Fishy Bits

I don't eat fish.  But the rest of my family does.  So when lobster tails and mussels went on sale at our local market I snapped them up.  F has had mussels before but this was the first time he got to shuck (is that the right term?) them all on his own.  I've never seen anyone shuck and eat quite so fast, you'd think they were sugar dipped in chocolate and sprinkles the way his hands blurred between plate, mouth, and bowl.

QOTD

Driving over train tracks,
"Wow, that road was sort of wrinkly."

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Some Neighborly Chores

FFM takes advantage of our open plan neighborhood and bops in and out of our neighbors yards on the weekends (and some weekdays) to check to "see what they are up to."  We're working on some boundaries, like asking if it's OK to come in or if they are too busy to visit.  He's picking it up pretty quickly and so are the neighbors.  We're super lucky to have super duper neighbors who like kids.

Like Mr. Pat.  Mr. Pat isn't the normal mower-of-the-lawn at his house and wasn't to happy to be stuck with the chore. So when FFM came to visit he decided that some help would be great.

Pushing a push mower is HARD work, even for a grown up!  It must take two...

They finally got it done and when the string trimmer came out Travis decided it was time for FFM to come back home.  Not sure he's quite ready for giant power tools yet.

Last Day of School 2011

Oh my, lots of change this year!  First day vs. last day of school.

QOTD

Lots of quotes lately.
With the hope of warm weather we've had more open shoes which has led to learning about stubbed toes.  This morning I heard...

"OUCH!  I stubbed my elbow!"

QOTD

This one isn't exactly funny, but it's EXACTLY what you want to hear when your child wakes up at 7:40am (yes, you read that right) the morning after you get home from a concert at 12:35am.

"Daddy, I'm still sleepy.  Can you tuck me in and give me a snuggle please?"

(Daddy did not, they got up very quietly and I went back to sleep until 8:30.  Bliss.)

QOTD

There's been a lot of birthday chatter around these parts lately.  And it's still SIX WEEKS away.

Tonight-
"Mommy, I'm starting to get very old."

Leveled

It's still home improvement season around here, lots of projects in the pipe!

When we bought our house one of the things that cropped up on our inspection was a seriously out of kilter garage floor.  Anytime our cars were wet we'd end up with lakes at the wrong end of the garage since the floor tilted toward the house instead of toward the driveway.

We've been saving up to get it fixed, thinking that 2 of the 4 slabs in the garage would need to be replaced.  It turned out that even though two slabs were cracked they did not need to be replaced.  Because of that the bids came in much lower than we expected, whoo hoo!  That NEVER happens with home repairs!

Giant cracked, tilted slab #1, AKA Lake Superior most of the winter.

If you've got sharp eyes you'll be able to make out a thin line in the foundation on L side of photo under the wood boards, that's where the slab should be.

Dramatic before and after of the other corner.

 The slab should be sitting right about where the drywall stops, about 8" from where it is now.  That spot in the middle where all the slabs meet was a mess, we'd always stub our toe on the slab on the right (where the tiller is parked in the photo) which was the only slab that was at the level it was supposed to be.

TA DA!  Level floor (tilting slightly toward the garage door as it should).

Previous owners had also misrouted a downspout so we had a washout under some sidewalk and our front stoop, also fixed up during this project.  Labor on our part?  Paying the bill and cleaning out the garage.  Much easier than laying sod.

Our Weekend as a Wannabe DIY Cable Show

You know you've watched one.  Some family/couple/person gets their room/house/yard redone in some totally unbelievable amount of time without breaking a sweat.  Cameras pan over dreadful spaces and then half a hour later the great reveal shows whooooooooosh, gasp, AMAZING!

OK.  So we didn't have an entire cable TV show crew to help us.  And there was no cheerful host cracking little jokes along the way.  But we did have an overly helpful preschooler who didn't understand why he wasn't allowed to run the heavy machinery.

Fade in:
Moores Redo the Entire Front Lawn.

Old Lawn.  Dead, dying, fungus and mite ridden. (I didn't take a very good before shot)

 Laying out new shrubs and perennials in future bed location.  More dead, fungus ridden grass.

Travis rented a sod cutter to cut out the lawn.  He also cut out about 1/3 of the backyard where the bunnies ate it.

Yucky lawn OUT!  Compost going IN.  You can see all the rolls of sod stacked up in the garage.

 Here's the flash forward part.  We got so busy I didn't take any more pictures until we were pretty much all done.  The project took all of Saturday (T got up at 6, F and I at 6:30) and half of Mother's Day.  By Sunday night I literally collapsed.  Monday evening I finished up the rock and tried unsuccessfully to tweak the sprinklers, it was just too windy here to do a good job.

We now have a perennial bed and shrubs where the worst grass was.

Our neighbors are all pretty happy to not have to look at our eyesore front yard anymore, but were quick to reassure us it had been that way for many, many years.  Travis and I were feeling a bit like lawn care failures but I guess last summer the moisture from the winter before made us look good.  Here's hoping the shrinking patch of grass does better this summer!

A Little Morning Music

Just a little something to make you smile this morning.

Repaired Videos and Cousin Labor

First, the videos on the blog were SUPER sized, so if you felt like they were cut off on the sides, they were. It wasn't bad filming, just bad uploading. They are fixed now and you can actually see the whole scene now.

Second, suddenly it's Monday. We had weekend guests on Saturday and Sunday, cousins Ryan and Skylar came to stay while their parents went to Sonoma for a long (and overdue) getaway weekend. Saturday we watched Skylar dash around and win a great soccer game then celebrated her 10th birthday a week early.

On Sunday we put the kids to work. A bit to our surprise they were really excited to work. The treetop house (aka playhouse) in the backyard needed to be moved and be re-leveled.  To do that we needed to take most of it apart so it would be light enough for us to move. Travis needed some new wrenches so we all headed off to the hardware store where Skylar was super interested in the tool aisle. Hmmm, maybe we should have gotten her some tools instead of books for her birthday?!

Everyone donned gloves and we had the house taken apart in no time. After lunch Travis did some of the solo work while we had a little rest, then he and I shifted the house, and our hearty crew jumped right back in. What great helpers they were! All three kids got really good with wrenches and the two big kids even got turns with the drill.  Ryan and Skylar, you guys can come help out at our house anytime :)