Saturday, June 30, 2007

Saturday Morning

Today I have lots of things I need to do:

First item on the list is the dishes.

Then the laundry.

After that, I need to repot my grapefruit plant. Yes, I know I live in Washington, but I'm gonna try to grow one indoors anyway :-b

I also have to fix the weed-eater that a guy at church wants me to fix. I've only put that off for 3 weeks now...

I need to run to the Hardware store and get some more lumber and some chain to build a porch swing and keep working on Ammon's dresser.

I have to mow the back yard.

I've got to finish pruning the hedges. That takes forever, even though I've got a nice electric trimmer.

I have to build corner shelves in Ammon's room so that Rachel can put more junk on them...

I have to read through and prepare my Sunday School lesson.

I probably should look at the Saturn to try and figure out what is making it rumble SO LOUDLY THAT I CAN HARDLY THINK!!! But I really don't want to.

I have to finish filling out those crazy surveys for the University of Michigan, but at least I get paid for that ;-)

There are undoubtedly more things that should be on this list, but I can't really think of any others right now. I'll try to get as much done as I can, but it's only 24 hours. And the last time I checked, I was only one man...

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Where I Work

I don't remember if I have mentioned this, but I work for FedEx Express. I think I did somewhere in this thing, but then, who knows? Anyway, that's where I work. I am what is know as a swing driver, which means that I have to know most of the routes in the station, so that I can fill in on them if someone calls in sick or something. Today, I went to pick up a bulk stop at a medical shipping company downtown. I drove our biggest regular truck, a 900, and filled it up. This is what it looked like (more or less):
It isn't very fun loading all those boxes into your truck, knowing that you are just going to have to unload the all over again in 15 minutes. The only thing that makes going there worthwhile is the free vending machines. I always get a couple of cans of orange juice or apple juice when I go there.
My boss was gone this last weekend. He took Friday and Monday off, so we went ahead and toilet papered his office while he was gone. The funny thing about that is that he already has an actual toilet in his office just sitting there, not hooked up of course. So we thought that the toilet paper added a much needed boost to the office decor. We also used the label maker and made a tag saying "Men's Room" and stuck that on his office door. But we put toilet paper everywhere. I taped it to the ceiling and ran it through the blinds and tacked it to his pegboard from one side of the room to the other. I thought I had done a pretty good job, but my boss said that he was disappointed because it only took him like 15 minutes to clean up. And most of that was spent scraping the mens room tag off his door. Lame. We only had one roll of TP though. Next time I'll know and bring some of my own...

Thursday, June 21, 2007

The Crib

Today I finally finished the baby crib. It is in Ammon's room right now and he is sleeping in it. He is not sleeping well, but I think that has more to do with the house being so muggy and hot than with the new sleeping arrangements. Rachel said that she really likes it except for the couple of blemishes where the wood didn't take the stain very well. I thought it turned out rather well, if I do say so myself:
P.S. ignore the clutter around the crib, it is there because we had to move stuff to fit it in. It takes up about 1/4 of the entire room.

I made it out of poplar and birch plywood, so hopefully it will last a while. It is a convert-a-crib, so if we don't have another baby by the time Ammon is ready to move out of it, it can be set up as a toddler bed as well as a full size bed. All in all, a good project, and it only took me 3 months of part time work every fourth or fifth day! So really about two weeks altogether. Now i have to get started on the changing table...

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Ammon is 4 months today!

Well today Ammon is exactly four months old. He is growing fast, faster than I think I want him to. It's kind of hard sometimes to see how fast everything is changing. Today he went in for his four month checkup and we found out that he is growing normally. His height is a little under average, but when you think about the family he comes from, that is kind of a given. I'm the tallest member of my immediate family at a staggering 5'10". But he is gaining weight nicely and his physiological development is progressing normally. He is vocalizing frequently now, and prefers to sit up instead of lay down. Or is it lie down? I don't remember right now. Rachel has decided it was ok for him to start on solid foods now, so earlier this evening she opened a bottle of applesauce (I think it was applesauce) and he got a few mouthfuls down. He wasn't quite sure about the whole solid food thing at first, but he seemed to be enjoying it at the end. I tried to give him some mashed up banana like 10 days ago and Rachel wasn't too happy about that. But today since the pediatrician said it was ok, now it's ok. Fine.
Rachel has been considering selling our current house for one that is closer to where she works and where Ammon is during the time when we are both at work. She says that she feels like she live in one place and sleeps in another. My parents have taken quite a liking to the idea and have been looking up all the listings for waterfront property in the area. I wish we had that kind of money to spend. It is one of my life's goals to eventually live on a small to medium size lake, where hopefully I will be able to build the exact house I want, kind of like my parents did. But to get started, my dad found one place that he is really excited about. It is a long skinny house on kind of a smallish pond/lake called Lake Killarney. We went to the house last night to check it out. My dad says that the place has lots of potential. If only we had the money to take full advantage of it. It really is a nice lot, and it has sort of a private lagoon. It is not classic waterfront in my mind, but it is waterfront. It looks like someone about 50 years ago took a backhoe and scooped out a bunch of land in back of their house and the lake just "happened" to fill in the empty space. So I don't think that it was originally a waterfront lot, but it is now. There are a few negatives though, apart from the fact that we don't have enough money to buy it. 1: its on septic. I hate dealing with septic and would want to connect to the sewer. 2: the house is straight out of the 60's. I mean architecture, style, feel, everything. 3: the lake is more giant pond than lake. It is shallow towards the shore, then deeper then in the middle it gets shallow again. Not much of a swimming lake, in my mind. I suppose you could do laps... If my parents wanted to give us the money to make up the difference I might consider living there. But it isn't somewhere I want to go out of my way to purchase. Maybe if I saw it during the daytime...