Seth's Bed

Seth slept in a Pack N Play for the first year of his life. Once he started to become aware that it was more like a cage then a bed, we had to take him out of it. He would grab the side and push and pull and he was starting to break it. We went to DI and bought a crib mattress, but no crib. We laid the mattress on the floor with not frame. Seth loved it. We had to teach him to stay in bed, but he got it after a while. A crib might have been easier, but I did not feel that we had room in our apartment. He still sometimes gets out of bed when he should be sleeping. We usually have to put him in bed four or five times each night. The same week that we bought the crib mattress from DI, Jennifer found a crib mattress in the dumpster of our apartment complex. It was in perfect shape, so she took it out and disinfected it. We just stacked one on top of the other and Seth has slept on both.

When Amy Jo lived in Cedar, she gave us a bunch of stuff for Seth (clothes, toys, a booster seat). She is ready to put Dallan in a crib, but she has misplaced the mattress. She called and asked if I still had two. I told her that she could have one of mine. We will be going to Richfield November 6th for my niece's (Avery) baptism. I got a little excited and started to prepare to take it today. I checked to see that it will fit in the trunk. It fits fine. I thought about leaving it there, but decided that Jennifer would not like that. She would not have a trunk for 4 weeks and I would get in trouble. It worked nice for Seth to have both mattresses stacked under the window, since he likes to watch for the garbage truck and likes to wave to me when I come home from work. With only one mattress, he is not tall enough to see out the window. I had some old 2X4's laying on the back porch and the top off of an old computer desk that was the same size as Seth's bed. I cut the 2X4's into four inch pieces and nailed them together in an L shape. I laid the L's on their sides and nailed one to each corner of the desk top. Seth's mattress fits perfectly on top of it. It makes his bed just as high as it was before. Now he can see out the window again. I found out that Seth is a good little helper. He loved handing me nails. He carried the container of nails across the room and then brought me one as I called out "Nail." The only problem was that he brought them one at a time. I had to call "Nail" just as I started to pound the one that he just brought me.

Seth had fun working on this project with his Dad. Now he is even more excited about his bed. May be now he will go down for a nap on the first try.

Go Cougars

Every morning we wake up and sing the Cougar Fight Song. Not really, but that would be pretty sweet. I sing it to myself in the shower. We have taught Seth the end of it. He is all ready to go to the BYU game in October. It is pretty funny that at the end of this video he is trying to teach Carter how to do it too.

New Shocks

While in the process of changing my fuel filler neck, I noticed that I needed new shocks. My rear shocks were leaking. I had wanted to change them for a while, but I did not realize that they had gotten that bad. When I go over a dip in the road my truck feels like the front tires lose contact with the road for a quarter of a second and I lose control of the vehicle. Then when it comes back down, it sort of jerks back into control. Michael said that his truck had the same problem and that he wanted to change the shocks on his as well. Since our trucks are near identical, he thought we could do it together. We could learn on one and then do the other easily.

This is one of the front shocks. They came black, but you know that I like blue. I spray painted them blue to give them that Thomas touch. I like to alter things a little to make them unique and also so no one else has one like mine. I think they turned out pretty nice.

Here is one of the old, front shocks compared with the new one. The old shocks were so rusty that the metal was flaking off the outside. I was able to compress the old shocks easily with just my hands. With the new shock, I had to put the tip on the ground and use my body weight to compress it. The nut holding the old shock on was so rusted it took all my strength to remove it (which is quite considerable, if you have ever arm wrestled me you know. If you beat me arm wrestling, then your strength is more considerable than mine). All the bolts came off stiff the whole way. The top of the shock goes through a hole in the frame and the bottom connects to a bolt welded to the frame. In order to compress the shock enough to get it on the bottom bolt I had to use my truck’s jack. Jennifer pumped the jack and I controlled the shock with both hands and when it was compressed enough I pushed it on the bolt. Without Jennifer’s help I would not have been able to do it (I tried).

Here is a picture of the old, rear shock compared with one of the new ones.



Seth is always so helpful. I am not sure what he is tightening up back there, but it must have been loose.

It feels good to make these minor repairs on my truck by myself. Next I need to call all the tire shops in town and ask how much it would cost to change my shocks. Then I will feel even better knowing how much I saved.

Fuel Filler Neck

Ever since I have owned my truck, it has had a fuel leak. Every time I fill up with gas, it would leak right at the top of the tank. The hose that runs from the gas cap to the top of the tank is called the filler neck. It had a small crack in the rubber. I figure that I was losing a fourth to half a gallon each time. I started letting the gas get low near the E, and then only adding ten gallons. Using this method no fuel was spilled on the ground. I still had the issue of my gas evaporating out the crack in the bottom of the filler neck.

I went to the dealer to see how much for the part. The guy told me that they must be precious. They were charging $240 just for the part, no installation. I searched on the internet and found some for $100. Still too much. I then found a website called discountbodyparts.com They were selling the same part for $25. It is an exact match.

Here's the hole that the gas was escaping out of.

I had to drop my gas tank to remover the filler neck. I suggest doing this when the tank is near empty. I had ten gallons in mine. I was able to lift the tank, using all my strength, and Jennifer put jacks under it. This project was very frustrating working with heavy objects in small places. Luckily, I had Jennifer there to do the swearing for me.

I got it all put back together and it works great with no leaks. Seth was a big help. The next project will be to change all four shocks.

Peaches

Thomas and I decided that we would try our hand at canning our own peaches. To start off you have to blanch the peaches to get the skins off.  If you boil them in water for a minute or two, they come off quite easily.  Place them in cold water before removing the skins, to avoid burning your fingers.  Through this process we learned that in order for this to be effective you need to have ripe peaches and you need to only leave them in the boiling water a minute.  While I went to help Carter, Thomas took over the blanching.   Lets just say that we had a few that were a little over cooked.  Seth ate those, and loved them.

The skins came off really easy.  We cut an X on the bottom of each peach before blanching to give us a corner to get under.  

Thomas then cut the peaches and put them into the jars. We had enough to fill four jars.

They were then placed into a water bath, where they boiled for 25 minutes. Before they even started to boil I noticed that one of the jars had broken, so I carefully pulled out the pieces that I could and the others continued to boil. After they boiled I removed them from the heat and poured off some of the water so that they could more easily be removed with hot pads.

 

Here is the final project. It was a long process but we had fun learning along the way. Too bad there are only 3. :(

Everywhere You Look

The other day Thomas said, “If someone came into our apartment, they wouldn’t know that we are BYU fans.  We need more BYU stuff.”  I told him that people know.  Just look around our place and it obvious.  I think that he was just joking.

This is the first thing you see as you come to our door.  A lot of things that Thomas wants, he cannot find in stores.  He makes most of his own BYU stuff.

This is the last thing you see as you leave.  His mother bought this for him for Christmas last year.

 

These are hanging in our front room.  He made the “BYU Family” sign.  He bought the BYU banner off eBay for $4 which included shipping.  The BYU clock, he found at DI in St. George for $2.

 

These are on the shelf in the front room.  Thomas’ little brother Michael, brought BYU Russian nesting dolls back with him from his mission.   Thomas repainted the biggest one to have his name on the back.  He also changed the number to 10, which is Thomas favorite number.  The BYU baseball head was the first BYU thing that Thomas ever made, back in 2006.  It is a replica of the Dodgers baseball head that Thomas’ older brother Clint made years ago.

These are in the kitchen. I bought this blue cooler for Thomas last Christmas with the intention of him putting a “Y” on it and that is just what he did. The BYU flag is from the bookstore and use to hang in the window but we did not want it to fade in the sun we moved it to the kitchen.

These are in the boys’ room.  We found this little dresser at DI.  It was many different colors, so Thomas went straight to work personalizing it. Carter uses it right now but some day it will be Thomas’ night stand.

 

This is what he wears at work. 

He painted Ys on his mud flaps and has a BYU sticker in the rear window.  He also has a BYU license plate frame.  Our car also has a BYU sticker in the rear window and a BYU license plate frame.

Last Saturday Thomas was outside fixing the washer fluid nozzles on our car and I went out to see how it was coming along.  This is what I found. Nothing is safe. If a BYU logo will look good some place you can count on it having a logo on it.

I am sure that it is obvious that we are BYU fans and some might say that it is a little overboard.

We are proud of our Cougars and not afraid to show it.

GO COUGARS!!! 

Homemade Salsa

Yesterday I decided that I would make some salsa. I had gotten the tomatoes from my sister Heather (who panted 50 tomato plants). What I did not know was that it would take me all day.

I had to first blanch and remove the skins from 3 sacks of tomatoes, measuring to be 6 Quarts or 24 cups of tomatoes. Then it was time to cut the bell peppers and the recipe called for 6. After the bell peppers came the onions. We needed six of those diced also. Heather warned me that the onions would probably make me cry and they did. So after the tears were wiped away it was time to cut the jalapeños. Before I started cutting these I thought I would sample a small bit. Not a good idea. I ran straight for the cartoon of milk. Oh how it burned. Not smart. After the jalapenos was the garlic. Have you ever tried to peal the skins off of fresh garlic? I was having the hardest time. When I was finally finished with all of the chopping and cutting it had been over THREE HOURS and my hands were still burning from the jalapeños.

It was then time to put it all in to a big pot and let it simmer for 1 ½ to 2 hours. I then put it in to jars and into the jar sealer for 20 minutes. By the time it was all finished it was time to make dinner. We had burrito with some of the freshly made salsa. Yum!!

Seth is very pleased with the salsa. He loves salsa.  It was one of his first words.  When he was probably 12 months old, Thomas taught him to answer the questions, “What do you want for breakfast?”, “What do you want for lunch?”, “What do you want for dinner?” with the reply “Salsa.”  The boy loves his salsa.  Any kind of sauce he calls salsa. When we first introduced Seth to salad, he did not like it.  Then Thomas told him that Ranch dressing is salsa and now he loves it.

Making salsa has been a fun project and I look forward to the day that we have a garden and can grow a few things of our own for canning.