Spring Is Here To Me

I came home from being out about 2pm, from being out with my good friend, Sherry. We had enjoyed a morning of roaming clear to Northboro, to the fabric store, the Christmas Tree Shoppe (oh my goodness- I could have bought everything in there) and to a couple of other places. It was warm enough in the van to have the windows open and still sweat. According to my very loved temperature gauge in the van, it was 47. It made me wonder if Steven's bees were taking a chance to enjoy some Spring weather. Sure enough, they were. Along with taking pictures of the bees, I walked around the yard to see what else I would see on this wonderful, wonderful, Spring day. Checking out why my bird bath was tipping so far in the mud revealed the ground was very soft and next to it revealed the bulbs that I had planted last fall. I went all around the yard and I saw tulips and daffodils buds peeping their tips greeting us with a reminder that Spring is truly around the corner. I saw buds on the trees at Jacob's school and was, I must say, thrilled. I looked at my forsythia bush and only saw tiny buds. But it lets me know the winter wasn't too nasty. We have really had a pretty mild winter. It may be doing the winter thing of going out like a lion and coming in like a lamb, there is hope. So, hang in there dear friends. It may seem like a cruel joke today to have this snow and rain mixture with the high winds. Our cat, O'Malley, is really feeling very confused today as well. He was loving the fact he could roam without having to watch where he stepped so he wouldn't get snow on and in his paws. But today, he has been looking longingly out the windows and growling if you tried to give any sympathy to him. But I guess one thing we will have to endure are the winds as it is March and more rain for April.

Meanwhile, it is time to be thinking of what you might want to grow in your garden this year (and don't forget to re-pot your indoor plants). May 1st is the last frost date this year for our area. Steven and I are doing square foot gardening this year. I am having hope we will have a decent garden this year with not having to use the poor soil that our yard has. I am looking forward to planting in the square foot boxes and not having to deal with weeds or less weeds. The first thing we have to do is determine how much vermiculite, peat moss, and compost we need, build the boxes, and get the plants. Steven and I have already determined how many boxes and what/how many plants we will need. I have had no luck with seeds but since you directly plant the seeds in the boxes, I won't have to deal with starting them. We are also going to be reading about how to plant in the way that will provide vegetables throughout the summer without a break. For instance, growing lettuce all summer.

I am thrilled Steven has taken an interest in gardening. All the years we have been married and able to raise a garden, Steven has not been too interested. But I wonder with the past few years of seeing my discouragement with a poor garden, he took pity and is going to teach me with his ability to read and totally understand a concept and join me in an endeavor. Possibly it also has something to do with the helping the bees too. But with us each having one of these interests, we have joined together as a team and I think it will be fun. I don't know if Michael and Jacob will show much interest. But they will be involved in the process. I think Jacob will have a great time doing it as long as there is a dirt pile as compensation. He and his friends talked about literally trying to dig to China, last year. They built deep volcanoes and were able to jump down into their holes that resembled fox holes. I'll have to get pictures this year of their endeavors.

A Delayed Christmas Present...

For Christmas Tracy got me a Home Depot gift card. But I had a hard time finding something to buy. I didn't need any small tools that the card would pay for; but the card wouldn't pay for more expensive tools I maybe wanted.

Then this weekend I thought of something I could use which was in the price range. So I present to you:

My new garage florescent light!!

Yea, I know - kinda lame. But in the garage, where I do some woodwork-type stuff (when the car isn't there), the only lights are a couple of CFL bulbs high in the rafters. I mounted this light low enough that it is overhead when I am doing some work. There is a pull-chain I use to turn it on and off. Woo-hoo!

Merry Christmas to me!!!

My latest craze

My favorite song lately- And the video is quite cute...

Lyrics | Michael Buble lyrics - Haven't Met You Yet lyrics


It's a good song to dance to while cleaning house.

Happy New Year 2010!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Happy New Year! We have sure enjoyed our Christmas break. Unfortunately, it is ending too soon. It's times like this I really cherish. We all had a great Christmas. Michael and Jacob got all the Lego's a child could ever want. Steven got money mostly(what else do you get a guy who has it all?) And I didn't have any expectations so I didn't have my heart set on anything. But I got plenty of cool things including a knitting kit (don't expect a sweater or potholder anytime soon). But Steven is teaching me how. Steven has so many talents! And lots of patience!

It has been so nice to sleep in most mornings until 9 or 10am. That will be a real kicker when January 4th, at 6am, comes. It has been great to veg out and do whatever we wanted for the most part. Michael and Jacob had friends over to play. No strict schedule has been enforced but will start again tomorrow night, the 2th.

While everyone has been home, we have been doing some cleaning and everyone has been jumping into help. And for the most part, without any complaint. That's a nice treat! We have had a family movie night and watched the new, "Star Trek". Yeh, we are a boring family. We did go to Burlington Mall on the 28th, and had Chick-Fil-A, for dinner and went to the Lego store. That was a real treat for us. Chick-Fil-A is a restaurant that we had in Georgia. It serves the best chicken strips, soups, sandwiches, cheesecake, and ice milk ice cream.

For New Years Eve, we just stayed home and watched the ball drop on TV, from NYC. There is no way we even wanted to be out in a crowd of a million people and in the frigid cold, not even in Boston or Worcester. The boys were happy to be on the Wii, making noise with the noise makers, and eating wonderful ribs sent from Steven's brother, Ryan, from Cincinnati. If you have never tasted Montgomery Inn ribs with their famous sauce, you are missing out on a lot. Even Jacob tried the ribs (without the sauce) and said they were so good. They were also happy to be eating Laffy Taffy's and telling jokes that came from the wrappers.

Tonight, the 1st, at church, we had a fun night with Jacob meeting his new teacher for his Pri-
mary class this year. He is in the 9 year old class. Still the same classmates, just a new teacher and new lessons. There was pizza, veggies w/ dip, and cookies for dinner there. On December 9th, his birthday, Jacob earned his Wolf rank in Cub Scouts. Jacob has grown so tall this past year. He is in heaven with his Lego's.



Michael is no longer in Primary. He turned 12 in October and is Young Men's now. It seems so weird this year not seeing Michael move up in Primary. Michael earned his Tenderfoot rank in Boy Scouts, on December 30th. Makes me know the boys are growing up so fast. It won't be long until Michael is taller than I am. Michael is doing so well playing the alto sax in the school band. He still wants to play the drums.


The Christmas decorations come down tomorrow, the 2nd. Had enough of green and red around the house. We are tired of all the boxes of lights, and ornaments hanging around. It's time to have a house looking clean and get rid of the clutter. I will start working on that tomorrow. I worked on more of the organization of things today. The coupon binder used weekly was in need of some cleaning up so when Steven went to the store, he wouldn't be ambushed with expired coupons. I also put tabs in the binder so it is easier for him to find the categories. I also found more recipes for my recipe box. I love collecting recipes. I got new cookbooks for Christmas. And have already tried a fun recipe out of one of the books. One of my hopes this new year is to cook more from scratch and be better at not going out to eat so much. That is one of my downfalls.

I'm looking forward to the new lessons at church this year. The book in Relief Society is more on the gospel principles and I'm excited to see what the new theme of our Relief Society is this year. I'm excited to help the boys learn more on the lesson from the new Primary theme this year, "I Feel My Savior's Love". With that theme, I am excited with the format of the book to teach Family Home Evening lesson from it.

I don't know if we will travel much this year. That won't be happening until this spring anyway. But there is so much to see up here in New England. Michael and Jacob often ask about going to the ocean, especially up in Maine. Maine is such a beautiful state. We are definitely going back to Scituate and Plymouth. Gotta go to Cupcake Charlie's for their wonderful cupcakes. With the family sort of homebodies, we are bound to be found here painting the inside of the house and fixing things up around there. The outside light fixtures are rusted shut so they must be replaced. There will be new garden beds, new plants, and hopefully we can get the brown hive of bees up and going again. And hopefully honey from our hives this year.

May you all have a prosperous New Year!

It's For The Birds...

Jacob is a Wolf Scout in the Cub Scout program, and one of the requirements he has for a conservation award is to make a birdhouse.

Well, Saturday was the day for Dad to get in gear! Since power tools are involved, so is Dad. I operated the saw and the drill; Jacob operated the glue and the hammer. Together we made the birdhouse seen above.

I had some wood in the garage that we used, and I just "eyeballed" the design. It was simple enough, even with the slanted cuts, that it worked out great! I usually don't have such luck...

The lid is hinged for easy clean-out, and slanted to keep the rain off. The perch was Jacob's idea.

We had to let the glue dry, then we will put it outside. Don't know if it will be occupied this year, but it'll be ready for the spring!

How Did This Happen?!?

In the busy day-to-day activity of the Christensen household, last month I discovered I how have a 12-year-old!



How did that happen? What happened to this little boy??

It's Good to Have Water (Pressure)...

Fair warning - this is going to be a long post. But I hope to make it interesting, First, a little background on this post: our house was built in 2001, and the location/height of the house relative to the gravity-fed city water system means we have very low inlet water pressure. As a result, all of the houses on our street have a water pump / pressure tank combination, similar to what you would have if you had a well.

Our particular tank/pump started having problems a year or so ago, where we would notice the pump cycling more often. It looked like the tank was not holding a charge of air. Take a look at the following picture from this page to see how the air tank operates (click for larger view):


So you can see that if the air leaks out, then there won't be as much pressure to keep the water pressure up, and the pump will have to fill things up faster.

That was what was happening at our house. I could see some rust on the back side of the tank, so I suspected that was the cause of the leak. But the leak wasn't bad enough, and I could use an air compressor to pump up the air tank and give us a few more months before I'd have to do that again.

Well, as things you put off usually do, the tank got worse and worse, where I was pumping things up every week. I knew I had to replace the pump. I called around locally for prices, and was shocked at what this system costs (I wanted the same make/model of pump and tank, as I felt that they were the best quality). I found a few cheaper alternatives, but they scared me a little (there were models with no tank - I'm not sure how long that would last).

I found out the company that makes the pump is about 30 minutes away in Rhode Island! Great, I thought! I'll call them and go pick one up. Unfortunately, they make you go through a distributor, and the local distributors have terrible markups and they charge you the freight charge it takes to get it from RI to their store.

I found a place in New York which had the exact model I wanted, at a significant cost savings from what I could get it locally. Plus, their shipping was pretty reasonable (well, still expensive, but not as bad as others). So I ordered the pump. Ironic I had to go to NY to get an item made 30 minutes away... Anyway, they arranged for a freight company to ship it (it weighs 150# - too big for UPS to handle). But I learned later that I was responsible for getting this off the truck (they were only a freight company - but for an extra $120 they would send out a truck with a lift gate! [no thanks]). So I took the day of the delivery off, and waited for the truck. Luck was with me, because the truck that delivered it had a lift gate, and the driver was nice enough to bring the tank up to the top of my driveway! It was good, because here is what was delivered:

I got the box down to the basement (it really wasn't heavy - the 150# included the pallet), and here's the new pump next to the old one, which is still hooked up to the plumbing:

So off I go to Home Depot to get a bunch of plumbing parts, copper tubes and elbows, joints, including a blowtorch and solder, etc. (I honestly thought I had a blowtorch already, but couldn't find it in the garage). It wouldn't be my only trip there...

Step one: remove the old pump and tank. The house plumbing had a bypass already set up, so I bypassed the pump and removed it. Here's what it looks like after I took it out:

Notice the bad rust down the side of the pump. The connection between the pump and the tank was leaking, and had rusted out the tank. If you figure the tank was installed when the house was built, it had 8 years to corrode.

I was pleased to see the new pump had an electronic controller, instead of the mechanical controller the old one had. Unfortunately they also changed the locations of the inlet connection, and I had to do some extra piping.

Now comes the fun part - I salvaged the existing shutoff valves and check valve, so that required some creative ways of draining water pipes. You can't heat up a copper pipe if it has water in it - trust me, I tried. All you do is make steam!

Step two through 'n': install the pump. So I got the new pump hooked up, and turned on the water, and... A LEAK!! Drat!! Double-Drat! Now I had to take things apart and fix it. The piping of the pump is a combination of screw threads (requiring Teflon tape) and solder joints. You get one chance to tighten a threaded joint, because after you solder it to the other pipes, you can't tighten it any more (it is fixed solid). And it's not like an electric circuit where you can use a meter to check for shorts, etc. You don't know until you pressurize the system if it is leak-proof.

Well, let's just say plumbing is not a profession I will be switching to, because even after two more tries (and multiple trips to Home Depot - they know me there in the plumbing section), I still couldn't tighten the screw joint tight enough. I was frustrated at how much soldering and cutting and re-soldering I was doing.

So I turned to the font of all knowledge - the Internet! I learned that just using Teflon tape alone sometimes doesn't seal things. They suggested pipe dope, and I got it during my next trip.

In the mean time, the family is suffering through wimpy showers and slow flowing faucets. They were "encouraging" me to quickly get the job done, but were also very understanding!

After the guy in the plumbing dept. saw me for the 3rd time, he told me about a product called Sharkbite. It's a connection system where you snap things together. That sounded ideal for my problem of tightening things up. If there was a leak, I could disconnect the pipes, and try again without soldering. I wasn't too sure about it, but then I noticed that the joints on the pump itself were sharkbite joints - so they obviously had some quality behind them.

So after multiple times, I finally got things fixed, and thus far, no leaks!! Here are some "after" pictures - note the creative sloped pipe (hey, who said pipes have to be only horizontal or vertical!).



All in all it was a good learning experience. It could have gone quicker and easier if I had called in someone to do it, but my time is cheap, and right now we need to watch all our pennies. The end result I think is pretty good, if I do say so for myself!