Newport Beach

Took the kids to Newport Beach while in CA. I'm not much of a beach girl but I gotta say it was SO nice. The day before it had been snowing in Tehachapi and we came to 80+ weather. The weather in Utah while we were gone was snowy, rainy, and just miserable. My neighbors were not interested in hearing about how nice it was. Why can't some people just be glad for you? I'm always glad for people when they get the chance to do something fun.

Very nice not to have any kids afraid of the water this time around. John was in heaven in his giant sandbox and was so bold in the water I was nervous and kept having to tell him not to go out so far. The water was cold as usual, but not frigid.
We ate at the Crab Cooker where we were not impressed with the price for the servings and the Rockin' Lobster, which was fantastic. We'll be going back there as soon as we can. My kids just love seafood. Such smart children. Though sometimes I wish they didn't and there would be more for me:)

Taking down the 15 yr. old deck

So a recent RM in our ward did our aeration this year and while he was here I mentioned we were planning to do some things in the backyard, including taking down the deck. He was eager to say he would do it and Peter had already made it clear he wanted to hire it out. I asked him to call me later with a bid.
He called back with a ridiculously low bid.
"Mark," I said, "let me tell you a secret to owning your own business. You actually have to charge people for your work."
I told him he was probably underestimating how much work this was going to be and he agreed. So I made him a more realistic offer and he took it down and hauled it away in truckloads within the week.
Ahhh...the energy of the young.

These posts were cemented feet into the ground. He brought over his ATV to pull them but when that didn't work he just manhandled them out. The deck must have been original to the house because when he removed it there was no siding where it had been attached to the house. Weird.

I can't believe how much bigger the backyard looks. It was a huge deck!
Of course it began raining as soon as he was finished and our dog made a holy mess in the house while the kids and I were in California. Now there is a sheer drop out the backdoor. Peter and I have agreed it is where we will lead the persistent salesmen that come to our door all summer.
"Just step through this door..."

When Mark asked me what our plan was now I told him we hadn't gotten that far. We just knew we were just ready for that deck to go and want something level with the ground for privacy.
He says he'd do work on that and I told him he'd probably be getting a call.

Mouse Trap Car

Over here at the Mitchell household we have had no internet for almost 3 weeks. I almost lost it on several occasions and was reduced to using it at the library to get the confirmation information for our hotel in Aneheim. So now that I'm FINALLY back online I'm doing some make-up blogging, because lots of stuff has been going on!

Peter has been gone until yesterday and I finally hit the wall last week with being a single mom so it was good timing. Of the multitude of inconvenient things that happened while he was gone the worst was the building of a mouse trap car. Never heard of one? Me neither until Nathaniel was required to build one for science. It is a big thing here at Springville Jr High and quite the competition. Nathaniel gave me absolutely NO indication of how major this thing was going to be and you basically fail the class if you don't build one. It has to go 10 feet to get full credit--10 points per foot. (The record is around 150 ft.)
Why is it that your kids are assigned things the teacher knows the parents are going to end up doing? Isn't that like parent homework?
I won't even start on that one.
Of course all the other kids have their DADS to help with this project. And trust me, this was way beyond building something like a pinewood derby car. You could leave that as a block of wood and it least it would still go. You can't use a kit in the mousetrap car project--it is against the rules. So we are trying to build a vehicle powered by a mousetrap using engineering I was not really grasping.
Make car. Disassemble a mousetrap and remove excess parts. Attach mousetrap to car. Attach lever to mousetrap spring. String tied to lever and wound around axle is powered by the spring in the mousetrap, which spins the axle and turns the wheels.
Huh??

Here is Nathaniel's design:

For me I cannot move onto step 4 until I've done step 3 and so on because I can't seem to see beyond the step I'm on, which, as Nathaniel can tell you, created some problems.
"Uhhh...Mom, I told you this was going to happen but you weren't listening."

Here was the first go-around. What a disaster.

We made this on Monday and it was due on Wednesday so we had to completely start over on Tuesday. Here I am using the circular saw in our garage to cut the wood (my contractor neighbor had to come over to show me how to take the safety off.) Sanding, cutting, drilling, gluing.
It was ridiculous.

Monday night I was a nervous wreck. I had a ton of stuff going on and this thing was not only sucking up all my time but I was unsure of what the heck we were doing. I finally bought a book of designs online and spent quite a chunk of time pouring over it at midnight only to have stressful dreams about it all night.
Tuesday morning I had it out with Nathaniel.
"Why didn't you tell me how major this thing was going to be??!"
"I didn't know it was going to be!"
"It doesn't even seem like you know what you're doing! I'm doing all the work! Can't you talk to your teacher?"
"I do know what I am doing!"
"Then why aren't you doing it?"
"Cause I don't know!"
So I could see this wasn't going anywhere.
In the carpool I asked the other boys how long theirs took to make.
"Mine took me about a week."
"I donno, maybe a couple of days."
WHAT??!!

So this was #2. Note the balloons stretched over the wheels for traction. I took the plans to the hardware store down the street and had four men all racking their brains on how we were going to create working axles for the wheels. Finally one guy says, "You realize between us you have four college degrees trying to figure this out?"
Enough said.
When we finally finished, after about trip #134 to the hardware store, we set it on the kitchen floor and let it go. It went all the way across. First time.
We high-fived each other so hard my hand hurt for half an hour.
All we wanted was the 10 feet.
For the event his went 25.
When I called Peter to tell him he said, "See? I knew you could do it!"
I said he was a liar. He admitted he was.

Basketball season ends

Basketball season actually ended a while ago, but I wanted to post a few pictures anyway.
This one is the most accurate depiction of Nathaniel because being the tallest boy he spent most of the games in this position.
That was his job most of the time and was the thing he was best at.

And here we have him fouling another boy--though surprisingly he didn't get called on it.

Of course our favorite part was the redneck coaches I have previously mentioned. Specifically the main coach here in the gray (I was most disappointed he chose the day I was taking pictures to wear a clean shirt.)
He said a lot of funny things during the season but the one we liked best is when he yelled, "Come on ref! Use the whistle for somethin' other than holdin' your teeth apart!"

There was a general series of laughter from the stands at that one and Peter and I had to hold ourselves together.

Good hardworking man, our coach. Tellin' it like it is.

I did hope Nathaniel would find his hidden talent in basketball--but alas he did not. He did learn a lot, and did improve, especially because unlike the other boys he had never played before and was very lost at the beginning because he didn't speak basketball lingo yet.

Peter and I have not given up home that he will eventually get used to his height and loosen up a bit so he can achieve more fluid coordination, but for now he is doing track and we are thrilled with that. It is good for a kid to do a hard thing.

Pioneer Woman?

Yesterday Peter was supposed to be flying in from California around noon. We were going to go from the airport to an area near Bountiful to pick up a new mattress. Our last one ended up being terrible and developed two indentations so miserably fast that half the time I ended up in the guest room in the middle of the night.
Since we also have a piano to purchase this year I was determined to find a good deal on an almost new Temper-Pedic mattress. They don't come up terribly often, especially in a king, and so I was excited when a couple bought one only to find themselves a few months later moving into a house with a master 1/2 the size of their present one. Their loss--my gain!
I had already borrowed a truck when I get a call from him around nine in the morning telling me his flight has been canceled and now he won't be in until almost 7:30pm.
The one time we have had plans for the day he returns and the one time his flight has ever been canceled. Nice one Murphy.
I only have this pick-up for one day and was determined to use it for what we needed to--man or no man. So I roped Sarah into helping me drag our present mammoth mattress down the stairs and out to the truck so I could haul it out to the dump myself. I felt kind of guilty dumping this completely brand new looking mattress out there but knew I could never force the miserable thing onto anyone else. Picture April driving a truck with a giant mattress stuffed into the bed like a sad little "u," and then backing it up to the dump pile to manhandle that baby out the back.
Oy.
The other reason we needed the truck was to pick up some trees to replace the ones that died along our back fence. I had seen the ones we needed for a smokin' deal at Home Depot and they were going fast--so off I went and got the trees. Nathaniel, who finally got back from a day at the BYU Pow Wow, was then enlisted to help me get these obscenely heavy trees out.
My neighbor friend came out and said I was awfully ambitious. Peter tells me I would have made a good pioneer woman. I don't know about you, but I do this all the time. I always have. If I wasn't independent it would never do for us anyway--Peter has been gone too much for that. I take on major projects all the time when he is gone even more because he isn't around to trip over them or harass me about my nutty ideas ("Why do you have to do this now??") and though I occasionally reflect on just what others might think of it, or what I may be signing myself up for, I usually go ahead with it anyway.
I know I'm not the only woman who does this. I believe women all over the place are silently waiting for their husband's absence to start their secret projects.
Poor Nathaniel has of course wondered at my sanity as I he watches me try to reassemble a bunk bed or rip out large amounts of sod because I just couldn't wait for Peter.
"Why are you always doing this stuff without Dad? Why not just wait?"
Why? I'll tell you why. Because lets face it ladies, there are times when if we waited for the men to get around to it, it may never be done. The flame I light under his rear sometimes just fizzles out.
(Love you sweetie!)
Thanks to our school district moving our spring break back a week I take my kids solo to Disneyland in a couple of weeks. This means that I--Miss Directionally Incompetent, will be driving to Aneheim, going to the beach, staying in a hotel for a couple of days, and playing at Disneyland.
Alone.
Let's hope I'm not going to eat my personal declaration of independence.

My stroke of genius

The other day I went to the store and couldn't find my ATM card. Weird because for years I have always keep it in the same place--a little black cigarette case I use for my cards.
I really didn't worry too much about it because I was pretty sure the last time I used it was to order something online.
But still. I wanted to find it.
Looking under/around the computer I had no luck. It just didn't make sense to me that I would have just left the card sitting there anyway.
You know that feeling of stupor you have when there just isn't any other place to look?
When I told Peter he kept trying to talk me into retracing my tracks, which was very frustrating.
"I know exactly where it was! I don't need to retrace!"
He wasn't listening. I swear sometimes he thinks I have just lost my mind.
So there was only one other alternative-- and that of course was John--
but when I asked him he didn't seem to know what I was talking about and I really believed him until I started to walk away and he mumbled, "Maybe Venom took it."
What I did not know about this Venom fellow is that he is a kind of alter-ego for Spiderman.
Hmmmmm...
Suddenly it was like the fog in my mind cleared and I knew exactly what he had done with it.
A few days before I had let him do some of Peter's shredding and we came across a card. I showed John he couldn't put it through the paper slot, but had to put it in the other one.
He must have felt the need to do that again. Which means he had to have taken it out of my purse, reclosed the case, and put things exactly as they were before he slipped down to the basement, turned on the shredder and put it through.
I just have to say I thought it was awfully clever of me to figure this out.

Thank heaven it wasn't my driver's license.

My son is funny (the other one)

John has taken to a bear he calls Spencer.
"Mom, Spencer needs a raincoat. Make him one."
"Mom, Spencer is cold at night. You need to make him pajamas."
Bummer that mom doesn't sew clothes.
Well this was cute and I thought it was very sweet of John to care for his bear so lovingly until I found it blindfolded and hogtied the other night.
"What the heck John?"
"We were playing."
Very weird we all thought and so Nathaniel took the opportunity to tell John that it would be a good idea if he didn't feed the bear because then it would become real, like on the Velveteen Rabbit. Except the bear would be ostracized by society as a freak of nature and come back to want to kill his creator like in Frankenstein.
Not so very long ago I had to read Frankenstein for my British Literature class and not only did I think this was a very interesting application, but I found it hilarious.

Sometimes Nathaniel can be the typical annoying one-word answer teen that we are all familiar with, but a good deal of the time he is very talkative (to the point of demanding my attention NOW) and nice to be around. And the best thing is that he absolutely kills me with his sense of humor.
Of course, you know how I do love to laugh.
Here is a typical drawing of Nathaniel's I find lying around the house:

"Attack of the Giant Ape People"

I find these a lot. At least this one is not gory or anything.
The other night Peter was in town and we went out for dinner and a movie, which is something we very rarely do as a whole family, but it was really fun. We saw "Alice in Wonderland" (which was awesome, I thought--love you Johnny--amazing as usual) and then out for dinner where the conversation somehow turned into kid jokes. Sarah asked what has four legs and flies. The answer was a horse. Har har.
Nathaniel thought of a new punchline. So here goes.
What has four legs and flies?
A poop with legs.
I may be juvenile, but I laughed a good long time.