for now, the only thing we're growing on this farm is kids - not the goat variety

Month: July 2009

Can I Just Tell You…

I love mowing the yard. Where else can you clean up and then say, “Okay kids, have at it!”?

Mowing is hot, sweaty work, and sometimes I get gnats in my eyes. But, unlike housework that can get undone so fast it makes my head spin, that cut grass is going to look great for at least 3 whole days before it starts slowly looking shaggy again. Only God or a person mean enough to do donuts in the yard can mess it up.

Oh happy thought!

John Williams Tribute

Are your kids Star Wars fans? Superman? Indiana Jones maybe? If so (or even if not), you might enjoy this John Williams tribute. This fellow, Corey Vidal, is lip-syncing (and doing a fine job of it, I might add) to the Moosebutter quartet vocals. Knowing about the lip-syncing might spoil it a bit for you, but maybe you’d rather find out sooner rather than later. If not…well, sorry.

EVEN STILL this is just really fun.

More Ralph Moody Finds

Commenter and fellow Ralph Moody fan Patrick Garrett shared these links with me. The first is a bio at the Littleton, CO website. It tells more about Ralph’s life than I have covered in the books, so I had to stop reading about 3/4 of the way into it. I don’t want to spoil his stories for myself.

The second is a delightful glimpse of some correspondence between Moody and the Nebraska Public Library Commission in 1965. I love the 2nd paragraph in Moody’s March 19 letter that states,

As to topic and title: I presume you know that my formal education terminated at the eighth grade. It did, and from that time to this public libraries have been my school, and scores of dedicated librarians the faculty. At a very early age I learned to read from the viewpoint of the author, and when I first tried writing, at the age of fifty, I found little difficulty, for I had learned to write from reading. And because of the guidance given me by public librarians, I’ve had the best teachers in the English Speaking World — the authors of the classics. How about calling the talk [that I’ll be giving], “My Alma Mater: The Public Library”?

The photo above is from the “Official Nebraska Government Website” from a clipping from 1965. Moody died in 1982.

Our Cimple Drawer Divider


So, here it is. Our Cimple (pronounced “simple”) drawer divider that is now available on Amazon. I had been eying a similar product, a spring-loaded drawer divider, wondering how we could make something similar sans spring.

I mentioned it to Marathon, and after a month or 2 he had some ideas. He started experimenting, and the Cimple expandable divider was born.

We’ve since come up a use for it that we didn’t initially have in mind. It’s to use the Cimple as a shelf divider. I organized our bathroom closet about 5 weeks ago. It has NEVER looked so tidy for so long. I haven’t had to spruce it up a bit since – not once. Do I sound like a commercial? 😉 Here are before and after picture. See what I mean?

Before…

After…
Cimple drawer divider used as a shelf divider

I haven’t organized our school books for the next school year yet (I need to do this soon!), but I’ll be using Cimples as shelf dividers to organize them: this section for Carman, this one for Sudoku, one for Doodle, one for me that will include our read-alouds, one for library books, etc.

The drawer dividers work nicely in drawers too. 🙂 We’re currently making them in 3″ and 6″ high versions.

Anonymous feedback below.

The Amazon selling, like all things, has a learning curve, and we’ve had some unexpected bumps in the road. More on that another time…

Garbage Day


Did you watch the garbage truck when you were a kid? I did. My brothers too. We’d run to the picture window and watch the men hanging on the back of the truck. They looked so nimble hopping off and on; it seemed like a daring and dangerous job. Riding on the back of the trash truck was the dream job of one of my brothers.

Of course, the new-fangled trucks require only one operator, and if you don’t have a new-fangled trash can, they’ll skip over your house. But even with losing the back-riding dare-devils, the trash-gathering machinery has maintained its appeal.

My kids like to watch the trash truck. And so do the neighbor kids. I caught these pictures of them late last week.

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