Manifesto 2013

I am torn about making New Years resolutions... I am always well meaning in making them, but then somehow they drift into the obis of everyday life. (Now having said that I did make it to around July before I gave up on/lost my cloth shopping bags in 2012.)  But as in past years I will make some resolutions...

So for 2013...

I resolve to find more time for myself by...

• Finishing at least 3 large crafting projects
• Reading one book a month
• Exercising 30 minutes a day
• Blogging at least once a month
• Driving the 911 at least once a month

 I resolve to spend more time with Miles by...

• Playing a game of his choosing at least 20 minutes a day.  
• Taking him to something cultural at least once a month
• Going to the zoo at least 6 times this year

I resolve to spend more quality time with Chris by...

• Planning a family vacation to somewhere relaxing and fun
•  Going on a date at least once a month
• Meeting for lunch at least once a week
• ......

I resolve to keep up my good work at leading a healthier life style by...

• Only eating out with Chris
• Not eating white foods
• Only eating dessert out
• Drinking 8 glasses of water daily
• Not eating foods I can't pronounce the ingredients to
• Eating something green everyday (M&M's don't count)
• Working out 30 minutes a day
• Spending some time outside everyday

I resolve to add more whimsy to my life by...

• Trying something new at least once a month
• Having friends over more often/laughing more
• Instituting Fancy Plate Friday (ie. Using the Queens China every Friday we eat at home.) 
• Trying not to plan so much... 
• ..................................................  (If I plan all the ways to be whimsical I won't be...)  

So I know it's a long list, but once I start I have a hard time stopping... I didn't even get to financial resolutions... I think I'll just put that under budget.  

Snow Days: Some of my most fond memories

When I was little I remember pushing the snow off the porch with the screen door and then running and jumping off the porch into the snow.  We would then dig tunnels through the snow and create paths.  We would make huge snow balls and then dig out the insides to make a wonderful place to hide.  Some of our forts were big enough for 2 of us.  We would have snowball fights from the top of the playhouse in the back yard and would swing on the swing to give ourselves more momentum.  This went on for seemingly hours.... When we finally did go inside, there was hot cocoa.  We would warm our hands over the vents and they would tingle.

Now I live in southern Indiana where we get a "Good" snow every 4 years or so.  This is the first one that we've had since Miles has been big enough to play in it.  Probably because these are some of my favorite memories I want to build these memories for Miles.  I rue the day that he is in school and we will be unable to play in the snow "all day."  So yesterday we did a little of it all.

We made a snowman/dog.

We made snow angles.

We had a snowball fight.

We started our fort.

We went sledding.

It was a wonderful day had by all.  My hope is that he shares similar experiences with future generations.  Snow brings a certain about of magic to the air.  It brings out the very best child in everyone.

Old Wives Tales- Pineapple for Bruises

It seems that frequently I give the advice that my grandmother gave my mother and my mother has given me about natural ways to heal.  I often get non-believers.  Many of the tips that I have received from my foremothers use items from around the house.  I think the thing that floors me is that they don't seem to be common knowledge.  I don't know if this is because of the growth of modern medicine, and so these remedies have not needed to be passed on even though they don't hurt to try.  One of these that I most often pass on is to eat pineapple to help in the healing of bruises.  For those of you who don't know, I recently dropped a 1"x8"x8 anvil on my foot.  I didn't break it, but boy did it do a number on my foot.  I of course elevated it and put ice on it.  But I also put pineapple in my diet once a day since it happened.

Wednesday (the night it happened... after ice) My whole foot is swollen, bruised, and hurt to move.

Thursday morning It's still swollen, the bruise has settled some, and it didn't hurt once in my sneaker and iced.  

Friday Morning It really looked the best here... I had eaten a half a can of pineapple on Thursday. I ate a pineapple yogurt on Friday. 

Saturday Morning The healing bruise is starting to appear.  The swelling is down considerably.  Today I drank pineapple juice.

Sunday Morning It looks like it's healing, but I wore cute shoes yesterday instead of my sneakers and I think that that played a role in the bruise being more defined.  Today I drank more pineapple juice.  

OK... so yes the bruise is more visible this morning, but it is healing green and purple.  The swelling is all but gone... Not bad for day 4.  

I'm still in the healing process... and I will need to finish healing.  My guess that will be gone by this coming Wednesday.  I'll keep you posted.

Is eating pineapple for bruises hogwash?  I don't think so.  And more than that,  what a great excuse to add a delicious fruit to my diet.  

_______________________________________________________________

As promised here is an update...

Monday Morning - So I was smart yesterday and I went back to my sneakers and drank more pineapple juice.  Today the bruise is less festive and is now more into the brown green stage than yesterday.  Although I do have a  purple bruise that has appeared on the side of my foot just below the abrasion.  I'm still hoping for a full recovery by Wednesday.  Any takers on the bet?  

Wednesday Morning- Well I loose the bet....It's not all the way healed, but it does look considerably better.  I can still see a hint of the bruise, but over all a great recovery.

Road Atlanta- Third in the Tri-fecta

The story around the story (in Chris' words)...

We Kentuckianian racers have the best worst luck, but we stick together help each other out and somehow get by! This is a long status update, but worth clicking on the dots, I promise. Thursday Carrie, Miles and I departed in our beater E250 van towing the Little Lamb-orghini for Trudy Edenfield's place to lay our heads en route for a Chumpcar race at Road Atlanta. I paid $1500 for this van, it's 

quite rough and has never been further than across town since in my possession, but it hauled the 4200+lb load plus probably another 1000 pounds worth of tools through Nashville rush hour stop-go traffic, through the mountains, all the way to the track with no complaint, until we were literally at the gate to enter the track, and the radiator exploded. What great bad luck, at least we made it! Bob Jennine Frankfuter was awesome enough to solder the radiator back together, a fix that I hoped would be good enough to get us home, at least. The events of the race are another story all together, but after it was over, Carrie and I went to a near by bar to enjoy a toast to a race at least finished. In a bizarre stroke of best worst luck Carrie forgot her purse at the bar, and did not realize it until the next morning. She called our friends Paul and Lora Blaylock on our race team who were staying in a hotel near the bar. They were kind enough to delay their departure for Evansville to go pick up the purse which was (luckily) still there and (luckily) still containing our traveling cash. We too separately departed from Trudy's house later in the day with the same, now repaired beater van and race car in tow. On the Blaylock's journey back they encountered a trailer traveling down the highway which appeared to have a tire with the tread separating. They pulled along side the van hauling the trailer to signal to the driver, and who was it? Our friends Gene and Julie of the Kentucky Spirits racing team! They got the trailer pulled over, limped it to the next exit and Paul and Lora were kind enough to lend Gene a hand getting the tire changed. At a slightly different time and slightly different place but on the same highway, a lone Barrry Schonberger was hauling the Larry Tech 944 back to Evansville from the race when he too had a flat tire. Unfortunately, the spare tire was at the front of the trailer, requiring him to partially back the race car out of the trailer to access it. By himself and unable to restart the car, he could not push the car over the threshold of the trailer, and was in a bit of a pickle, when Jane Bridges happens to be driving by to lend him a hand. With the car back in the trailer, he was on his way for Evansville, and just made it to the first traffic light in town, when the truck he was driving died and refused to restart. And it was POURING rain and lightening. And his wife Angie was out of town and unable to come pick him up, even if he did get the truck and trailer towed to a repair shop. Just at that moment, who approached on the highway by pure coincidence to save the day for Barry? Paul and Lora Blaylock. The Blaylock's gave Barry a ride home in the rain and were back home by about the time we (remember us?) were arriving in the area in our beater van and car in tow. Our trackside radiator repair had been working great. Made it back through the mountains, several major metropoli, and were soldiering on through blinding rain at a speed of 30-40 mph as we crossed the Ohio River bridge, at which point the bridge was struck by an enormous bolt of lightening. I have never seen anything like it in my life. Actually, I didn't really see anything, just everything went blinding white light for about a half second, after which my hair was standing straight up and I had the distinct sensation of having just had an out-of-body experience. FREAKY! But the van was still working, everything was OK, we just kept moving like nothing had happened all the way to our home safely. I stopped the van with the trailer in front of our house, let Carrie and Miles out to run into the house in the pouring rain, then backed the van up a bit to get it a little closer to the curb as my parking job in the dark rain was a bit poor. No sooner had I moved the van in reverse 10 feet and... The radiator exploded again.

The race...

We arrived at the track, parked, and got in the growing line for tech.  Where Chris came in $15 over AIV and was given a lap.  He was also told he had to loose the facial hair or wear a balaclava.  He doesn't see as well with one, so shaving was the first order on race day morning.

  

It was eerie.  We arrived at the track with no necessary tweeks needed for the Little Lamborghini.  We simply had to change tires, and we were ready to roll. Chris was the first to take the wheel.  He went out for a single lap, came back in and said that all seemed to be OK and he was going to make a go of it.  On lap 5 Chris called into the pit... "I don't have any breaks."  "How could he not have breaks... We just started, and he just had them."  

Chris later told us that he was at the end of the back straight (about 110 mph) when the breaks went straight to the floor. 

The car was towed to the cold pits on the flatbed and the diagnosing began.  It wasn't long before it was discovered that the break line had rubbed through. 

   We also had a major gash in the V8's radiator hose, but we brought one of those with us.  

Glen hopped in his car and was off to the parts store to get the part for the break that was needed. When they took the wheel off to get to the breaks they saw that the tire had been nearly eaten through on the inside and needed to be replaced.  (We brought rain tires, so on one went.)  

The diagnosing continued.  The exhaust was ripped from the front engine, but Chris had brought a piece of roll bar that would suffice. 

 The battery had seemed a little weak of charge, so while we were stopped we thought we'd swap it out.  The only problem was that the battery bracket needed modification.  No problem! An angle grinder and some Super Huge Zip-Ties will fix that right up.  They had fixed the exhaust and were putting finishing touches on getting the battery tied down when Charlie walked up and said "Your engine mount is torn." 

 Sure enough, Chris' bought of agricultural racing had torn the engine mount on the 4 cylinder So off I ran to find a chunk of metal to make a temporary mount.  

When all of this was fixed Jenson jumped in the car and began his stint rather uneventfully. (Thank goodness!!) Glen too had no problems and made laps.  

Paul was the first to take the wheel and had just recently been released from his doctor because 8 weeks ago he broke the tip off his elbow.  Because of this, he was simply going to try to drive.  He took a lap tested it out and then decided that he's try a few more.  At about lap 6, he was rubbed off the track.  He and the car were flatbed towed off the track with a wheel that was perpendicular to the car.  (Luckily this was the same tire that had been replaced earlier in the day, so at least it wasn't new.) They ground away some obtrusive metal, and put a new tire on, checked the alignment and were back to making laps in under an hour.  

And all was good until the last hour and a half of the race.  The V8 started to overheat.  The brought it in, added more water and sent it back out.  20 minutes later, Chris was black flagged for smoking and going too slow since the V8 cut out.  We asked the race official if we could go "work on the car" (ie. just let the thing cool down) in the cold pits until the final 10 minutes of the race.  Chris went back out and finished under our own power.  Goal Achieved!!! We finished the race....

And we were able to share it with our family!! 

Hanging the Bells

This was the first year that Miles really helped trim the Christmas tree.  He really got into it.  It was delightful to see him react to the ornaments and choose a special place for each one. (He really liked the bottom left corner of the tree.)

 He loved digging into the box of bells.  He was delighted to have bells just like Santa.  We were able to discuss the tradition that Chris and I have of hanging them on the tree each year for the past 10 Christmases.  At our wedding, we had bells on each of the tables and asked people to write messages on them.  They were rung as we left the reception.  We've left the tags on them and read them as they are placed on the tree.  It's fun to see people's advice and expressions.

Please note the missile-toe in the background.  (It's been up since last year.) 

We came across my childhood stocking and used it for it's original intended purpose.  

Thank goodness for the stairs or we'd never reach the top of the tree.

Chris still had to do the top of the tree.  

Daddy's first Experience with Goop

So Miles and I made goop with 1 cup of glue mixed with a cup of water then mixed with a solution of 3/4 cup of warm water with 1 tsp of borax and food coloring.  We showed Chris the goop and he was amazed!!   

Tactile experiences are important for children (and daddies) to build fine motor skills.  

Binding Books- As promised

Miles and I make books.  Some of them are about our experiences such as trips we've taken to the zoo.  Some of them are childhood songs acted out with the song in print, one is about his play written down as he played it and then he illustrated it.  The one we are working on currently is an alphabet book.  He and I are working on finding things that pertain to his life that begin with each letter of the Alphabet.  This project will probably take us a while, but I've already made the binding for the book in my normal style.  Page protectors sewn together and accented with biased tape.  Here's how I did it.


First decide how many pages you book will be, or is.  Half that number and add 2.  (If you had an odd number of pages to begin with then you add 2 to the whole number of the equation.  This is because you can use the odd page on the back cover.)

so for the alphabet book (26 pages/2) =13pages needed for the guts of the book plus 2 pages for the covers =15 page protectors needed.

This is the thickest book that I would do with this method.  It was a little difficult for my machine to go through all of the layers.  

Next  make sure they are all facing the same direction, and sew them together along the manufactured dotted line along the side of the pages.  I like to use safety pins or binder rings to help me line them up.  If you have the guts of the book ready to go it is easier to sew them together if you have them already placed them in the page protectors.

After that you will need to cut the excess on the side off.  This doesn't need to be pretty since you will be covering this up.  I like to make a line along the inside of the 3 hole punch and cut along it.

The next step is sewing the biased tape over the edge.  I essentially sew directly over where I've sewn before just with the biased tape covering the previous stitches.

In this case, I made my own.  I used a strip of scrap cloth and then sewed ironed it in half and then in half again and cut it to the length of the page protectors.

Finally, if you didn't already put the guts of your book in do this now and read, read,... read.  I like to use card-stock for the cover to give it more structure.

I originally started using this method when Miles was a toddler, so the books would last longer.  When he gets older I may just combine all the pages with the cover and sew them together without the page protectors, but for now I know our creations will be safe.

I have also used this method to make class books in which all the children contribute.  When I was in the classroom I tried to make enough class books with the children that at the end of the year they would all get to take one home.       

Marble Scientist

Lately Miles has been using marbles in his play.  He has been making soup, rolling them down tubes and ramps, and now adding them to Oobleck (cornstarch and water).

The neat thing about using marbles with a “non-Newtonian liquid”  (It's viscosity changes depending on the stress or force applied to it.) is that the marbles will land on top of the Oobleck and then sink slowly in.  This is also a great activity for fine motor development, because it is difficult to get the marbles out of Oobleck.  He/we ended up scooping the mass into the strainer and then allowing it to drip off over night when he was done playing in the Ooblick.

There are many sites that get into the proportions for making the best Oobleck, but we just put in a container of cornstarch and then slowly added water until we had the right consistency.  (If you add too much water you can pour it off.)  We always add food coloring to our experiments.  I don't really care if Miles hands are dyed for a day or two, but if you do you may want to mix in the color with a metal spoon.  (Although putting this limit on it will surely take out some of the fun.)  And while I recommend doing this over surfaces that can be easily wiped up if it gets in carpet simply allow it to dry and vacuum it up.

For a long time Miles was leery of playing in messy things, which is against my and Chris' very nature.  Adding something that he is very interested in playing in (i.e. the marbles) allowed him to extend his comfort zone and try something new.  It allowed him to build on his prior knowledge of how a marble should behave in liquids (We've used them in the bathtub.) and across solids.  He was able to note that it is different, how it is different, and explore vocabulary that explains the difference.

For those of you who are not familiar with why it is called Oobleck, please note that there is a great literary connection by non other than.... you guessed it!!     Dr. Seuss!!! The book is called Bartholomew and the Oobleck and is a great precursor to introducing Oobleck to children.

Of course you can... You just made Miles a Shark!

The other day Chris said, "You're so talented, do you think you could do a little project for me?"  So I asked him what exactly he had in mind.  (He was definitely trying to butter me up for some reason.)
His idea was to convert this...

The stock seat from a '86 Ford Escort into a racing seat cover.  He has to keep his GRM Challenge Budget under $2012 (see www.littlelamborghini.com to see the full plan.)

So I did.

Step 1. Use small snips to take off the fabric and vinyl pieces right along the seams to allow the largest pieces possible to work with.  I would have used my seam ripper, but I couldn't locate it.

Step 2. Clean the materials.  I sent the fabric though a gentle cycle in my washer and wiped the vinyl down with cleaner.  This is what I had to work with.

Step 3. Decide how to best use the material to fit the seat and cut the pieces to the right shape.

Step 4. Sew the pieces together. Some of the pieces I left big and then trimmed them down after I sewed them.

Step 5. Cut the foam to fit the race car seat.  The size was measured and then an OLD kitchen knife was used to cut the foam to fit.

Step 6. Dry Fit the driver- I had Chris sit in the seat from time to time to make sure the fit was good.

Step 7. Add the snaps- The snaps that are on a standard racing seat are riveted on.  They are a standard size that can be gotten from craft stores (I has some of these left over from footy PJ's I made Chris for Christmas.)  We put the seat on, marked where the snaps lined up.  Used a small drill bit (with our hand) to make a round hole, and then followed the manufactures directions.  (I got Chris involved on this step, so that he could smash his fingers.)

Step 8. Add the holes for the belts.  To do this I put the cover back on the seat, traced where the holes needed to be, cut triangles from the center of the hole, pulled them back as I sewed, and then trimmed off the points.  

The hole at the top of the seat doesn't want to lay flat, so I'm going to try to pull the edge back with duct tape on the back of the seat.  Well see how that goes.  

For all intents and purposes the seat is ready to go back in the Little Lamborghini.  Here's to making it up as I go!!! 

 Total money added to the GRM budget = $0 = Success!!

(Oh and I hand sewed the hole shut that was put in the seat for the BABE Rally. )

P.S. We are doing this whole adventure to bring awareness to Little Lambs of Evansville and help them raise money.  So please think about making a contribution to Little Lambs which helps support local families in receiving services and goods needed in the first years of life.  Give on the Little Lambs of Evansville site.