Frost Road Country Fair

This weekend was very busy for us and in some ways it started over a month ago. Now that Callie is going to school we've got to start doing the parenting participation thing. The extra dynamic for us is that Callie goes to the same school where Kerry teaches. Kerry volunteered us to help organize the Frost Road Country Fair. My role ended up being a carpentry role which suits me fine. Rona donated some plywood and the organizers wanted me to cut some holes in it so that they could make one of those picture walls where yous stick your head through. I think they were expecting it to just be a few cuts however Rona only donated 1/4 inch plywood which wasn't even strong enough to stand up without bending. 

I ended up sandwiching two layers together with a core of random strips of 2x4. I also added a plywood base and bolted it all together. Total cost was about $30.00 and I ended up clearing a lot of scrap wood out of the shop. I didn't do the painting but they turned out really well. Callie's bright idea was to take her toy horse and get a picture with her head in the horse and the horses head in the cowboy.

The fair was a lot of fun and luckily it ended up being outside. Around 3:15 in the afternoon the power went out to the entire neighborhood due to a vehicle accident. It didn't come back on until 10 minutes before the fair ended. Callie and Carter got their first pony ride. Carter still remembers his ponies name. Sabrina. The fair had all sorts of fun for the kids including bouncy castles, face painting, games, a cake walking contest and last but not least a pie eating contest.

This is where the odd dynamic of being a parent and a teacher comes in. Kerry was one of the organizers and was in charge of organizing the pie eating contest. This is difficult to do without participating yourself. There were a total of eight teachers and they sold tickets so that people could guess who they thought was going to win. Kerry is still coming down from the sugar high.

I'm not sure how much money they raised but they ended up running out of tickets. Unfortunately they couldn't photo copy more due to the power outage so they had to resort to making them by hand. I'm not sure what next years theme will be but if it's not cowboy themed I guess we'll have to repaint the picture wall.

Happy Mother's Day!

Nothing says Happy Mother's Day like feeding goats. I must say that I suck at Mother's Day. Since the kids are still young Mother's Day is pretty much still my responsibility. I tried to make breakfast but Kerry decided that she wanted Eggs Benedict. She bought the ingredients and told me what she wanted but she forgot to get ham so we were sunk.We settled on fried egg sandwiches but apparently "breaking the yolk" is a major sin and I wasn't entrusted with that portion of the meal.

The goat feeding took place at Port Kells nursery near our house. It's a great family run business and the goats were a new addition this year. They have fish in their ponds and lot's of chickens. (Carter does not like to get too close to the chickens.)

Back to Mother's day. The purpose of going to the nursery was so Kerry could pick out a plant for her present. This year she got a Yellow Rhododendron. The kids also made gifts for her at school/daycare. Carter made a cup of dirt with a wooden stick painted as a boy. (We think there is a seed in there too.)  Callie made some friendship bracelets, a card and some pictures.
For dinner we ordered Chinese food and I took care of the house hold cleaning for the day. Happy Mother's Day Kerry!

Express Yourself Finale

I had hoped to have a post after both the second and third "Express Yourself" days however day two ended up being absolute chaos. We had an additional 6 kids show up and we had to get them started from scratch and caught up with the rest of the kids. We were also down both our helpers but luckily Mr. Andres the Swiss French teacher showed up to keep the kids in line. One thing we didn't anticipate was the difficulty the kids would have hammering the nails. This was partly due to the folding tables we were using as a bench. Every hammer blow would cause the whole table to bounce. We had better luck on the floor or using the kids workbench that I had brought in.

By day three we were finally starting to figure out all the tricks including pre-drilling for the nails. We were using pine so it wasn't really necessary but it made it a lot easier for the kids to hammer. At one point I had three different drills going. One pre-drilling the nail holes. One pre-drilling the holes for the screws on the bottom and one driving the screws. (We installed the bottoms using screws to allow them to clean out the bird house between seasons.)

You'll notice I've covered the kids faces in the pictures. In the age of digital photography this is probably unnecessary but there are still guidelines about posting pictures taken in the school.
In the end we did manage to complete all the bird houses and I think the kids were quite satisfied with their accomplishments. Who knows, maybe we inspired some of them to take up woodworking as a career. Hopefully they do this again next year. I'm definitely signing up again.

Easter Weekend

This weekend we headed up to Gub and Gampoo's house for Easter. (Callie picked the names when she was about two. Carter sometimes gets caught adding an R into Gampoo so he often pronounces it Gaaaampoo just to make sure he gets it right.) They're only about 4 1/2 hours away in Oliver so it's an easy trip to do over a long weekend. They're also right near the lake and with temperatures in the high teens and low twenties it was a welcome escape from the Vancouver rains. I brought my bike and got in about 75k of riding. Day one was spent watching "Tangled" from the leather recliner on Gampoo's big screen.

Day two started with an Easter Egg hunt at the local civic centre. There were different hunts for each age group and as you can see Carter's wasn't overly complicated. It was a shot gun start and he knew exactly what to do even though the age group was 3-4 and he is only two. There was also a special "Golden Egg" but Carter ran right by it. This is actually a good thing because it just meant more chocolate and we were running short on insulin as it was.

Callie's age group was 5-6 and was a bit more complicated with smaller eggs hidden in the tall grass. She also had to find 16 eggs whereas Carter only had to find 4. Callie wasn't quite as aggressive in the hunt as Carter and ended up being the last one to find all her eggs. Several other kids had given up and I was close to calling it quits when she hit 15. We had been over the whole area twice but Callie insisted on persevering and eventually found her last egg. (I'm not sure if someone else didn't drop it there to help her out.) Still a proud moment watching her not give up.

Day three was Easter Sunday. As previously mentioned we had already hit our yearly quota for chocolate and hadn't even hit Easter Sunday yet. I think they should move Diabetes Awareness Month to April. Callie had spent Friday evening teaching Carter how to find eggs so he was quite proud of his haul.

Day three was also Game six of the Canucks playoff series. Surprisingly this picture was taken after the game. (If you look closely you'll see that Reg's smile is quite forced as Callie is never the quickest one to get ready for pictures.) The shirts were part of a fund raising effort Kerry organized at her school. The expectations for this year are very high and she sold over 250 and the supplier had difficulties filling the order. Thankfully she collected the money up front as these shirts may not be too popular come Tuesday evening.

Express Yourself - Day 1

Last Thursday was a hectic one and  I'm still recovering. Frost Road elementary applied for a $5000 grant with the intention of using it for an event called 'Express Yourself'. It was an opportunity for kids to learn skills that wouldn't ordinarily be taught in elementary skill. The idea was to have parents volunteer their time for four Thursday mornings and teach a group of kids. I volunteered to do woodworking for 6-12 kids with a couple of parent helpers. Unfortunately only about 20 parents volunteered to teach for a school with 560 kids. This left myself and another parent with 30 kids. That's a lot of bird houses.

The prep work alone was probably about 30 or 40 hours between the two of us as we had to cut parts for 30 bird houses and buy all the tools and materials. Our budget was roughly $500.00 and we managed to get quite a few tools.  30 tape measures, 30 pairs of safety glasses, 6 pairs of pliers to hold the nails, 4 nail sets, 12 glue bottles and a dozen hammers. We also bought about 150 linear feet of 1x6 pine.
When the principle called to let us know the details he promised us as many as 10 helpers.  (Our 10 helpers are shown on the left.)

When we sat down to put together a lesson plan time was our biggest worry.  We only had from 9:00a to 10:15 plus 15 minutes to cleanup. On day one we figured we would hand out the supplies, have them mark their pieces and drill the holes for the bird and the perch. We also set up a few hands on stations where they could try out a hand brace and some planes.
Amazingly we managed to get everything done that we planned.Unfortunately there was a mix up with the scheduling and we only had 15 kids. The others were at their high school orientation. Day two will have 30 kids with 15 of them being a day behind.

A Workbench for Little People

At the beginning of the year one of my resolutions was to builds a workbench. Technically I was talking about a work bench for myself but from a resolution point of view this will do. The creation of this work bench serves several purposes.
1) A potential prototype for my own workbench.
2) I've always thought it would be neat for Callie and Carter to have their own workbench.
3) I'm going to be teaching woodworking to 30 grade 6/7 kids on Thursday's in April. (More on that in a future posting.)

The construction is pretty straight forward with a few fancy bits thrown in. The base is made of 4/4 poplar glued together to form thicker boards where necessary. The legs are mortise and tenoned into the base and upper stretchers and the lower stretchers are through tenoned into the legs with wedges. The top is made from 2x6 spruce cut in half and glued together and there is a vice that I picked up at a tool show several years ago. (It's okay for a kids bench but for $20.00 I got what I paid for. Very sloppy machining.) All together I think the it cost me about $75.00 and about 12 hours to build.

Callie and I put it to use immediately to make her a small toolbox for her gardening tools.So far the toolbox has been decorated with pencil crayons and about 30 red and pink stickers. Not sure where we'll store the bench but it's going to be great for crafts and for bringing up the next generation of wood workers.

Good Night Vancouver

I titled this post after one of Carter's books. These are a series of books that I'm sure are making someone a lot of money. I got the first one when I was in Phoenix. It was called Good Night Zoo and takes you through the process of waking up all the zoo creatures and ends with saying good night to them all. Good night Vancouver is similar except rather than zoo creatures it's various sights around Vancouver. One such sight is the Point Atkinson light house which is where we headed on Sunday for a walk. It's quite a large nature park in West Vancouver and is home to one of the last stands of old growth forest in the lower mainland. With two young kids we only saw a small percentage and I'm sure you could go there regularly and see something new every time.

Carter was our guide and took his role of holding the map very seriously. The round thing behind him in the picture was a slab of Douglas fir that was several hundred years old. You see these all over the place and sometimes I wonder if they're all from the same tree. (Again someone making a lot of money with a simple idea.) Carter was an excellent hiker. He insisted on walking almost the whole way and it was only when I mentioned "safety reasons" that he would let me pick him up. I think he's on to me though so that probably won't last much longer.

The park was a great place to take your dog as almost every one there seemed to have theirs with them. Callie's job was to look after Wilson and she looked very cute in her new sneakers. She did get a bit bored though as she thought we were going to do some treasure hunting. (Geocaching) Unfortunately most of the sites were a bit out of the way so we didn't get to any. We really enjoyed our hike though and I definitely think we'll go back to let Carter show us more of the area.

Below is a short video of Carter's determined hiking.