Archives for March 2007

Well, when TJ was just turning 3 years old an tyler was 6 months old and jake was no where… I stayed up late late late one night and finished a fort we built from scratch for TJ to surprise him. He loved it.

4 1/2 years later we moved. But, with 3 boys and all the money and time spent on building a 12 foot high monster fort, I unbolted it and brought it with me to San Diego. We also, with the new house, inherited a smaller fort.

So, my Dad and I rebuilt the old one, added a bridge, and modified two forts into one “mother of all forts kinda fort”. It’s like 30 feet long with 3 swings, 2 decks, and 2 slides- one of which is 12 feet long. You’d think that would have the kids elated… and it did!

…initially… but times change and 2 years later, TJ is almost 10 and now he wants walls, and doors, and stuff to hide behind so he and his brothers and their buddies can have full on WAR with each other.

So… enter FORTIFYING FORT BERRY– a 6 day set of after work/school projects that TJ and I did together. Jake and Tyler sorta helped. Sorta.

• DAY 1: Trip to Lowes to buy plywood, paint, rope, couple of pulleys, and some hinges. Then we painted the plywood brown on both sides.

• DAY 2: Add plywood to the sides of the fort and cut holes to shoot through. Added doors to a few of the holes for cool factor. It’s always better to shoot through a hole and then slam the door shut on your enemy evidently.

• DAY 3: Move the ladder from outside and angled to inside and straight up and down. Add trap door in the floor. Add plywood to upstairs railing.

• DAY 4: Add dumbwaiter to keep trap door from falling on it’s own (which 2 of my kids can testify really hurts) and make it easy enough for Jake to open. Add rope pulley system to get guns and ammo to the top deck.

• DAY 5: Build and install the door downstairs.

• DAY 6: Camo the place up and add the climbing holds to the 9 foot high climbing wall.

• DAY 7: Dad rests and the kid start a war, ambush the neighbors, and climb like crazy.

Thursday has become “thursdadsday” lately. Thursday afternoons I’m trying to spend some one-on-one time with TJ. Friday after school has become Jake’s time- usually on the trampoline- till his brother’s get home. Not sure where Tyler and I are going to bond alone… but I’m gonna have to make that happen soon. But lately, I’ve also had 2 consecutive weeks of Thursday events with the boys school.

Last thursday tyler played the role of a servant to the Giant in his school play, “Jack and the Beanstalk”. It was fun to watch him. He was so excited to have his family there. He is NOT our actor, so I was just excited that he actually sang the songs. We sent him to VBS last summer and the whole stage was filled with kids belting out the songs and Tyler was standing there- with this look that said, “These people are so lame. I have no idea why they sing. I’m too cool for this.” So, his participation was a HUGE step in some direction…. I guess in the singing direction.

Then, today, I went with TJ’s class to a local nature preserve. We spent the first 20 minutes in the museum being indoctrinated into Kumeyaah Indian creation stories by a movie about how the world came about …. really made me wonder if the Genesis story sounds this utterly ridiculous to those hearing it for the first time… made me think maybe I’m as nuts as this Indian guy telling me that two creators made the place and after a war, one of them died and the coyote jockeyed for position to end up in charge, eventually eating creator number one’s heart and causing the dirt to turn red as he spilled the blood.

We then went on a hike down to the river to see this rock where the Indians would make their bread and such by mashing acorns with a rock. That’s a lot of mashing of acorns to eventually make bread. And by the way, since they must have been eating rock in minuscule amounts in their bread… I’m gonna try adding a pinch of granite dust to my cereal in honor of those who used to have to grind acorns.

We then ate lunch, hiked back out, and I learned the fine art of how as a teacher- by the end of the day- you want to strangle the kid who won’t stop breathing on you as you walk… Oh… and teacher’s evidently have hand signals for everything. I have not maximized this learning yet and I need to get on it. She raises her hand and everyone has to shut up before her finger count down goes from 5 fingers to a fist. I’m thinking maybe this would work in youth group- yeah right…. Then she also does this thing where she has numbered the class, and if she wants to know if anyone is missing, she just does this count down thingy and everyone has a number that is memorized that is their number. They count down from 1-20 and these kids even know who is missing- by number alone. Like walk up to class and say, I’m missing #11- who is gone. They can tell you. Yep… my kid is being indoctrinated. Lord help us.

Well, Day 4 started before the sun got up. I decided I wanted to see a sunrise, which I’ll show you in some pics to come soon, but in the mean time, I offer these two photo collages of our trip to go cave tubing in Belize: a country south of Mexico and right next door to Guatemala in Central America. They speak English as their national language because it used to be a British Colony. Anyway, this cave tubing thing was one of the things we signed up for the very first day on the boat. And it turned out to be quite the memory maker. Here’s the trip:

Pictures of the float portion are a little fuzzy cuz my cool water proof camera feature works awesome while under the water, but I’ve got a learning curve on how to make sure there’s no water spots to blurry the photo when it’s not submerged and needs a flash… which is the case for this whole excursion inside the caves.