Monday, November 18, 2013

Weaning cattle, Baby Adventures, Flooring Fun

This is from the end of October, and I may have already posted it.  I don't care.  It needs to be posted again.  Ben left Alex right.
 
 
We went back to the farm to help wean cattle.  Cousin and Aunt came as well.  Here are the boys playing with Cousin.  He is about 6 months older.  They are eating Cheerios out of a bowl.

 
The bowl didn't last long.  A lot longer than expected, though.

 
The maracas have been a big hit.  They carry them when they walk, or hold them in their hands while they crawl.  The poor things have been chewed like crazy. 

 
Bottle caps in the mouth.  Alex blue cap, Ben orange cap.

 
He got the entire thing in there.

 
My babies are able to pull the outlet covers out of the outlet.  They don't seem to be very effective in a baby mouth.  Alex.

 
Ben
 
I don't let them keep these pieces of plastic in their mouth, but they always seem to be able to find more.  Little monsters.

 
Ben toilet flushing.

 
Here is a better picture of the pacifier getting pulled out with the blanket trick.

 
Ben likes to get behind the couch and walk back and forth.

 
Our flooring project has begun.  The babies were VERY  helpful when Cody started removing trim before we could get the floor out.
 
 
They like tools.

 
One of the walking while carrying a hammer.  (We did not let them  play with the tools for very long and only with supervision.  I don't let them play with sharp objects usually.)


 
Checking progress.


 
Ben

 
We had to construct a barrier to keep the babies away with kitchen chairs.  Here is Ben watching progress while eating a graham cracker and sitting on tiles.  Eventually we just used to baby gate pulled toward the wall to keep them from being able to get into the kitchen/living room area all together.  It was a long few days of us just hanging out in the bedrooms.
 
 
Baby barrier.  This was just the 2nd line of defense in case they managed to get past the hallway baby gate.

 
Our flooring delivery.
 
Here is a tale I like to call "The Most Productive Nap Ever."
 
We ordered roughly 40 boxes of laminate, 20 sheets of cement board, and 20 boxes of tile.  Since the order was so big, we decided to pay to have the store deliver it.  The $55 delivery fee is totally worth not loading it on a cart, into the pickup, making 2 trips there and back because it was too heavy/big for one pickup load, and then unloading at home.
 
So here is the order.  I didn't ask the guy to put it in the garage.  I don't know if he would have, but I didn't think to ask.  The weather called for rain later in the day.  Cody was not happy.  I decided that meant I should move everything in to the house.  By myself.  During a baby nap.
 
Each laminate box was 33 lbs. = 1320 lbs
Each cement board panel is 30 lbs = 600 lbs
Each box of tile is 60 lbs = 1200 lbs
 
Total weight: 3120 lbs.  A ton and a half. In about 45 minutes.  That is just part of the tale though.
 
 
 
The tile was on top.  I managed to carry it in through the garage and pile it neatly in the basement.  Next was the cement board.  I was not confident I could carry it all the way to the basement, so I put in neatly in the far corner on the garage.
 
By the time I got to the laminate, I was checking the clock and knew I didn't have long.  I was very confident I couldn't keep carrying it to the basement.  I decided the bed of the pickup was a good place to stack boxes.  It would keep me from bending over and would be quicker to grab to bring upstairs. 
 
Here is all of my work.  There are more boxes to the right, but they aren't important here.

 
After I finished unloading everything.  I realized Cody was planning to take the pickup to work because I needed the car the next day.  I was about to cry.  I couldn't just leave it for Cody to drive to work, and Cody was not going to have time that evening to help unload.  He had to use a rented tool to tear out our floor.
 
So, I unloaded the pickup and moved as much as I could from behind the pickup.  So that was another 19 boxes of laminate moved.  Again.  You can see I was too tired and weak to get those final two boxes behind the tire.  I tried to push them off to the side, but I just didn't have it in me.
 
Final total approximately 3747 lbs. And lots of tears.  (no actual tears, but there were tears on the inside)
 
As soon as I was finished with the final box, I heard the babies start crying on the monitor.
 
The most productive baby nap ever.
 
The final kicker: We decided that laminate wasn't going to work, so we'll have to load the boxes back on to the pallet and then unload another pallet of significantly heavier laminate.
 
 

 
Our trips to and from Kansas seem to be cursed.  This time we hit a giant beaver.  Yes.. a giant beaver on the highway.
 
Here is Cody inspecting the damage on the side of the highway.  The babies were not happy.  We were not happy.  The babies spent the next 2 hours of the drive home crying.  They wouldn't even stop crying for a graham cracker.
 
Horrible.
 
It looks like we got out of it with minimal damage.  It really was a huge beaver.

 
Our car has now killed countless birds, a duck family, a deer, (some other small raccoonish creature I'll have to get Cody to remind me about), and a beaver.


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