Beach Olympics 2011

Last Saturday Jessi and I helped out with Beach Olympics. It is a 30 year annual event for our church's youth group. I could try to explain what it was like, but it wouldn't work. Instead, here are a few pictures of the day. We had 128 students participate at Ona Beach, South of Newport. It was a long day, and an extremely fun day.

Building Bible related sand castles

Playing a game called Bucket Ball. Get it?

More Bucket Ball

Yelling at Students (in a good way)

Digging to China

Green team. This year's champions!

My afternoon nap

Dinner and a message

Arriving at the beach

All the teams

Red Hot Poker. Don't touch the trash can!

Running over the bridge

Steal The Bacon - absolute crazy!

Surf run - grab the noodles and run back

Tennis ball launch

Student testimonies and the green trophy

A very tired Vinnie

Tug 'a War!

Great competition! Great fun!

Fly Trap!

One of the joys pre-doggie door was that we got A LOT of flies in our house from leaving the back door ajar so Vinnie could go out as he pleased. Leaving the door open was great for potty training because he learned quickly that he could just go out when he wanted and didn't have to wait for us to notice he had to go. But like I said, lots of flies got in.

I think James killed at least 50 and I had a menagerie of fruit flies in the kitchen. I saw this blog post about making your own fly trap so I decided what the hay it looks easy enough. I made one last week with a chunk of watermelon and caught about 15 fruit flies. The pictures are of the one for this week with kiwi scraps in the bottom. As you can see there are tons of fruit flies meeting their doom!

The trick was getting the hole small enough for the flies to get in but not get back out. I ended up just putting a piece of tape over most of the hole and that seemed to work. In the blogpost she says to take the jar outside and let the flies go free. I am not so nice. I don't really want them coming back into the house and with a compost container on the shelf next to the sink there are always more fruit flies to replace them. Try it out. It totally works for eliminating pesky fruit flies. I'm not so sure I want to know what kind of bait to use for regular flies...for now the fly swatter will do.

Doggie Door

5:15am. Vinnie has to go to the bathroom. Unfortunately, Jessi and I went to sleep at 1:00am because we were hanging out with friends. Therefore, we didn't hear him get up and make noise. So, at 5:30am, Vinnie does what any rationale dog would do... take a dump on our carpet. 5:31am. Jessi wakes up to the smell of poop. Apparently my tolerance is a little higher... She gets up and cleans up.

Later that morning, Jessi does some doggie door research on doggie doors. Later that afternoon, we are the proud owners of a new doggie door. The coolest part about the project is that Jessi got to use her new sawsall. Here's a video of her using it for the first time.




Vinnie watching from inside. He was NOT a fan of all the noise. This is the very serious look he kept giving us. Personally, I like his smashed nose.

And the final product. It looks good. Once Vinnie figures out how to use it, that should be the end of early morning surprises.

Oh, Vinnie...No more eating dead rodents

So, you've no doubt seen pictures of the cutest pup ever on our blog recently. Vinnie has me wrapped around his little...hmmm...paw? and he just has to look up at me with those cute little puppy eyes and he gets pretty much whatever he wants, most of the time.

Yesterday, Vinnie and I had a little bonding moment on our afternoon walk. We had a great morning, he let me finish the dishes, laundry and a test for my online class with no problems! So I had pretty high expectations for our walk. One thing you need to know about Vinnie and walks is that he is a total hound dog which means he HAS to smell EVERYTHING and eat a few things too

for at least the first half an hour. He especially likes to snack on stinky things like dead worms, slugs, moldy grass and the occasional poop. We try our hardest to keep him away from these things but sometimes he's just too fast and finds one before we do.

So, we were on our walk and he was doing his thing sniffing and snacking. We had walked for about 20 minutes so I was ready for the shift to normal walking and less hounding. So we started our course to the park. We have walked by a fenced off construction zone almost every day for the past three weeks so I was just going along enjoying the walk. Vinnie usually sniffs around in some bushes just at the edge of the fence so I let him do his thing...when all of a sudden he makes his classic gobbling something down move (you know the one, head back, teeth chomping, tongue licking, kind of like a Velociraptor). Well I move in to get a closer look and take the "poop" out of his mouth only to see fur and little teeth on the thing he was chewing!!!!!

I almost puked right there but I knew I had to pull it together and get whatever it was out of Vinnie's mouth! I looked around for any help I could find but time was running out and he was relentlessly chomping and chomping. I had to act quick so I just held my breath, bent down, grabbed Vinnies jaws...and remembered that I had a handy little poop scoop bag in my pocket!

(side note: I have an ingenious idea about poop bag stations but I'll save that for a later date) So I yank the bag out of my pocket and reach into the jaws of death grabbing and pulling the best I could against Vinnie's ferocious appetite. Yes, I got it! Or so I thought. The instant I threw the first chunk away, I look back and realize (this gets pretty graphic...) that the other half of the rodent is still in his mouth!!!! At this point I'm thinking, "What! I have to reach in there again! Come on! Just drop it Vinnie it can't be tastier than the delicious meat treats we feed you at home!" But I have to go back in. I held my breath again and pried his teeth apart just long enough to whip the last part of the rodent out and across the sidewalk.

Vinnie was not a happy camper. He bee-lined straight for it again and I pulled him away. At this point I was holding back tears of frustration, grossed-out-ness and sadness that my cute little puppy could eat something so horrible. But I again pulled myself together and marched straight home with Vinnie in tow. Did I mention that the rat-thing had ants on it that had crawled onto my hand that I just now noticed half-way home!!!!! Oh my gosh, I'm getting sick just writing about it...let's move on to the clean-up.

I had to clean myself up before I could even think about Vinnie, so I put my nervous, confused little pup in his pen and scrubbed my hands and arms and anything else that might have contacted "the rodent". I headed back to the kitchen and took Vinnie straight to the tub. He got a full scrubbing, including his mouth, which I then brushed with his doggy toothbrush and paste several times and fed him some good food to wash it all down while saying the whole time, "This is good food, Vinnie. This is what we eat, not nasty rats by the side of the road." I sure hope he understood me.

Needless to say, Vinnie was kind of freaked out by my obsessive compulsive need to wash his entire body and mouth several times after eating a simple "snack". So he did laps around the house every time I got near him for the next hour. I knew he was clean and safe and that's all that mattered. We're totally friends again. I will think extra hard though before I let him sniff around in any more bushes.

James wanted to get some digital evidence of the incident so we went back to the scene of the crime and found this...

The head...which I ripped out first

and the decapitated body which I ripped out second.

After all that Vinnie is still a great doggie and I wouldn't trade him for anything...I only wish his natural instincts were a little less keen at times.

Crafty

I have taken some of this wonderful free time I've had lately to do some crafting. I have been working on a t-shirt quilt (scheduled to be finished sometime next year...it's a project!) and as a result I have had a bunch of t-shirt scraps around.

Since my lovely sister-in-law-to-be, Kendra, got me hooked on Pinterest I've been loading up on tons of craft, food, style...ideas. So, t-shirt scraps and Pinterest combined and I got a lovely necklace and tube scarf!

Let me know if you want an invite for Pinterest...I will warn you though, it is super addicting!

Here's some pictures of my creations!

In case you want to try your hand out at these crafts, here's the original blog posts I learned from:

http://melissaesplin.com/home/2010/03/t-shirt-refashion-jersey-necklace/

http://cottonandcurls.blogspot.com/2010/11/tube-or-circle-scarf.html

Happy Crafting!

Good-Bye Old Shorts

It's been a while in the making, but I finally bought new shorts. As you can tell from the photo above, these pair had a good run, but it's time for them to be retired. I bought these pair about 4 years ago. It was a year ago when Jessi repaired the first set of holes. And this time round, she refused.

The biggest reason is that they no longer fit me. They literally fall off my hips unless I really tighten my belt around them - a belt that I punched 3 new holes into so I could keep using it. Yeah, once I find something I like, I tend to hold onto it.

So, my new shorts are actually 2 sizes smaller. Crazy! I guess that's what happens when you lose 40 pounds within those 4 years. I'm actually working on a report/packet/thingy right now that teaches people how to live healthier, and this will be a nice little factoid to add. Possibly more on that later (it depends on how well it turns out).

Anyways, I'm excited for the fall when we go shopping for new jeans. They have similar issues (the patches are starting to rip). I'll probably have to drop a couple sizes on my jeans too given I have the same "synching up" issue.

Sourdough!

I know I have neglected our blog for quite some time...I was inspired however after a mega-baking session this afternoon (I know, I know it's 85 degrees outside and I have the oven on!) anyway, I was inspired to share a new recipe.

For this one you need a little back story.

Three years ago, when we got married, one of our wedding gifts was a sourdough starter from James' mom. I had never used a starter before and was kind of intimidated at first. I honestly thought it was a little gross. After I tasted the starter at work in biscuits and pancakes I was hooked. Over the past three years I have mainly stuck to safe recipes but recently I was talking with our pastor's wife, Laurel, and she shared a book with a whole sourdough chapter in it and a recipe for sourdough pizza crust so I was down the track of experimentation!

The recipe I used today is below. I just did a google search for sourdough cookies and picked one on Allrecipes.com. They were delicious! If only you were all closer you could come over and try one! I even made a snicker doodle and chocolate chip version with the same base recipe. Our favorite was the plain...maybe with a homemade strawberry frosting next time!

• Ingredients

  • 1 cup sourdough starter
  • 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup butter, softened
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 egg
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease or line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
  2. In a large bowl cream the butter or margarine with the sugar. Beat in the egg and the Sweet Sourdough Starter. Stir in the flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder and vanilla. Mix until smooth.
  3. Drop dough by teaspoonfuls onto the prepared baking sheets. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 10 to 12 minutes.

I hope you get to try it out someday. Sourdough is not at all scary and it is worth the work!

Happy eating!

Jessi

Spring Cleaning: Summer Edition

On Tuesday Jessi and I decided to clean out our garage. Mostly because we had a bunch of old stuff that had started to accumulate, but also because I have a crazy dream of one day actually owning less stuff than when we moved in (this goes with my idea of spending on experiences). We started at 4pm and finished at midnight.

Our process was to take everything out of the garage and put it into 1 of 5 piles: Keep, give away, sell, trash & unknown. We then consolidated and re-organized the items we wanted to keep, and will do the appropriate thing with the other items.

The picture above is the before shot. The picture below is the after shot. All of that stuff in the font center of the garage is going away. We also filled the back of my truck with larger items, and created a nice pile of wood for an up-coming camping trip. It's hard to tell from the photos, but we easily eliminated 1/3 of the items.

Often times the hardest items to decide on while cleaning are the sentimental ones - you know you're never going to use it again, but when you see it, you can't help but smile at the thought of the memory. We'll, we came up with a solution that helped a lot: Take a picture. Here are two examples:

One is of a box that Jessi used to transport one of her sculptures she made in college. The other is some shredded money from the Fed in San Francisco I got while visiting with my family. Both are no longer in our garage, but now the memories live on our computers (and screen savers). Now we will actually see, and remember, those items/events more often.

Finally, while cleaning we put all our tools/materials on one of our tables so we could re-organize our shelve. We took a picture of it because it made a really cool "eye-spy" type of photo. Can you find the 5 glass mason jars? How about the red pipe wrench?

July... Just Another Summer Month

The month of July was a crazy month for us. It was supposed to be relaxing, but after looking at this list, that clearly wasn't the case. Here are some of the highlights:

• My parents visited during the Independence Day weekend
• Bought a Jeep
• Bought another Jeep
• Celebrated 3 years of marital bliss
• Got a new recipe for sour dough pizza crust - tried it - and will probably keep it in our regular rotation (that's the picture above)
• Start training classes with Vinnie - they're going great
• Went on a camping trip to Detroit Lake
• Other than that, just the normal weekly activities: HP work, practicing jiu jitsu, leading church BBQ's, playing softball, taking our online real estate class, and hanging out with friends

Baby Dog Teeth

Did you know that dogs lose all their baby teeth? Vinnie lost all his front ones, and has recently started losing the others as well. Here's what we've found so far.

Beep Beep... Bought Another Jeep... Wait. What?

Well, it feels like only a month ago we bought our first Jeep. Wait. It was LESS than a month ago that we bought our first Jeep! So what happened?

We took our first Jeep in a couple weeks ago to do some regular maintenance and get a baseline of what needed to be repaired in the future. That's when we got a call asking us to come down and check out the Jeep - we had a major issue.

This is what he showed us. The passenger-side back corner of the frame was completely rusted away. That oval piece connects to the leaf spring which holds up the WHEEL. The only thing keeping that oval piece in place was the pressure of the body and the wheel (ie, gravity). If we hit a large enough bump, it's very likely that oval piece could have fallen off. Needless to say, this was a major safety issue.

It gets worse.

We didn't see this when we bought it for one big reason. Someone had gone ahead and put mesh with bondo over the spot (think of it as paper mashe for cars - looks pretty, but zero structural strength). See what looks like white scratches along the frame? That's where the paint from the bondo is coming off - yeah it's a solid 18" of false repair work.

Crazily enough, they actually make a part to fix this section of the frame. I guess it's a common occurrence for the frame to rust away here because of the wheels kicking up debris. Unfortunately, the Jeep is just old enough that the cost to replace that section is SIGNIFICANTLY more than the whole Jeep is worth. This, I guess, is because it's old enough that when they start messing with this section, adjacent sections will also likely need to be fixed.

It gets worse.

Since we bought the Jeep from a private party, there's very little we can do (there's still one thing we're looking into). So that's a bummer.

OK. Now it gets better.

Instead of wallowing in our failed purchase, we decided to go test driving for a new Jeep. We came across this one and decided is was what we wanted. This time we went through a used car dealer, and the whole process felt much more official. We were also able to trade in our "old" Jeep. So it will be properly documented and dealt with.

So, now we have a 2002 blue Jeep with a hard top, air conditioning, and an AC plug for our phones. We were also able to keep the wheels off our "old" Jeep because we like the logo rims. Jessi also won her first eBay auction to replace the door mirrors (they were moved, and we're putting them back to the factory location).

From this, there's one major lesson we learned and wanted to share:

When buying a vehicle, no matter where it's from, have it inspected. Our issue was something we never would have caught ourselves. However, a trained professional looking at the vehicle (jacked up 4 feet in the air) was able to catch it. It costs about $100 to do, but is worth the insurance of knowing your vehicle is safe to drive.

Safari Omnibar

A little background on my browser choices:

My personal computer is a Mac, and I use Safari.
My work computer is Windows, and I use Chrome.

Why not download Chrome on my Mac? I don't have any good reasons other than Safari is pretty good and if I can avoid downloading another app, I will. I also tend to run pretty light on extensions in my browsers. When I add one, I tend to go for minimalist options.

On Chrome, I have 6 extensions: Adblock & 5 buttons which are really just mini-bookmark scripts (like a bit.ly url shortner, for example).

On Safari, I have 2 extensions: Adblock & Gentle Status Bar (It pops up a little bar at the bottom showing me the url destination my mouse is hovering over - something Chrome does natively).

So, when I choose to download an extension, it has to be something pretty special.

The one feature Chrome has is the Omnibar. It's a single box at the top that allows you to type in urls or do a search (see the picture above for what it looks like). It's smart enough to either send you to the website or do a search on Google - very cool. Safari never had that feature, and it's the one I regularly missed.

Well, today I found a Safari Omnibar extension (thanks Lifehacker) and it works just like the Chrome Omnibar. Very exciting! I just had a share. Now my Safari browsing experience is complete. You can download it on Github. Scroll down to the installation section and click on the installer link.

Look At All The Vinnies!!

Here's a fun kid story.

I was at a friend's house when one of his kids wanted to see pictures of our dog, Vinnie. He had met him before and wanted to know where he was. So, I pulled out my iPhone and switched it over to the album with all my Vinnie pictures and showed him how to swipe to new photos.

He was having a blast looking at all the photos when he came to this one:

Suddenly he exclaimed in pure joy, "Look at all the Vinnies!!!"

Ha ha. So true, those are lots of Vinnies! It never even occurred to me that if Vinnie was the only dachshund he's seen, and we introduced him as Vinnie, then all dachshunds would be a "Vinnie".

Cute kid. If I were his parents, I would stay away from Dachshund breeders unless they're planning on taking one home.

Beep Beep... Bought A Jeep

One of the things I like about Jessi is that she has really practical dreams. Some people, like myself, have crazy dreams like wanting to own an airplane and staring up a farm to raise cattle and sheep. Jessi, on the other hand, dreams of things that are actually attainable. Case in point: she wanted a dachshund. That's reasonable. Another dream of hers has been to own a Jeep. Again, reasonable.

Last month, after much planning, we were able to get Jessi's dream dog. I've already shared about Vinnie and his exploits. This month, with considerably less planning, we were able to get Jessi's dream Jeep.

We had been talking about it for a while, but never really had an incentive to pull the trigger. After all, Jessi current car ran really well and was practical. Then one day at work an opportunity presented itself to sell Jessi's car. It was an opportunity to help someone else, and help us achieve our dream. Win-win.

So, we took the plunge and sold Jessi's car. We figured since Jessi had the summer off, we could take our time looking for the perfect Jeep. Of course, Jessi found her perfect Jeep in less than a day and after a quick ride fell in love with it.

So now we're the proud owners of another white vehicle, neither of which is actually a car. This probably isn't the most practical decision we've ever made, but sometimes you need to be a little crazy when it comes to fulfilling dreams.

This is Jessi's "golden year" - she was both on the 27th and she's 27 years old. Normally it's just a golden birthday (again, same day as years), and she extended it the entire year. And it's shaping up to be a great year for Jessi. Fulfilling dreams is a lot of fun - I recommend it.