Merry Christmas Eve!

Joel likes our tree.  I think it's because it has such a cool light up star on top.  Merry Christmas!

Mile Stone 2 Complete!

I was off of work all week last week and I managed to get the two shelves installed on the miter saw stand to be almost flush with the miter saw deck.  It's certainly to the point where when the saw finishes a cut, the board will only fall 1/16th of an inch, instead of all the way to the ground.

Also note that I mounted the miter saw almost all the way back on the frame, so that it can pretty easily support a 24" wide piece of plywood.  The saw is able to cut 16", then I can flip the board over and complete the cut.

Where have I Been?

It has been too long since I have posted.  I started a couple of exciting new endeavors this fall and there goes my free time.  After my year off I went back to working my couple hours a week as a speech therapist and became a Jamberry Nails Indpendent Consultant.  In case you have never heard of them Jamberry Nail wraps are vinyl nail wraps that are applied to your nails with heat and pressure and last for up to 2 weeks on nails and 4 on toenails without chipping or fading.  I love that they last sooo long, don't smell, and I can stop mid application because lets face it as a mommy of little people I am more often than not interrupted even if those 2 little cuties are supposed to be upstairs napping.  So if you haven't heard of Jamberry you should really check them out.  http://rbjork.jamberrynails.net/

Okay, now besides working what else have we been up to during my blog hiatus.  Lets see...

We celebrated Rachel's birthday super-girl style

Vacationed in Disneyland and San Diego

Spent the Day in Apple Hill

Yup, that about sums it up.

1 Weekend!

I worked hard all weekend and managed, with my dad's help, to get the frame of my new miter saw stand cut out and put together.  Those are four inch wheels I've there so it rolls around my garage super easy right now.  We will see how it goes when I put some more weight in there.

The next stage is going to be creating the top to be flush with the deck of my miter saw, complete with a fence.  And the third stage is going to be making drawers for it to keep tools and other garage type things.

The Super-Girl Princess is almost 4!

Can you believe it?!  Rachel is going to be four in a little over a week.  I can't.  Four sounds so old, and if you ask her she just might tell you she is old enough to babysit Joel.  So I guess four is pretty mature.

Rachel has been into being a Super-girl princess complete with a super power.  "Rachel Super-Girl Princess with the power to potty-train.  I have no idea why that is her super power, but I hope it sticks around for a couple years.  Then she can be in charge of potty training Joel.  In fact if you want she can potty train the little people in your life too for a small fee.

She has a very creative imagination, so pretend play with her is a blast.  You never know what will happen, who you will get to be, or what song she will come up with.  Rachel loves to learn, especially things in the area of science.  She is constantly exploring life around her and asking why and how.  I love teaching her and learning with her.

Rachel is a blessing to our family.  She and I have grown a lot together in our parent/child adventure.  Because she is always thinking and exploring, she keeps me on my toes.  I never know what she will come up with next.  When I look back over my four years with her I am a much calmer, more forgiving, more playful, slower to anger mommy.  I take more time to enjoy her.  I don't just love her I genuinely like her!

Trip to the Farm

 Last week we took a field trip with my mom's group to Davis Ranch.  We left Joel home and had a girls day.  This was our third visit to the farm.  It is always a blast to ride the tractor out to the fields and pick fresh produce.  After picking in the fields we visited the farm stand and got a few more yummy things.  We came home with tomatoes, bell peppers, zucchinis, cantaloupe, watermelon, corn, green beans, and strawberries.

In other news, Joel is now an expert walker, is getting a 5th tooth, and has added a few more words to his ever growing vocabulary including "all done" and "cat."

Rachel is as spunky as ever.  She would like a pet and continues to ask for one.  I told her we would discuss it when she is older, so the other day she came to me and said, "I would like to discuss me getting a pet."  We discussed it and the end result was she is not quite old enough for that responsibility but someday she will be.  She has now added that to the ever growing list of things she can do when she is older like go to Kansas by herself on a plane, watch certain movies, and be a hairdresser.

Camping

At the end of June we headed up to Sly Park with our church group for a weekend of fun.  Brian never ceases to amaze me with his real life tetris skills.  The amount of stuff he can fit into our car and tent is quite impressive.  We made it another year without a car top carrier or larger vehicle.  Brian even managed to bring up the wind surfer board which was a hit with more than just our kiddos.  Even Joel got a ride around the lake on it. 
  

 

The dirt was dirty, the marshmallows were tasty,  the lake was refreshing, and the rocks were fun to climb on.  A good time was had by all.

Monster Birthday

  Our Little Monster turned one a couple of weeks ago.  We celebrated with the grandparents and some monster themed fun.

I Needed to Saw Something

Brian Here,

Yesterday on my stay-cation we stayed home to give us all a break from all of our activities.  So in the morning I took Rachel on a bike ride.  That was fun.  Then after lunch Rachel, Joel, and I all took naps while Rebekah went to church to help prep for VBS. Then after Rebekah got home she wanted to bake some things while the kids were still asleep. That gave me 2 hours to do anything I wanted! WOW!  I started labeling pictures on my computer for a little while, but it wasn't quite right.

As it turned out, I just needed to saw something! 

Rebekah and I have a few small white boards that are about 8 inches by 14 inches and we put them on the refrigerator. They are fairly cheaply made and one of them had been dropped several times.  So much so that the plastic frame was broken pretty bad.  So I decided to make a new wooden frame for it. This would allow me to saw something!

I have a 12" X 1" X 6' piece of redwood that I had lying around, left over from the planter box I made for Rebekah at the last house. I ran it through as a test piece for grooves when I made Rebekah's new planter (which does have really nice grooves).  So ripped an inch of it down the long way, and then ripped it down to 3/4 inch on the other side. That gave me two smooth sides. Then I turned it on a smooth size and ran it through both ways to cut off the rough parts.  After that I ran it through with the blade up only 1/4 inch high to create grooves for the white board to fit in.

After I had a 6' long piece all milled to the proper dimensions with my table saw, I got out my miter saw and cut the 45 degree angles. The trick here, was that I had to use a stop on the miter saw so that the pieces could be exactly the same length.  This was a little tricky, but I was able to do it.  After I got all the pieces cut out I tried to put them on the white board, and they didn't quite line up right. Oh no!  But, the trick was to raise my table saw blade a 16th inch and run the boards through again to make the grooves just a little deeper. That worked!

Then it was dinner time.

After dinner, Rachel came out and put glue on the boards for me, and I clamped it.  That took about 15 minutes. Since I used so few tools for the entire project, it only took about 15 minutes to clean it all up. Woo Hoo!

And here is the picture of it!  Recap: 2.5 hours, 0 trips to Lowe's, $0 extra spent, and the project was completely finished in a day.

Fun to be (almost) One Photos

Last weekend we took Joel's 1 year old photos.  We went to Capital Park because we got such nice backgrounds for Rachel's 1 year photos, but with the drought the flowers were few and far between.  Plus Joel got tired and cranky.  The best pictures we got that morning were of Rachel.  We were able to get some nice ones of Joel later in our front yard.  Also note that this year no one is dressed is white or black for the photo shoot.  It only took 3 years of Brian mentioning how difficult it is to take pictures with those colors for me to get the message.

May Days

Wondering what we have been up to?  Well look no further.  Actually not much other than enjoying our kids and working on projects around the house.  Here are some pictures from the past month.

 Rachel and Joel love each other.  One of my prayers for them as siblings has been that they would not just love each other, but like each other and genuinely enjoy each other's company.  I absolutely love how Joel squeals with delight when we go wake Rachel up from her nap, and how she asks about him every morning.  As Joel has developed more personality it has been fun to watch their play evolve.  He wants to be with Rachel and do what she is doing and vice versa.  They seek each other out.  Yes, they don't always get along, but the majority of the time they do play well together.  My prayer is that their relationship continues to grow and that they are friends.  Other friends may come and go, but they will have each other for a lifetime.

 Joel discovered he could climb on the step stool the other day and reach all of Rachel's notes.  Once he ran out of notes within reach he got even braver and climbed onto the table.

We have three baby pigeons living above our bedroom window for the next month.  They are cute in a messy, noisy sort of way.  In a couple of weeks they should be flying, and then we will be taking steps to discourage them from coming back to make more baby pigeons. They fit in nicely with our lesson about how God made birds this past week.

This week Rachel decided we needed to have "fancy day," and then "fabulous day."  These pictures were taken on "fabulous day."  I think she nailed fabulous.

One of our projects was to make Rachel as area to dig in.  I had removed the rocks and fabric, but the dirt was really hard and impossible to dig in.  Brian discovered there was a thin layer of concrete under the top layer of dirt and dug it out for us.  Today the three of them enjoyed some time in the dirt.  We have some more fun plans for that play area so stay tuned in the coming months or year (you know how house projects go).

Creatively Conquering His Lion Walker

 Joel, the baby engineer, is a problem solver.  You can see the wheels turning in his little head when he encounters a puzzle, problem, or something new.

More Macro

Brian here,

With all the projects going on this weekend I still managed to pull out the camera and take some pictures.  We have a fairly large cherry tree in our new back yard and there were bees all over it this weekend because it's blooming.  I took 40 shots, and only a couple really turned out ok.  Bees when they are moving are really hard to get good shots.

It's a bee!

 This one is actually quite sharp and could probably be blown up to 8 X 10 and still look good.

Here it is again with a tighter crop.

Ok, I know you all want to see Joel. Here he is.

New Macro Lens

Brian here,

Nikon had a good rebate on a macro lens and then Google gave an extra 6% off for using Google Wallet so I decided to take the plunge and buy the Nikon 105mm macro lens that I've been wanting.  A year or two ago I bought some macro rings that turn my current lenses into macro lenses. The problem with them is that the lens will only focus on something that is 1-6 inches away. My new lens lets me achieve the really close up shots by being 8 inches away, and I can be further than that and still be able to focus. This is a big bonus because I can just step back to get more in my shots now if I want.

Enjoy the pictures:

This is Joel from 5 feet away. This lens also makes a good portrait lens.

This is Rachel's geode

This is one of my warhammer models. He stands about an inch and a half tall.

This is Rachel's lady bug larva. I set up the tripod and turned on live view. I would focus, and she would press the button to take the picture.

This is one of our roses from our front yard. It isn't the best looking rose, but it still makes a nice picture.

This is another rose from our yard. I am about 2 feet back from this bud which is something I couldn't do before.  Because it's a telephoto lens, it's really easy to get the blurred background. 

Sledding and Snowmen

Here we are in April and we made it up to Tahoe for some snow play.  We headed up early this morning for Donner Summit, our favorite sno park.  This was Rachel's third time sledding at Donner Summit and the first time she really enjoyed herself.  She was able to walk in the snow and when she fell down or rolled off the sled she would laugh instead of bursting into tears.  She absolutely loved sledding and was brave enough to go down the hill all by herself.  My independent girl even tried to walk up the hill all by herself and was so proud of herself when she made it part way up without holding our hand.  She has grown up so much since last year.  It was fun to watch her experience and enjoy snow.

She and I made a tiny snowman in the morning, but he got smooshed by a sled.  Later in the afternoon, she and Brian  made a big snowman.  The bottom was a snow covered rock which provided an excellent base.  Their snowman was so "fabulous" (Rachel's very accurate description) that Brian took a trip to the car to get the camera so we could take a picture.

 

Many Milestones

 

 Happy St Patrick's Day!

 Both kids have been learning new skills lately, so we thought it was time to share.  Rachel has been learning to roller skate.  Brian is a great teacher.  He is really good at breaking things down and explaining them.  I may be able to teach academics, but I am glad Brian is around to teach Rachel other skills like roller skating.  We make a pretty good team.
 

Joel will be 9 months tomorrow and has been working on pulling up.  A whole new world of things to get into are now within his reach.  He is also getting to be quite the speedy crawler.  Thanks to his army crawl he is currently sporting two lovely rug burned arms, but it doesn't phase him. 

Mobile Baby and Other Fun

I am posting these videos mostly for the grandparents because I realize that watching more than about 30 seconds of other people's babies doing baby things is not all that exciting.  So without further ado here are multiple videos of my adorable children.

Snacking (I must have been in a very generous and relaxed mood to allow the kiddos to eat on the carpet.)

 Rolling Around - Joel's favorite way to get from point A to point B

And finally....Joel is just learning to crawl

Rainy Day Fun

I has been raining the last couple of days, and we are so excited and grateful for the rain.  There has been lots of conversations with Rachel about leaving her mittens out so she can be ready for Tahoe and the snow (she has been asking to go sledding for the last month) and how the plants need the water to grow but not too much or they might drown.

We have mostly been staying inside these last couple days.  Rachel has been into pretending to go camping lately, so I thought it would be fun to bring out the play doghouse.  We all crowded in Rachel's "tent" to go camping.  She kept us safe from bears which all turned out to be nice, so we fed them.  Joel even got to play the role of "Joel Bear" one day, but he was not such a nice bear.  He had to stay out of the tent until he cried to be picked up.

This afternoon Rachel begged to go outside and play in the rain, so I let her go outside of a little while.  Really so what if she gets a little wet.  She will dry and can always change her clothes if they get soaked.  Rachel had quite the ensemble on to brave the cold and wet: snow boots, snow jacket, dress, and capris.  She looked so cute and happy I had to take a picture.  Joel and I stayed inside and watched the fun from the window.