Jacob's drawings

Jacob has been talking about building a bird house with Daddy. Here are his plans. At the bottom of the pictures is the bird house which is hanging on a tree from a hook. He also drew a man hammering a nail into wood.



This is a car Jacob made for Daddy. The picture is of a boat with sails and a motor going fast in the water. It is lifted on some floats.

Friday


Saturday


Today





The last few day have been busy staining and polyurethaning the bunk bed. Yesterday I went, with my Mom, sisters, Kenzie, and Jack to a friends baby shower. We all had a fun time there. Kenzie came home with me to spend the night. It was dinner time by the time we got home. In the evening we worked on moving the crib and dresser into Jacob's bedroom, taking down Jacob's bed and moving his dresser in the boys room.

Sunday: After church and lunch Jared started working on setting up the boys bunk bed. It looks so nice and he did a great job building it. The boys were very excited about their new bed. I packed away the boys summer clothes and organized their clothes into the dresser and closet. My parents got to our house shortly before 3pm and we watched the football game together. We made a tent in Adam's lower bed and the kids had fun playing in there. Kenzie and Jacob made a zoo using lincoln logs and animals. Adam got out the train set to play with. They had fun with the car hauler from Aunt Bippi. She also got Jacob a dry erase board and Adam a lunch box which they love. We had sloppy jo's and fried potato's for dinner. After dinner we made chocolate shakes. Nana, Papa, and Kenzie left around 8pm. The boys were excited to sleep in their new bed. It took them over an hour to fall asleep.

Bunk Bed Adventures

Jared here, I stole the blog from Kimmy to summarize the bunk bed build. Since the next four name Russell boy will arrive in about six weeks we decided to bunk the two oldest boys in Adam's room and turn it into the Jacob and Adam room. I thought I'd give it a whirl at building the boys bunk bed. I made Jacob's toddler bed so if I just made two and stacked them on top of each other...I mean how hard could it be. yeah right...I was about too find out. I found some hard ware too attach bed rails at Rockler.com along with the pins to hold the top and bottom bunk in line. So back when I first planned on this build I figured to make the bunk bed one solid piece and unable to separate. The room is quite small and two twin beds would not fit side by side if we ever wanted to split them apart. However that changed when I sort of forgot that original plan and cut the first pieces as if I was making too separate beds...oops. Now to find plans to build from. I found a few online but the stiles were not to my liking and you had to pay for the plans... being a rather fiscally restricted individual I decided against it. Kimmy had seen a model at Meijer she wanted me to look at. I liked it and decided to perform a little R&D (rip off and duplicate). Kimmy took the boys on a walk though the store and I walked over to the hard ware section to borrow a tape measure for a few minutes. Kimmy had a pad of paper and a pen and I stood next to the model for about fifteen minutes and wrote down all the dimensions I needed. So I took those numbers home found some graph paper and sketched out the different boards. Now I started this project about three weekends ago...and probably averaged 2 to 3 hours a night. Typically after the boys were in bed at 9 pm I'd head out to the work shop and fired up my little heater and work on it. I used a little nicer pine that I was use to so for just about every cut I practiced on a scrap piece first. This added to the time but cut down on my frustration as pine is really hard to stretch if you cut it too short. I finished it up this past week and Kimmy stained and polyurethane the majority of it... I did the fine sanding and the last two coats of polyurethane. And today was the magic day to see if it all fit together. And by the grace of God it did... I was pretty nervous as I'd never tackled such a huge project. I'd made the head boards and foot boards in two sets so I knew which one on bottom would line up with the one on top. I set the first one and then grabbed it's mate... and they didn't line up... I started to sweat. Then I realized I'd grabbed the wrong top piece. The right one fit like a glove. I still have all ten fingers and didn't bleed at all on this project... which I think is a first. Typically my saying goes that it isn't an official project unless I bleed while building it. Enjoy the pictures below, the boys loved crawling under it more than they did sitting in it.

I got up at 6am to do my am exercises. The boys were up around 8:00. While they ate breakfast we watched Curious George and Sid. I did some staining and worked on laundry this morning. The boys had fun playing together with the fire truck and tunnel. Then they got out their banks to count change while sitting at the counter. They played with the train set until it was time to leave for school. Adam ate a packed lunch on the way home from school. He and I played with potato heads and took them for a ride in the fire truck. At 1:30 we read books and then I tucked him in for a nap. He fell asleep very quickly. While he slept I worked on writing in the boys baby books. I woke Adam when it was time to leave to pick up Jacob. Adam slept on the drive there. Jared got home around 5pm. He worked on the bunk bed until dinner was ready. After dinner he went back outside to work some more. The boys and I played with legos. Jared brought the rest of the bed parts in for staining. The boys were tucked in bed by 9pm. I worked on staining for a couple hours.

The boys woke up around 7:30. We watched Curious George and Sid. After breakfast the boys got out the Potato head container. They sure had a lot of fun putting together their potato heads and playing with them. Then they worked with their tools in Jacob’s bedroom closet. I stained the bunk bed ladder. We watched some of Sesame Street while I gave Jacob a haircut. After his haircut Jacob took a shower. Adam asked to get in too but soon started crying to get out. Though he had fun playing from the outside of the tub. After a while Jacob decided he wanted to turn the shower off and take a bath. Adam got in with him and they played until it was time to get ready for school. We got home from school and ate lunch. Adam was tired so he lay down and took a nap. I got a little nap in too. I woke Adam when we had to leave to pick Jacob up from school. Jared got home around 4:45. The boys played with playdoh until dinnertime. Jared went outside to work on the bunk bed. After dinner I worked on staining another piece to the bunk bed. The boys had fun playing with all their Little People toys. This evening I gave Jared a haircut. We watched American Idol. As I tucked Adam in bed tonight he said, “I want Max, and Jack, and Meme, and Bruce to come here. And I want Meme and Bruce to go bye bye and Max and Jack to ride in our van. Jack can sit up front and Max sit in back by me. I wanna do that.” He really wants those boys to spend the night again soon.