It Grieveth Me That I Should Lose This Tree

The River (Clump) Birch tree that has been in the center of our front yard for more than 25 years came down today. It was in poor health and had many dead and dying branches, so it was time.

The decision to remove the tree today was made about a week ago but it just so happened that a few of Kyle's friends decided to T-P our yard last night. The condemned tree was well-adorned with toilet paper, much of it way too high to reach for clean-up. Usually when that happens we hit the t.p. with water from a hose until it falls down. Since the tree was coming down anyway we left most of it there. Kyle texted his friends and said something like "you're not going to believe this...the toilet paper was too high in the tree for us to get it down, so my Dad just cut down the tree! Thanks a lot! That tree was over 20 years old!"

Many neighbors stopped to watch the tree-felling and all commented on the t.p. Everyone agreed that telling Kyle's friends the story of the toilet paper being the cause for removing the tree was pretty funny.

The first thing that had to be done we remove the two smaller trunks of the three. Bruce did that with his gas-powered chain saw. Kyle pulled a rope that was looped around each trunk to make sure they fell where they were supposed to (they were supposed to fall NOT on the house). Each trunk successfully fell NOT on the house.

Next, Bruce used the gas chain saw and Kyle used the electric chain saw to reduce the trunks to firewood, branches and sawdust.

This afternoon, Carl van Katwijk brought his heavy duty chain saw over to take down the main part of the tree. He did this in exchange for the wood of the main trunk. Oh, and also because he is a good guy!

The view out the front door after the two smaller trunks were cut.

Kyle using the electric chain saw.

Tying a rock to the rope to facilitate getting the rope around the top of the tree.

Preparing to throw the rock-laden rope over a sturdy branch.

Dueling Chain Saws: Cutting the branches off the trunks and making firewood

Bruce's first attempt at getting the rope over a branch (I have three more videos exactly like this one...I won't bore you)

...finally got the rope over a branch...not the branch we wanted.

Spent, Bruce gives up the fight

Kyle's turn to try. Repeat same shot two or three times.

Almost Crafty

I am NOT a scrapbooker, but when I saw a Cricut machine for about 60% off, I bought it for Bruce to give me for Christmas (when you know what you want, grab it, especially at 6:30 AM on "Black Friday!"). So far I have cut out some vinyl letters for a friend's picture frame, made some captions for the missionary board at Seminary and put together the fun birth announcements from the newspaper (pictured below).

I had intended to just mount these on cardstock and laminate them, but the new cutting machine could help make them cute. In theory these were easy projects:

1. Cut out the name and shapes on the Cricut.
2. Glue them on cardstock.
3. Glue the newspaper clipping.
4. Trim up the whole thing.
5. Laminate and cut it out again.
   

It would have been fast if the letters weren't so small! Now that I see a magnified version, some of the letters are crooked! Darn! These were hard to attach. The largest letters are 1 inch tall while the shortest are less than 1/3 of an inch.

Can't wait to give these to the families!

Kyle's 100 Breaststroke Race - Walla Walla Pentathalon

This is a video of Kyle's 100 Breast race in the Walla Walla on December 12, 2009 . Each swimmer swam five events: free, back, breast, fly and IM. As you can tell, Kyle has bulked up quite a bit since his freshman year.

Kyle and Megan April 2006

This picture is one of my favorites. It was taken in April of 2006 when Kyle and I went to Cleveland during spring break to visit Kate, Mike and Megan.

Signs You Don't See Every Day

States I Have Visited

I found a link to this cool map generator on the geocaching.com website. The generator can be found here. Since we spent so much of the last two weeks driving through the western United States, I thought I would put a map on this blog. It might be cheating, but I am counting states that I have driven through and landed in on airport layovers.




During the last two weeks alone we drove from Washington, through Oregon and Idaho to Utah. Two days later we left Utah and went through a bit of Colorado, ALL of New Mexico to Texas. On the way back we went through ALL of New Mexico, a tiny bit of Arizona, back to a bit of New Mexico, stepped on New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado at the same time, aka "Four Corners," (watch for that post...coming soon), back through a tiny bit of Colorado and on to Utah.

I'm in Utah now and when I return home, in a few days, I will have crossed a state border 16 times!

Well, lookey here...

There may or may not exist a semi-awkward, fully-funny video of Drew dancing on his mission.
Mom may or may not have asked me to find it.
I may or may not have found it.
I may or may not have posted it below.

It's all so fuzzy...