Macgyver + Mythbusters = (genetically predisposed) mayhem

So the kids' new favorite show is Macgyver. We have season 1 and they're up to disk 5. I'm not terribly surprised, having raised them thus far on a steady diet of Mythbusters. (as well as having a dad who was planning on growing up to be Angus Macgyver.)

Anyhow.

The cherry tree is in bloom. (cherry tree?!! What's up with that? Stick with me here.) I'm out fixing the irrigation (still), and the 5 year old wanders by with a tupperware dish.

Dad: "Watcha doin?"

5yo: "I'm going to pick cherries, dad."

Ahh, I think. What an idyllic boyhood activity. Wholesome. Harmless.

(can't you just *see* the butterflys fluttering by?)

5yo: "We're going to make cherry bombs."

[record scratch]

Dad: "Oh? Umm...you know that cherry bombs aren't made with cherries. Cherries don't explode, you see."

5yo: [completely serious] "They do if you put black powder in them."

THAT'S my boy!!**


**No, I don't didn't have any black powder in the house. And no, I would never, ever think of letting a 5 year old pack powder into cherries for the express purpose of blowing them to kingdom come. That's my job.

Maggie Extravaganza

How do you sum up the past month?

Well, here is a whole load of pictures to share our sweet bundle!

Here she is so tiny

The bunny's head is about the same size!

This is warm-ups for karate practice in her Little Lions diaper.

Pull your arm back....

Then lift it high.....



Then pop out your other arm to take them by surprise!

I did not sign up to be a diaper model - get this ballerina diaper off of me!

She is so skinny - the diaper is so BIG!

Here they are baby is growing bigger next to her bunny.

wiggle!

Here we are showing off our cheeks and another cute diaper.

Here is part of our diaper stash, they are so cute!!!

Still not happy about being a model

hmmm, maybe today it is okay to be happy with showing off the diapers!

Can you see she is getting rounder cheeks?

Nana bought the matching headband and shoes - aren't I a pretty girl?

and Auntie Becky scored the Boppy pillow for $.25 at a garage sale

Isn't she gorgeous?!?

The most fabulous bath towel made by Leslie N.

her machine embroiders gorgeous flowers!

Looking so pretty!

Oooooopppppssss, how did this happen, it was right side up before importing?!?! Turn your screen upside down.

Cherries diaper, getting ready for a new day.

Big sister swimming.

People say that I look just like her.

This is my Joshua, he loves me so much!

This is my biggest brother and he watches over me and will always protect me!

Here I am in my Beeeyootiful handmade dress from Miss Birgit.

Such a sweetie

So peaceful.

I took her to the homeschool convention, two long days and she did great!
I kept her in the wrap most of the time and she was content.

Sisters in matching purple. Sister is gratified that her knuckle will work in a pinch.

Doing daddy bonding with the laptop

Uncle Jon, learning how to be a daddy. My cousin is the bump on Auntie Becky, behind Jon.

Here I am all beautiful in another dress, from the Jones family.

See how her face is growing almost as big as her bunny's? Those nursing cheeks are getting pudgy - and I am so proud!!! We have worked hours and hours to develop them :+)

She is such a sweetie! And such a great baby.

She slept for 7 1/2 hours last night!

What an amazing girl, we are so blessed.

Backhoe Wars IV, The Irrigation Pipe Strikes Back

We got our irrigation back in. Resettled the concrete tubes. Covered 'em up with dirt.

And last tuesday, we let 'er rip.

The water gushed through the box. It flowed through the diversion. It ran pell-mell towards our lawn. And then it...disappeared.

Again.

I dug up the pipes (again) and (surprise, surprise) it was flowing out a seam (again) into an unknown destination on the *OTHER* side of the irrigation pipe.

That's right folks...we've been trying to fill not one, but *TWO* underground caverns! (bomb shelters, septic tanks, whatever..)

Stay tuned true-believers, as the backhoe's back and I'm gonna get in trouble...

Grandpa's shop

I was going to write something eloquent about my grandpa Don for father's day.

But this captures it pretty well. Enjoy.

(the article is behind the "subscribe now!" banner. And clicking on the loaded article should also zoom it in to readable size.)

Look Inside >>  Volume 08

http://www.make-digital.com/make/vol08/?pg=39&pm=1&u1=friend

Spelunk Part IV: Unveiling

(read part1, part2, and part3)

"I can do that with a shovel..."

Thanks to Janey's dad, sanity prevailed, and we had a nice man (thanks Gary!) come over and dig us out.



After a grueling 15 minutes of work (snapping pictures and sipping coffee is _hard_!) we struck paydirt. Or at least concrete.



(notice Aaron's insightful and witty commentary: "oh, there's some concrete!" "Hey, I'll bet that's the cap." and the ever profound: "Hey! We found something!")

The top was pulled up and...oh...my...well THERE'S your problem! Instead of flooding our yard with irrigation water, we were attempting to fill a secret underground cistern.



Alas, no ancient buried Mayan treasure. On the upside, we didn't unleash a buried horde of zombies or inadvertently open a portal to the netherworld. Gotta take the good with the bad.

Naturally, I had to go down and investigate. Fortunately my wife was nowhere near to say "You're going to do WHAT?!!"

Hey look ma, I'm standing in a cesspit! Yeah, that's right. I'm standing in a...oh. Eww.



In the end we dumped some special sealing clay pellets into the bottom, dumped all the dirt back in, and topped it off with more from the field.

My daughter (who's been avidly reading Nancy Drew) finally got her mystery.

Coming soon to a bookstore near you:

• Nancy Drew and the Mysterious Vanishing Irrigation Water
• Nancy Drew and the Irrigation Pipe Mystery
• Nancy Drew and the Cesspit of DOOM

Spelunk..part III

In the end I resigned myself to digging up a section of the pipe.

Fortunately, by now we'd isolated the problem to somewhere between the pipe I'd sliced the top off of, and the end.

With the help of a trusty crew, we got to work.


In short order, a mere 3' from the outlet end of the pipe, we struck gold. Or air. Whichever. A mysterious hole beckoned...



We pulled out the end pipe and discovered it had been sitting "crooked"...and the bottom had a nice gap in it. And there was a veritable cavern underneath.



Further excavation revealed that the roughly square yard "antechamber" was connected o something bigger.

Much bigger.

Something so deep, that when I put this pipe down it, the pipe sank to the blue rag...



Dude. That's deeeeeep.


Next time: Spelunk IV: The Unveiling

Weighing In

Well, our 'little' Miss Maggie is now a hefty 9 pounds 4.5 ounces!

I was flabbergasted when I read the numbers. I was expecting her to be approaching 8 pounds, not at all expecting her to bypass 9 pounds.

It is so interesting that after registering this new number/statistic that now she 'looks' so much bigger than before when I thought she was so small. Isn't it interesting how relative size is?

New pictures will be coming soon!

Free ICE CREAM

Well, I just visited this site and had to share with you so that you too can enter for free ice cream each month for a year. Contests are so fun and ice cream is so yummy for the summer!

So go check out this link for some free Blue Bunny ice cream: From Dates to Diapers

Spelunk..part II

In an attempt to determine where the heck the water went, I decided to do what any red blooded american geek would do.

Send in a remote camera.

Specifically, wrap a wireless camera in a ziploc bag, add a flashlight and a bit of string, tape the whole mess on top of some styrofoam, and "float it down the river" to see what was going on.

Naturally, the thing leaked. So we got nice, blurry pictures of..water!

The next day, I disassembled the Vexplorer robot. The design mutated and evolved into the "Ultimate robotic irrigation tube following thingie"




Naturally, it didn't work. So in the end, we just went "old skool" and taped a mini (cheap) camcorder to the end of a stick and fed it through.




Not that we learned much more, mind you. But it was still a hoot.

And if you're really curious...

Dark...dank...dirty from Aaron Backer on Vimeo.

It's muddy! It's slimy! It's...the inside of our irrigation pipe!

On to part III - discovery!

Spelunk..part I

It all started so innocently enough. We wanted to water our back yard with the flood irrigation that comes past the house. After talking to our neighbors, we established that we had the water on tuesdays, and one neighbor had seen it used in years past.

"We're going to FLOOD our back yard!" I told the kids. They were, quite understandably, psyched. Went to bed with visions of Noah sailing across the back lawn, no doubt.

Tuesday morning came and we opened the floodgates.

Waited.

Watched as the water happily skittered down the access. Through the second diversion box. And then through an underground elbow, through a 20' straight stretch and out to .... a muddy trickle out the end. Hmm...must need a little time.

After 10 hours of irrigation, Noah was nowhere in sight. The trickle wasn't any larger. And we all wondered...the water is still merrily flowing at the box...where could it *possibly* be going?!!

The Irrigation Saga Begins

part II - the expedition

Cloth Diapers

Go check out Simple Mom she has a free diaper give away. And she has a great series to get you informed on cloth diapers.

She has done a very thorough job on diaper 101 education, it is such a great resource!

Of rope swings, steel cables, and jeeps

Rope swings...more complicated than you'd think from Aaron Backer on Vimeo.

one improvised climbing harness, 14' of trucker's chain, two steel cables, one large tree, and a jeep.

what could possibly go wrong?

(fortunately enough for me...not much)

Also, a lesson on why giving the kids the camera to film your (possible) americas funniest debut isn't the smartest idea...