More Arianna's Floor

Liesl had us busy intalling more flooring in Arianna's bedroom. Arianna has been a trooper and has been putting in boards too. Liesl is too determined to complete things quickly and I am more the person to slow things down. We really needed to slow things down especially when we got to the last row. We ended up cutting planks too narrow or cutting the wrong side. If we would have been careful, we could have returned a whole unopened box. Fate was against us.

We took a bit of time to install the piece that went from the bedroom to the closet. I wanted to do it correctly so that it transitioned professionally.

You can see that the piece of laminate goes underneath the door frame allowing for a clean transition. I was proud of myself. The tool that made this possible can be found at http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=67256. This is a knock-off of the Rockwall tool that is currently on television on an infomerical. This tool helped us make cuts including full length cuts.

The last row is finally done and the transition between the room and the 3/8" flooring in the hall. The transition piece needed to be placed at an angle. We ended up having to use three finish nails to hold it in place.

Now all we have to do is put in the new framing trim around the doors. We removed it to make installation easier.

Removing it caused damage and required us to install new trim. I hope that we don't have issues installing it.

Powered by Zoundry Raven

Sunday Afternoon of Geocaching!!!

I love to take the kids out geocaching. It gives us a chance to get out of the house and away from the computers. Arianna and J.T. went with me today. It wasn't the best for caches; we only got 4, but it was nice to be out in the warm weather.

Today we went to Morgan Creek Park. J.T. drove the GPS and I worked the camera.

This is J.T. and Arianna climbing up a hill toward a cache. They both found walking stick which they always want to bring home. They always end up in their rooms and never used again. J.T. was holding the GPS. He is good at leading us toward the cache, but has a tendency to walk past the stopping point. He only watches the distance and not the compass needle.

This is the results of the hunt. It was a small Tupperware with a tablet for signing our name and a bunch of little knick knacks and toys. We didn't take anything because we didn't bring anything for trading. That is one of the rules.

This is another one that the kids found. It is an ammo box. They are really popular with the kids because they are large enough to hold lots of goodies. After the log is signed, the kids put everything back in the box and then hide it back in the same spot really good. Usually, it is place back better then when we found it.

Arianna loves to explore in the outdoors. She wanted to climb up this gully with a lot of fallen trees. She said she wanted to act like a monkey (not difficult for her and her sense of humor) while climbing over and under the branches. While we were doing this, another group of cachers came through. They were very loud and were not having a lot of luck. It was funny; there were six of them and they were all armed with a GPS unit. Any muggle (what the geocaching world calls a non-cacher) could figure out what they were doing. This is not the way of the cacher. Muggles can steal a hidden cache and make it non-fun for others.

This was another cache they found. Someone had taken the time to cut a log in half, hollow it out, and put a metal hinge to hook the two halves together.

Liesl called about this time to let us know that she needed help with dinner. We weren't ready to come home. It is always just one more . . . all we need is one more. We started heading out when I notice that there was one more nearby. We just had to get it.

We drove up and headed out. Arianna was a little mad that they hid it up so high. She likes to find them herself.

The last one. This one smelled really bad. Arianna made me get all of the stuff out of it. She decided then that she wanted to climb into another bunch of branches.

Boy are we dumb. We are trying to save money by installing out own laminate flooring. We did OK, except Alan can't seem to get the measurements correct; each one came up short. Liesl finally had to take over the measuring.

This is going into Arianna's room. The cats totally destroyed the carpet.

We are about 3/4 the way through the room and are trying to figure out how to do the closets.

I hope it continues to get easier. It sure looks nice.

Spring Break 2010

The kids were itching to go someplace for spring break this year. We had discussed going back to the Wisconsin Dells, but since we had been there, we decided to go to St. Louis; somewhere we had never been before.

Because of Alan's work, he could only take a couple of days off. He took March 18th and 19th off. We drove down late after work on the 17th and woke up early on the 18th. The first place that we went was to downtown St. Louis to the City Museum. It is a seven story warehouse of fun. Check out the website.

 This warehouse even has stuff on the roof to do. Take a look at the upper right corner of the building. There is a full sized school bus hanging over the edge. They have removed part of the floor and installed Plexiglas. You can stand on it and see nothing but air below you. Too bad the roof was closed for the winter.

The first thing the kids did was go down the 3-story slide. It has a bunch of metal roller pipes above you that you run your hands on as you go down. They make noise.

In the art area, there was a lady that painted faces. She was awesome. The kids loved getting their faces painted.

The ground floor was a jungle/cave/metal forest that kids could crawl through and get lost for hours. They even pushed the parents to explore.

 All the kids loved to climb through everywhere, but it begin to get real crowded which stressed them out. The noise was loud too.

If you can believe it, they also have a 5-story and a 10-story slide. We were dead tired after climbing the to the top one.
 
The museum also has a aquarium section that you have to pay extra for. The best part of it was this tank that you put your hands in and these little fish eat all the dead skin off your hands; an almost perfect manicure. 

The next thing we did was head to the St. Louis Arch to get tickets to ride to the top. It turns out they sell out quickly and the don't pre-sell tickets for the the next day. We decided to find a hotel with an indoor swimming pool and take a rest.

This is a requirement when we travel. This kids love to swim. J.T. is such a ham for the camera.


We spent the night and had a great breakfast in the morning before heading out to get our tickets to the arch.


We got our tickets and then realized that we had left the camera in the car. Braden had his iPhone and took pictures at the top, but I don't have them to show. It was a lot of fun being 620 ft up in the air looking out a little window.