a second church service, on Christmas Eve, and choose that particular pew to find one of our donated hymnals for the first time?

It made pastor's message about the importance of family even more meaningful.

With all the blessings we have been fortunate enough to enjoy, this warm Christmas message from our loved one will make this year one of our most memorable Christmas Eves.

Live Long and Decorate

Christmas is almost here. Are you ready? Have all of the cards been sent? Presents wrapped? Cookies made? And then eaten? And then made again?

Well, in order to save some time with this year's preparation, Number One Son volunteered to put up one of our Christmas trees. As you may remember from posts past, we usually decorate three Christmas trees. In early December, with Sweet Pea's help, I was able to assemble, light and decorate two of our trees but ran out of weekend for the last one. So as another busy Sunday night had us running Sweet Pea to volleyball practice, I offered N1S a project to keep him from thinking about the Wii time he had already spent.

"While we are gone, you can put up the tree to help me out.", I asked.

Surprisingly, he said OK.

On the drive back home, I wondered what kind of job N1S did. Would the small branches be on the bottom? Would anything break? How bad would the tree lean?

My fears, however, were unnecessary.

He did a pretty good job. It even looked like he started to shape a few of the branches. Like maybe about three. But then decided on the natural scraggly look with bare spots to show off the metal pole.

And just like any good assembly job, you always are left with a few spare parts right? I asked, "Wouldn't these three branches fit?"

Distractedly he answered from the couch, "Oh I don't know. They must have been extra."

I thanked him anyway for saving me time and effort this season. We decorated the trees the same way as last year. The only difference being that Sweet Pea did most of the kid tree decorating.

If you look closely you'll notice that Mr. Spock must have gotten a puppy from Santa this year to help him at his science station.

As did Dr. McCoy.

So boldly celebrate Christmas, where no one has celebrated before!