Recent happenings

Just a few random postings during the past couple of weeks.  Let's start off with a video of the squirrel.  Yes, this little fella wasn't even afraid of me while he (or she) was busy burying its fig!

https://youtu.be/M8wzhz9m--o

I guess the squirrel is getting ready for winter??!  I want to know how does it remember where it buries all its food??!  Plus, I'm not sure how well a fig will stay fresh while buried in the ground.  Too cute though!

While we're still talking about animals... the mouse is back! NOOOoooo...!!!

I had to clear out the entire bottom cabinet and then also wipe down the counter tops.  Bob was making fun about how much more counter space we have.  Pha! :-P

I wasn't sure if the little mouse had taken the mouse bait/poison that was already in the cabinet.  But I guess not because there was still some obvious evidence of it.  I am sort of glad it didn't because otherwise, we might have to deal with the stench of a dead mouse in the walls of the house.  I bought new mouse traps but the little stinker was pooping in front of it!  So I ended up buying some glue traps and.... GOT IT!

Except now I have to deal with disposing the mouse and glue trap and obviously the mouse was still alive.  Eeeeekkk!!! And once I put it in 2 plastic bags, I could still hear the mouse struggling.  Urgh... so yes, I decided to "take care of it" before dumping the bag into the trash bin outside.  I hope I don't have to deal with this again!  I've set more glue traps just in case there is more "activity" but so far so good.  I can't figure out where these mice are coming in from. I thought we were all good now :-/

On a happier note, I got to hang out with a mom-friend last Friday.  It was a little road trip as she had to get her cameras cleaned in Costa Mesa:

Thankfully traffic wasn't bad and we stopped for a quick meal before heading home for the evening.  We found some dumplings!  YUM!!!

It was probably a good idea that we didn't hit the road anyway during rush hour.  It was definitely a more pleasant drive home.  Plus, we got to see the beautiful sunset:

And speaking about finding stuff, I was digging through our bathroom cabinet looking for toothpaste and I found a bottle of shampoo.  Not just any shampoo, this one is from Abu Dhabi.  Ha ha! 

It's at least 4 years old since yesterday (9/28) was the anniversary of our move from Abu Dhabi 4 years ago now.  It's amazing how quickly time has flown!  I'm guessing this shampoo is still good? I guess I will find out soon :-)

That's all for now!  The weather has been cooler which has been awesome.  Oh, I do have one last photo.  It's a photo of my "wall" project.  I tried to take a panorama photo but obviously was not too steady with my hands/camera so the wall it a bit wavy.  But here it is... as I tell Bob, just as he tells me about his yard/grass-growing project - it is EVOLVING.  LOL!

This next photos is probably a bit better but minus the length of the entire wall:

I just have 2 more sun rays to deal with and I should be all done!  Should be.  This was definitely NOT how I imagined the project to end up looking ;-P

Hyperlapse video - New ceiling fan

It was finally cool enough to install Graham's new ceiling fan.  I say this because his room is normally really warm during the day but since the weather has only been in the mid 70s, it hasn't been too bad when I had to turn the power off!

Charlie was insistent on getting another hyperlapse video done on my phone when I do the install. So here goes... installation from start to finish! I think the worse part of it was actually taking the old fan off.  Oh, it's actually a YouTube link because the video is too large.  I believe it actually took me 45 minutes or so in total:

https://youtu.be/XemjZVOivMk

Charlie was my little helper as usual, although he only wanted to help out with one of the fan blades.  Maybe because I was yelling at him (good thing there is no sound on the video!) as he was slapping the blade around before the install.  I was so worried he was going to break it!

And I also bought an extra fancy wall switch for $25 EACH.  Sheesh!  But I think it's definitely worth my peace of mind and sanity. This way if the boys ever lose their remote, we can still control the fan and light from this switch.  Yes, I'm definitely planning ahead or perhaps I am already foreseeing the future.  Ha ha!

Love these new fans.  They look so much better than the old ones!  Just one old fan now which is in our master bedroom.  We'll see if I want to change that out. I was looking at one with some bling but Bobby gave me a look when I showed it to him on my phone.  Ha ha! And nevermind that, ceiling fans are not cheap either!

Archery update

Charlie has finally shot the target number!  He just needs to do the same thing one more time before he can make it to the Advance class.

Since there were only 6 ends this past Saturday, the target score was 108 and he was clearly past that number at 120 points.  Woo hooooo!!!

And there was clearly some math mistakes (on the 8th end) so which also means that Charlie shot over 200 points for the day!  There was a bet with Daddy for some soft-shell crabs so looks like Charlie will be getting a nice meal soon too.  Ha ha!

If only the boys would be so nice and well behaved at home while sharing a seat:

And Charlie wanted to show Daddy how well he shot from 18m.  That was one of his first shots too.  Better than me shooting almost up the roof. LOL!

I'm glad we are still all having fun with archery.  Although we did sign up for a golf event next weekend so the boys better be ready for that too, since there are so many bunkers on that golf course!

Making own quiver

After spending all that money on the boys buying new archery gear, I've decided to make my own quiver.  A quiver is basically the little long bag where you put your arrows and you normally hang it on your belt loop.  So here goes!  I found some paper towel rolls and some leftover fabric (that was used for Graham's 5th Grade promotion):

I could have dragged out the sewing machine but figured just the needle and thread should be fine.  Sometimes it's just easier because it takes me a while to figure out how to thread the sewing machine again.  Ha ha!

Charlie is helping me thread the needle.  My poor old eyes... :-P

Okay, we are getting somewhere.  Two tubes should be plenty for our normally archery days where we only put 3 arrows in our quiver:

The tubes in the boys' quiver is made out of plastic.  Maybe eventually when I hit the golf shop, I can find some golf club separator/tubes there.  So this will do in the meantime:

And while I'm doing this, I've been thinking about a little baggie for Charlie.  When he is out on the archery range and has to pick up his arrows, he is constantly having a tough time with writing his score down while he has his finger tab on.  Soooo, working on a little baggie so he can put his finger tab:

Not too bad??!  Definitely looks homemade. LOL!!!

And ya, these are the pair of shorts that I cut the pocket out of.  It's the boys' old swim shorts that don't fit anymore.  And actually the elastic is really old too.  We're "up-cycling" as they say :-)

And oh, and then Charlie says he wants to make a little pillow for his baby stuffed "Wolfie":

My quiver is a bit short/petite but looks like it might work without toppling all those arrows over:

I need my model/volunteer to test it out :-)

Not too shabby!  And now moving on back to Charlie's little pillow.  I had him stitch most of it:

Ta da!!! So cute.  He's one happy kid and there's one happy Wolfie :-D

After rethinking about my quiver and contemplating that perhaps it is a bit too petite, I decided to add on some more length to it the morning before our archery session at the park:

I cut it and decided to just sew in a few more inches, except that I had sewn the one side inside out!  Urgh!!! I didn't feel taking off the stitches so I just decided to just keep it as is and "make it work" as Bobby puts it.  And so here is the final project:

I found an old belt and used that to hook the quiver.  There aren't any photos while I was on the range but it definitely worked like a charm!  

If only I can live up to the same standard in shooting:

Okay, so to be fair - it was my first time shooting from 18m.  We normally shoot from 9m and instead of aiming lower, I was aiming higher from the target and needless to say, that's where my arrow ended up. Too funny!  I was just glad that the ladder was already handy and one of the coaches was more than willing to go up there and really pry my poor arrow out of the wood :-D

Hey, at least Graham said I looked very professional with my new homemade quiver.  That or he was just making fun of me ;-P

New ceiling fan for the boys

I managed to get 1 new fan installed in Charlie's room today.  Yay!  Bobby said we had it in our budgie so figured it was time to update a little bit more of the house again.

Charlie has been busy supervising, helping, and also taking photos:

Better take a photo of the wires so in case I did to refer back to it:

Charlie also took some funny videos.  Like this one.  Looks like he has discovered some funny functionality on my phone/camera:

And then there's this video.  Just hilarious!

It's crazy what these phones can do these days.  Charlie also discovered the "Timelapse" videos.  Actually it's called "Hyperlapse".  Hyperlapse speeds up a normal-speed video where as a "timelapse" stitches up a series of still images into a video.  Learn something new every day!

 

So it seems that every 12 seconds becomes 1 second of the hyperlapse video, which means this 7-second video actually took me 84 seconds, which is 1 minute 24 seconds.  Is  my math right??!

We had to stop the video for a reason I don't remember now.  And so here's the continuation until the fan is finally installed.  I didn't realize that Bob and Graham and Charlie had included their faces in the video too.  Too funny!!!

The video is rather large so here's the link:

https://youtu.be/GosH4Iq05JA

It's crazy to see what took so long to do - especially that one part where I had to reattach the LED light and plate on 3 times!... and only 36 seconds long in the video.  Ha!

Ta da!!!  I love this new fan!  So slick and no pull chains to have to deal with:

Charlie says he wants to donate the old fan to charity.  So looks like that's what we will do then. Until then, time to clean up!

I bought a wall switch too for these fans, just in case the boys lose the remotes!  That's how much faith I have in these boys. LOL!!!  

Recent happenings

Just a few photos from our recent adventures.  Well, this one starts out at home in the front garden.  I'm so glad Bobby saw this first thing in the morning and no one stepped through this massive spider web!

This spider is crazy!  How on earth did it make this web?  From the tree all the way down to our grass??!

Ahhh.... this is Charlie's day after Distance Learning at home.  Ha ha!  What a life!  No wonder he doesn't mind staying at home:

Looks like Charlie got a hold of my phone again.  Silly kids!

It's amazing what these phones/Apps can do these days:

We didn't have any school this past Thursday so we decided to go for a bike ride along the beach.  What a beautiful day it was:

Just glad no one got hurt!

Always a lovely sighting when the hummingbird doesn't know that you're sitting at the outdoor patio table.  It's so fascinating watching them chase each other.  They are so territorial when it comes to guarding their sugar water!

Bobby made some "man" pancakes this morning and the boys said this one had an angry face.  Ha ha!

In the meantime, I am still working on my wall:

This project has grown in a different direction than what I had originally thought in my head, but the boys including Bob still think it's pretty cool.  So I guess I'll just keep going:

Call me crazy but I actually did measure the direction on the compass and it was just a bit east of Northeast.  And Charlie said that one arrow points North and the other points East.  I didn't even think about that.  I just figured I'd draw a couple of arrows since we have been doing so much archery lately.  

And then, I was going through an art book and came up with some other patterns.  The wall project is definitely evolving!

I just have to try and do the same thing on the opposite side of the sun, and hopefully remember what colors I used.  This is the problem when you have too much time on your hands and/or too much sample paint laying around. LOL!!!  

Charlie is so close!

We are continuing with our archery every Saturday at the El Dorado Range.  Charlie is still trying to advance to the next level.  He needs to shoot at least 180 points not once but in 2 separate sessions:

Adding up all his scores at the end of the 10th end and oh no, just short at 171 points!

Looks like Charlie will have to wait until next weekend to try again.  On the other hand, Momma was on fire towards the end with a score of 209!  My personal best yet.  On my last 2 ends, my scores were 10, 9, 9 and then 10, 10, 9.  Woohoo!!  And this was using our new simple recurve where I'm aiming by using the tip of the arrow:

In any case, there's always food and dessert at the end of the archery day.  Thank you Daddy for picking up all the food!  

I think we need to get Daddy out on the range with us next time :-)

Earthquake!

There was an earthquake this past Friday night - reported just before 8pm in Carson.  And crazy enough, we were not too far from the epicenter just leaving from archery, and we didn't feel a single thing!

And if I didn't get a notification on my phone, I wouldn't have known any better.  Everything in the house seemed pretty normal.  The only thing that fell over was one of our wedding photos in our bedroom:

I'm glad I anchored most of our shelves to the wall.  Can you imagine coming home to toppled over shelves??! Yikes!  Maybe I should pack away all the glass items in the shelves. Hmmm....  I'm almost bummed out we didn't get to feel the earthquake because I would have like the boys to experience it.  That way they know what it feels like whenever the next one shows up (hopefully not anytime soon though).