The First Piano Recital

Lillian and Morgan participated in their first piano recital recently... they did great! See for yourself!

This first video is of Lillian playing "Russian Sailor Dance"

This second video is of Morgan playing "All the Stars are Shining"

Bail-outs prevent learning from mistakes

If I steal and get caught doing so, the authorities (my parents, the government) help me learn that stealing is not okay in our society by imposing a penalty on me. Maybe the penalty is a fine, or perhaps even jail time. Whatever the method, there’s a consequence that discourages me from repeating the same socially unacceptable behavior. This consequence also discourages others from following my behavior. Our society is based upon this practice of enforcing standards of conduct. We typically call this practice the ‘rule of law’. It’s a good practice to live by. Most people in the world would agree.
We teach our children that the rule of law is what makes our society a nice, safe place to live. We teach them that negative consequences follow bad behavior so that we learn from mistakes. We would consider someone a bad parent if they allowed their teenager to act irresponsibly without imposing some negative consequence as a result. We would likewise consider someone a bad parent if they remove the natural negative consequences that follow bad or irresponsible behavior.
So I’m confused now. Because there are a number of people who’ve acted irresponsibly with their future and now the government is removing the natural negative consequences that should follow such irresponsible behavior. Individuals that borrowed too much money for a house they couldn’t afford are one example. They blame lenders just as my child might blame her sibling, “But she tricked me into doing it!” Banks, automakers, the list goes on. They all seem to have some valid excuse or someone to else to blame. The reality is, each is to blame. Each needs to be held responsible for their irresponsible practices & decisions by suffering the natural consequences. If we try to escape the consequences of our decisions or allow others to, the truth is, we’re doomed to repeat the same irresponsible practices & decisions. We’ll never learn.
But the consequences hurt too much! The consequences would affect too many others! Others will see and think poorly of us! Who cares! The consequences will most assuredly hurt more next time.
I urge everyone to exercise wisdom and reject proposed legislation or action that prevents us or others from learning from mistakes. Tell the government to not give my money away to people and/or businesses that need to learn from their poor choices. Allow the natural consequences to teach and we will learn.

The Scoop on the Coop

So in my last post, I promised to blog on the progress of the coop (like it's a house or anything super incredible). Alas, here's my treatise on the coop.

It started back in February, with the search for free lumber. My project on this project was to be unlike any other project I'd undertaken before... that is to come in under my cost bogey. I know, I know; Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, but expecting different results. So I was determined to break the mold. But how? Finally it struck me. Recycled building materials! The only problem was I didn't want the coop to look "ghetto". You know, like those redneck chicken coops you see online that people are so proud of because they made the coop themselves. I don't want that junk in my yard.

Well I set off in search of a source of free lumber. My backyard is full of trees, and some had fallen, so I thought, I'll just mill lumber out of my own yard! How cool would that be? So I went back in the woods to take a look at some of the fallen oaks (there were three of them) and see whether I could get enough lumber out of them for a coop. I spotted a perfect tree. It was straight, long, and looked promising. I started looking around to see if I could find a local sawmill that could mill the trees for me. There were several around, but then I realized that the 1 foot long peice I cut off this fallen oak was at least 100 pounds! Then the geek in me started calculating the estimated weight of the treee. Yeah, so there's no way my F-150 is going to be able to haul a 2 ton tree out of my yard. I was starting to get discouraged. I resigned myself to cut the oak up for firewood. So how am I going to build this "low-cost" coop? As I walked by my compost bin, I got another idea... pallets!

On the next trip into town, I stopped by Toys-R-Us and went in to ask the manager if I could have some of their old pallets. She made a quick call and responded, "Sure, take them all!" Awesome. I loaded up the truck. Recall that pallets are made to be beaten, thus they are made of oak... at least good ones are. And these were good ones. So over the next week, I made two or three trips and stocked up on about 25 pallets. See below:

Next, I whipped out the sawzall and had to cut the pallets apart. Pulling those spiral nails out of oak just seemed time consuming and like too much effort. So I burned up a couple blades cutting off the nails.

Again, see below:

After I got the pallets apart, I looked at what lumber I had and drafted up some plans to fit what I had, plus maybe a little. I'm thinking functional, not "Park Avenue". After the plans were done, it was time to start cutting and hammering.

Some time ago, I picked up a couple nail aprons from Home Depot, and I thought since I had the kiddos at home, they might want to use them, so Kate dawned a Home Depot apron and decided she'd like to help build the new house for the chicks. She did a great job. I have to say that her involvement was definitely the funnest part. She told me that she was going to work as Home Depot when she grew up. She said, just like Aunt Meg. I told her that was fine as long as she went to college first (parents have to say stuff like that). I probably should have said "Graduate from college first" as I'm sure she'll remember and remind me that I told her she only had to "go" to college. Home Depot is not bad. In fact I'd take Home Depot over Lowe's any day. I think the Depot is a better store, not just less expensive. Kate loves the free hot dogs that the various HVAC contractors give away outside HD on Saturday mornings. See Megan, you have a following... don't forget it. Some day Kate will be teaching the Saturday morning how-to sessions, and will eat free hot dogs for lunch. I'm sure she'll have her ballet slippers on, with hot dog in hand, thinking, "It doesn't get any better than this!"

Once the walls and floors were framed up, we put them together. Then, with the walls up, I framed up the rest, racked and leveled the walls and roof. See the pictures below... they'll save me a least a couple thousand words.