| Well last Thursday the kids started back in school. This year Ethen is in 2nd Grade with Kyle starting kindergarten. Kyle has an all day kindergarten (which I don't agree with, but am powerless to change) and comes home with tales of it being too long. I suspect that no matter how long the day is he would think that it was to long. Ethen was rather opposed to going back to school this year. He really enjoyed it last year, but this year he has a different teacher, and our neighbor (about 3-4 years older than Ethen) told Ethen that he would have the hardest teacher in the school. Needless to say that this didn't make for an easy send off for Terra. She had to down right drag him kicking and screaming to school and then leave him there once the door closed. |  |
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Kyle is like the other two kids in that he can't seem to get enough of holding Landen. He is not like the other kids in that he needs a nap on a daily basis. Rachel still occasionally needs a nap (or else she is grouchy and hateful) but she fights tooth and nail to take one. Kyle on the other hand falls asleep when he is in the car for extended drives (10 minutes) or if he is watching TV. The other to can't fall asleep while watching TV. |
| About two weeks ago, I decided to replace the air intake system on the Bronco. This job was a rather easy one, and all of the kids needed to take part in the festivities. Ethen and Rachel didn't last to long, but Kyle stayed until we were about 3/4 of the way finished. Ethen likes to start to help on these projects, but rarely stays. Rachel is similar, but Kyle likes to stay and "help out" the longest. |  |
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What didn't help them stay focused on this particular adventure was that once I took off the air intake/air filter assembly, I found two dead mice under the air filter. Apparently I had been burning a little methane for the last month or so - although with an insignificant increase in gas milage. Both mice were dead, and were actually just hallow fur covered skeletons. One larger and the other smaller (probably an offspring). |
| Here is a close up of the mice. I suspect that they chose poorly in their choice for a layer. I also wonder how many other ones lived there but weren't present during my investigation. It just goes to show how industrious these critters are. They would have had to crawl up the tires then get on the axles then climb up into the engine compartment and then up to the grill which they would have to scale until they found the intake duct and then enter and travel the 2.5 feet until they found the filter. If they had chewed through the filter, then a few of my valves would have had an abrasive cleaning - but wouldn't it look neat to see a charred mouse skeleton shooting out the tail pipe... |
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I found this photo on the computer (among many others of the same or similar poses). Terra likes taking pictures of the kids, and the kids like fighting over Landen. This one was the best of the shoot, but it was obvious that at varying times a few of the participants weren't to happy with the arrangements. Rachel particularly has a hard time leaving the poor kid alone. She will often go and find him and then proceed to maul him until he yells. Once she has achieved that result she will then attempt to pick him up and transport him to his mother for the proper attention. She is very, very helpful. |
| As some of you know, we have a small pool in the back yard. As I don't like maintaining pools (and Terra shares my tastes in this case) the pool hasn't seem much service as a swim meet. Mia would probably recognize this as a horse accessory, but nonetheless it sits in the back yard and just collects rain water and pine needles from the overhead trees. Recently I went out to dump it again (something that I do periodically) to kill the misquotes that breed in there, when I found it filled with tadpoles. |
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This is a bad picture, but there were probably between 300-500 of these little tadpoles in there. I decided that dumping it would kill the tadpoles and the tadpoles most likely eat the mosquito larva, so I left them. I am excited to see how many frogs that we end up having in the back yard from this little experiment. The kids have also taken a liking to them and routinely go out there with cups and catch a few watch them for a while, try to sneak them in the house and then end up putting them back into their container waiting for them to become frogs. If I were a good anphibianologist then I might be able to identify what species of frogs these are, but as I am not, we will just have to wait and see what type of frogs they become. |
| In other news, yesterday (Saturday) I loaded up some miscellaneous junk form the back yard (I still don't understand how this stuff keeps collecting) into the trailer and then headed off to the dump. As usual I had no problems getting there and unloading the garbage. I even remembered which Saturday it was open and managed to find the dump in an operating state (and yes I have showed up to closed gates in the past). As this was a rather easy trip I just though that I was finally managing to overcome the easy things in life, when as I was on my way home (about 0.5 miles away from the dump) I heard a loud pop. |
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Something impacted the back window of the bronco and the back window just shattered. I stopped the car and inspected it and even debated about pulling the window out and just leaving it on the ground, but thought that since I didn't have any gloves on I should wait until I returned home before attempting it. Once home, I decided that the best thing to do was to find some cardboard and insert it into the window opening to keep out critters and any rain water that might fall. This conclusion was only reached after I couldn't find an open junk yard, or glass shop within a 3 hour drive of my house. The joys of living in rural America. |
| On Sunday after church we got our first rain that would try out my concoction. As it turns out, the cardboard actually held up pretty well. I didn't do a close inspection but I suspect that the majority of the water was kept out even through we received 0.77 inches of rain in an hour and a half. I suspect that we will continue to get rain on a daily basis (if not more) until I manage to put some more glass back into the slot even though the forcast calls for it to be hot and a >10% chance of rain. I guess that this will give me the perfect opportunity to fix the broken window key switch located on the tailgate. |
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