The Friend Family

Collateral Damage

2011-04-18T22:00:00.004-04:00

Now that the kitchen is mostly finished, we were able to turn our attention to a couple other rooms. The new room behind the kitchen, used for our homeschool room, was the first order of business. A set of book cases from IKEA, including one that will mount the TV, was installed along one wall. We moved the couch and the computer table from the living room in as well. One of our goals was to reclaim the living room, which had been the homeschool room for the last eight years. After moving some of the furniture out, the living room began to take on a larger, empty look. One of the casualties of all this was the entertainment center, which has graced our living room for the last 25 years. Since the TV was no longer in it, it was now a rather superfluous piece of furniture, and was no longer needed.

We just had one problem. What do you do with a 25-year old entertainment center that will not fit modern flat-screen televisions?

A year or so ago, when our old 19-inch tube died, we broke down and bought a flat screen. This started the whole problem, because it would not fit in our entertainment center. So we listed it for sale on craigslist. Cheap.

We didn't get a single inquiry. We found out that the thrift stores are lined with old entertainment centers, along with the old TVs that used to fit in them. The demand for them is zero. Even the nice ones, like ours. It was quite a purchase back then, and was still in great shape today.

I couldn't bear to reduce such a nice piece to kindling wood, so I cut out the interior center wall and re-hinged the doors so that it now fit the TV. Problem solved, for now.

Fast forward to today, when it no longer contains a TV at all. The craigslist route still yielded no hits, even though it was listed as being able to fit up to a 50 inch screen. It was still a shame to heat the home with such a nice piece of furniture, so I again took the saw to it, this time doing a little bit more major surgery. I disassembled the entire cabinet, removed the TV portion of it, and re-assembled what was left, leaving a tall, narrow cabinet that could still be used to house electronics, or could be used as a nice curio cabinet. It turned out rather well, as the pictures below show:

Before: The piece that nobody wanted

After: Entertainment center on a diet.

One other benefit: This one will actually move. The original entertainment center was so large and heavy that the people that helped us move it 20 years ago told us they would not help us move again if we still had it. It has sat in the same spot for all of those 20 years.

Our kitchen and addition area is already getting good use, even before it is fully finished. David had a few friends over last night. At least what we thought were a few. They just kept streaming in and all gathered in the kitchen. We lost count at 16. They all piled into the homeschool room and watched a movie. It sort-of reminded me of those how-many-people-will-fit-into-the-back-of-a-volkswagen challenges, only this time it was my furniture under all that humanity.

Details, Details

2011-03-13T22:01:00.011-04:00

Wow, It's been a month and a half since I have posted anything. Time flies when you're having fun. And sometimes time just flies.

Our kitchen is progressing. We're getting down to the smaller details, as you will see in the pictures that follow. There are just thousands of those smaller details to take care of.

The first small detail (OK, maybe a bit larger than 'small') was the tile work. We decided to to an accent above the stove using the tile set at an angle, and framed in small squares. Deb then made little accent pieces from Sculpy clay, baked them, painted them copper/bronze color, and then fastened them to the tile. It turned out rather nicely, if I say so myself.

Tile work in the sink area.

Starting the accent above the stove.

Accent complete (click on the picture for a larger view)

Accent pieces added. I also have the range hood power unit hung in this picture. Building the range hood is another 'small' detail.

The next 'small' detail was the wood floor in the extra room off the kitchen. We are planning to use this room for our homeschool room. A few months back there was hickory wood plank flooring on sale at Home Depot so we picked up enough to do this room. It sat in the basement, occupying quite a bit of floor space, for a few months. I finally got to take some it out of the box to see what it looked like shortly before installing it. With a floor nailer purchased on Ebay and a couple Saturdays, I managed to put the floor in. Without Joshua's help, I probably would still be working on it.
Yours truly, just starting out.

A rather long evening's work.

Just finished.

Love the look of a hickory floor!

Yesterday I spent some time putting in baseboard molding and also made some accent strips for the bottom of the upper cabinets. These served two purposes: to add a black accent to the bottom, and to hide the undercabinet lights. For the cost of a router bit, some scrap lumber, and some black paint, it turned out rather well...

A view of the black accents. The next picture shows a closer view.

The 'before' shot. The lights are visible here. They don't show up in the picture as much as they do in real life. At the right angle, they could be downright annoying. Now that's all hidden.

Next up, building a range hood, finishing the trim, finishing the insulation, and a bunch of other things that I've already forgotten about...

Being Dutch

2011-02-25T19:06:00.003-05:00

I was cutting up the remainder of a ham the other day after dinner. Abigail was sitting at the island where I was working, watching me. "Why are we keeping the bone?" she asked.

"Because it makes good soup stock," Deb told her.

"Because we're Dutch, and we don't throw good food away," I said.

"OK, we're Dutch, you're Chinese," I added after a short pause.

Abigail got up from her seat and disappeared to her room. In the short time she was there, we could hear laughter drifting down the hall.

When she came out, she was laughing uncontrollably. Between gales of laughter, she announced, "Now I'm Dutch!" She had taken a wad of silly putty, fashioned it in the shape of a large nose, and stuck it to her face.

This is a glimpse of what it's like to be a multicultural family. The differences can be described with a wad of silly putty.

The Story Behind the Stove

2011-01-29T21:39:00.002-05:00

Today I did quite a bit of finish work on the island. I'll let the pictures below tell most of the story, but the progress today consisted of the beadboard on the back side of the island (Deb was getting rather sick of the OSB that has graced it for the last several weeks), finish panels and trim on both sides of the island, and a single course of tile on the front of the island between the two levels of butcher block. About the only things left are the grout for the tile and some shoe moulding around the bottom.

View of the front of the island. Just for a frame of reference, if this were the old kitchen, I would be standing in the back yard when taking this picture. The old wall stood midway between the island and the countertop in the foreground of the picture.

View from the family room.

A closer look at the front. The blue boxes in the island will soon be filled with electrical outlets.

A couple days ago, I finally got the stovetop installed. There's a rather long story behind the stove. We took a chance and ordered a "refurbished" cooktop from the Sears mail-order outlet in mid-October. It represented a rather significant savings over the list price, and this particular model was one we liked, having seen a similar one in a local store.

It took quite a while to arrive, and we were beginning to wonder if we were going to see it at all. When it did arrive, it was very poorly packaged, having been wrapped in a single layer of cardboard followed by plastic shrink wrap. Most of the stuff I have bought on Ebay has been packaged much better than that.

Removing the shrink wrap and inspecting the contents, we discovered that there were a few pieces missing. Deb got on the phone and after an unbelievable amount of phone-tag with several different people, managed to get someone who was able to order the parts. It was quite another job just to describe the parts that were missing so we would have a chance of receiving the correct ones. Deb wisely took down that person's name and direct phone number.

In ordering the parts, the representative also offered to send us some of the accessories that can go with this model; a griddle, a wok-ring, and a few other items. We thought we were all set when these parts arrived several days later.

Fast forward several weeks. I got the countertops all in and ready to install the cooktop. In gathering all the pieces, I discovered there was an additional part missing, a gas regulator and an elbow that I could not match at the local bog-box home improvement stores. Deb called the direct line, and the person recognized her immediately. This time I managed to find an assembly drawing on the Internet (did I mention that the stove came with no manuals or paperwork?) and gave the person actual part numbers.

That was the good news. The bad news was that the elbow was back-ordered until January 19, several weeks hence.

We received the regulator a few days later, and a bag containing 10 gaskets a week after that. then January 19 came and went. Deb called again. Apparently they got something screwed up and ordered the wrong part for us. So now we had to wait another week for the elbow.

When it came, there was much rejoicing in the Friend home. Particularly from Deb, who has been working with an electric hot plate for several months. A rather anemic hot plate that takes forever to boil water.

I finally installed the cooktop. I was half-expecting it not to work due to some missing internal piece, but was rewarded with an enormous flame from the center burner.

We gave it the boil test. We had a pan of water boiling in short order. Life is now good.

The big center burner is meant for high heat stuff like stir-fry. We had a stir-fry dinner the next day. It was done in no time and was delicious.

Although there is still a lot of finish work to be done, the kitchen is now fully functional.

The Coat

2011-01-17T06:59:00.002-05:00

I now have the metal supports for the island built and in place. Next step is to put the butcher-block top on it. I decided to build my own supports because we just couldn't swallow the $120 each for the fancy corbels they recommended when we bought our cabinets. After doing the math for three of them, it sounded like something we could do better on our own.

The six-foot piece of angle iron cost $14.95. It took some time to figure out how it would all go together, and some time in the barn cutting and welding, but the end result worked out pretty well.

The Plan:

The Product

The Collateral Damage:
While grinding and welding on these supports, I set my coat on fire with the sparks from the grinder. I smelled something different than hot metal, and, looking down, saw a flame crawling up the front of my coat. I quickly snuffed it out. The two layers of clothing under the coat were undamaged, but, had I been wearing less clothing, I could have had a new belly button.

Hazard Pay

2011-01-13T07:30:00.002-05:00

I never knew that remodeling a kitchen could be such a dangerous job. While making some metal brackets last night to hold up the top surface of the island, I set my coat on fire. Somehow, old nylon jackets and welding/grinding don't go together.

Maybe I should get hazard pay.

The Plan is Coming Together

2011-01-10T12:27:00.013-05:00

I love it when a plan comes together.

In this case, it's a plan started last June, with the first ground broken in September. The Plan will still take a while to complete as there's still a bajillion details that still need detailing, but things are falling into place:

I had three days off between Christmas and New Year's Day. Perfect time for attacking the counter tops. The above picture has the surface all prepared for the laminate, all I had to do was cut a piece that originally was 5 feet wide by 12 feet long to the right dimensions and glue it into place. Easy, No?

Laminate glued down, with the rim of the sink set on it to show the eventual location of the sink. Managing a piece of thin laminate that big is not an easy task but we managed to get it in place with only a little bit of damage. My camera has been acting up a bit lately and likes to trash parts of some pictures, turning them either plain shades of gray or some vibrant primary color.

With the laminate down and the sink in place, it was time to start on the island. Here the four island cabinets are set in place. We decided to set off the island in a different color, giving some relief from the acres of medium maple color.

Another view of the island after I built a half-wall behind it. The top of the island will be butcher block and will be two levels, the first you can see in the picture and the second will be on top of the half-wall to be used as a breakfast bar.

A view of the island from the opposite side. This was before I cut the eight-foot piece of butcher block down to six feet to fit the island.

After I cut the butcher block to length, Abigail helped by putting the first coat of tung oil finish on it.

During all this, Deb was trying to get the ceiling painted before we put too much nice stuff on the floors and cabinets. She enlisted the help of Josh. He helped out willingly, but painting is not his favorite thing to do.

We had some friends over and they helped us with the floor. After all, what are friends for? It took an entire evening to get the underlayment down. The next evening we laid the tile. Josh managed to get most of the pieces that needed some strange notch cut out of them. The mark he made on this piece doesn't show up in the picture very well, but it had to fit around the refrigerator return in the next picture.

Once he cut the piece for this location, it fit perfectly.

Here the tile has progressed around the island in front of the sink. We eventually finished the tiling a couple days later. Well, almost. We ran two boxes short, so right now we have an area with exposed glue by the garage entry and in the pantry closet. This results in some rather interesting tactile experiences for those guests who come into our house. This glue remains tacky for a very long time, and just about anyone that has come into our house via the garage has ended up with at least one foot in the glue. We've heard various expressions of surprise as they attempt to lift their foot out of the glue and are met with stiff resistance or leave their sock on the floor.

While we're working on getting the remainder of the tile (to prevent our guests from getting glued to the floor), we're working on grouting the whole area. This is a tedious, time-consuming task as our indentured servant, Josh, can attest.

Wide Open Spaces

2010-12-26T21:04:00.006-05:00

We finally got rid of the pipes.

The tall steel pipes that were in the center of every picture are now history, resting comfortably on pile number 4 of Padnos Iron & Metal Recycling. With those gone, a lot could (and has) finally happened. We were finally able to move the fridge to the other side of the room. We finally removed the last of the original counter containing the sink. We finally plugged the large holes in the plank floor and put new subfloor over the whole area.

And that enabled a whole bunch more activities. We installed the large pantry cabinets along the wall where the fridge used to be. We installed a small desk area (Deb's meal planning area) next to the pantry cabinets. We now have a bunch of undercabinet lighting installed.

It's beginning to look a lot like ... kitchen!

Last picture before the pipes were removed by the plumber

First picture with the pipes and the old sink cabinet gone. We have a couple pieces of new subfloor down also in this picture.

Last picture of the original refrigerator wall. The fridge always seemed to be an unintended focal point in our kitchen because it stuck out so far.

After all the old cabinets in the fridge wall were removed. This also reveals some of our secrets. When I installed the new wall oven several years ago, it was an inch and a half too long to fit into the opening, so I cut an enormous hole in the wall, trimming back the two-by-fours to make the space deep enough for the oven to fit.

The new cabinets and desk area. (The remaining doors have been installed since this picture was taken.) The big hole is still there, along with a few smaller ones. It's just now hidden again by the new cabinets.

The (almost) finished pantry wall. Deb lost no time in filling the bookshelf.

Looking towards the oven and sink. The sink is only temporary since there are no countertops, yet. Perhaps that can be started this week.

A New Look

2010-12-22T06:40:00.003-05:00

If you come over to our house, please take your shoes off at the door. Our kitchen floor has a new look, and we would hate to get any dirt or snow on it. We've decided to go for a more 'rustic' look complete with gaps in the planks, which allow us to immediately see when the basement lights are on. The kids thought this effect was cool, and Josh commented that, when you sweep the floor perpendicular to the floor planks, the dirt just kind of disappears. You don't even have to pick it up. So if you have your shoes off, there's no danger of getting dirt on our floor.

There is a slight risk of getting a nail in the foot, however.

We removed all the old flooring yesterday, complete with a large layer of sub-floor, leaving only the old planks in place. Unfortunately, the builder already removed our big dumpster, so the old material is now sitting in a pile outside. We're also waiting for the plumber to come in and remove the big pipes we've been working around for the past several weeks. The plumber was due yesterday and didn't show up. Once he does his thing, the last piece of the old counter containing the sink can be removed and we'll be able to complete the new subfloor and start building the island.

More Cabinets Up

2010-12-16T06:25:00.002-05:00

I put in a few more cabinets last night. At least one corner of the room is starting to look like an actual kitchen. And a little bit more of the old kitchen has gone away. I had to remove the dishwasher in order to install the wall-oven cabinet. When Abigail came in and noticed the dishwasher was missing, she started at the empty location for a little bit then asked, "Where's the dishwasher?"

"I'm looking right at her," I told her. She didn't comprehend and repeated the question.

"You're the dishwasher," I said.

When it finally dawned on her what I was saying, she asked, "Are we going to be using paper plates from now on?"

Perhaps when the plumber comes on Tuesday we can get rid of all the pipes that are sticking up all over the place.

First Cabinets Up

2010-12-14T06:58:00.003-05:00

We hung the first cabinets last night. I'm sure it would have been more efficient to paint the whole place first before hanging the cabinets, but we haven't picked out the colors yet and wanted to get the cabinets out of the dining room. At least now we have three cabinets worth of order in the chaos we've been living in for a few months.

My trusty assistant along with a couple properly-sized boards held things up while I fastened the units to the wall.

Progress. Definite progress.

The Wall is Gone

2010-12-12T22:53:00.003-05:00

It's been several days and a LOT has happened. Somehow, it's hard to find time to post pictures on the Internet when the house is in chaos, there's big holes in the ceiling, letting in all the cold air, and I am in the process of starting a new job. But here are a few pictures of our progress since the last post:

First picture with the wall gone. This was taken AFTER all the rubble was cleaned up. It was quite a mess for a while.

Another view. The space looks considerably bigger now. One of the first orders of business was to remove the toilet from the middle of the floor. With all the walls gone, it was now in the way.

With the wall gone, the drywallers came back and finished up. Now things are really taking shape. The big holes in the ceiling are now all gone, and we are no longer heating the great outdoors.

With the drywall done, it was now time to put on primer. I hung all sorts of plastic and then figured out that the primer was too thick to use in my paint sprayer. I ended up doing it with a roller.

Another view, shortly before primer was put on.

Next job is to start hanging cabinets...

Big Changes

2010-12-01T09:34:00.002-05:00

Things are a-happening now. The heat in the house is having a struggle keeping up because of the missing window and a large section of missing ceiling in the former kitchen. The large support beam is in place, the roof is held up, and things are a real mess. Deb, the neat-nick of the family is holding up pretty well. The kitchen is somewhat of an extension of herself, and having it in such chaos is unsettling for her. With no power, no heat, and very little light in what was once the nerve center of the house, she is a bit at loose ends.

But, so far, she has been managing to soldier on, even attempting some baking amidst the dust and debris...

I keep having to tell her that it WILL get better. It may get a little worse, particularly today, when the adjoining wall is torn down and much of the rest of the countertops are ripped out, but it WILL get better.

On the bright side, the drywall crew has been hard at work and the addition looks dramatically different than it did one day ago.

The drywallers will be back once the wall is gone and the framing is fixed up (probably tomorrow), and then maybe we can be warm again.

Another sign of progress, the siding was finished on Monday. From the outside, it's looking pretty good:

Moving Forward

2010-11-28T09:50:00.002-05:00

After a few weeks of very little happening, things are hopping again. The drywall crew is due to arrive on Monday and a large roof-support beam is supposed to be installed on Tuesday. In preparation for the beam, I had to remove all the upper cabinets in the kitchen and open up a couple walls for the support pillars. I had taken several pictures of the kitchen just before I started tearing things out, unfortunately, the memory card in the camera decided to go bad so those pictures no longer exist. So what is below is all I have. I had to remove the lower cabinet just to the left of the dishwasher and discovered that granite is pretty tough to remove. It had to be pulverized by beating on it with a hammer and then removed in very small pieces. This was a little hard to do because I just installed it three years ago.

As soon as the beam is in place, the wall with the window will be completely removed.

Meanwhile, the siding guy was hard at work on the exterior and will probably be finishing this coming week also.

Below are a couple pictures of the inside of the addition. It's just waiting for drywall right now.

A Garage-Full

2010-11-11T22:55:00.002-05:00

Our cabinets were delivered today. We're not near ready for them. The drywallers are not scheduled to arrive until after Thanksgiving, so, until the drywall is done, the cabinets will be crowding the garage.

I did manage to save some space by consolidating some of the boxes. One box felt rather light, and I opened it to find it nearly empty. It only contained a very small box with six knobs and four drawer pulls. So much for efficiency.

Abigail helped me check most of the shipment over. We discovered she was just about the right size to fit in one of the shelves, sort of looked like a doll in a box.

I spent most of the evening opening boxes and checking the paperwork. Abigail thought it was fun, sort of like a whole garage full of large Christmas presents, only we knew what they all were.

November 10, 2008 - Gotcha Day

2010-11-11T22:23:00.002-05:00

Two years ago, we were sitting in a hotel room in central China, wondering what to do next. We had just picked up a scared little 9-year-old girl the day before and now we had the newest little member of our family whom we didn't have a clue how to communicate with. We could tell she was a talkative person because she jabbered continuously with our Chinese guide and struck up conversations with just about anyone she met on the street. She just didn't converse with us. In the two years that followed, she gradually grew nearly silent as one language faded away and then started to talk again as the next language was acquired. She now loves to talk again.

In the mean time, she has grown nearly nine inches in height and her hair, coming from the normal orphanage buzz cut, is now halfway down her back. I wonder if those she knew back in China would recognize her anymore.

She celebrated her "gotcha day" by making an apple pie. She had scratched "Abigail, 2 years" into the top crust before she baked it and we enjoyed most of it yesterday.

I must say, these last two years have been quite an adventure. Pulling two far-different cultures together in one family has been a stretching experience for all of us. Abigail has grown from a scared little 9-year-old into a lovely, outgoing 11-year-old. And we are eating more rice. Among other things.

It will be interesting to see what the next two years has in store...

Warm and Dry (almost)

2010-11-07T20:22:00.002-05:00

The new addition has been dry for a while, now it is almost warm. I spent most of Saturday hanging insulation, and finished the entire addition except for just a few wall cavities. I spent the next several hours scratching my itches. Fiberglass is fun stuff to work with.

Wiring Approved

2010-11-03T21:59:00.005-04:00

The last several days have been spent drilling holes and pulling wire. It's amazing how much wire goes into a kitchen and a bathroom, especially when the bathroom will eventually contain laundry appliances. Today the electrical inspector came and inspected and approved the wiring. With that approved, I could proceed with the insulation and cover up my beautiful wiring job. I completed just about all the wall insulation, and the ceiling will follow shortly. Below are a few pictures of the current state of things. It is still technically outside the envelope of the house, since the original wall is still up and there is no heat yet, but we are moving closer to having the wall come down.

Looking into what will be the bathroom

Looking at the old wall of the house and the old kitchen and bathroom window

Dry

2010-10-25T22:43:00.002-04:00

With the roof on and the windows in, it is now officially "dry". We no longer have to worry about water coming in through various openings or ending up in the basement. Just in time for the inclement weather that's supposed to be headed our way.

NOT Another Use for Duct Tape

2010-10-23T22:29:00.002-04:00

We have been having phone problems lately. Lots of problems. As a result, we've missed a lot of calls. If one of them was you, please accept our apologies. It wasn't intentional. We've contacted AT&T service a few times over the last couple months, and each time, things started working acceptably before they came.

This past Tuesday, the phones stopped working altogether. No dial tone, no Ring-y Ding-y, no Internet, no nothing. It was at that time that we realized how much we rely on the Internet for so many things. Even tonight, there are four of us in one room, each one with a computer on their lap. We are a connected family.

I got on the Internet at work and logged a trouble report on AT&T's web site. Their estimate for having it fixed was Saturday evening, five days hence. So much for speedy service.

On our way to church a couple days later, I noticed a wire lying on the road. In fact, I ran over it as I passed by. It looked the right size to be a phone line. I put two and two together. That was probably MY phone line being pounded into the pavement by all the passing cars.

Most of it disappeared a couple days later. Perhaps that coincided with the apartment complex across the street mowing their lawn. Now my line is not only down, it's probably shredded into a million pieces.

On Saturday afternoon, we were beginning to lose hope. There was no sign of any AT&T repairman. And David is supposed to start an on-line class on Monday. It was looking like he might start his class at the local McDonalds.

The guy showed up at 4:00 on Saturday afternoon. I pointed to the wire dangling from the pole. "That could very well be the problem," he stated. I agreed with him.

An hour later he came to the door. "You should be all set," he told me. I tried it out. Wow, a dial tone!

He called about a half hour later. When the phone rang, we were dismayed to hear that the old problems were still there. It worked, but we were now back to the problems of a couple weeks ago. He told us that he checked the line after getting it fixed and it still registered a problem. "I will try to be back out on Monday," he said.

I did a little checking of my own and figured out that the problem was INSIDE the house instead of OUTSIDE. That meant it was my responsibility. So I set to work attempting to isolate sections of the wiring to determine where the problem was.

I eventually found it. A splice behind a wall. There are quite a few splices in this house, but this one was different. It was wrapped with duct tape. I'm not sure what gave me the presence of mind to wrap electrical connections with duct tape, but I now know that, as the stuff ages it assumes certain electrical characteristics that can drive you and your phone company nuts.

I was just at Lowe's today, buying some supplies for our new addition. In the electrical section was a large box containing zillions of rolls of electrical tape. I remember pondering it for just a few seconds, and then concluding that I really don't use electrical tape all that much and the sixty cents would be better spent somewhere else.

I now know better.

Progress In Spite of Being Busy

2010-10-22T08:34:00.003-04:00

The picture below is a little bit old. It was taken Monday and it is now Friday. From the outside it still looks similar, although the roof is now done and the door is installed. Inside, the plumbers have been hard at work, the heating guy was here yesterday, and the electrician (yours truly) has been drilling his own holes in the walls and the floor.

There wasn't a lot of time to work on it yesterday evening; about the only thing I had time for was to hang a couple recessed light fixtures, and then we were off to a presentation of traditional Chinese dance and music put on by the Living Hope Angels, a group of Chinese orphans who are currently traveling here in the States and putting on these presentations. We were privileged to host five of them at our home last night, three teenage girls, an interpreter, and a US-based support person. Abigail was excited to have them over. All the girls slept on cots and mattresses in the basement last night, and Abigail joined them--sort of like a Chinese slumber party. She even was able to practice a little bit of her Chinese

Getting Darker

2010-10-17T16:03:00.004-04:00

It's definitely getting darker on the inside. On Friday, more of the trusses were put up and quite a bit of the roof deck was also placed. Right now it is all protected against the rain by a patchwork of tarps and leftover Tyvek.

Below is a view from the inside, looking out the old kitchen window. The stud wall in the foreground is the location of the sink, although the wall will be half-high, and allow a view of the window beyond from the kitchen. The wall on the right is the new half bath.

Growing Taller

2010-10-15T09:29:00.003-04:00

Some of the trusses were set yesterday. This gives a little better idea of what the roof line will look like. Also, a few interior walls, outer sheathing, and some of the moisture wrap.

Last night it rained. Hard. But we were better prepared this time. The basement stayed dry.

Rain

2010-10-14T07:08:00.003-04:00

Our Indian Summer took a breather yesterday when a thunderstorm rolled through. There's nothing like little rain to reveal the holes in the open walls. Deb went downstairs during the storm and discovered it was raining harder in the basement than it was outside. Water from the roof was being funneled down onto the new subfloor, where it rain against the house. Since all the outer brick had been peeled off the house, the water ran freely down inside the house, and into some upper wall cabinets in the basement, which then distributed the water evenly over the washer and the dryer. It was quite a mess.

Deb didn't have the presence of mind to take any pictures. When it's raining in the laundry area, the last thing one thinks about is getting the camera.

Standing Walls

2010-10-13T06:49:00.003-04:00

This awesome Indian Summer we've been having has allowed building to continue unabated since the start of the project. But, alas, progress will halt for a couple days as we wait for trusses, which should be here on Thursday.

Our screened porch now only has windows on two sides as side three was torn out to make way for a new wall.

Subfloor In

2010-10-12T08:01:00.002-04:00

This is the time of the project when things seem to happen really fast. It is no longer possible to fall into the hole in the ground because the subfloor is now installed and the first wall is nearly built. The plan today is to start tearing into the wall on the right of the screen-porch in the picture below in order to put a support beam up to bear the roof trusses. Perhaps I'll be able to take a picture of a standing wall when I get home from work this evening, or perhaps there will just be a bigger mess.

Feeling Poorer

2010-10-09T21:36:00.001-04:00

We ordered cabinets for the kitchen today. I'm holding the receipt. Need I say more?

Lotsa Concrete

2010-10-04T22:04:00.003-04:00

The floor of the crawl space under the addition was poured today. More large trucks in the back yard, more big muddy ruts in the lawn.

We spent a few hours on Saturday moving the dirt from the big piles on the lawn into the hole beside the new foundation wall. One shovel-full at a time. Abigail even helped for a while. She had a small trenching shovel, and every scoop of dirt she would hold up high and say, "Look, Daddy! Look how big THIS load is!" Not only was I moving my own loads of dirt, I was inspecting and acknowledging every load of dirt that Abigail was moving. Helping out was her idea, however, and she willingly moved dirt with the rest of us.

Today the floor was poured, so at least that part has a finished look about it. Now, with the weather becoming frosty at night, the hole in the house is becoming a problem...

Foundation Wall Up

2010-09-29T20:49:00.002-04:00

Some of us were barely out of bed this morning when the block crew arrived. It was nearly dark. I suppose we could have stayed in bed and just watched them, since we have been sleeping on the 3-season porch right next to the addition. A whole swarm of guys arrived with all their equipment and had the wall finished by noon.

Next up is to pour the floor.

A House Full of Holes

2010-09-28T22:02:00.002-04:00

If we weren't committed yesterday, then we are really committed today. I had a guy come out and cut a large hole in the foundation wall of our house, and we took out a large section of the 10-inch thick concrete to make an access hole into the eventual crawl space under the addition. Now I just have to move some of the plumbing that is directly in front of the hole (visible in the picture).

Why, oh why, does every job eventually involve plumbing??

The Big Dig

2010-09-27T18:22:00.002-04:00

I guess we're committed now. There's a big hole in the back yard and the place is a mess. I took a day off work because there were some things to keep track of so I got to document the whole process in pictures:

Starting Out. First thing that came up was the buried power, phone and Ethernet cables running to the barn.

Oops. We knew the old septic system was here somewhere, but after over 25 years of non-use, we figured the tank would be pretty much dry. It wasn't. When we broke through the lid, it was full within a foot of the top.

Kerkstra Septic Tank Cleaning was there within a half hour, and a half hour after that, the tank was empty and the sides had been collapsed in.

Progress once again. Here the hole is almost complete.

By now all the trucks and equipment had made mincemeat out of the lawn.

The footing guys came a short while later and poured the footings.

End of Day 1. Progress.

Home Improvement

2010-09-24T12:37:00.002-04:00

When we bought our house 19 years ago, the one feature that Deb wasn't crazy about was the kitchen. The location of the house was great, it had great "bone structure" (although the wall and floor coverings were badly in need of updating), and it fit our family well. The galley kitchen was passable as long as there was only one cook. And for a long time there was only one cook.

So we've lived with this non-ideal kitchen for all these years, making several cosmetic updates. When dinner guests come over, the arrangement of the house naturally causes all the incoming guests to congregate in the kitchen, which makes for extreme congestion, just when the meal comes out of the oven.

We now have two cooks. Abigail, now that she has acquired the language and has become more comfortable in our family, has gravitated to the kitchen as one of the places she likes to be. She likes to cook. She loves "cook's privilege" (the cook gets to lick out the bowl). So we finally decided that the kitchen was in need of a more extreme makeover. After a few months of planning, we're moving ahead with the project. The kitchen is going to grow.

Along with the kitchen, the adjoining half bath is moving, and we're adding a room onto the back of the house, a sort-of homeschool room or sitting room that adjoins the kitchen and shares open space with the kitchen. In the picture below, the wall area between the two red lines will be removed and extended out about 19 feet into the back yard.

The permits are in place, the plans are drawn up, and excavation begins on Monday, September 27. We'll post pictures as this progresses.

Tales from the Front Pew, Chapter 11

2010-04-18T16:41:00.003-04:00

Abigail has a new friend.

LeiAnna, who is nine years old, was adopted a month ago by close friends of ours. LeiAnna is busy adapting to a completely new culture, language, and family, and they are going through what we went through about a year and a half ago. Lots of adjustments and you never know what is going to happen.

One of those adjustments is sitting through church services. Orphanage children generally do not sit through church services, so this is a new adjustment for them. One of the big things is just keeping the child from being too distracting to others while a stranger stands in front and speaks for a half hour or more in a language that she doesn't understand.

This past Sunday evening, Abigail was delighted when LeiAnna was seated right next to her. They became friends almost instantly when LeiAnna came home from China and they are always excited to see each other.

The two girls held hands through much of the church service. During the prayer, I was distracted by Abigail's hand hitting my leg. Abigail is an inquisitive child, with lots of questions, so she taps me regularly with a question. But this was not her usual soft tap. It was a full backhand slap. I was about to ask her what was wrong when I saw LeiAnna grab Abigail's hand and wind up for another swing at my leg. I quickly grabbed Abigail's hand, which seemed to satisfy LeiAnna. LeiAnna was holding Abigail's other hand as well as her dad's hand, who was seated next to her. Apparently, in LeiAnna's household, they hold hands during prayer, so LeiAnna thought everyone held hands during prayer. Seeing that Abigail and I were not holding hands, she sought to rectify the situation.

We have been observing the adjustments that have been happening in that family for the last month with interest, not because we enjoy seeing them go through difficult adjustments but because we have been there and can sympathize with them, and also because it confirms for us that what we went through over a year ago was actually sort of normal when adopting an older child. We really weren't such a nutty family as we appeared to be.

So getting slugged during prayer in church was not all that abnormal after all.

Project Completion

2010-02-24T12:33:00.003-05:00

It's done. Finished. Completed. Culminated. Ended. Mopped Up. Finalized. Wrapped Up.

After about eight months of work, the house we have been rehabbing in downtown Grand Rapids is complete. The last thing to be done was a re-build of the chimney (I hired that job out). Our work included painting entire exterior and most of the interior, gutting and redoing two bathrooms, refinishing hardwood floors, rebuilding the concrete steps on the front porch, replacing most of the wiring and most of the plumbing, installing four new windows and several doors, new heating system, new water heaters, tearing off six layers of shingles and putting a new roof on (hired out), and a list of other tasks that would probably fill a good sized book.

About halfway through the project, I started to maintain a list of tasks to be done. As the project progressed, that list grew as we thought of more tasks. There came a time when the list started to get smaller. About two months ago, the list could be printed on a single page. At that point, it seemed we were "almost done". We also discovered that "almost done" can last a long time. It seems that the list doesn't seem to get any shorter, the details on the list just get smaller. For example, list items like "install tub surround", and "rebuild kitchen cabinets" gave way to "trim the bedroom door so it actually closes", and "caulk the bathtub", which gave way to "trim the strings on the blinds" and "replace dining room window lock". And then we kept finding new things that needed to be done. Many of them were little things, but new things nonetheless. Loose outlet plates, missing shoe moulding, slow running hot water (those plumbing details will drive ya nuts!), coat hangers, and a zillion other things all cospired to extend the time from our original September estimate to February.

Part of the problem was that the labor pool shrank dramatically. First, Josh started college, and then David ended up having enough homework to where he was often unavailable. And Abigail was usually able to con Grandma into taking her to Grandma's house on the days when we worked. And then she wondered why she wasn't making any money.

So it came down to Deb and I, with occasional help from David. It was the two of us that would don the old paint-spattered clothing after supper on a Tuesday night, throw a few supplies in the car, and drive downtown to spend a couple more hours working at the Joe (as we called the property). On Saturdays, I would go early and Deb and David would join me later on in the day. We would get home in time for our traditional Saturday home-made pizza meal.

These sorts of projects tend to take on a life of their own. Part of that life is to prevent many other tasks from happening. Our vegetable garden this past summer was a mass of weeds because many spare moments were spent with paintbrush or hammer in hand. Perhaps the hardest hit was the barn, which became sort of a dumping ground for anything that needed to be stored indoors, as well as many "deal-with-it-later" items. Now that it's later, I'm having to deal with it. I have spent the last couple of weeks sorting through the piles of stuff on the table and the floor. I've started remodeling the interior of the barn at the same time, so the mess is still there. But it's a good kind of mess now, a mess that means progress.

One of the effects of finishing a big project like this is that David's income has suddenly dropped to zero. He is now having to look for a job. It was very convenient for him (and us) to be working for me, as we could be very flexible. We took time off in the summer to spend on family vacations. There were several evenings where we just didn't feel like working, so we stayed home. There was always plenty to do, but we could ignore it if we felt like it, or if the calendar had other activities listed. (This was another reason for our February instead of September completion date.)

That was nice, but it's not gonna happen again real soon. It's time for a real McJob.

As a reminder of our neglect of many things at home, on the day we officially declared the project done, our microwave oven died. Time to catch up on the home front...

The Finished Product

The boys spent many hours refinishing the floors in this picture and the next picture

Joyful Noise

2009-12-13T22:11:00.006-05:00

A year ago, Abigail could not speak the language. Life for her at that time was a blur, in fact she remembers very little of the month after we returned from China. A year later (yesterday evening), she was singing a solo in front of a large church. She loved it. She wants to do it again.

God is good.

Pictures and a video clip below...

Abigail is the one with the pink shirt and big smile (circled):

In the following video clip, Abigail is the first to sing...

The Strong-Willed Child

2009-12-04T06:31:00.000-05:00

It is said that some children are strong-willed. We have one of those. If there were a way to measure the strength of a child's will, Abigail would be way at the top of the scale. Some children have strong wills, her will is made of high strength steel. While this can result in some tensions within the family, particularly with other strong-willed family members, it can also result in some rather humorous situations.

She has been learning the concept of obedience, and of one's role in the family--particularly, children being obedient to their parents. Some of this she has been learning the hard way, through the consequences that occur from disobedience. Those are some hard lessons, but she is making progress. To put it in simpler language for her, Dad and Mom are the "boss", and the boss is to be obeyed.

Knowing now what she is like, it really came as no surprise to us when she announced at dinnertime yesterday, "I wanna be the BOSS." She just blurted it out to the whole family. She has never been accused of being subtle, so this was right in line with her character. She wants to be in charge, and will let everyone know about it. I think she knew that she wasn't going to get far with this little request, since we all burst out laughing, but I think that she was only half joking.

This resulted in an animated discussion of what being the "boss" was like. This was backed up a little later when the topic on our Advent calendar was Jesus the Servant King. The "boss" serves his family. The "boss" is the one who gets up earlier than everyone else to clear the snow off the driveway. The "boss" takes responsibility to provide for those that he is responsible for, putting his own desires aside.

I told her that she could be the boss. I would go to Chinese class once a week, and practice the piano for a half hour a day, and sleep in until 9:30, and wash the dishes, and work on math problems. She could then pay the bills and go to work and make sure there's food on the table every day and keep the cars on the road and heat in the house.

She was not dissuaded.

She still wants to be the "boss".

It Is Finished

2009-11-26T15:50:00.005-05:00

At long last, the bathroom is finished. Below is a progression of pictures which shows the destruction phase, then the construction phase, a process which took several months.

The original bathroom. If you stood far enough away, it didn't look too bad.

The beginning of demolition. Tile shards, drywall dust, sawdust, and just plain dust made for a very dirty job. That's why I had my kids do it.

The claw-foot bathtub exposed. Because of the slant of the floor, it would not drain properly.

Destruction nearly complete. All the fixtures gone, and the plaster about to be removed. Josh and David had the job of hauling the tub down the narrow stairway. I told them that they built a lot of character that day. David told me that they learned a lot of new language that day also.

New plumbing stack installed. Since the house settled several inches and the old stack didn't, the difference pushed the toilet out of the floor. So I either had to raise the house or lower the plumbing. I chose to lower the plumbing by simply replacing all of it.

Additional plumbing for the tub installed.

Time to level the floor. Sleepers cut at an angle and new plywood made for good bathtub drainage again.

New level floor installed. Because of the severity of the slant across the bathroom, the floor had to be rebuilt in two levels, so the tub is actually two inches higher than the rest of the bathroom.

Tub set in place. Too bad the room is seven inches wider than the tub.

New drywall and new window in place. Also, the seven inches behind the tub was filled with a linen cabinet.

Some of the painting is done. Heating vent installed, medicine cabinet installed, and the final flooring is installed.

The finished product. The only thing missing from this picture is the showerhead.

The End of an Era

2009-11-23T21:49:00.004-05:00

It's tough to see happen, but the boys have moved on from things that were interesting a few years ago. Particularly since they had so much fun building and then using these "go-machines". But, in the end, practicality won out. I needed the space in my barn, so the go-machines had to go. I took some last pictures, just for old time's sake...

The low-racer, made from a Craftsman lawn tractor

The infamous propeller-kart. This one was a blast.

The propeller-kart, rear view

On the trailer, before hauling to the recycling center. This was 1200 pounds of metal. Our place seems to accumulate this stuff.

The Missing Day

2009-11-05T12:31:00.004-05:00

Last year, we didn't have a November 5. We went right from November 4 to November 6. So this year I'll sit and bask in the November five-iness for a while to make up for last year.

We left last year on November 4 and arrived in Beijing on November 6, heading into an adventure that we had no idea how it would turn out. It was, and continues to be, quite an adventure. A few days from our missing November 5, on November 10, we stepped off the train after an 11-hour overnight train trip in Xi'an in central China. Later that day, we met our daughter for the first time. She has been with us ever since, and we have not been the same since. Abigail certainly added a whole new dynamic to our family. We thank God for our newest family member and the progress she has made. In just one short year, she has learned to speak English, she has learned how to live in a family, she is making strides academically, and she is growing physically.

What a difference a year makes.

The Little Foxes

2009-10-25T22:17:00.003-04:00

Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom.

Song of Solomon 2:15

This verse really didn't seem to mean much to me until today when, for the first time since we have lived in this house (18 years), we spotted a fox in the back yard. We watched him for perhaps five minutes and shot several pictures from the kitchen window until something spooked the fox and he dashed off into the trees behind our place.

Its reason for being there was specifically the row of grapes along the garden, our vineyard, and he was eagerly eating the grapes that Abigail had thrown down a couple days ago, when she was trimming the plants. After a bumper crop, we had a lot of grapes left over, so the fox was grabbing the easy stuff, the grapes lying on the ground.

I would imagine they could do considerable damage to a good crop, given half the chance...

Facebook Panic

2009-10-11T15:21:00.002-04:00

Tim Friend is unemployed.

There's a whole story behind this. Most of the story was caused by the appearance of these four words on Facebook this past Friday.

I check Facebook occasionally. Sometimes, it is the only way to find out what my college kid is up to. I rarely post anything. The signal to noise ratio on Facebook is quite low and adding to the inane posts will only increase the noise level.

Such things as:

So-and-so is bored.

or:

So-and-so is tired.

appear frequently, so I thought that:

Tim Friend is unemployed.

would be just another four words in the endless digital chatter.

I was wrong.

On a whim, just before I shut down my computer for the last time at work, just before I turned in my ID badge, I logged into Facebook and typed two words (my name was already filled out). I then handed my computer to my boss and walked out the door for the last time.

I had David with me. The secretary from the Tech Center where he is taking his auto mechanics class called me to tell me he missed the bus, so I picked him up and had him help me clean out my office. I learned that his bus had left an hour early because of homecoming at the high school and had left him behind.

When I walked in the door at home, my dear wife went for the jugular. It took a little effort to pry her hands from around my neck and when I finally could breathe again, she went for the verbal jugular.

"What do you mean, you lost your job?!" she screeched.

"You know what's going on," I told her, "I start my other job on Monday. Unemployment is only for the weekend. You've known about this for two weeks."

As she started to calm down, the story came out.

When she arrived home from picking up Abigail from her class, David's car was not in its usual spot in the driveway. Deb's immediate thought was, "road kill" and Panic 1 started. David has had his driver's license for about a month and his car (which we affectionately call 'the bomb'--see The Car Crisis) for a week. So Deb thought he was splattered on the road somewhere.

She checked the answering machine, which was flashing 9 messages. When she finally got to the last one, it was me, telling her that I had David. The panic started to abate as turned on the computer to check email. She doesn't have a Facebook account, so she could only see the emailed responses to the above four words. "We're so sorry." "We'll be praying for you." "We're sorry you lost your job." These sorts of messages greeted her and started Panic 2.

We have great friends and family, by the way. They've showed lots of concern for what turns out to have been a false alarm.

While Deb was still reading the email, the phone rang. "Did Tim lose his job?" asked my mom. They are currently travelling and had received a phone call saying I had lost my job.

"I don't know," said Deb, "but I'm going to wring his neck."

So, just to set the record straight, I no longer work at Gentex as of this past Friday, but I start at a former employer, X-Rite, on Monday. So the statement "Tim Friend is unemployed" is true, but only temporarily.

And if you want to be in on the fun, just be my friend on Facebook. You may not hear from me that often, but when you do, it may make waves.

The Car Crisis

2009-10-04T22:26:00.004-04:00

It's been a while since I've posted anything. There's a good reason for this. We've been a little busy. For one thing, we're still working on getting used to an extra female in this family. Abigail comes into a family where boy stuff ruled the day for nearly two decades. Since Abigail joined our family nearly a year ago, we're seeing some of the pink side of things. Treehouses, zip lines, potato cannons, go karts and the like are giving way to tea parties, talking, and pony tails.

Abigail has a box of miscellaneous doll-house stuff at Grandma's house. Complete with the small doll in the flowing dress. Yesterday, she was playing wedding. The doll, whom she called Katie, was getting married. She spent quite a bit of time arranging the wedding. The only problem was, she didn't have a groom. In her ten-year-old creativity, she chose the nearest available thing--a cow whose legs could be manipulated, Gumby-style. The wedding proceeded despite this little glitch, the beautiful doll and the gumby-cow. When she described this to us the next day and repeated some of the festivities, it was really hard to keep from laughing.

This year finally tied us down to the school year. With Josh in college now and David going to the Intermediate School District Auto Mechanics program, we have specific start dates, days off, and schedules. Abigail, also, is going to a set of classes every Friday. So now we have a new problem on our hands. The Car Crisis.

We could see it coming and we have tried to head it off in various manners. The problem involves having more drivers needing to go different places at the same time than available vehicles. I'm sure many other families with older teenagers have run into this also for each kid, but, for us, it happened all at once. Josh needs to go one direction, David needs to go another, I go to work every day, and Deb needs transport Abigail to her classes and do all the normal household management stuff. With two cars, this doesn't seem to work.

Josh has biked to his classes at Grand Valley quite a few times. David also bikes to the high school where he picks up the bus for the Tech Center. But that only really works when the weather is nice. This is Michigan, after all. Bicycles and Blizzards, although they begin with the same letter, do not go well together. So we found an inexpensive car: a tired Honda that somehow escaped the Cash for Clunkers program. Josh uses it when it rains, when his backpack gets too heavy, and when he oversleeps. Problem solved. For one driver.

The second driver, David, has been a little harder. Since he has an interest in fixing cars, we bought a non-functional car several months ago for him to fix up. The idea was to have it fixed before school started. This one had a blown head gasket. He spent quite a bit of time tearing down the engine to replace the gasket, and then putting it all back together. It even occupied the coveted spot in our garage where the van normally sits, much to the consternation of Deb, who drives the van and covets the garage.

We got it running a few weeks ago. For a short time. Then with a clunk, it died. Due to a few mistakes in reassembling the engine, we now have a head gasket that needs replacing. If experience is the best teacher, we have been learning a lot lately.

So the car is still non-functional, and still in the garage. Deb's lament is: why can't we buy cars that work? I think she wants her garage back.

Meanwhile, the weather has turned decidedly colder. And wetter. September was awesome, good for biking, but the rain-rescues Deb has been having to make lately are getting numerous, and Winter is coming.

Friday we went to look at another car. David's project has gotten too lengthy and Deb can't take him to catch the bus all the time so we found a car on Craigslist that seemed to fit the bill. A means for getting from point A to point B was all we were asking. When David's car is working, then we can get rid of it.

The car was located in Hastings, about an hour away. By the time we got there, it was dark. We missed the driveway. Twice. The house had no lights on outside and the mailbox number was almost impossible to read. The car sat in the driveway in front of one of the large garage doors. The house had four of these, each garage having a large lift. It reminded me of a muffler shop, with a small living area sandwiched between bays 3 and 4.

We took the car for a test drive. It was a means for getting from point A to point B, but that was about it. In its glory days, it was a nice car. A Honda Accord LX with all the trappings, I'm sure it was nice at one time. It's not so nice now. With several large dents and a fair amount of rust, it would take a lot of imagination to call it "pretty". It makes a lot of Michigan winter beaters look good.

But it ran well and drove well. The wipers made a horrible screeching across the windshield, but those are easy to replace. I wish they had been newer because it poured rain all the way home. I couldn't see a thing.

I gave a lower offer and the guy accepted it so we took it home. The first thing we discovered when we stopped to get gas was that the fuel door wouldn't open. So we continued home, hoping the the fuel gauge was not lying to us.

The next day, when it was light, we could finally see what we had purchased. David was dismayed and said he would probably be laughed off the parking lot after seeing the nice mauve/purple interior of the car. Perhaps this will be additional incentive to get his other car working. The other car is a rear-engine, two seater sports car. We managed to punch out one dent using a large block of wood and a hammer, but the others may be permanent fixtures in the car.

So the Friend Transportation Department has been very active lately, but the Friend Housing Department has not been far behind. Our house rehab project has taken a little longer than planned, and with all my workers now in school, it is mostly Deb and I and Abigail, with a little of David's time, that continue the project. Yesterday, we replaced a window, putting a large hole in the side of the building, then getting it all put back together, with new wood siding, per historic district requirements. I was hoping to get it painted the same day, but a brief rain shower soaked everything, sending us inside for the remainder of the day. Deb discovered water dribbling from the bathroom ceiling, so now we have additional plumbing and drywall work to do. After replacing nearly all the plumbing in the building, we discovered that one of the few areas that was not replaced leaks. So it goes for old buildings.

There are other things going on as well, but I think I am running out of disk space. Stay tuned. This could get interesting.

Before: (the hack job)

After:

The whole building, before and after paint:

Before:

After: (David putting on finishing touches)

Road Trip, The Rest of the Story

2009-08-24T06:04:00.011-04:00

We just got back from a family road trip to Ohio. We spent a week touring some of the natural features and state parks, putting on about 1000 miles in a big loop through the state. Some of the more memorable times of the trip were:

1. Spending the first night in a private campground just southwest of Cleveland. This wasn't one of our destinations but was located near Cuyahoga Valley National Park. This campground had a distinctly redneck feel to it. Half of the campers were installed rather permanently, as evidenced by the tall grass, foundation plantings (if I can call the wheels the 'foundation'), and even large decks built off the side of the camper. Our campsite was located just a few feet from what appeared to be a beer tent, complete with large Budweiser and Dale Ernhardt banners, skull and crossbones flags, and guys with no shirts on swizzling from tall aluminum cans. During temporary lulls in the noise, we could hear other parties raging in the distance. The only redeeming factor, according to Josh, was the open wireless network.

2. The heat. It was HOT. The farther south we traveled, the hotter it got. And it wasn't a dry heat, either. We told Abigail when we first got her that it was hot in July, when her birthday was. It was cool most of July and didn't get hot until we were away from home in Mid August. She probably thinks we're a bunch of liars.

3. Stow, Ohio. We stayed two nights in a city campground in Stow, Ohio. Although the campground itself was "rustic" (i.e. no flush toilets), the rest of the park was pretty upscale, including a large lake that was for dogs only--no humans allowed. The entire city seemed to be more on the upscale side with beautiful large homes and immaculately manicured lawns. Even the McDonalds restaurant we stopped at for ice cream was done upscale, with walnut crown moulding and lots of wood trim.

4. Hills. I've always thought of Ohio as flat, kind of like Indiana flat. But we were on some hilly roads that would challenge any mountain road for hills and curves. David, our performace car buff, was lamenting that we were doing these roads in an overloaded minivan towing a heavy trailer instead of a sports car. His idea of a great road trip is doing these kinds of roads in a mid-engine two-seater, at the highest speeds possible.

5. Ice Cave. A natural cave in some small rocky cliffs in Cuyahoga National Park. Aptly named because of its chilly interior. It was a welcome relief from the heat. We could have stayed in there all day.

6. Kidron, Ohio. The location of Lehmans, a company that sells a lot of stuff that could be considered "back to the land", and supplies to the Amish community. Massive store, lots of cool stuff, way overpriced. We left, having only sampled the fudge.

7. P. Graham Dunn. Located not far from Lehmans, but over more of those surprisingly steep and twisting roads, this business makes inspirational plaques from wood and other materials. Deb browsed their store while the kids and I took their factory tour. Laser engraving and cutting. Computer controlled wood engraving. Pretty cool stuff.

8. Hocking Hills State Park. A small canyon in the middle of this hilly country (yes, there is a canyon in Ohio!). Some cool hiking trails along the rim and along the creek at the bottom.

9. Tar Hollow State Park. We called this the Tar Pitts. It took us over 2 hours to drive the 21 miles to get there, and we were led astray by the locals twice ("It's jest up that thar road, ya can't miss it"). Turns out the GPS led us to a remote section of the park, and the 'fastest route' was over many miles of one-lane dirt road. We finally ended up at a fire lookout tower in the middle of the forest where we managed a weak cell phone signal and called the park office. The park was rather unspectacular. Perhaps one of the nicest features was the elusive entrance sign that we were told we couldn't miss. It was big and it was nice and we couldn't miss it--if we were on the right road.

10. Tecumseh. This was the biggest reason we stayed at the Tar Pitts, because it was located near the Tecumseh outdoor dramatic play. Tecumseh was about the life of Chief Tecumseh and the battles at Tippecanoe. The stage included some of the forest and a small lake and the play included gunfire and cannonfire, so it was very noisy at times but very well done. We had to keep reminding Abigail that the people weren't really dead.

11. Ceasar Creek State Park. 10,000 acres of park and recreation area circled around a lake which formed when Ceasar Creek was dammed up. Lots of trails, including mountain biking trails. I discovered that it's really tough to do a mountain biking trail with a tag-a-long attached to my bicycle. Abigail thought it was a hoot, but it wore me out.

12. Campground firewood. There's a reason I try to bring my own firewood. A small bundle of wood bought at the camp office was so wet that it took an hour to get it to a point where we could roast a marshmallow. We used gobs of paper, whatever burnables we could find in the trash bag, and the fan to keep the fire going. Other people seemed to have an easier time, but the distinct odor of charcoal lighter fluid gave them away.

13. Flying bicycle wheels. When driving to a biking trail, I glanced in the rear view mirror just in time to see a single bicycle wheel bouncing behind the car. We searched for an hour but could not find where David's front wheel ended up. Perhaps in the corn on one side of the road or in the soybeans on the other side of the road, but David now has a one-wheeled bike.

Abigail loves camping. She has told people that she went camping twice this summer, and gets to go again in September.

Road Trip, Day 1

2009-08-15T08:41:00.003-04:00

Willow Lake Park, a private campground and "resort" near Brunswick, Ohio. This is one of those resorts that is half filled with full time campers and then other more transient campers like ourselves. It also seems to be the local party spot. We rolled in here last night about 10:30, and the campsite we were assigned was about 3 feet away from an informal beer tent, and a party was in full swing. When I asked to be reassigned, they gave us the next site, which was 10 feet away.

I think we'll move on...

The Fort

2009-08-10T19:22:00.009-04:00

There is a large number of wooden trays stored here in the barn. These trays were used extensively until the flower operation was shut down over a decade ago. Since then they have been stored in a back section of the barn.

One year, the kids moved several stacks of these trays around to create a secret room, a fort which made for endless hours of play. Each time some of the cousins would come from out of town, the fort would get re-arranged, or added on to. Accessories were added. A ceiling was added. Old desk lamps were used for lighting. The final rendition consisted of a large main room and two side rooms, the main room having a door, a bed, an old radio, an numerous other items. They even have carpet. Some of the kids have slept there overnight.

Looking toward the entrance

The main room

Looking into a side room

The most recent addition was a wall of fame, the names of each of the cousins burned into the wood of the trays in a section of the main room. This year, one more name was added. Abigail got to burn her name into the fort, thus becoming one of the brotherhood and sisterhood of the Friend Fort.

Previous names

Abigail adding her own name

The newest name.

Nine Months

2009-08-10T08:00:00.000-04:00

Nine months ago today, we picked up a scared little girl on a street corner in Xi'An, China. I've written about this a couple times before, but what I have not written about so far was what happened immediately after we received Abigail at the Civil Affairs Office in Xi'An. It was nothing big or momentous, but it was an indication of how this whole adoption process goes.

In a nutshell, the way ahead is dark, and you never know what is going to happen next.

After we left the Civil Affairs Office, we needed to have a picture taken for the adoption certificate. Our guide, Jane, finally coaxed a very reluctant Abigail to hold my hand, so with Abigail walking very stiffly and sullenly beside me, we set off towards our hotel.

It was past dusk by this time, and the place where the picture was to be taken was on the way back to the hotel, according to Jane. I have no idea if this was actually true, because of all the twists and turns we took during the journey.

Jane led us down a few very dark and very narrow streets. Many times we had to walk on the street itself because the sidewalk was still crowded with vendors packing up their wares, parked cars, and other things we couldn't identify. When the occasional car went by, we almost had to flatten ourselves against a building to make room.

The gloom, the dark buildings towering over the narrow streets, the occasional brackish water standing in the low spots, and our unknown destination all combined to give me the feeling that I was playing a part in some B-rate gumshoe detective movie, only I had no idea of the plot or the outcome.

That feeling was reinforced by our destination, a nondescript door in a building that opened to a dimly lit stairway. The stairs were only wide enough for two abreast, and Abigail balked that Jane was not able to walk beside her up the stairs. We finally convinced her to hold my hand up the stairs, and we arrived in a tiny room that really didn't look like a photography studio.

The only thing missing from my detective picture was the skinny guy with his feet up on the big wooden desk smoking a cigar, and the ceiling fan spinning slowly overhead. Instead, there was an older Chinese man, who ushered us through the cluttered room into the next room, equally tiny and cluttered. This room had a camera, a few chairs, and a big white box, and we were arranged on the box and our picture was taken.

It was a bit of a test of wills to get everyone arranged to actually take the picture. Abigail, who was quite scared and very tired, just wanted to cling to Jane, but Jane was not supposed to be in the picture. Abigail did manage some semblance of a smile and we even managed some semblance of a smile despite the stress of the day, and we were heading back down the stairs in about ten minutes. Back in our hotel, the next test of wills was getting Abigail to brush her teeth.

The whole thing seems a bit surreal now, like some half-remembered dream.

In the nine months since then we've been asked many times how it's going. The easy answer is "fine". Abigail is a generally happy ten-year-old, usually eager to help out. She loves her friends, loves her family, and is particularly interested in how the family all fits together. We've had several family get-togethers since she has been home and she wants to know just how each person is related. She will ask about each person multiple times, which can get a little tiring when the get-together consists of over 60 people. Family is important to her, so it was fitting that she was able to be in the extended family picture from our family reunion in May.

She sleeps well, eats well; her English is coming amazingly well, and she likes to learn. Most of the time, she will have a smile on her face, and she loves to tease.

The undercurrents are a little harder to describe. I don't wish to publish lots of detail on the Internet, but suffice it to say that family relationships have been and continue to be buffeted strongly by these undercurrents. In engineering terms, if a disturbance is introduced into a stable system, the system will oscillate for a while before becoming stable again. We're very much in the oscillation stage. We're working towards stability again, but we're not there yet. We can only take things one day at a time, and plant our feet firmly on the Solid Rock, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

By casting our cares on his mercy each day, we will soldier on, knowing that He will carry us through. We look forward to what He will do in the next three months and beyond...

The Silver Lining

2009-08-07T10:16:00.002-04:00

Purchasing airline tickets is a task that gets more onerous all the time. This latest batch was definitely no exception. We seem to be paying more and more for increasingly lousy service, bad connections, and long layovers. Our tickets for our trip to Washington had connections in Chicago, Las Vegas, and finally Seattle. The return flight was a red-eye, arriving in Chicago at 5:30 a.m. All this for $378, not including all the taxes and fees. Any better connections or times put the cost somewhere north of five hundred bucks. With four of us flying, that added up in a real hurry.

When we arrived at the airport on Monday, we could tell immediately that something was wrong. The lines at the ticket counter weren't particularly long, but the ticket agents looked harried and there were lines outside the usual cattle stalls. The 6:00 flight to Chicago had been cancelled and they were trying to re-route a planeload of passengers on other flights. I overheard an agent telling a passenger that she could not get her on a flight until two days from now. We managed to check in for our 6:45 flight and then waited in the gate area.

The plane eventually filled up and left, right on time. Only we were not on it. The flight was way overbooked and we were the unlucky ones to not have seats. We waited by the desk while the agent tapped madly on the computer. There were perhaps a dozen other passengers in the same predicament. The next available flight, she finally told us, was at 2:15 and consisted of three flight segments on three different airlines. On the last segment, she could not get seating assignments, we had to check in again.

As if to head off any questions about being bumped from a confirmed flight, she handed me a brochure on passenger rights and said we had a choice of free tickets to anywhere in the USA or cash compensation. I told her we would take the cash.

So, back to the United ticket counter to submit our claim, then to another line at the American counter to check in for the first leg of our new flight.

Rather than waiting five hours at the airport, we went home for a while.

Abigail was becoming quite confused by the whole thing. In China, we went to the airport, got on an airplane, and flew to our destination. Here we went to the airport, waited in several lines for a few hours, then went back home. A few hours later, we went back to the airport and finally got on a plane.

So we flew to Chicago on American, to Minneapolis on United (Abigail calls it Many Apples), and to Seattle on Alaska Airlines. Our luggage took the earlier flights to Chicago and Las Vegas.

When we arrived in Seattle, we went to the United baggage claim desk as we were told way back in Grand Rapids. The lady there gave us the run-around for a while and then sent us to Alaska Airlines. Alaska Airlines clicked and tapped on her computer for an interminable amount of time, never locating the town of Zillah to send the bags to. She finally got her manager who took one look at the computer and told us, "This code means that the bags are sitting at this airport." She printed out proof of this and sent us back to United. United took a look at the printout, then our baggage claim ticket and told us we had to go to US Airways. US Airways was located by Carousel 9 (we were near 18) which was a fair distance to walk, particularly in a crowded airport.

When I arrived at US Airways, the line was long and they only had one agent working. I spotted the bags in a corner of the room. I then estimated the amount of time required to properly check with the agent to clear the bags. It was distressingly long. I waited until the agent was concentrating on her computer, grabbed the bags, and ran from the room. It felt a little funny, stealing my own luggage, but the luggage ordeal was already at an hour and a half and Dad was waiting outside in the van, with the back door open and all the carry-on bags half loaded to make it look to the parking police that he was actually loading bags in the loading zone. An hour in a five-minute loading zone was pushing it a little bit.

We made it home a little after 1:00 am (4:00 am Michigan time). 24 hours to travel across the country. It took us only 26 hours to travel to Beijing, China.

But the silver lining of the whole thing was: United refunded us $300 per ticket.

Mount Rainier

2009-08-07T00:45:00.004-04:00

A couple pictures of us at Mount Rainier National Park...

Silver Falls

Mount Rainier before it clouded over

Abigail's First Wedding

2009-08-02T20:21:00.002-04:00

Abigail got to participate in her first wedding, passing out directions to the reception after the ceremony. She loved it and even had two friends to share the job with...

Cook's Privilege

2009-08-02T20:05:00.002-04:00

The cook gets to lick out the bowl...

Milestones

2009-08-01T07:35:00.002-04:00

We've hit a milestone in our family. Abigail can now ride a bike. We've been working on this for a few months now, first with a scooter in the basement while the snow was still on the ground, then with her on the tagalong behind my bike and then practicing, practicing, practicing on her own bike, with one of us running along beside holding her up. Usually it was at some crazy angle where letting go would have resulted in instant ground-contact, but gradually she could go ten to twenty feet on her own on a straight, flat surface.

Yesterday things sort-of clicked. Deb had her in the church parking lot near our home and she took off and went round and round and round, with a huge smile on her face. She even figured out how to start on her own and come to a controlled stop. I took her out again later in the evening and she did several more laps.

She was thrilled. And so were we.

Carefully Laid Plans

2009-07-26T08:01:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was one of those days that was timed almost to the minute. The schedule went something like this:

I left for the "Joe" (the nickname we have been using for our rehab house) at around 9:00. On the agenda was to replace a plank in a hardwood floor and then continue dealing with the upstairs bathroom. Deb and Abigail arrived around 10:30 to paint some trim.

Josh was working at the bike shop, and David stayed home. He and his friend, Patrick, were going to try to remove a stubborn crankshaft pulley from David's car.

Deb and Abigail began their cleanup at 1:05 and then left for home at 1:15. Deb had to finish a meal she was making for someone in our church. She had been planning and thinking about this meal for two weeks, carefully collecting and assembling the ingredients over that time. We were planning on delivering the meal on our way to sister Sherry's house in Kalamazoo. Since we had to be there at 4:00 and it was an hour's drive, we needed to leave our house at 2:30 to leave room for the side trip to deliver the meal.

I stayed a little longer to puzzle how to set a square tub into a bathroom that was not quite square. Also, the bathroom is six inches wider than the tub, so something needs to be built to fill in the gap.

Around 1:30 the phone rang. I am not accustomed to carrying a cell phone, so when my pocket suddenly exploded with the Ringtone Concerto, it set me a little on edge.

It was Deb on the phone. The panic was evident in her voice.

"Tim, you gotta come home right now!" she cried.

I had now forgotten about square tubs, drywall, and floor boards. This sounded serious. My mind immediately jumped to the worst. House on fire--no, then she would not be calling from the phone in the house. One or more kids in the emergency room--that's a possibility; I've injured myself more than once trying to fix a car. Also, with teenagers on the road, one of them may have smashed a car.

"What's wrong?" I shot back, still trying to conjure up even worse scenarios.

"David ate the chicken!" she said, almost in tears.

"I'll be home right away," I told her. I re-hung the front door that she had painted earlier in the day, locked up and left for home. With the main ingredient for the meal we had to deliver in a little over an hour now missing, we had to come up with Plan B.

Plan B was very similar to Plan A. Deb had some additional chicken in the freezer that she had all ready to put on the grill by the time I got home. After the chicken was done, she prepared the meal the second time and we were able to deliver it on time and be in Kalamazoo at precisely 4:00. And no one was the wiser (except now, that this story has been broadcast all over the Internet).

David said the chicken was very good. He was casting about the refrigerator, looking for some lunch, when he happened across the chicken, which was set there to thaw. He thought they were leftovers, so they became lunch.

Now that the Big Panic is over with, we had a good laugh about it.

Road School

2009-07-20T12:26:00.004-04:00

It has been 10 years since one of our first experiences with home schooling. Although we didn't formally begin homeschooling our children until the fall of 2002, we did try a little bit of what could be considered homeschooling on a family road trip in July of 1999. Our boys (then 8 and 5) were at a great age for a family road trip, and they were excited and curious about just about everything, so a road trip to Yellowstone National Park would be great for family adventure and learning.

So as part of the planning for our three weeks on the road, we packed materials for writing a journal, for drawing pictures of what they had seen, various books, also books on tape, and other materials. We planned on buying postcards at each of the stops along the way to document the journey as well.

We had been thinking about this for a year prior to this trip and decided to buy an older motor home and then work the kinks out of before the Big Trip. That way we could hopefully keep the costs down and travel comfortably also.

The ride we eventually got, a tired 1978 Winnebago, turned out to have quite a few kinks, and the summer of 1998 found us sitting by the side of the road more than once with some sort of mechanical failure. But on July 2, 1999, we piled in and hit the road, hoping that we had dealt with most of the major issues.

I kept a journal myself. It is over 30 pages long, in small type, single spaced. Exactly three sentences of this journal described the homeschooling part of our journey. Most of the remainder of this journal is about the motor home. There wasn't a day that went by without some sort of mechanical trouble. Exhaust system troubles, electrical troubles, carburetor problems, vacuum leaks, fluid leaks, broken lug nuts, a broken awning and burned up starters were just some of the challenges that greeted us each day

We had plenty of adventure and family learning, but not in the ways we had expected. Some of the adventures related to auto parts stores, repair shops, and doctors offices. Some of the family learning was on how to keep a motor home on the road using a roll of duct tape. Additional learning was on how to secure things when the vehicle is in motion. A large pitcher full of fruit juice found its way onto the floor when we rounded a curve. Due to a temporary lapse in diligence in securing all items, it was left on the counter when we took off. The juice was greedily absorbed by the '70s era orange carpet, and what the carpet didn't absorb was taken care of by the remainder of the sugar that had flown out of an upper cupboard when a latch popped open shortly before.

We almost didn't make it to Yellowstone. On the long climb up the mountain outside of Buffalo, Wyoming, the transmission began to overheat, and we had to turn around. After the many troubles we had up to this point, we decided to turn around and head for home. The next day found us in the tiny town of Douglas, Wyoming, after two of the rear wheels nearly fell off. The motor home spent the day in the shop, we spent the day in the city pool. The mechanic told us that it could still make it to Yellowstone, so we turned around again, this time coming into the park by the south route instead of through the mountains.

Yellowstone was enjoyable, and our enjoyment was perhaps magnified by the fact that we could hike the trails and leave the motor home behind. The kids got to see Old Faithful, one of their big goals of the trip. We spent a few days in vacation bliss, with campfires, long hikes, cool evenings, and sleeping in all part of the agenda.

The trip home was unbelievable. The 108 degree heat through Nebraska, along with a lack of air conditioning, the noise from the faulty exhaust system and the vibration and rattle of a vehicle well past is prime took a toll on all of us. Any attempts at learning were long forgotten, we were simply focused on covering the next mile. The engine was running poorly, our second starter was showing signs of expiring, and I think I was putting in more and more oil, brake fluid, and transmission fluid at every gas stop.

It was a welcome relief to make it to my brother's house near Des Moines, Iowa. We were able to experience silence and air conditioning for an evening.

We had not made it very far down the freeway the next morning when cars behind us began blowing their horns. Glancing in the rear view mirror, I could not see the cars, because the cloud of smoke we were leaving behind was so thick.

The motor home didn't make it home. We left it in a scrap yard in Iowa. We finished our journey in a rented car. Not much schooling happened, but we did learn a lot. And it really was a memorable trip.

If you want learning and adventure, come join us. It always seems to follow us, where ever we go. The next year we did the simple, tent-camping thing. One of our tents was destroyed by a bear.

If you haven't been scared off by now, my full journal can be had by simply emailing me and requesting it...

How Not to Fix Up a House

2009-07-11T06:17:00.003-04:00

After a few months of working on a 130-year-old house, I have spent considerable time fixing up other people's shortcuts. Many of these are simply annoying and cheap, some are downright dangerous. So I've compiled a partial list of the things NOT to do when making repairs to a house.

When the plumbing leaks or the pipes don't fit together right, seal the plumbing with plastic grocery bags.

When you re-wire the second floor apartment, don't bother using electrical boxes to contain the splices. Just let them hang out in the open. That way, when the next owner wants to add some insulation in the attic, he can't due to the fire hazard.

In fact, on some connections, don't even bother using electrical tape or wire nuts.

When you put new laminate flooring in the living room, dining room, and front bedroom, don't bother cutting out the holes for the heating vents. After all, the single vent that's left in the back bedroom will be sufficient for heating the entire apartment, particularly with gravity heat. And just cover up the vent opening in the kitchen floor with a piece of plywood. The tripping hazard that creates is fairly minor anyway.

When new electrical panels are installed, wire about half of the lower apartment's lights and plugs into the upper apartment's electrical panel. This will keep the electricity cost in the lower unit to a minimum.

Use a hollow core door as a main entry door into the upper apartment. A deadbolt in a hollow core door will give a great sense of security.

When installing carpet over hardwood floors, don't bother filling in old heating vents or missing floor boards. Just stuff some extra carpet padding in the holes. This creates a rather unique soft spot in the floor that just begs to catch the unwary foot and send the person attached to that foot crashing to the floor.

Fix broken windows by replacing the glass with plexiglass and glazing them with bathtub caulk. Plexiglass acquires this wonderful scratchy patina over time, making it very hard to clean.

Don't bother using a strike plate for the entry door lock set. A couple of drywall screws will suffice.

If your house sits in a nationally registered historic district, please feel free to modify window locations and install vinyl sliding windows. This earns the undying admiration of the city Historic Preservation Commission and forces the new owner to rip out that nice new shower stall you've just installed because it covers up the original window location.

Allow the front steps to crumble to a point where large weeds grow through the cracks.

Don't bother maintaining the exterior paint. Peeling paint and rotting clapboard siding gives a real sense of age.

If you do any painting, use a sprayer and allow the overspray to collect on the window glass. Don't bother cleaning it up. You can always frame the Notice of Violation letters you get from the city Neighborhood Improvement Department as souvenirs.

If a basement window breaks, just put plywood over it. Over time, when all the windows are boarded up, the 130-year accumulation of cobwebs and the darkness would make this a great setting for a creepy movie. Especially with the network of gravity heat pipes, sagging plumbing, and low-hanging non-functional light fixtures ready to connect with the unsuspecting noggin.

Locate the furnace thermostat six inches from a drafty window.

Locate the only available outlet in a kitchen immediately above the sink. Since there's no counter space around this particular sink, that forces any small electrical appliances to be located IN the sink. This will make for some wonderfully charged experiences.

Dont bother putting a proper plumbing trap under the kitchen sink. Your tenants will appreciate the rich and colorful odors that emanate from the open sewage system.

I'm sure there will be more surprises as this project progresses. Up until now, it has been quite an education.

What Were They Thinking?

2009-07-09T07:46:00.003-04:00

I've been doing a lot of plumbing work in the basement of our rehab house lately. It seems like old iron pipe tends to gunk up on the inside after many years, causing faucets to run really slow. So many of them needed to be replaced. Yesterday I arrived at one of the water heaters, and the above picture is one of the connections to this water heater. Leaning out of the top at a crazy angle was flexible copper pipe, kinked in two places, several miscellaneous iron fittings, a ball valve that wouldn't open all the way because it hit the pipe, more iron fittings, ten feet of copper, and another twelve feet of iron with a big patch in one spot. It all got replaced with CPVC.

Meanwhile, Deb put the first coat of polyurethane on the living room floor that Josh just finished sanding. Josh spent most of the day with Barabbas (the name given to our big noisy old floor sander), taking all the layers of paint and gunk off the hardwood floor. It's a noisy, dusty, nasty job, but the result is so much nicer than the beige carpet that formerly covered this floor.

Fun in the Sun

2009-07-08T12:39:00.003-04:00

There's nothing like a big Lake Michigan sand dune on a sunny summer day!

The 4th Tradition

2009-07-05T08:31:00.005-04:00

We've had a tradition for the 4th, something we've done for years. This year, Abigail got to participate in the tradition. We will outfit our bicycles with whatever lights we can scrounge up: red lights from the parts bin on the back of the bike, powered by a cordless drill battery, and small flashlights duct-taped to our helmets, and head off to the Grandville fireworks display, about two miles away. Our bikes are packed with a blanket to sit on, snacks, sparklers, and whatever else we think to take along. We usually leave around 8:30pm, and claim our square of grass in the park next to Grandville Middle School, just off the bike path.

Abigail has been looking forward to this for a long time, and for this day she could hardly stand the wait. We heard the question "Is it time to go?" about a zillion times. She wanted to cut everything short so that we could get going. I think all the scurrying around and preparing things only heightens the anticipation.

We had her outfitted with a red blinker light clipped to the back of her pants, which she thought was really cool. She had to show us how it worked many times, turning it on and off and watching it blink.

When we finally claimed our spot on the grass, she wanted to play on the nearby playground for a while. The entire area was crowded and there was lots of noise from people talking, yelling, and setting off firecrackers. It didn't phase her a bit. Having spent time in several big cities in China, I can see why. Crowds are the norm.

She enjoyed her two boxes of sparklers as it began to get dark, but what she really liked were the flexible glow-sticks. These are the things you see people walking around the crowds and trying to sell for way too much money. Deb had found a box of a dozen of them for a dollar at a local store a couple weeks ago and figured they would be a good thing to head off having little girls asking for the overpriced ones on the day of the fireworks.

She soon had them around her neck, ankles, wrists, and waist. She also made sure that I had one, that Deb had one, and that Josh had one. Even after the fireworks started, she was busy rearranging the colors and sizes, making hats and bracelets. Never mind the fireworks, she had seen those before in China. This was something new.

When the fireworks ended, then it was time to move. With our blinkers on and our helmet flashlights on, we headed off down the bike trail towards home. Abigail wanted to play with her glowing bracelets, but needed to hang on to the bike to keep from falling off.

The nice thing about bikes is that we just ride past the snarl of traffic all trying to go home. We can be home and in bed before most people even make it out of the parking lot. Even so, it was nearly 11:30 when we arrived home. Abigail thought that was a hoot. Staying up way past bedtime. And she got to wear her glow sticks to bed.

We peeked in the window a little while later. She was still awake, playing with the glow sticks. I don't know how long it took her to get to sleep, but it was one of those special days when bedtime rules are set aside and the normal routine is broken up for a fun activity.

The trouble is, the next day we had an extended family get-together at a state park, and the day after that was her birthday. She's going to think that all we do around here is party.

Update from Slidell

2009-07-05T08:09:00.002-04:00

Following is a note from the leader of David's group:

We have arrived in Slidell! We got to "blow stuff up" tonight as well since all fireworks are legal here ;-) We arrived on schedule at about 4pm and have been enjoying the fellowship already with the body at Sovereign Grace Fellowship. Sunday we will attend the a.m. service, have lunch with the congregation & then some orientation. If time goes well we are planning on a short time at the beach. Monday morning the work in this heat begins... and please DO pray for us as it is definitely hot & muggy!

Grace & peace,

Chris & the team

Slidell Bound

2009-07-03T21:17:00.002-04:00

David is currently traveling down to Slidell, Louisiana with our church youth group where he will be helping with Hurricane Katrina construction. They will be there for a week.

After a couple months working for me rehabbing an old house, he gets to travel south and do a lot of the same stuff. Only this time it is in 95 degree heat and high humidity.

Maybe he will like painting more when he gets back.

I LOVE to Paint

2009-07-02T09:23:00.006-04:00

"I LOVE to paint," says Abigail. And, indeed, she has been helping with quite a bit of painting lately. She also likes the wages that come with it. Spending money--a rather new concept for her.

We'll see how she feels after she has done as much painting as David. David is less enthusiastic about painting. And it's not improving with experience for him. He likes painting even less than he likes scraping. He and Josh are the lucky ones who get to paint the entire exterior of the building, first with primer, then with the final color.

So Many Colors, So Little Time

2009-06-24T22:19:00.004-04:00

This is Deb, in her usual research position, surrounded by color swatches. Since she has the better feel for color, she gets to decide what colors to paint our rehab house. The boys have been scraping old paint for the last four weeks and are nearly done. They even spent time on it today, in 90+ degree heat. It's kind of a miserable job, but it has to be done.

David told me he would rather stand on a scaffold and scrape than paint. Now that the scraping is nearly done ... it's time to paint.

Me, I get the really fun stuff, like cutting holes in walls to fix plumbing leaks, figuring out why plugs in the kitchen don't work, and reglazing windows.

Somehow, the plumbing always sneaks in there somewhere.

Adoption Alfresco Dining

2009-06-22T22:45:00.005-04:00

Our church's adoption/orphan/foster care ministry team blessed us with a delectable dinner tonight. Since it's been six months since we brought Abigail home, they decided it was time for us to celebrate and be doted on. Nancy came and set a beautiful table for us with fresh flowers, linens and dishes. Jamie prepared an absolutely delectable meal. Usually when you have a fine meal at a restaurant, it might be good, but it seems like there's never enough. Such was not the case tonight. It was delicious and we had plenty to eat. We loved the toasted pecans in the salad and the fresh asparagus spears. The parmesan chicken smothered with garlic butter sauce was delightful.

Yes, they were as yummy as they look!

And Abigail had the last strawberry. She enjoyed it immensely.

Precious Moments

2009-06-21T07:41:00.004-04:00

"Abigial," I said, "wo ai ni."

"Whaa," she said, her usual response to something she doesn't understand.

"Wo ai ni," I repeated.

She looked puzzled. This lasted for about five seconds, then her face lit up and she grinned broadly.

"I love you," she exclaimed.

The change in her expression when it dawned on her was priceless. My Chinese may not have been good, but she figured it out.

Deconstruction - The Cherry on Top

2009-06-18T06:27:00.002-04:00

One more little detail for those of you who have read my "Deconstruction" post: This house sits in a historic district, so there are strict rules for what can be done to the exterior of the building. I would have to obtain approval from the Powers That Be to stick a piece of plastic pipe through the roof and it would probably be denied because it would change the nature and character of the building. So the little cherry on top of the nice new PVC plastic plumbing stack is a two-foot section of the original iron pipe, joined in the attic and sticking through the roof in its original location, just like it has for the last 130 years or so. From the outside, it hasn't changed a bit.

Now the Powers That Be are happy, I am happy, everyone is happy.

Past Tense

2009-06-17T06:51:00.002-04:00

Now that Abigail can speak the language adequately enough to hold a conversation, we're starting to discover things about her past. She told us last night that she had two meals a day.

In the orphanage, her hair was always kept short. We have pictures of her with a buzz cut. She said she didn't like the short hair and she wants it down to the middle of her back. So we're letting it grow out, but keeping the bangs in check. This concept of longer hair is unique and fun for her. I trimmed her bangs last night to keep them out of her eyes. After I had wet her hair, she shook her head like a dog shakes itself off and flung water all over the kitchen. She thought that was uproariously funny. This is what she looked like after the big shakeout:

Deconstruction

2009-06-10T08:24:00.010-04:00

Why would I want to take a second-floor bathroom that looks like this...

...and allow my boys in with hammers and wrecking bars...

...to make it look like this...

...then like this...

...then like this?

Because I can?

No.

Because I want to?

No. Y'all know I hate plumbing and bathrooms are usually full of plumbing.

It's because it desperately needed it, for the following reasons:

The claw-foot bathtub had to go. Some prior owner framed it in by building a wall around it, making it look like some sort of bath-nook. His framing job was bad and his tile job was even worse. The grout was falling out and what was left was mildewed. The tub was also propped up on one end so it would drain properly. The house has settled significantly over the past 130 years or so, and the bathroom has a decided lean to it.

The floor was spongy. The prior owner covered up a problem by putting laminate floor over it. That just made the laminate floor look like it had a problem also.

The house and the plumbing have settled at different rates. The result is that the main waste stack is now at least three inches higher than it used to be relative to the rest of the house. This made the toilet lean forward at a rather precarious angle. The floor around the throne was built up slightly in an attempt to compensate for the plumbing. While that hid the pipes from showing through, it didn't do anything for the slope of the floor, or the obvious lean of the toilet.

This is one of those jobs that works like an onion. On the surface it doesn't look too bad. Peeling away one layer makes you cry and reveals another layer. Peeling away that layer makes you cry again and reveals another layer. And so on, ad infinitum.

So, let the extreme makeover begin.

It has to get worse before it gets better. Here are the steps to making it worse.

1. Remove the toilet and the sink.
2. Remove all the tile and the false wall around the claw-foot tub. This creates an enormous amount of dust and debris. The entire tub is now full of broken tile, dirt, plaster chunks, nails, and cement backer board.
3. Remove the laminate floor.
4. Observe all the moisture problems under the laminate floor.
5. Remove the rotten hardwood floor. I'm sure it was beautiful at one time. It's not beautiful now.
6. Remove portions of the subfloor to expose the plumbing. Actually, most of it was already exposed, having pushed itself through the subfloor.
7. Clean the tub out and remove the tub. I had the boys wrestle it down the stairs. They are younger and stronger than I am and need these colorful experiences. The tub was extremely heavy and the stairs extremely narrow. They are now much better for having experienced this.
8. Look at the plumbing and scratch my head. I'm either going to have to lower the plumbing or raise the floor. I vote for lowering the plumbing. Unfortunately this has other implications and eventually led to removing the entire waste stack, from the basement all the way through the roof. This affects the first floor bathroom also (not to mention every other plumbing fixture in the house). Now the first floor bathroom has large holes in the wall.
9. Rebuild the waste stack using PVC plastic pipe. It looks a lot better now. And it doesn't leak. Several of the sections of old iron pipe were split and leaking, and one broke completely in half as I was attempting to remove it. I think I made the right decision.
10. Observe how the prior owner fixed plumbing problems by joining pipe without glue. In one instance, he accounted for the difference in size between two fittings by stuffing the gaps with a plastic shopping bag. I'm sure Meijer would be interested that their bag was recycled in this manner.
11. Remove all the lath and plaster. It was in rough shape anyway. We'll start fresh with drywall.

I think I'm nearly at the point where I can start making it better. It can't get much worse than this. There's practically nothing left.

Now I just have to compensate for the slant of the house, install a new subfloor, install new plumbing for the bathtub and shower, insulate the outer wall, fix the window, modify the heating ducts, install new drywall, install new fixtures, including new tub and surround, install new finish flooring, and finally finish it off with paint.

Once this is all done, I get to do most of this over again in the bathroom downstairs.

Wanna help?

Six Months

2009-06-09T07:56:00.001-04:00

Six months ago, we stepped off the plane as a family of five. Our newest family member, 9-year-old Abigail, joined us in Xi'an, China and then accompanied us for the next two weeks as we traveled across China to complete the adoption paperwork.

The immersion began the next day.

We communicated using some basic words of English that Abigail had learned from us in China, a few words of Chinese, and lots of pantomime. I'm sure that someone who didn't know the situation would think we were some sort of nutty family, speaking unintelligibly and gestulating wildly to each other. A few times while trying to communicate something, Abigail motioned for a piece of paper, and then wrote out what she was trying to say. She then pointed at the neatly written Chinese characters and looked at me expectantly. Had it not been so frustrating, I probably would have burst out laughing. I don't read Chinese any more than I speak it.

It's small wonder that she clocked in over 12 hours of sleep per night and ate more than my teenage boys. Learning a new language, culture, family, friends and strange foods takes a tremendous amount of energy.

Over the last six months she has lived a lifetime of changes and new experiences. It took a while to get her used to the novel idea of home schooling, and we are still working on how that all works, but she is making good progress in several subjects. She tends to soak up all available time and it's good that we have other children who can work rather independently.

I have noticed a big decline on available leftovers for my lunch, as Abigail will usually eat them for breakfast. As long as it's hot, she wants it. So she will have anything from pizza to lasagna to soup to pasta salad to start the day. When there isn't any "left stuff", as she calls leftovers, then she will have instant noodles. For a family that has cold cereal and muffins for breakfast, this took a little getting used to.

Abigail is fitting herself into our family and blossoming in many ways. She has acquired quite a bit of language now, and likes nothing better than to talk with people. When we put her to bed, she stalls as long as possible by asking questions and talking about nearly anything. She also is establishing herself as the family sheep dog. "Scoot!", she told Deb when it was time to leave for church. She will round up the boys when it is time to go home with a singsong "Time to go!"

She loves music, and loves to have someone read to her, especially from her Bible story book. She is the first to remind us at the end of the day if we haven't read her a Bible story yet.

We are seeing more personality come to light with each passing day. Abigail is a curious, happy and energetic little girl who loves to be around people. Our Friend family reunion in May was one of the highlights of the last several weeks for her as she was able to meet the rest of her cousins.

Our family life has actually settled into some form of chaotic routine, and we are grateful to God for bringing us this far. We may not know what the future holds, but He does, and we are content to live life the way we have been living it for the last six months: One day at a time.

Rust In Peace

2009-04-26T21:45:00.003-04:00

The Thunderbird is now gone.

David's donor car, which he spent three hot days torching into small pieces, took its last journey on a trailer behind the van to Black River Recycling, a local scrap yard. I can't say that I miss it. After the city delivered its edict to remove the car, it was moved into the garage until we could secure a trailer.

It's surprising just how much metal scrap can come from a single car. Our garage is supposed to hold two cars, but the pile of scrap from this car was surprisingly large, and with another project currently in progress in the garage, both the cars were parked outside.

On Friday, we piled the whole mess on a trailer. What wouldn't fit on the trailer went in the van after we pulled all the seats out. I hauled the whole business to the scrap yard on my way to work in the morning.

After all that work, the total take for selling 1560 pounds of scrap was $38.30.

Entropy

2009-04-21T21:19:00.003-04:00

This used to be a 1989 Ford Thunderbird Supercoupe.

After removing the engine and transmission and several other parts from it, David parked it in the side yard because Deb wanted the garage back. The goal was to harvest any usable sheet metal from it, then take the rest to a scrap yard to be recycled.

I told David it had to be removed by May 8. Last week, we got a letter from the city telling us that it had to be removed by April 20 or we would be guilty of a civil infraction. We got the letter on the 15th, giving us five days to remove the car. I was in California from the 15th until the 18th, so David was pretty much on his own for removing the car.

He spent quite a bit of work cutting it up in pieces and was nearly done when he ran out of acetylene gas. The last two big pieces are in the garage, waiting to be trailered to the scrap yard, along with all the other smaller pieces. Deb can't park her car in the garage, but at least the city is happy again.

David framed the letter from the city and hung it in his bedroom.

Tales from the Front Pew, Chapter 10

2009-04-06T21:36:00.001-04:00

It's been many years since Chapter 9 of this series was written. I think as children age they become better behaved in church and so provide less fodder for interesting stories. Either that or they just save their behavior for some other time. It's probably too embarassing for a teenager to act out when sitting in the front row of a crowded church. A 9-year-old has no such inhibitions.

We have had several comments from members of our choir on how Abigail seems to enjoy singing so much. People have remarked that she is so good in church, that she loves her daddy, and that she is radiantly trying to sing with the congregation, even though she may not know the words. Since we sit in the front row, we are readily visible from the choir risers.

The choir usually sits down after the first set of songs, however, so any observations beyond that get missed. Perhaps they would have a far different picture if they kept their positions during the entire service.

This past Sunday morning was fairly typical for us. Abigail sat well for the first 15 minutes of the sermon and then wanted to sit on my lap for the last half. She usually loses interest in following along in her Bible, turning to the children's bulletin. She can't read well enough to decode what's going on in the chilren's bulletin, so she pesters me for a while, asking how to do the puzzles and word games, until she finally figures out that I would really like to listen to the pastor. She will spend some time copying some text onto her writing pad. Sometimes it's from her Bible, other times it's the advertising text on her pen. Then she will start to fidget and yawn, sometimes going into a full body stretch that raises her hands high in the air.

When all this is happening on your lap, it can be a little distracting. Taking notes has been out of the question for the past few months.

Yesterday, just before the end of the sermon, she did her squirming and stretching and then blurted out in a loud whisper, "He talks TOO MUCH!"

This is the kind of stuff the choir never sees.

Radio Silence

2009-04-06T01:07:00.000-04:00

It has been a long time since this blog has had any posts. The reason is that our family has been essentially consumed by the adoption of Abigail which took place in November. You can read this entire adventure on our adoption blog at abigailcomeshome.blogspot.com

Travel Approval

2008-10-16T16:46:00.000-04:00

I just KNEW it would have to happen today. I could feel it in my bones. And it did happen today, just as I predicted.

We just received our Travel Approval from China, meaning things now shift into high gear. This is the last document necessary for a trip to China to bring our daughter home. We will be tentatively leaving on November 7 for China, and returning to the USA on November 19. We will probably meet our 9-year-old daughter for the first time on November 9. Once we get a visa appointment in place in China, then these dates will firm up and we can make actual travel plans. This should happen in a couple days.

You can follow our adventures in China on our travel journal here.

The trouble is, I just KNEW it had to happen yesterday, and I could feel in my bones that it would happen last Friday. I've been having these feelings for the last three weeks.

Hopefully I make a better dad than a prophet.

Letter of Confirmation

2008-09-11T09:36:00.000-04:00

A long awaited milestone in our adoption process has arrived.

We just received our Letter of Confirmation (LOC) from the CCAA in China, which is basically a letter that we sign indicating that we still wish to go through with this adoption process. This gets sent back to China, and after they sit on it for a week or three, they will issue a Travel Authorization (TA), at which point we can begin to make travel plans.

Receiving this letter means all the long wait times are over. Up till now, the wait times have been measured in months, now we're down to mere weeks while we wait for our Travel Authorization. We will most likely travel just a few weeks after the TA arrives (perhaps in October). Stay Tuned...

A Day at the Friend Home

2008-07-25T01:45:00.000-04:00

Life around the Friend home is pretty dull. To give you an idea of just how dull it is, I thought I would describe to you a typical dull day...

Tuesday, July 21, 2008

Deb canned five quarts of beans today. This normally would not be noteworthy except she has no kitchen right now. The only burner available is the side burner on the barbeque grill, so the beans are boiled and then canned in the garage. I guess the one small advantage of this is that it keeps the heat out of the house. Which is good because we have been having unusually cool weather for the month of July.

In addition to not having access to a stove, Deb also does not have a sink. So there is a table in the garage with two large tubs where she washes the dishes. We fill the water glasses and the ice cube trays in the bathroom.

The reason for all this is I have been putting new countertops in the kitchen. Granite countertops. Somehow, everything I do is a new learning experience, and working with granite is no exception. I figured out how to cut it reasonably well so I have my table saw set up in the garage with a jig I made to help cut straight lines through stone. I do the actual cutting with an angle grinder and a diamond blade. Hand cutting stone is a rather slow process and creates enormous amounts of dust. So I set up a big fan in the garage to blow all the dust outside. So far this makeshift workshop works reasonably well. Except when Deb is washing the dishes. It makes for rather dusty plates.

With most of the granite mounted and grouted in the kitchen, I spent some time sealing the granite to prevent stains. While I was doing this, I had David replacing some hoses on a project we have going: a 1979 MG Midget Convertible. I had just obtained a license plate from the Secretary of State's office, so if we could get some of the last problems fixed up, we could maybe take it out for a ride this evening.

We bought the MG in May as a project car as it needed a fair amount of work. I got it for a bargain, mostly because it suffered a rather unfortunate fire in the engine compartment. The fire was started by a wiring fault and burned up many of the plastic and rubber parts in one area under the hood, and scorched the paint on the hood and the passenger side fender. Since then, David and I have been working on it off and on, rewiring the car, replacing parts under the hood, etc. We actually got it running this past Saturday. So we were both itching to take it for a ride.

With the granite sealer taken care of, I helped David put the front bumper on the car, finish some wiring, test the lights, and get it ready to go. We then squeezed in and took off to our first stop: the gas station. Three gallons of gas was enough to make the needle point to 3/4 tank, plenty for some running around. We took off down Baldwin street, intending to stop at a friend of David's, who shares his interest in cars.

We both decided that riding in a convertible is a lot of fun. Especially during a pleasant sunny evening. David commented that you really don't want your hand to hang too far over the side of the car. This car is small enough and low enough that your hand may actually drag on the roadway.

Two miles later, the engine suddenly lost power. We had enough forward momentum to coast into a side street before coming to a stop. It now refused to start. One minute it was running great, now, not at all. Hmmm. What to do? We didn't have the presence of mind to bring any tools along, but I did drop a cell phone in my pocket just before we left.

I called Deb. Deb, for all her many talents, is somewhat tool-challenged. But she came through after my descriptions of what I wanted and came out in the van with the requested tools. David and I tinkered and poked for a little while and then the engine inexplicably roared to life and stayed running. Must be some sort of fuel problem. I had Deb follow us home. We lost power once more and I managed to coast into the parking lot of a local pizza joint. This time, it started right back up again. We got some strange looks, driving this tiny car with no hood and a burned fender, and coasting into the parking lot entrance marked "Out", but, as they say, "any port in a storm."

All the while, Deb was shaking her head and calling up visions of a 1978 Winnebago Motor home, which died one of its many deaths in that very neighborhood about ten years ago (it also was a fuel problem; we ran it out of gas on one of our joyrides).

Once we got home, we pulled into the family gathering place (you guessed it: the garage). Now it seemed to be running just fine. Maybe we'll stick a little closer to home for a while.

Josh had just got home from work at the bike shop when we arrived home, and I think he really wanted to take the car for a ride, but it was getting late, and he still had a lawn to mow, so his drive would have to wait.

The phone rang shortly after that. It was someone interested in looking at the pickup. With four vehicles crowding the driveway, it was time to get rid of one, so we had the truck for sale. The only car that actually fits in the garage right now is the MG, and that just barely, because of all the other activity going on there.

The guy came about a half hour later. It was dark by this time so I had a flashlight to help him look the vehicle over. He was gone for while, test driving it. I think I heard the sound of squealing tires down the street. He then came back and made me an offer I couldn't refuse. With the condition that the truck was in, it would have been hard to refuse ANY offer. We filled out the necessary blanks on the title on the hood of the pickup, by flashlight, slapping at mosquitoes the whole time. Then I watched the pickup disappear down the street and it was gone, the last echoes from the hole in the muffler fading shortly after. After 15 years of ownership, it was time to sell it. Just to fill the tank with gas was pushing eighty dollars.

Later on that night, Deb awoke to the sound of someone walking around in the back yard. The motion sensor light on the barn had come on, and she heard footsteps and other noises. She had visions of whole armies of theives stealing all our stuff, but after she woke me up, the night was quiet, and the light eventually turned itself off. I solved this mystery the next morning. Two voles had fallen into Joshua's window well and were scrabbling about, keeping him awake. He could still hear them with the window closed, so he got up and went to the barn in search of something to aid in dispatching the varmints. That would explain the footsteps and the light being on.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

I took David out for breakfast this morning and let him drive. He is just learning to drive a stick shift. At the first light, he killed the engine three times and we had to wait for the next cycle. So he was a little flustered by the time it turned green again. Adding to that was the fact that there now was a large SUV waiting behind us. He killed the engine twice more and was becoming quite agitated. I told him that he was not giving it enough gas. So the third time, as the light was turning yellow, he gunned the engine and we shot forward, engine screaming, gravel flying, and tires squealing. I think we would have done reasonably well on a quarter mile race track. The SUV didn't make it through the light and voiced his frustration by honking his horn.

Yesterday, I managed to replace the stove and sink in the kichen. The sink took me nearly all evening, but now Deb has her kitchen back. She managed six quarts of beans today and said it was infinitely easier than canning in the garage on the barbeque grill.

I had a few ideas on the fuel problem after doing a little Internet sleuthing. I began to suspect some scale or rust in the fuel tank which suddenly blocked the fuel line to the engine. I had David begin to take the fuel tank off while I glued a few more tiles down in the kitchen.

With the fuel tank off, we could see some large particles sloshing around with the gas. It looks like we found our culprit. We drained the tank and stuck a fan in the opening to dry out the inside. While it was drying I finished the evening's tile work in the kitchen. The tank couldn't dry fast enough for David. He was really itching to get in the car and drive it.

David and I vaccuumed out the particles in the now-dry tank and mounted the tank back on the car. With David at the wheel, we took off towards the church parking lot down the street.

This was a good opportunity to do a little more practice driving also. We drove circles around the parking lot for a while, and this car seems a little more forgiving than our other car. This one will actually lurch and buck and snort a few times and then start going when David lets out the clutch too fast. The Mazda just dies. We stopped and started and shifted until I noticed that the temperature gauge was hugging "hot". I had David drive it back home. Looks like there is some additional work to do before taking it on any expeditions.

So now here we are at the end of another day. With all the boredom in our day perhaps I should do something a little more exciting. Perhaps I'll take up watching TV.

A Long Distance Birthday

2008-07-09T11:07:00.000-04:00

Abigail turned 9 a few days ago. We threw a party for her and gave her some gifts. She is wearing her new outfit in this picture, one of her gifts. I only wish we could have been there. We could only observe using the pictures that were sent to us from twelve time zones away.

We were grateful for the pictures, though. Being separated by half of a world, different languages, and different cultures, the amount of information we are able to receive is quite small, so this was a welcome glimpse into her life and a few of the others at the orphanage.

Dossier to China

2008-06-13T01:19:00.000-04:00

Our dossier is officially on its way to China. Various portions of it have been "authenticated" at the China consulates in Chicago and San Francisco and now, having been gathered together again as one big sheaf of documents again, was express mailed to our adoption agency's office in Beijing. From there it should be just a few days before being submitted to the CCAA. And then the next wait cycle begins. If the normal estimated time frames are used, we should be able to travel sometime in October.

Meanwhile, Abigail will be celebrating her 9th birthday on July 6. Being separated by twelve time zones, we won't be able to celebrate it with her, but we'll be sending a care package to her. She will at least have some pictures of her family on that day.

Dossier Away!

2008-05-07T18:25:00.000-04:00

This morning I packaged up what amounted to about five months of work, copied in fourplicate (that's one more than triplicate), and notarized, certified (there may be a few more "ied" terms that are applicable), a bunch of required photographs, checklists, and a few other sundry items, and stuffed the whole business into a FedEx small box.

Each step of the way has added more value to that sheaf of papers, from the 51-page questionnaires that Deb and I each had to fill out for the homestudy, to the medical exams, to the numerous trips to the bank to have documents notarized. Add to this trips to be fingerprinted, loads of information to be digested from our adoption agency, not one, but two trips into Grand Rapids Secretary of State's office to certify all the documents and varying amounts of cash for many of these steps.

But the most valuable thing that package represents is an 8-year-old girl waiting in a Chinese orphanage, waiting for her Dad, Mom and two older brothers to come and pick her up and take her home to join the family.

All this, in a FedEx small box, which is now on its way to begin the next phase of the adoption process.

Please handle with care.

FDL

2008-05-03T01:29:00.000-04:00

Today we received a letter from the US Department of Homeland Security. It was the long-awaited FDL, or Favorable Determination Letter. This single page sheet was the culmination of nearly 11 weeks of waiting, a trip across town to be fingerprinted, a rather hefty application fee, and a rather large set of documents that were sent in near the end of February.

The next step now is to get state certifications for this and most of the other documents in our dossier, make several copies of the whole business, and then ship the stack of papers to our adoption agency so it can be authenticated, translated, spindled and mutilated and finally sent off to China.

Antipathy

2008-04-28T16:18:00.000-04:00

Several years ago, Deb and I placed a spare mattress and a bed frame in our three-season porch. We slept out there for many of the Spring and Fall months that year. The combination of the evening breezes coming through the windows, the crickets, an awesome view of the night sky, the morning songbirds and other factors made this a pleasant sleeping experience. It was sort of like those delightful summer evenings, camping in a tent with all the flaps rolled back to let in the night air, only without having to sleep on the hard ground.

The next year, we extended this into the winter by piling more blankets on the bed, and into the summer by opening more windows. We soon swapped the spare mattress on the porch with the good mattress in the master bedroom, because now the master bedroom was only used on those torrid July nights where air conditioning was the only way to sleep, and on those winter nights in the teens when our breath would condense and freeze on the pillows. Our master bedroom now serves as a guest bedroom, because we don't use it much anyway.

We've had some rather interesting experiences while sleeping out there. About ten years ago when straight-line winds tore out many trees and caused lots of property damage in the area, we were one of the first to know the winds were coming, because they lifted all the blankets right off the bed. We had a duck take flight early one morning and attempted to fly through one of the windows. The noisy crash and quacking that went on didn't break the window, but it did jolt us rather violently awake. It's amazing how loud a duck sounds when it hits a window 18 inches from your head.

We also can hear, in crystal clear surround sound, when a raccoon decides to start eating the corn out of our garden, which is just behind the porch. More than once I have dashed outside in the middle of the night and lobbed apples from the nearby tree at the corn-stealing varmint to chase him away.

I suppose you could say we're a little closer to nature out there. We're probably as close as we can get to being out in nature while still maintaining a roof over our heads and a few of the human creature comforts that we've come to enjoy.

Last week, nature came in to us.

Deb noticed while cleaning that there were several winged ants peeking out around the window trim near the floor in one corner of the porch. We cleaned these up using some bug spray and the central vaccuum. But we could tell there were more where they came from. Several minutes later, there were a few more ants peeking out from the same location. After a few rounds of cleaning up ants and then seeing more of them, we decided to call it a night and go to bed.

The next night was a warm spring night, and as we were getting ready for bed, we noticed that the floor around the bed was black with ants. Most of them were dying or already dead, but there were hundreds of them. They seemed to be literally coming out of the wood work, from the trim around the windows, to coming out from behind the window tracks, whereever there was a hole or a gap. We spent quite a bit of time vaccuumming them up, and eventually had the place looking ship-shape again.

I did some looking on the Internet to figure out what kind they were. Carpenter ants. The article I read indicated that swarms of ants could indicate a colony nearby. Do tell! I'll bet it's in the wall right next to the bed. So now I have a new project, removing the trim and the wall below the window so that I can go ant hunting.

We had some family over the next day. My 8-year-old nephew brought over something he wanted to show us. He took it out and placed it on the kitchen counter next to where Deb was making dinner. It was a small clear plastic box that glowed a soft blue when you plugged it in and turned it on. An ant farm. Lots of little ants making their tunnels through the blue-illuminated clear gel.

Ants. On the counter. In the kitchen. Sure, they may be contained, but its about the last thing Deb wanted around while preparing food. After the appropriate ooh-ing and aah-ing over the ant farm, it was moved to the floor of the dining room so Deb could finish the preparations without all that company.

This one was at least easy to remove. It went home with my nephew when they left. The carpenter ants in the porch walls will be an entirely different matter. Probably fit for another story.

Things That Go Bump in the Night

2008-04-25T01:45:00.000-04:00

I was awakened yesterday morning by the characteristic squeak of our bedroom door. The squeak is not all that unusual, as one of us will occasionally get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. However, this particular squeak arrived in my unconsciousness out of order. If Deb is the one who gets up, her movement wakes me up first, and then I hear the squeak of the door when I am awake. So to a person who is aware of the order of things, even while asleep, this particular squeak was particularly jarring.

While I was still clawing my way into a state of semi-consciousness, a three letter word floated about just beyond my reach. I think it was repeated a couple times before finally sinking into the mire far enough to be recognizable, but it eventually got there.

It was a distinctly male voice.

"Dad!" the voice said.

It took a few seconds to assemble all the pieces of my mental facilities together. The fog was still pretty thick. Auditory cortex... check! Prefrontal cortex... check! Brain stem... check! Primary visual cortex... Primary visual cortex.... Oh! check! Motor cortex... having a little hard time of it, but, check! Cerebellum... down!

"Dad, I need some help!"

All those brain facilities that have lurched to a start have been brought up so fast that they are now overreacting. Stark visions of fire, flood, ceiling collapse and other apocalyptic events swirled about as I struggled out of bed. Josh has been in his new bedroom for about a week, so I imagine there could be many things that go terribly wrong that I haven't even thought of.

I sure wish that cerebellum would come on line. I could use a little balance about now.

"Dad, there's a mouse in my bedroom!"

A mouse. No fires, no broken pipes and flooding, no major gas leaks, no cataclysmic events. I just went through the laborious process of brain initialization and startup at 4:30 in the morning for a mouse?

I followed him downstairs to his bedroom, grabbing the first weapon I could find along the way--one of Deb's shoes. I entered his bedroom, armed with the shoe, ready to do battle with a mouse. I squinted in the dazzling brilliance, not able to focus on anything at all, as Josh described hearing the mouse running back and forth beside his mattress. I imagine it was a little disconcerting, hearing the little rodent scrabbling about so close to his ears. I wouldn't be able to sleep either.

We drew up our battle plan. He would pull the mattress away from the wall and I would go in for the kill. I held the shoe high while he yanked the mattress up. No mouse. We searched the rest of the room for our prey. Nothing. I finally told him to get some sleep. We'll set traps or mouse bait in the morning.

I rolled back into bed, but sleep had long since fled. Deb noticed several minutes later that Josh's light had come back on. It was on for a while and then was back off.

When I arrived home from work that day, we pieced together the rest of the story. The mouse was active again immediately after Josh got back in bed so he got back up and managed to corner it against the wall and then trap it in a small bucket. He then carried his captive into the garage and left it there, where it later escaped. He also discovered that it was not a mouse but a vole.

It didn't take too long to figure out what a vole, which normally does not live in a house, was doing in Joshua's bedroom. It was rather warm the night before so we told him to open his window. He discovered that the screen I had bought for the window was the wrong size and could not be used so we told him to just open the window anyway because there are no mosquitoes or bugs at this time of year.

The thought of rodents coming in through the window didn't even cross my mind. As near as I can figure, the vole had fallen into his window well during the night and could not climb back up the smooth plastic sides. So it took the only path available to it--Joshua's open window.

This evening was rather warm again, so I went down in Joshua's room to open the window. I had looked for a screen at Lowe's this morning but they were out of stock. So I made sure to check all the corners of the window well before opening the window.

This time it was a young rabbit that was huddled in a corner. I removed the rabbit but wisely left the window closed. I can just about imagine what a rabbit would do for someone's sleep.

I am also wondering just what's next... a raccoon? Or maybe a snake?

Initial Contact

2008-03-22T01:39:00.000-04:00

We received an email from China today. I had contacted a woman who lives in Beijing and she put in a phone call to the orphanage where Abigail is at (did I mention that we have decided to name her Abigail?). I had Angela (the person in Beijing) ask about ten questions of the orphanage staff. This also is usually the first indication that a child is being adopted, when the adoptive parents make some form of contact. After making the phone call, she emailed me back with the answers. Following is the text of her email:

From: angela
Sent: Fri 3/21/2008 9:30 AM
To: Friend, Tim
Subject: ??: Orphanage Phone Call {FRIEND}

Hi Tim and Deb,
Sorry it took so long! Here is what I got today.

1. Updated measurements: Height: 121cm [right at about 4 feet]; Weight: 22.5kg [50 lb.]; Head: 50cm; Chest: 59cm; Foot:18.5cm; Teeth:23

2. Any updated pictures?
We have taken many pictures for her. We will give them to the family when they come. (I have asked them to send me few through regular mail. I am hoping to get them next week. If so, I will scan and forward them to you as soon as I can).

3. Does she know she is being adopted? Could you let her know and explain the process to her?
She knows she is going to be adopted. We told her: Your Daddy and Mommy are Americans, they love you! They are coming to take you home soon in the future.

4. Does her name have any special meaning?
Her name was given by a doctor, no special meaning.

5. How is she doing in school? Are any subjects difficult for her?
Abigail gets along well with her school mates at school. She studies hard. She often helps other students. She likes to help others. Teachers and classmates all love her very much! She is especially good at Chinese subject. She has her own opinion and she often gets on her feet to speak. She gets praise from the teachers and classmates often. Her math and other subjects are on the ordinary level.

6. How would you describe her personality?
She is fairly extroverted, active and enjoys helping others.

7. What makes her happy?
To buy her new clothes and toys make her happy. Such as: Barbie dolls and stationery.

8. What makes her angry or upset?
If other children take away her favorite stuff, she will get angry and cry. But after uncles, and aunts talk to her, she will be fine soon.

9. Is she frightened of anything?
She is afraid of stuffed animals and worms.

They didn't answer last two questions. When you come to adopt her, you will get a copy of a finding ad. Make sure you ask them on the Gotcha day, in case there is no one. And on the Gotcha day, they will have a piece of paper tells you if there was anything left with her when she was found. Make sure you ask that, too.

Have a wonderful Easter!
Blessings,
Angela

We're putting together a care package to send to Abigail and it was good to receive this email because we had several stuffed animals in it. I wouldn't want to send along anything that she would be frightened of.

In the mean time, we are progressing on the new bedroom in the basement. I had a guy come out last week and cut an enormous hole in the concrete foundation wall of the house. I now have installed a daylight window and have been working on trimming it out today. The drywall is just about done and we should be able to start painting hopefully next week.

Today was the first full day of Spring here and Mother Nature celebrated by dumping six inches of wet snow on us (and counting; it is still snowing). We didn't make it to the Good Friday service at church because all the roads are pure ice. After sliding through a major intersection, we decided to just stay put at home. I'm hoping the snow won't stay around long. The large hole I dug in the back yard for the window is now full of snow, and I would like to install the window well sometime soon.

A New Direction

2007-10-24T22:33:00.001-04:00

Today begins a new direction for our family. We have accepted the referral of an 8-year-old Chinese girl through the adoption agency All Gods Children International. We received this referral October 18 via email in a message containing three pictures and a translated medical profile. Not really a lot to go on, but this appears to be typical with international adoptions. Now that we've accepted the referral, we have one week to fill out and turn in a bunch of contract paperwork and become official clients of this agency. This starts a rather lengthy process (9 to 12 months) after which we will have a new daughter as part of our family. Stay tuned!

Acidic Eruptions

2007-09-30T22:38:00.004-04:00

I hate plumbing. If you've read anything I've written previously about plumbing, you already know that. This could be reason number 235 why I hate plumbing. I have nothing against the profession of plumbing. It's a good honest way to make a living. It's a good honest way for somebody ELSE to make a living. Just not me.

This latest episode involves the house we bought last December. If you know about this house, you are probably wondering what ever possessed me to buy an old house that has six bathrooms and six kitchens. One where the pipes were all frozen a couple winters ago.

When I finally got the water turned on (which is a separate story all by itself), it began to rain in several rooms from the split pipes in the ceilings. I did what any good handyman would do. I hired a plumber. When it became obvious that this plumber would not finish the job in time because he was so busy, I hired another plumber. About four weeks later, when he was wrapping up the last details, I told him to replace a section of pipe in the basement that came from a second floor kitchen.

"When I turn the water on in the kitchen," I told him, "it drains for a while and then suddenly stops. I estimate from the amount of water that actually does go down that the blockage is in the basement."

He took a look at it and told me that they don't handle that kind of work anymore. "Roto-Rooter and the like has taken all that business from us," he said. "That line needs to be snaked out and we don't have the equipment to do that." He told me that he didn't think just replacing the pipe would do it.

I called Roto Rooter. They said they could be out there that afternoon. Later on in the day, he called me back.

"That one is pretty bad," he told me. "It's completely clogged with grease. I snaked it three times before it would drain at all. And it's still a little slow. I put a whole bottle of Pipe Shield down the drain. It should clear it out. It's an enzyme which will dissolve the grease. Just don't use it for 24 hours to allow it to work. If it doesn't work, I have some other stuff called EZ Flow which should do the trick. It's sulferic acid and should eat right through it. It's expensive stuff so we save that for the really bad cases. Let me know if the Pipe Shield doesn't work and I can come back."

Two days later I called him back. "The water doesn't go anywhere," I told him. "It just fills the sink up."

He came the next day. I received a phone call at work from him.

"I put a whole bottle of EZ Flow down the drain, and it is still stopped up. I think you are going to have to replace the section of pipe in the basement. From the amount of water that goes down before it stops, that's probably where the problem is."

Hmmm. It seems I told the last plumber that. An now I just paid another plumber to come out and confirm what I already knew. I told him I would replace the pipe myself. I had enough into this already. Time to roll up the sleeves and dive in. Tim the Plumber strikes again.

This past Friday, I came to the house armed with a new section of plastic pipe, a few fittings, and my odd assortment of plumbers tools. The fittings on the iron pipe were too rusted to take apart so I attacked it with a hacksaw. It dribbled a rather viscous solution of brown goo as I was doing so, but I soon had the suspect section down. As I suspected, it was completely full of gunk. The section in the ceiling was also full of gunk so I stuck an old paint stirring stick in it to get it out.

The pipe drooled brown every time I pulled the stick out and I soon had most of the gunk out of the exposed section. I ran upstairs and ran some water down the drain to see if it was starting to clear. When I got back to the basement, none of the water had made it down. It just dribbled slowly onto the floor. At this rate, it would take all day for the sink to empty out.

I found a piece of flexible tubing and shoved it into the pipe. The tubing was longer than the stick and flexible so it could go around the elbow in the pipe. More thick brown goo ended up on the floor every time I pulled the pipe out. It was also starting to smell pretty ripe.

After I probed as far as the tubing would allow, I ran up to the kitchen and ran a little more water down the drain. Back downstairs to see that none of it had made it out the open end of the pipe. Just a slow, steady drip, drip of dark brown sludge.

I studied the situation for a little while, wondering what to do next. As I sat there looking at it, there suddenly came from the open end of the pipe a gurgling sound. This sound rapidly rose in crescendo until all at once, with a hissing, splattering sound, a column of brown water erupted out the end of the pipe and splashed to the floor about eight feet away. In a couple seconds, this mixture of enzyme, sulferic acid, and water dwindled to a fast dribble, but not before the entire section of the basement, including my tools, supplies, and an old clothes dryer that happened to be in the line of fire was covered with thick, sludge-like substance. A big wad of stuff resembling a giant hairball also ended up on top of the dryer.

When the flow died away completely, I figured I would leave it until the next day, perhaps it would be more tolerable when it had dried out.

The next day, a Saturday, I waited until the afternoon to give it a good chance to dry. It didn't take long to put the new section of pipe in now that all the hard work was done.. Now when I fill the sink with water and then pull the drains, I get these cool little whirlpools in the water, and the water goes away fast. One more item finally checked off the to-do list. The other task that I did on the same day was to replace a sink in a third floor bathroom. More plumbing, more headaches, fit for another story.

This Old House

2007-05-15T22:41:00.002-04:00

I've sometimes wondered how some families manage to keep everything together. They homeschool their children, run a family business, manage all the intricacies of modern life, and then they show up at all the homeschooling conferences looking like they have everything together. I'm sure you've seen them, they're the ones who have the booths at the shows with a bazillion books or other things for sale, their little cherubs are happily running the cash register, keeping the shelves full, or answering questions. I'm not condemning this in any way, in fact I'm in favor of it, I just wonder how they do it.

I've also thought that it would be cool to do this in my own family. Our family support comes primarily from my working outside the home, but, wouldn't it be great if I could bring that home and involve the rest of the family? Unfortunately, the field of electrical engineering doesn't lend itself very well to that sort of thing, so the family involvement would have to come from some other area.

We found that area a several months ago, in the form of a tired, 100-year-old house that was badly in need of some serious renovations. We decided to take this on as a family remodeling project. The boys are at the age where they can contribute to the project and it would provide a great opportunity for some life-skills learning.

We were grateful for the warmer weather in early January, because the place had no heat. The day after the heat was turned on, the weather turned decidedly colder. But now we could do interior work in relative warmth. We didn't have to protect the paint from freezing, and didn't have our heavy overcoats interfering with our motion.

Over the last several months, we have been spending several evenings a week, along with many Saturdays, working at this house. One of the first major tasks was patching and painting. Nearly everything needed painting, either because the existing paint was badly applied or because it was a weird color. None of us particularly enjoys painting, and David tends to wear a lot of it, but it's a task that needs to be done. This is one life-skill that the boys have had plenty of experience in, and they are always happy to move on to something else.

That "something else" has been a variety of tasks, including installing flooring, fixing plumbing, installing trim, changing light fixtures, refinishing hardwood floors, and a host of other things typical for an old house. It's been quite a challenge for me to keep four people busy doing productive tasks. Many times there's some training that goes along with it, and there are the invariable questions or problems that need to be addressed. These problems show up in a variety of ways, including a child standing beside me holding a broken section of pipe saying, "What do I do now?". Sometimes I just want to tell them, "Don't ask me, I'm making this all up as I go!" I have a new appreciation for a contractor trying to keep a crew busy.

Old houses tend to have a few surprises in store, and this one was no exception. One of those surprises showed up when we replaced a floor. After tearing up the old floor, including the subfloor, the boys discovered a trap door which led into a closet downstairs. They thought this was great fun; they could drop into the closet on the lower floor without using the stairs. We spent a while speculating on why there was a trap door buried under the floor.

Other surprises were not so benign. After sledge-hammering a hole in the basement floor to investigate a water leak, we discovered that the main water pipe into the house was made of lead, and needed to be replaced. Now instead of fixing a small section of pipe, we will be coordinating with the city with their lead abatement initiative and having part of the yard and the street torn up to replace the pipe. Maybe we'll get the water turned back on by next Christmas.

Surprises aside, it's been an overall positive experience. It has been encouraging to see the growth in the boys, from having to lead them through a task step by step, to just telling them to do a particular task, and having them come back a while later saying, "It's done." It's been a stretch for me as well.

We figured when this is all over that we will have a clothing-burning party. We'll throw all the paint-saturated work clothing we have been using into a bonfire and roast marshmallows. And then it's on to the next project.

You'll just have to stay tuned for that one.

Dribbles and Dads

2007-03-15T15:56:00.000-04:00

It can be a tough job being a Dad sometimes. It is quite a privilege to have two boys who look up to me and I would like to say that I always earn that respect, having led and instructed my children wisely. The trouble is, I am human and can really mess things up. Sometimes I don't deserve the respect I receive.

We have been restoring a 100-year-old house as sort of a family project. Having been vacant and neglected for three years, the place is badly in need of quite a few fixes. So we have been patching plaster, fixing doors and floors, and (of course) painting. Having gone through and painted several rooms, we arrived in the kitchen a couple weeks ago. This was the perfect place for practice painting. This kitchen was missing all the cabinets and the floor, so paint dribbles would not be a problem.

Painting is one of those tasks that none of us really enjoys doing, but it does dress the place up, so we will swallow our pride and pick up the paintbrush. David is no exception to this. Being the youngest, he has been assigned the job of taping and painting trim quite a bit, and was pretty sick of it by the time we started on the kitchen. He was pretty excited when I told him he was going to run the paint sprayer. Somehow the job is much more fun if it can be done with power tools.

Both boys had used the paint sprayer in other rooms, and this would be a great time for additional practice. David, however, had the least experience with the sprayer so I gave him some instructions on how to prime the sprayer and hold the gun and then turned him loose on a large blank wall.

He soon had the bottom half of the wall covered and started on the top half from a ladder. I noticed a few runs in the paint so I cautioned him on the correct distance from the wall. "Keep it about ten inches from the wall and don't pull the trigger until the gun is moving," I told him. I watched him do a few more swipes and then set about fixing up the paint runs with a paint brush.

After getting the runs fixed up, I started noticing more runs and went to fix these up. "Try moving the gun a little faster," I instructed. "I think we're still getting too much paint on the wall.

David continued the upper part of the wall and I continued to fix up running paint. I began to notice many more runs in the paint and scrambled to keep up with them. "Less paint on the wall, make sure you're holding the gun straight" I told him a couple more times, growing a little more impatient.

Now I was noticing that large sections of the wall were forming lots of little rivulets slowly oozing their way towards the floor. I was getting hopelessly behind.

"Hand the gun to Josh," I commanded. "Grab another brush and help me fix up these dribbles!" I was having visions of the entire wall drying to the look and texture of a frozen waterfall.

David quietly handed the gun over and Josh started on the next wall. After working a while on the rivers of paint, I noticed three things. David had disappeared, Joshua's wall was starting to flow in spots, and the areas I had fixed up were also starting their dribbling descent anew. I began to suspect that the paint was part of the problem. We had switched types of paint for the kitchen and it appeared to be going on differently than the paint we had used in other rooms.

I chased paint rivers for the rest of evening. Trying to fix paint runs as the paint is drying can make quite a mess, and this kitchen was turning out to be a big disaster. We managed to take care of most of the streams, but when we left, the texture was still looking rather tough.

We talked about it on the way home. I told David about the different type of paint and how it acted differently when sprayed on the wall. I also apologized for my rather rough demotion of my budding painter. I could tell almost immediately after I demoted him that he was hurt by it. I told him that we will just deal with the kitchen somehow and that he shouldn't worry about it.

The next day, we came back to find very little evidence that there ever was a problem. The rough lines from the paintbrushes had dried smooth and the walls looked good. I felt sheepish and relieved at the same time, sheepish because I had blamed my son for something caused by a difference in paint and relieved that I wouldn't have to do it all over again.

When we started trimming the floor, I instructed the boys on how to measure and cut the shoe moulding. This time, I was not so impatient when things went wrong. There were several pieces that the boys cut incorrectly in some very interesting ways. Instead of getting impatient about it, I bantered with them about creating scrap.

Sometimes I wonder who learns more when we instruct our kids. The kids may learn about handling paint sprayers and shoe moulding, but Dad is continually learning how to handle kids.

Personality

2007-02-15T12:48:00.000-05:00

Life would be pretty dull if all our personalities were the same. Deb and I have commented on that many times. If we were like each other, we would probably drive each other nuts. As it turns out, the differences in our personalities add spice to our family. Many of those differences complement each other. It's the way God designed us. Opposites attract, and that's a good thing.

Personality differences can also be a source of strife. Statistics abound on the number of marriages split apart because of differences in how finances are handled, how each side communicates, and where the toothpaste tube gets squished, to name a few examples. Part of being married is discovering how to manage those differences.

In twenty-plus years of marriage, I have learned a lot about my better half. I have learned especially (and I am still learning) that God designed her to be her and not a carbon copy of me. It would be so much easier during a discussion or disagreement if she would just change her views and see things my way. After all, that's the right way ... right? But it doesn't work that way. She is who she is for a reason, and part of my job as a husband is discovering what that reason is, if she doesn't just come right out and tell me.

Deb is the linear-thinking worrier of the family. She is always thinking of contingencies and worst-case scenarios for every situation. If there are no contingencies or worst-case scenarios, she will invent one. If one of the boys climbs a tree, she is already planning the trip to the hospital, holding a child with every bone in his body broken. I am the random-thinking free-spirit of the family. I am always thinking of ... whatever. If I wasn't in the tree with my son, I would be pointing out which limbs could be used as good hand holds.

Now throw a couple kids into this personality mix. Stir well, then let stand. The result can be highly entertaining. The two kids that we have are definitely a blend of our personalities, but blended together in ways that can be surprising but are definitely unique.

Deb and Josh share the linear-thinking, task-oriented, driven personality. This similarity has prompted Deb to state many times in earlier years, "I could NEVER teach my own son. We're too much alike. We would drive each other crazy!" Now that we're homeschooling him, to some extent, that's true. Things are working, though. We're just learning what lines to draw and where. Deb doesn't teach math. We have a self-directed curriculum and I handle any questions or problems he may have.

Josh inherited my fascination with all things technical as well as my tendency to drift off topic if there's something more interesting to be explored. The latest issue of Popular Science is usually way more captivating than geometry or American Government.

One of the blessings of home schooling is the opportunity to celebrate and encourage those personality differences, and not to suppress them. Josh, when he is on task, excels at diving into the task and working steadily at it. David is more relationship-oriented and would rather spend time bantering with someone. And so the approach to teaching each of them is also going to be different and we as parents have to take this into account.

When helping out with their math, for example, I will naturally fall into a more logical explanation with Josh. If A then B then C. That's the way he is wired. Whether it's working through an algebra equation or a geometry proof, the logical progression works best. When we arrive at the logical conclusion, then he gets it and is good with it.

With David, the logic is still there, since math is inherently logical, but we will do things in a more back and forth, bantering manner. Story problems are especially good bait for this. They are usually some artificially contrived scenario with little basis in reality. The fun comes in exposing how ridiculous they really are while still benefiting from the underlying math practice. Who cares if Susan goes twice as fast as Jane in the opposite direction. One of them is going the wrong way.

Although much of the subject matter is the same, allowing the kids to express themselves in different ways when studying has helped keep their interest. Josh enjoys doing his reading and studying in the big easy chair by the window, David will be on the floor or at the kitchen table. We have figured out that some subjects work better in the morning, and Fridays are good for field trips and volunteering. David likes manipulatives. A wad of Silly Putty accompanies most lessons, or he will attempt to juggle several apples from the fridge while talking to Deb in the kitchen about his work. Josh complains about the bruises on the apples as a result of this juggling practice.

Other families may do things quite differently than ours, because the mix of personalities is different, but we do enjoy the flexibility of tailoring our schooling and our days around our personalities rather than the other way around.

Expanding My Vocabulary

2006-12-06T12:03:00.000-05:00

I ran across an interesting word today that I had never seen before. The word appeared in a patent publication that was sent to me via email at work. While the legalese on patents is always a challenge due to the strange usage of the language and somewhat arcane words in use, the word "hydrometeor" stood out for some reason.

I looked up the word "hydrometeor", and one definition stated that it was "A precipitation product, such as rain, snow, fog, or clouds, formed from the condensation of water vapor in the atmosphere." In other words, a hydrometeor is a raindrop or a snowflake, among other things.

We have been having lots of hydrometeors around here lately. A regular hydrometeor shower. Last Friday's storm dropped white hydrometeors to a depth of about six inches. I used the hydrometeorblower to move all the hydrometeors off the driveway. The boys, seeing that this kind of hydrometeor makes for slippery parking lots, hauled out the propellor bike and created huge clouds of hydrometeors until the engine died. It appears that the carburetor is fouled up. Josh was disappointed because the engine died before David's turn was finished.

I now have in my brain two very different types of meteors. A "meteor" is a solid object which, when striking the earth, creates large craters or causes other damage. A "hydrometeor" can hardly be felt when it lands on the tip of your tongue.

There's probably something deeply philosophical in all this somewhere. I just don't see it.

Maybe I'll just get my hydrometeor shoes and do some snow shoeing.

Tomato Tales

2006-10-18T22:27:00.000-04:00

This year, as a way for the boys to earn some money, we decided to have them raise tomatoes and sell them by the road. Our neighbor had been doing that for several years, and Josh had helped him the last two years because of the neighbor's failing health. When the neighbor passed away this past winter, his widow offered us the use of his little tomato stand and the use of his garden space for raising tomatoes.

In early May, Deb took the boys shopping. They came home with what they thought was 200 tomato plants. They discovered a little later that they actually had 250 plants. They went to two different places to buy the plants, and one place put more plants in a flat than the other place. So now we had 250 plants in the greenhouse that needed to be kept watered until the danger of frost was past.

Putting out that much money ahead of time, with no guarantee of ever getting it back, was tough on the boys. Sixty bucks is a lot of money, and put a good dent in their spending money. Even so, there were a couple times when the plants in the greenhouse got a little dry from neglect, and I walked in to find their big investment looking very droopy.

All of them survived, however, and soon they had the rather daunting task of planting that many tomato plants. It was a lot of work, and had to be done in a short time, because of a week long vacation we were planning at the end of May. This trip forced us to plant about a week earlier than we would otherwise have planted. Frost is still possible near the end of May, and we watched the weather closely.

The day before we left, the weather forecast included a frost warning. That evening, in addition to packing for a week-long trip, we had to figure out how to save 250 tomato plants from frostbite.

It was well after dark when we finally finished our makeshift protection. We put the sprinklers on the tomatoes in the neighbor's garden, after scrambling to find enough hose, and a large fan hanging from a ladder would hopefully keep the frost from settling on the plants in our garden. This consumed our entire stock of extension cords. The thermometer that I placed in our garden recorded a low of 33 degrees that night. One degree above crop failure.

The next expense came when the plants needed to be staked. We managed to find enough wood to make stakes, but the boys had to buy their own twine. Staking tomatoes consumes enormous amounts of twine, and the big roll they had bought last year when they were selling firewood quickly ran out. They found baler twine at a local farm supply store, and bought about 4 miles of it.

The staking was even more work than the planting. We handled it bit by bit. Stake one or two rows today, one or two tomorrow, a little at a time until, after a couple weeks, the stakes and twine were all up.

At this point, they were having doubts that this venture was worthwhile. They had a lot of hard work and about ninety dollars into it, with nothing to show for it except a large spider web of orange baler twine hanging in the garden. It was wait-and-see time. Keep the plants watered and wait and see if anything happens.

About mid-July the first tomatoes started to ripen. Out of the entire patch, we were getting first one or two per day, then five or six. When we finally had enough for a quart-sized box, we did some fixing up to the stand, which was rather weather-worn, and parked the stand with a single box of tomatoes in the front yard. A sign announced, "Tomatoes, $2.00 per box."

The box was gone within a half hour. In the money box was the first income from the tomato business. Two bucks, in small change. Since the stand was now empty, the boys rolled it back up the driveway and parked it out of the way by the big Forsythia bush.

The next day, there was enough for one more box. Again, they parked the stand by the road with its lone box of tomatoes. Again, the tomatoes disappeared in the first half hour. Four bucks down, eighty-six to go to break-even.

A few days later, there were enough tomatoes for two boxes, which also sold quickly. There were more doubts. Half of the patch planted in the neighbor's garden was showing signs of blight. The scrawny plants probably didn't even need the stakes and twine that surrounded them. Although the plants located in our garden were doing much better, they seemed bent on producing lots of rich foliage and very few tomatoes. One row in particular overgrew the stakes and twine, the plants becoming so large and heavy that they started to pull the stakes over.

But production did continue to increase. As I'm sure anyone who has raised a few tomato plants can attest, once a plant has developed a full head of steam, it seems to want to bury you in tomatoes. We eventually reached that point. One day, we had a couple boxes of tomatoes left over at the end of the day. It seems that we finally saturated the clientele of the neighborhood.

Most of the time, the tomatoes simply disappeared, being replaced by cash in the box, so we never got to meet many of the people who stopped by. We had people leave too much money, too little money, or sometimes no money at all. One person decided to rearrange all the tomatoes in the boxes, taking the best ones for herself, and then mistakenly left a one and a ten-dollar bill in the box. When she didn't come back to claim the extra money, we figured it was the cost of the "premium" tomatoes. Occasionally someone would come up the driveway, needing change or just wanting to talk. One woman in particular told the boys, "I just love your tomatoes. I come about twice a week." It was nice to see that we actually had regular customers.

We had been regularly making deposits into the boys' bank accounts from the tomato sales and from their weekly paper routes, which is also collected in one-dollar bills and small change. We count the cash, make an electronic transfer from our joint checking account, and stow the cash in a safe place. One day we brought it all out onto the kitchen table and counted it all out. A few-hundred dollars in one-dollar bills can look like an enormous amount of money, especially when counted into neat piles on the table. It can also make quite an impact on a child who, just a couple months before, was questioning a ninety dollar investment. Those doubts were now gone and the boys are now convinced that it was well worth the hard work. The bank teller was also amazed when I came in with a large big pile of singles and about ten pounds of change.

A wet, mostly dreary September effectively ended the season. The tomatoes are gone, and so is the income they generated. Having no regular income other than their weekly paper routes, the boys will have to make their savings stretch over the winter. This will be a lesson in restraint, particularly since there will need to be enough left over in the spring to buy next summer's plants. Right now, that seems like eons away.

How To Build a Boat

2006-08-27T22:31:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, we and another family met together to plan a Cardboard Canoe Regatta. Participants would have two hours to build a canoe entirely out of cardboard and duct tape and then would then compete against other participants for speed and endurance. We drew up a set of rules, chose a date and a location, and then hoped for good weather.

We had no idea how many people would choose to participate. Such events are usually sponsored by youth groups and university engineering departments, but when the day of the event came, we had 7 boats in the Regatta, a very workable number.

We collected a whole bunch of cardboard from a local bike shop, who conveniently held a big sale at that time and so had a lot of cardboard to get rid of. We also had several cartons from some kitchen cabinets. It was quite a pile. It was enough to allow the boys to build and test a prototype canoe a week before the event.

The boys completed their prototype in about two hours and they used every bit of duct tape we had laying around, about a roll and a half. We found out then that all duct tape is not created equal. One partial roll had adhesive about as strong as sticky notes, and would come off as soon as it was applied. They had to reinforce that with some clear packing tape (we can bend the rules when building prototypes).

The prototype performed well, lasting for just over ten minutes. Joshua's end of the boat sank first, after he slowly sank through the sodden cardboard. The boys paddled nearly all the way across the lake at 8th Avenue Park before the boat sank. What a blast. They laughed all the way across the lake.

But 10 minutes was not long enough. They learned that another team built a boat that lasted for 15 minutes. This was the new target.

When the day of the Regatta came, the boys applied what they had learned to their new boat. The made the new boat larger and stronger, and they had two fresh rolls of duct tape, which stuck well and stayed in place.

The boat building time was a flurry of activity, with the pavilion at the park littered with cardboard and busy boat-builders. It was interesting to see all the various design approaches, from precision measuring, cutting, and fitting to slap it together and tape it in place.

Two rolls of duct tape turned out to be quite a bit, and a couple careful boat building teams were able to have enough left over to coat the entire bottom of the boat with tape. This could be a long contest.

The park was practically deserted except for our group, and a local police officer who was patrolling the area expressed surprise at this. He said this park is usually crowded on a summer Saturday.

After the building was done, it was time to launch the boats. We set out a couple milk-jug buoys and instructed the boaters that the first around the buoys and back to shore would win the speed award.

At the starting signal, all seven boats splashed into the water. One sank immediately, the weight of its occupants bursting out the back. The others splashed toward the first buoy.

Josh and David, in the SS Minnow II, pulled ahead right away and made it back to shore in three minutes. I'm not sure if it was the design of the boat or the furious paddling or both that contributed to their speed, but it was a no-contest race.

Over the next half hour, three more boats sank. The SS Tadpole, piloted by our women's team, started to collapse and then capsized, dumping them into the water. They completed the course around the buoys by swimming, towing their wreckage behind them. Another creation took over twenty minutes to sink, and it sank very slowly, probably due the sheer volume of cardboard used in its construction.

After a half hour, there were three boats left: The SS Minnow II, the Endurance, and the Flying Dutchman. Since we were getting hungry by this time, and pizza had been ordered, we opened the contest up to aggression. The boats came quickly together and with a furious splashing of water and people leaping onto other people's boats, all three boats were down within 30 seconds. The Endurance went down last, just a few seconds after the SS Minnow II, and so earned the Endurance Award.

The event ended with an informal awards ceremony where the Shackleton Award (Endurance) and the Amundsen Award (Speed) were handed out. These were trophies made of ... you guessed it ... cardboard and duct tape. It only seemed appropriate.

This was one of those events that will probably warrant a repeat performance; we'll probably do it again next year.

"H" is for Cold

2006-04-24T22:29:00.001-04:00

It leaks.

I turned the water on the other day, partly to test my plumbing work and partly because we needed the water in the greenhouse. The joint where the new pipe joins the old began the familiar shimmer around the edge, and then formed a droplet which eventually fell onto the floor in front of the clothes washer. It was soon followed by another, and another; little shimmering dribbles growing, then falling, growing, the falling. It would have been rather hypnotic had it not been so maddening. Of course, I do not have the parts, which will necessitate a fourth trip to Lowe's.

I fixed it temporarily with an empty paint can, hanging it below the pipe to catch the dribbles.

We're big into life skills for the boys and this would have been another opportunity for life skills training. But we've done quite a bit of plumbing and are to the point where perhaps plumbing training is becoming counterproductive. I had David help me put the faucet back on the bathroom sink after we had it re-glazed several weeks ago. I showed him which hoses to hook up where under the sink and he worked at it for a while, looking like a plumber. Only the bottom half of him was visible, sticking out from under the sink and I could hear the clanking of wrenches and pliers.

When he emerged, I asked him if he trusted his work enough to turn the water on. He just grinned.

I ducked under the sink to make sure the drain was all tightened down and noticed something amiss.

"David!" I exclaimed, "Did you realize that you got the hot and cold water pipes backwards?"

His grin just got a little bigger. "Rats!" he said, with a twinkle in his eye. "You weren't supposed to notice this soon!" He was hoping it would go unnoticed until someone (usually Deb) turned on the hot water, waiting for it to warm up. It would have been a long wait.

When your son starts sabotaging the plumbing, then it's time to end the training. He can learn in the school of hard knocks once he gets his own home. Then we'll see what kind of water comes out when you turn the handle marked "H".

Purple and Happy

2006-04-18T20:21:00.000-04:00

"Use only in a well-ventilated area."

Yeah, right. The instructions on the can don't take into account that most plumbing is in basements, or close crawl spaces. This latest plumbing job was to replace a faucet that I temporarily repaired last fall by simply screwing another valve onto the end of it. My makeshift fix froze over the winter and split. This was another one of those I-Hate-Plumbing jobs.

This time, I was going to do it right. I paid the big bucks for one of those freeze proof faucets. Armed with my newest purchase, a flashlight, and a hack saw, I wormed into the crawl space under the family room to where last year's twisted pipe was. It took some pretty good bodily twisting to actually get the saw onto the section of pipe that needed to be cut, but I managed to start the cut... and got water and copper shavings dribbled onto my face.

This is part of the job, I told myself, and kept going. Eventually, the pipe was free. I wormed out of the crawl space, pulled the old faucet out from the outside, and inserted the new one into the hole in the wall. Back into the crawl space, back into the contorted position so I could reach the tail end of the faucet so I could wrap it with plumber's tape.

I picked up the plastic pipe fitting that mated with the tail of the faucet and saw that it was the wrong size. How typical. This meant another trip to Lowe's to replace a 35 cent part. And it was one of the few parts I didn't have in my large bag of leftover plastic pipe fittings. It seems that every plumbing job requires at least two trips to the hardware store, so this would get the obligatory second trip over with.

I checked out with the same cashier that I had just an hour before. She appeared surprised that I was back so soon, buying another part for 35 cents. Out of my frustration, I didn't offer any explanation.

Back in the crawl space, I now had to thread the new part onto the faucet. This is rather hard to do when both arms are extended over one's head into the floor boards while the rest of the body resembles the fetal position. I managed to get another section of pipe glued into the fitting, and an elbow onto the pipe so now it extended below the floorboards, making the next sections much easier to put on. I only dribbled a little of the purple primer onto my hands and managed to sniff just a little of the Tetrahydrofuran and Methyl Ethyl Ketone and Cyclohexanone contained in the pipe glue. It makes for a rather odiferous crawl space and a rather light-headed plumber.

Only a short section of pipe and a coupling remained between me and another completed plumbing job. The short section of pipe was glued in quickly, but I then discovered that the old section of pipe was just very slightly larger than the fittings allowed. It seems that pipe this old was no longer compatible with today's version.

Oh, the joys of owning an older home. Now I was not only replacing a faucet, I was going to have to replace 40 feet of pipe as well. This resulted in trip number three to Lowe's to get the necessary pipe and fittings. A 1-hour job was now spreading out into 2 complete evenings.

Now, instead of just a couple fittings needing to be glued together, there were more. Elbows, couplings, pipe sections, hangars; all needing to be assembled over my head in close quarters and worked around the other infrastructure: heating ducts, wires, other pipes, etc. And the daubers in the cans of purple primer and glue are really meant for larger parts and so hold far too much for little fittings. My hands were stained purple from the dribbling primer. At least the glue, although it smelleD strongly, wAs thiCker, sO it DIdn't dRip as bAdLY. i tHnk i actUAly fIniishedthe joBbefore i ppasSEdout.. maYbee i'LL turNIton neXtYeartoSeEif itActuaallllly lEAksssssssss.

ihateplumnig

Plumbing

2005-08-24T23:14:00.000-04:00

I hate plumbing. Can I say that? I hate plumbing. This necessary evil in most homes drives me nuts. Electrical I can handle, but plumbing drives me around the bend. It's not that I can't do it, I can, and I have done lots of it, but that doesn't endear me to it.

Electrical work is so clean. Nothing gets wet. Nothing leaks slowly. You don't have to join wires together every ten feet and around every corner. There's no such thing as elbows and tee-joints, unless you are running wires in a conduit, in which case you are back to plumbing. If something goes wrong, it just blows a breaker or refuses to work. It doesn't soak the insulation and warp the plywood. It doesn't result in large puddles of electricity on the floor. If something goes REALLY wrong, the resulting fire usually burns pretty clean.

Plumbing projects always last a lot longer than originally estimated. I usually have lots of spare parts on hand from prior projects, but none of them ever fit. The pipe glue for plastic pipe has always dried out by the time I need it. The fancy creation I have made out of pipe to get around an obstruction points the wrong way. All this results in extra trips to the hardware store for more supplies. If I have to dig a trench to lay a pipe outside, there will invariably be large stones just under the grass which stop the shovel with a bone-jarring clank. Just below the stone will be a main sprinkler line that I laid a few years ago that I have forgotten about. This main line is no match for the shovel and I end up shattering a section of the pipe. The sudden flow of water instantly soaks the ground and my clothing and I leave a wet trail through the house as I rush in to shut the well off.

The latest project was an outside water faucet that leaked. Badly. It should have been replaced several years ago, but, as you know by now, I hate plumbing. This year the handle started to strip. When you turned the handle, you were not usually opening the faucet, unless you pushed down at the same time.

Yesterday, it was time to fix it. I needed to spray some weeds and it was difficult to turn the water on to fill the sprayer.

I tried tightening the screw holding the handle on. It broke. Now the faucet has no handle. I dug through my spare parts. I actually found a new faucet that fit. Now the chore was getting the old faucet off.

A couple years ago, after another plumbing project which required me to borrow a pipe wrench, Deb bought me my own pipe wrench. A nice big one. Two feet long. It could double as a boat anchor. Armed with that wrench, I attempted to unscrew the entire faucet from the wall. It turned, but the entire pipe turned with it, making the old caulking around the pipe chip away in large chunks. I wormed my way into the crawl space to clamp the pipe down from the inside.

Back outside to give the faucet another go. This time I could feel the resistance of the clamped pipe. The faucet began to turn. Slowly at first, then all of a sudden easily. Looking at it closely, I could see the pipe was still turning with it.

Back into the crawl space to check on the status of the clamp. It hadn't moved. That could only mean one thing. The section of copper pipe hidden inside the wall had buckled and twisted from the force. Not a good situation. Now a half-hour project was turning into an entire day project. Rebuilding the pipe in those tight quarters was not going to be fun. And any more attempts to turn the faucet would most likely break the pipe.

It's here that my "whatever works" engineering philosophy kicked in. I didn't need a new faucet. I just needed a way to stop the water from flowing. I drove to Lowe's and bought a small shut-off valve with hose fittings, and screwed that onto the end of the faucet. The faucet may not close all the way and have no handle, but it doesn't matter anymore. The three bucks I spent on the in-line shut-off valve saved me an entire evening of work, and probably an equivalent amount in new fittings and pipe sections.

I may have delayed the inevitable, probably having to actually fix it if I ever sell the house, but I saved the time for now (an hour saved is an hour earned!). I actually got the weeds sprayed before it got dark.

The Fun Side of Plumbing ... Again

2005-08-15T08:42:00.000-04:00

If you have been reading these posts for more than a year, you may recall one that I wrote last summer. Entitled "The Fun Side of Plumbing", it described one of my attempts to teach my boys life skills. The life skill at that time was plumbing. The laboratory was a slow-draining bathtub, and my two students got to see just how fun plumbing can be.

Since that time, we have had a couple other "plumbing labs", one of them being the same bathtub drain pipe which I finally replaced because of its continuing reluctance to make the bathtub water disappear. This time, the lesson was how the force of habit can interact with home repairs. I disassembled the drain plumbing and then drove to the hardware store for parts. In the mean time, Deb told Josh to take a shower as she always does about this time of day. Halfway through the shower, Deb needed to get something from the basement and discovered it was raining in the basement. Deb ran up and yelled through the door at Josh, who quickly stoppered the drain. This reduced the downpour in the basement to a mere drizzle. When I got home, they were moving all the boys' Lego pieces from the big wet spot in the carpet and had a large bucket catching most of the water. In this case, I didn't think of leaving some sort of reminder in the bathtub because I don't usually use it at that time. Josh wasn't helping me with the drain pipe so he didn't realize it was missing. Once things were dried out we had a good laugh.

We teach these things to our boys because we want them to be able to manage a household of their own someday. Including the plumbing. These life skills include the knowledge of what they can do themselves and when they need to pay for a professional. I sometimes wonder how much of these "life experience" lessons actually stick.

This past Saturday, I found out that these lessons actually do stick. Maybe not all of them, but this one stuck enough to avert a small disaster.

Deb and I went out to run some errands on a Saturday morning, leaving the boys at home. When we arrived home about an hour and a half later, David was waiting anxiously in the driveway.

"What took you so long?" he inquired. We thought it was a little strange that he would wait like this; he usually reads in his room when all his tasks are done.

We vaguely mentioned birthday shopping as his birthday is coming up in a couple weeks. But he seemed to be preoccupied with something else so we finally asked him what was up.

"Water," he said impatiently, "we almost had a flood".

When we came in, the boys were talking through each other in an effort to explain.

They heard a hissing noise in the kitchen, and after checking that the burners on the stove were indeed off, they located the source of the hissing under the sink. By this time the water was starting to run out over the kitchen floor, although most of it was pouring into the basement. A pipe had ruptured and was soaking everything under the sink. Josh tried to stem the tide by wrapping it with duct tape (I think he has seen me fix too many things with duct tape), but discovered that even duct tape has its limitations. It will not hold up to water pressure. Seeing that our sink does not have shut-off valves, Josh had the presence of mind to run downstairs and shut off the main water valve to the house. With Old Faithful now settled back down, they mopped up all the water and cleaned up the kitchen.

By the time we arrived home they had things pretty much back to normal.

I guess you could call this a sort-of "life skills pop quiz", and I am pleased to report that my boys passed this one. This kind of test may have been unexpected but it is far more real-world than a scheduled test in a classroom. Hopefully, when my boys are on their own, they will be better equipped to handle those fun little emergencies than I was. I'm pretty handy, but it was a rude awakening when, three days into the ownership of my first house, the toilet overflowed, and, with lots of gurgling noises, continued to run and run and run...

Me and plumbing, we go WAY back.

The Fun Side of Plumbing

2003-12-03T21:48:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we had a night where we actually weren't going anywhere or doing anything. That meant it was time to take care of some things that were on the "urgent" list but somehow keep getting pushed back. One of those was the bathroom plumbing. The tub has been draining slower and slower over the last several weeks until a typical shower would leave water standing in the tub for the next half hour. It does wonders for bathtub rings. I have been able to delay this problem occasionally by a vigorous attack with the plunger, which would bring the drain-time to about five or ten minutes. Then it would gradually slow down again.

Time to teach the kids some life skills.

We located a pipe wrench at the neigbor's house, set up some chairs in the basement to stand on, and went to work.

I had David hold a bucket under the pipe while I removed the hangars from the ceiling and let the pipe down from the tub drain. I told him to keep the bucket under the open end of the pipe while I rotated the vertical section to unscrew it from the large pipe at the wall. As the section of pipe tilted downward, the predictable stream of water poured from the end. Only David had the bucket aimed wrong. Most of the water made it in the bucket, but some of it splashed over his hands and onto the basement floor. With the water came some of the stuff that caused the problem. Thick black tar-like goo that the water carried out in little globs. It didn't smell like roses, either.

David let out a shriek, dropped the bucket, which I managed to catch with my free hand before it hit the floor, and clamped his fingers over his nose. "PEWW!" he yelled. "This is awful!" He then swiftly wiped his other hand all over his clothing.

I held the pipe AND the bucket and let him gather his wits about him. He came back in the room with his shirt pulled up over his nose, making gagging noises as he peered over his shirt collar. Since the pipe came apart in the wrong spot, I had to take another section out. This one required considerable force on the pipe wrench, and the free end of the pipe wiggled around substantially, putting all that black gunk everywhere but in the bucket.

I told the kids we were going to take the sections outside and run the garden hose through them to force the gook out. Josh ran out to the barn to get a hose while I carried the pipes up the stairs.

I was just in the garage when Grandma drove up. She had a stack of books in her arms from the library. Lego books. Josh has a library card, but he has Grandma's library card number memorized. So whenever he gets on the computer to reserve books at the library, he reserves the books using Grandma's library card number.

I'm sure the librarians think we have an interesting Grandma. She checks out a lot of books on Legos, robotics, and birds.

Josh came back from the barn, lugging a garden hose. He saw what Grandma was carrying. The next thing I knew, the garden hose was laying midway through the door in the garage, and Josh had disappeared. I guess drain plumbing and life skills still don't hold a candle to Lego robots. I completed the job by myself.

Maybe next time I'll have Grandma come over with a stack of books on Math problems, or spelling words. Or tell the kids we're going to design a robot to remove black gook from the drain pipes. Or just tell them to grimace and bear it.

P.S. Deb says any bathroom SHE uses in this house doesn't have black gook in the drains.

Tales from the Front Pew, Chapter 9

2003-02-24T00:55:00.001-05:00

Josh has a Palm PDA (Personal Digital Assistant). When he was in school, he used it to keep track of test dates, assignments due, etc. It was one attempt to keep him from forgetting everything. Now that he his home schooled, it is used less often. Mostly for playing games on long car trips.

His good friend, Jonathan, from school got a Palm for Christmas. Josh was there for a sleepover recently and the two of them traded Palm programs, beaming them back and forth like some sort of Star Wars communicators. Jonathan found a Bible program. The complete NIV Bible for the Palm. Josh now has it on his Palm. He likes to use it when we're reading Bible verses during family devotions.

A family that sits near us in church has a son, Troy, who is a year older than Josh. Troy saved up his money and bought a Palm PDA. He learned that Josh had a Bible program on his Palm. We sat ahead of Troy in church tonight. Both boys brought their Palms because Troy wanted the Bible program.

So, during the prelude, there the two are, Josh facing the back, both of them holding their Palms aimed at each other over the pew, while the Torah transferred invisibly from one to the other. During the offertory, it was the Kings, Psalms and the minor prophets. The New Testament had to wait until after the service, when Josh, Troy and David huddled over one of the tables in the back to do their beamings. I think they would have beamed stuff back and forth while we were walking out, but they couldn't keep things steady enough.

Normally, we would discourage this sort of thing, but, since it was the Bible that was being transferred, we let it go.

Tales from the front pew, Chapter 8

2002-09-16T01:30:00.000-04:00

David is a free spirit. One of the things that he was excited about with home-schooling was that he would have some say over what he studied. I think he had the idea that he would be able to do whatever he wanted without any bounds. He has this idea in his head that he wants to do experiments. He has Deb's old chemistry set and he wants very badly to start mixing things together to see if they will blow up. I think we have a future pyrotechnics expert on our hands. Or perhaps just a pyromaniac.

Some of these experiments he does are constructive and I think he learns from them. He has been studying magnetism. There is a bowl of water on his desk in his bedroom. It has some wire wrapped around the rim, several magnets arranged around the rim, one magnet in the bottom, and a nail, slowly rusting away in the water. He discovered that if he stirred the water with the nail, he could get a small reading from a meter connected to the wire and the water. I'm still trying to explain what is actually making the meter move, but he already has visions of large bowls of water used to generate electricity.

Some of those experiments do not go so well. He wanted to experiment this morning before church. He had his new clothes on that Grandma had bought for him just the other day. He went downstairs. He was going to make a drill. He somehow connected an old ink pen to a motor and started the thing turning by connecting it to a battery. Unfortunately, the ink pen still had ink in it. Lots of ink. It is now all over his new clothes. He came upstairs rather sheepishly. "Uhh, Mom," he said. "We have a problem."

All the homeschool books encourage letting your kids discover by experiencing and experimenting. What they don't tell you is how much it will cost.

In church this evening, the pastor started a series of sermons on marriage. David wanted to lie down because it didn't apply to him. I told him to sit up. "You'll probably get married someday, " I told him. "Besides, if you sit up and act like you're listening, everyone behind us will think that we have such good kids." (I think they already know better.)

As the service started David asked me, "Dad, if you're a bachelor, do you have to go to these?"

I guess when you're 9 years old, marriage seems like it's a million years away.

Tales from the Front Pew, Chapter 7

2002-04-28T20:29:00.000-04:00

Tonight's sermon topic was the Fruit of the Spirit, taken from Galatians 5:22-23. We were not in our usual spot, the fourth row from the front. Instead, we were in the fifth row from the front to make room for the Gems (the girls group), who led part of the worship service. There was a basket of fruit on the stage, and Pastor Doug introduced his message by holding up an apple and asking, "Who wants some fruit?" Many hands from the less inhibited among us (the children) shot in the air, and our two cherubs were practically leaping out of their seats in an effort to get their hands higher than the others.

He lobbed the apple into the audience, taking careful aim at someone who was actually paying attention. An orange was lofted next, and a couple other fruits. With an apple in hand, Pastor Doug caught David's eye and gently underhanded the apple into the air.

Understand that I do play catch with my son, and he does catch pretty well. Only this time, he didn't. The apple missed his outstretched hands and with the distinctive apple-sounding thud, struck David in the forehead and bounced onto the floor. David yelped, probably more in surprise than in pain, and the audience roared. David is good at eliciting that kind of response. After making sure David was OK, Pastor Doug continued his pitching practice. His last apple was thrown to Josh who still had his hand in the air. Only this time he came a few paces down the aisle before lofting the apple. Josh caught it and was now satisfied that he also had an apple. To have one child get an apple thrown to him in church and not the other can be a cause for war. Pastor Doug is a wise man. He has three boys of his own.

Tales from the Front Pew, Chapter 6

2002-02-16T23:29:00.000-05:00

We had a choir in our church last Sunday. A big choir complete with robes. It's been a while since we have had a choir with robes, as the reactions of our kids indicated. When we were coming in, Joshua was looking around at all the choir members milling around. "Dad," he said with a questioning voice, "Why are all these people walking around dressed like prophets?"

David was doing some wondering of his own. Less than 30 seconds after Josh posed his question, I got a poke in the side from David. "Dad," he asked, "why are all these angel-ladies walking around here?"

We've been watching the Olympics the last few nights, right now there are skiers flinging themselves fifty feet into the air doing tumbles and twists and actually landing on their feet. Incredible. David has it in his head that he wants to do the luge. There is a luge run in Muskegon. He wants to try it out. Maybe this is the start of another Olympic legend. Then Deb and I can be the ones on those commercials saying we were the only ones who believed in him. We'll make millions.

The kids have a couple days off from school next week. We decided to take them to Chicago to the Field Museum. After some debate, we gave them a choice. Stay overnight at a hotel and spend some time in the pool or take the entire trip in a single day with a twenty dollar credit towards legos or some other thing of their choice. The decision didn't take long. They went for the twenty bucks. So we'll do the trip in a day.

Tales from the front pew, Chapter 5

2001-12-24T00:08:00.000-05:00

Part of the sermon this morning was a video clip from "A Charlie Brown Christmas". Our normally-fidgety David was suddenly riveted to the screens, watching Linus recite Luke 2. There was an audible groan from David when the clip ended. He immediatley leaned over to me and said (loudly), "Can we rent that video, please?"

When we collected the kids to go home, I noticed that Deb had the video in her hand. Seems that David had approached the pastor immediately after the service and asked him if he could borrow the video. They watched it this afternoon.

Tales from the Front Pew, Chapter 4

2001-11-22T22:07:00.000-05:00

It's been seven years now since we sat in the hospital for ten days with David when he was sick with spinal meningitis. As I recall, Thansgiving that year wasn't real thankful. But we have gotten many reminders over the years of how thankful we should be. The latest of those came, appropriately enough, on Thanksgiving day.

Deb and the boys were sitting in our usual spot, fourth row from the front in church; I was running the sound board in the back. From my vantage in the back, I could see that there was a good sized crowd here today. After the initial set of singing, Pastor Paul got up. "Happy Easter," he proclaimed. There was a tittering in the audience. "Happy Thanksgiving!" he corrected. After some more introduction, Pastor Doug got up. "You know," he began, "Pastor Paul was right. In a way, we do celebrate Easter today."

At this point a voice rang out clearly from the front of church. "It's Thanksgiving!" yelled David. The entire congregation roared. "Well," said Pastor Doug after a pause. "I guess that about says it all."

Seven years ago at this time, we were not sure what our son would be able to hear, if anything. This was a reminder that he not only hears, but understands what is going on. It just would be nice if those reminders came in other ways. My eight-year-old arguing with the senior pastor in the front of a packed church would not be my first choice.

We just had conferences for the kids at their school. One of the things that came up was that David's grammar was not as good as it could be. We were not surprised. After all, why put a period at the end of a sentence, or capitalize words at all? It doesn't change the meaning of a sentence, and it's just extra work. David doesn't like extra work. He knows the stuff, however. His teacher told us that he is the first to correct her grammar in class. One of the ways that Mrs. VanVugt tried to interest David in doing some better work was to let him do some of his grammar work on the computer. Correcting sentences like: peggy ate three candy bars She and the student teacher were talking over this with Deb last week when the student teacher began to giggle. She was looking over David's work on the computer and came across the above sentence. David corrected the grammar and then typed "what a pig" after it.

David was handed a paper in science class the other day. He asked the teacher, "Is this a test?"

"Yes," said Mrs. VanVugt.

"Well," responded David, "I better concentrate harder on this one then." David only concentrates on what's important. All the other stuff like everyday assignments and penmanship are not important. If it were his choice, he wouldn't do them at all.

I played tour guide the other day. Joshua asked me a while back if his ACT class could take a tour of Gentex as part of their studies on companies and think tanks. I agreed to this and set up a tour for the 20th. Three days before the tour, a company-wide email was circulated from the head of facilities saying that children were not allowed in the manufacturing areas. And I was planning on taking 18 fifth graders through the manufacturing areas. I did manage to clear it with one of the VP's and the tour went on as planned. My co-worker, Hal, and I split the group in half and each took a group around the plant. We had to stroll around the plant ourselves the day before because we don't often go to this particular building. So it was an education for us also.

Most kids would be fascinated by all the stuff they saw, but this group of naturally technically curious kids were oogle-eyed. A group of four of them spent several minutes analyzing a circuit board routing machine, trying to figure out how it worked. One of the workers in the circuit board assembly area gave a few of the kids some of the parts that were being put on the boards, parts only a little bigger than a grain of sand. It was rather funny watching them try to pass it around, especially when one of them dropped one on the carpeted floor of the conference room a little while later. We had lots of questions, but a few enterprising souls were repeatedly asking, "What do you do with the failed mirrors?" I finally reached into my box and pulled out one of my demo pieces, a piece of mirror glass with a circuit board attached to it. "Tell you what," I said. "I'll give this to Mrs. Gabriels [the teacher], and you can have it in your classroom to look at."

Mrs. Gabriels emailed me the next day saying a couple of her students were showing their friends from school the mirror that they have in their classroom. It must have made an impression.