The Egg Drop Container

David's class had a little Easter Exercise on April 1st. We had to build a container which would hold a raw egg. This container would be dropped from the roof of the school and the point was for the egg to stay in one piece after it was dropped.

Andrew was very excited about this project. Perhaps moreso than David was. After some careful research and digging through the supplies in our garage, they decided to use this wipes box.


We had some spare styrofoam type stuff that he layered in the box, and then carved out a little egg shaped niche. They tested it to make sure the egg would survive. Once they were sure it would, David painted the box red. And dictated to Andrew what else the box should say.

"Drop with care" was my idea.

As was drawing on the egg to make him look like a crash test dummy.

The other night I walked upstairs to check on the kids. Elisabeth and David have developed a love for teddy bears lately (even carrying them around with them. They've never done that before.) This particular night, Elisabeth was asleep on my bear. Somewhere, my mum has a picture of me and Rob in our bed in Moosecreek with our bears when we first got them. I'll have to track it down and post it with this. But I love seeing the bears enjoying a second generation revival...

Happy Birthday Andrew!

(I bought two random boxes of smarties to decorate Andrew's cake. Those colours you see on the cake? That's ALL that was in the boxes. Are smarties girl candy? Where have all the boy colours gone. Where's green and blue? Or even brown??)

Veggie Explosion. Or Garden Renovation

I decided that my little veggie garden from last year wasn't quite to cut it for this summer. So I insisted that we build a little garden box to expand my territory. Only of course, I can never do things the easy way. So we started by looking at the lumber we had lying around. Then we decided to build a 12 by 6 box. But since we were putting our box on the lawn and we didn't to have buy dirt and have it brought in, we dug up the turf.

But then, again, rather than throwing away our turf, we decided that this hill could use it. See...it pretty much only grows moss.


So I dug up the hill and tried to level it so that we could piece in the grass we were bringing from the other side of the yard.

Andrew and I took turns digging up that section and bringing over the grass. It took a LOT longer than I anticipated.

And of course, after we got the dirt all dug up it rained for about a week. So the next pictures won't show up for a while.

BUT, here's a picture of Ellie. She's been begging me to colour her hair red lately. We'll spend ages perusing the hair dye aisles. So I finally gave in and used some coloured hair gel to give her red 80s (90s?) hair. Lovely.

The Day Daddy Came Back...

So back in March, when I was still blogging, Andrew went away to a conference in Washington State. Heh, maybe that's why I had so much time for blogging? Anyway, the kids missed him a lot. We're talking random weeping sessions all week long. So you really had to expect this would be their reaction when Daddy walked in the door on Thursday afternoon, right?

But then later that evening, the kids wanted me to do some makeup on them. I decided not to go for traditional girlie makeup and make them some masks instead. They rock their looks, doncha think?

Springtime in Chilliwack

I've raved about how wonderful Darren and Natasha's farm is lots on here. But I don't think I've ever mentioned that their wonderfully long driveway is lined with cherry trees. I'm eagerly anticipating those trees blooming so that I can get more pictures there. Well, on Saturday they were close. The buds were showing. And yesterday was the last guaranteed sunny day for quite a long time (according to the weather network, anyway!) so we decided to go see if those trees were ready for their photoshoot yet.

Of course they weren't.

So we stayed and played instead.

Riley nipped over to grandmother's house and brought all the kids icey snacks. Natasha and I sat on the porch and admired spring and our children.

These trees are going to be gorgeous. I just hope the weather cooperates so I can capture them on film!!

There's a monkey in the tree!

Playing Popcorn, their new favorite game!



And playing in the sandbox. I think I'm going to have to consider enlarging our sandbox. The kids love playing in there so much. Just...how do I keep the cats out...

Riley with her newest addition to the farm - a guinea pig named Darwin.

And David on Mayah's bike.

And when we got home, we saw that almost all of our seeds have already sprouted! Wowee! I don't even have plastic over them. Today the corn is already almost 2 inches tall so I can tell I'm going to have to get going on organizing my gardens!!

3003: More of Spring

I had planned on doing some sort of special post to commemorate passing the 3000 mark on this blog. Yes, that's right. This is my 3,003rd post! Not bad for 5.5 years of blogging! Anyway, as you can see, the 3000 mark is passed so I'll just acknowledge the milestone and move on!

Here are some more shots from our backyard. Me and Dad were puttering around in the yard again and the kids brought their chalk downstairs to play (just to prove me wrong in that other post!)


Jade came over too, and she was looking so beautiful I just had to snap a couple of pictures of her.



David meanwhile, spent the time drawing secret pictures for Jade. I think this is the two of them.

march bonfire

We have been itching to get out to the Abelman homestead again, especially since Tash reminded me that her driveway is lined with cherry trees. Luckily Saturday was gorgeous and dad as game for a fire. Unfortunately, the trees weren't in bloom yet. Oh well.

Here's tink looking solemn and cute!

We got there and everyone divided up to play! David and Andrew played catch for a while.

Elisabeth and Seth headed straight for the trampoline. Incredibly cute - there were beetles all over the tramp and Tink was scared of them. So they wandered around on their hands and knees finding them all, then Seth would carefully pick them up and throw them off the trampoline. Ahhhhhhh what a hero!

Riley joined them for a while.

Me and my honey xo

Darren trying to fix the iPod. No luck.

David found this cool pair of goggles. Doesn't he look like Bono?!

This is Riley and her pet rat. After all my experiences with mice - none of them pleasant - I have to say the rat gave me the heebie jeebies. UGH!

Then Todd and Charlise arrived and Charlise joined in the fun. She is such a little motherly soul.


Elisabeth and Mayah enjoyed picking buds off the trees.

Then the kids all fed them to Grandpa Brad.

Which amused the rest of us no end!


Elisabeth got a bit carried away with the marshmallows!








The end.

Sowing, chopping and other gardening misadventures!

I have been saving egg containers all winter! Can you guess what for?

Yup, that's right. It has something to do with gardening. Incidentally, while my dad was here we weeded and turned over my garden to prepare it for this year's planting (by we I mostly mean DAD!)

Dad moved the strawberries up one level so they'd have their own section. This is where the corn was last year.


Oh! And here are my egg cartons. I filled them all with sand and started my seeds in them. So far, I have corn, pumpkins, watermelon, butternut squash, spagetti squash, radishes, beets, and carrots started. The lettuce I'll do straight into containers in a few weeks and there are a few veggies I'll start from plants. My herbs wintered okay so they should carry over as is. The rhubarb unfortunately got completely overwhelmed by squash plants last year and didn't survive, but I might grab another plant later this year.

After we'd started our seeds, Elisabeth and I joined dad where he was working on our tumble down fence. I pulled nails out of boards while Elisabeth held the pot of broken nails.


And measured things...


This next picture cracks me up. Lumberjack meets ANTM...