August 2013 – Page 2 – Andelin Adventures

Boys Mowing

I decided that we need to push Ethan to be more independent about mowing the lawn this year. He is getting older and therefore bigger and is more capable of doing it on his own, than in the past when he was smaller. Kyle has trouble mowing the lawn because of his bad ankles and his allergies, and I really have a hard time doing everything for everyone all the time, so I was really anxious to have Ethan step up and learn to help with the yard work so I can be doing other things without worrying about my yard falling apart. Kyle and Ethan and I talked about lawn mowing as being worth extra money too. When I was young, about 10-11 years old, I mowed the lawn at our house in Fullerton and I got $2 for mowing the backyard and $3 for the front yard, because it was bigger owing to the fact that we were on a corner lot. Kyle and I decided that our front yard would be worth $3 and the backyard $5 since I believe they are both larger than what I had to mow as a kid. So Ethan got to mow! I had to start the lawn mower for him, he could pull the starter string, but not hard enough and fast enough to make it turn on.

This week Jeremy decided HE wanted to try mowing, so I said that I would let him mow the front. Ethan wasn’t too happy about this because that meant Jeremy earning the money instead of him, but really Jeremy needs those opportunities too, and if he WANTS to mow the lawn when it is in need of mowing, I’m NOT going to say no!

It was very hard for him to push the lawn mower, especially when he came to an uneven part of the ground, but he did it with minimal help from me. I had to help him turn it around and show him how to line it up so that he wasn’t skipping any grass, and I had to help him get the lawn mower out of a few ruts. He was very worn out when he was done, so I had Ethan do the backyard this time, and I don’t think Jeremy is ready to be mowing the lawn on his own regularly yet, but I think we will let him try every now and then and eventually it will get easier for him. 🙂

Raingutter Regata

Our pack held it’s FIRST Raingutter Regatta tonight! Actually I don’t think it’s the first one our pack has ever done, but it’s the first one our pack has done since the people that are in charge now, have been in charge, and it’s the first one that they’ve had since Ethan has been in scouts. I was really excited when I saw this on the plan of pack meetings for the year. As we got closer though, they were saying that there wasn’t enough money in the budget to buy Raingutter Regatta boats and they decided to just make boats out of sections of pool noodles instead, which was somewhat disappointing to me. These are cub scouts not preschool kids! Well as it turns out, someone donated enough Raingutter Regatta boats for the boys in the pack and so they got to use those, and the siblings of the cub scouts got to make their own pool noodle boats. 😉

Ethan received the Handyman activity badge and a compass point before the races began, and since there is a pirate theme for tonight’s back meeting, they made him “walk the plank” to receive his awards.

Ethan didn’t place anywhere near the top, but he had fun making and racing his boat and that it really all that matters. He probably won’t ever get another shot at participating in a Raingutter Regatta, considering he is in Webelos now and next year he will be in the 11 year old scouts group, which is part of boy scouts not cub scouts, but I’m glad he got the chance to do it at least once.

They finished off the evening by shooting handfuls of candy out of a candy cannon that one of the Wolf den leaders made. The kids REALLY enjoyed that.

Sneak some Zucchini onto your neighbors porch day

During the latter part of July I had been taking the older kids with me, and visiting the ward garden every morning. We have filled, many bags with weeds from the pumpkin patch, and we have started harvesting green beans and squash. But it kind of feels like we are the only ones going to work in the garden. I don’t know this for sure, but we have never seen anyone else there, and every time we are there we check on all the produce that is growing, and none of it seems to be getting picked, unless we picked it. We have been picking everything that is ready every other day or so, and we have been taking it home and planning meals to include squash and fresh green beans, but there is no way for us to eat all that we pick and really I don’t want to eat all of it. It came from the ward garden and I felt like we should do our best to share it. So we have been putting squash and green beans on our porch and asking the neighbors to come get whatever they want, but that just isn’t working either.

This morning when I was on Facebook, I noticed that a friend of mine from my home ward in California posted that today is “National sneak some zucchini onto your neighbors porch day”, and I knew what we had to do. The kids and I planned it all before Kyle got home from work, and when he came home we all got in the van and went over to the ward garden. It was dusk when we got to the garden and we knew we had to work quickly. We were only planning on picking whatever squash was ready, and then leaving but we had to keep the kids together too. On our way to our ward’s plot I heard Jeremy say “snake” as he pointed at the ground ahead of him. I had to call to some of the kids that hadn’t heard him and tell them to stop walking. We saw the snake pass across the path in front of us, and we moved on more cautiously. The older kids and I went to the squash plants, and I picked all the squash that was ready, and handed it to the kids to take back to the wagon. We FILLED the wagon with squash! Then we went home to get ready to start sneaking.

I stayed home with Lydia and Adam, it was getting late now and they were getting cranky, and I didn’t want them crying the whole time we were out. So Kyle took the older kids after we explained to them that we are TRYING to be sneaky, they cannot make noise or fight with each other over who gets to pull the wagon or who gets to put the squash on someone’s porch. They didn’t come back until they had distributed all of the squash. 🙂

This morning when I got on Facebook I saw that one of my neighbors posted a thank you to “who ever left the zucchini on our porch this morning” and throughout the day more of our neighbors that also received squash commented as well on how excited they were about finding that someone had left them squash too. I am glad that we were able to make so many people happy with squash that we didn’t even grow ourselves, and I am glad that all that squash produced by the ward garden won’t be going to waste as it might have if we had waited for neighbors to come get it off our porch. Considering it went over so well, we may have to make this an annual tradition! 🙂

New Job

Spending the last month unemployed was interesting. Before I left Symantec, I had multiple companies approach me for a job, which I turned down. Now when I actually needed something, nobody seemed interested. I have contacted all the companies I heard from before, and they weren’t looking anymore. So, spending the month trying to contact anyone I knew, eventually I got in for an interview at EMC, a company my old manager went to. They seemed interested in my abilities and made an offer, and after a runaround with verification and screening tests, I started today.

Going from Venafi with its 100-ish employees, to an office with over 700 employees, it definitely felt like EMC is a huge company. I got in and started setting myself up, and had a meeting with our site director, who happened to be a manager at Symantec that I really liked. It’s good to be working under him again. But aside from this, it feels like I have a whole lot to learn again, and that thought is overwhelming.