The Cook Family

Today is our last day of break. Bridgit and I are both blessed to have two weeks off, and we even got a snow day tagged onto the start. I have been sick since before the break started and have been hoarse for almost two weeks. I was actually out sick the day before the snow day so I have had 18 days off. Now the kids are sick and I am almost better. We have been popping hippie-o-pathic remedies, vitamin C, teas, and all sorts of things to keep us all healthier.

Break has been great, I really like Christmas more at the beginning though. Christmas time is so chaotic it is nice to get it out of the way so the rest of the break can be relaxing. We had a 5 day chunk where we were going non-stop between Christmas, visiting family and friends, and Amelia's baptism.

Its going to be hard to get up and go to work tomorrow. Can I retire yet?

After thinking about it for a couple years we finally took the plunge this year. The All Season Tires on the Vibe are worn to the point that they are fine for summer, but weren't quite making the cut. I will put them back on and then in spring of 2010 we will get new tires and probably rims. As far as cost goes they are only a couple dollars more then regular all seasons and you spread wear out between two sets of tires. Extra costs come from getting them swapped a couple times a year which will run you $50 total a year. That price can be mitigated if you get a second set of rims and swap them yourself (which I plan to do). Most people get steel wheels, but we already have steel wheels, we will get nicer rims for the summer tires. Another way to look at it is: what is the price of your deductible and increased insurance rates from an accident? A few extra bucks for two sets starts to look nice.

After looking at the whole range of options I settled on "winter performance" tires. They have a winter compound that stays softer in colder temps and have treads to deal with ice and slush more then feet of powder. They still work better in powder then an all season tire though. Reviews are difficult because the lines change every year and who puts multiple sets of snow tires on in exactly the same conditions? I was able to get an idea from tirerack.com and some magazine/newspaper reviews. The best article I found was this one.

After looking at the range of options I had it narrowed down to a couple options and then availability decided on which of the two. I ended up getting Yokohama Ice Gaurd IG20's. I called Discount Tire and asked about price matching because I found them online for about $15 less a tire then they were advertising, and asked if I needed to bring anything in with the price and they guy said that I could do that or they could look it up online from the store. When I went in I told the guy the tire I wanted and that I saw it for this price and he just said "we can do that." Lesson learned, I am glad I didn't pre-buy them buy them online.

I have had them for a few weeks now and am really happy. Before I went to get them I did some informal stopping distance testing with the regular tires. Our side streets were plowed, but still mostly covered in snow and ice. It was basically go 25mph and hit the brakes when I pass the tree. With the snow tires I was stopping in about 60-70% of the distance of the all seasons. I also had the old tires and 3 stores worth of groceries in the car. We got a snow day before break and about 10" of snow. I just had to take them out. I went down the street and back with some sliding around the culdesac, but it worked out fine. On the slush and ice covered roads they worked great. At highway speeds they are a little squidgy.

We will see how they handle the rest of the winter and how many seasons they will last. I am hoping for 4 seasons, but they wear quicker then all seasons, especially on dry pavement.

Since the Holiday Chaos has wound down we have been keeping busy.

This week we went to the U of M Natural History Museum and had a ball. I haven't been there in a few years. It is nice and small so a two year old can actually make it though most of the museum. There were a number of other families there on a Tuesday afternoon. Eli loved the Dinosaurs most of all (of course). They have a few nice examples. They have a full Allosaurus and Hadrosaurid, a partial stegosaurus, t-rex skull, and a pair of Mastodons (I know they aren't dinos, but I wasn't going to argue with Eli too much.

He also had a good time checking out some of the Michigan animals we see while canoeing. He made howling noises when we saw the wolf and coyote. And he loved climbing in the dugout canoe and playing with the interactive parts of the museum. They have a cast of an Ankylosaurus tail club to touch and he kept talking about it. Overall, a good way to spend a few hours. I always find something new and always enjoy the Anthropology section on the top floor.

Actually Christmas could still happen, but the wise men couldn't come see Christ.

Christmas 2008: Why It Did Not Happen Now

Edmunds has a nifty article about why you shouldn't buy a hybrid now. With gas prices lower it will take a long time to break even on the added cost of a hybrid.

This is a scary time and I have held my tongue about the auto bailout because so many other people seem to be making sense. The problem is they don't make decisions. I saw this at Jalopnik and though that it was pretty cool.

This is a map of manufacturing sites for the Detriot 3 Automakers. It does not even count the suppliers.


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I am pretty sure that if you combined MacGyver, DiVinci, Paul Bunyan, and a healthy dash of Jesus you would end up with this man:

Norm has not one, but two shows. He has his own show, The New Yankee Workshop, where he builds the coolest everything. He also is on This Old House. The man can do anything and his shop must have required divine intervention to become so amazing. He also has the advantage of owning every tool, clamp and gadget ever needed. It's almost like on the 8th day God created tools and on the 9th day he created Norm to name them and watch over them and use them.

Eli and I both love watching his shows. He can't stop yelling "DRILL, DRILL" or "BIG SAW!!!."

If you want to also stalk Norm he provides a camera in the shop for just that.

It seems I haven't updated anything about how the kids are doing in a while.

Eli is speaking in full sentences. We are doing pretty well coping with a two year old's whims. The morning routine is going better. We have him get dressed before breakfast and he can do 80% of it by himself. His clothes often are on backwards, but he is pleased because he did it himself. Sometimes he will complain about his butt because his underpants are on backwards, and he is getting a wedgie. Speaking of underpants, he is in them full time. For a while he was still wearing a diaper at night, but now he gets up in the middle of the night (not very happily) and goes to the bathroom. This morning he got water all over his shirt while washing his hands, so I had to get up to change his shirt at 2:45am.

Amelia has a couple teeth now. She also sleeps from 10pm-5am most of the time, occasionally even longer. She is eating non-milk food (I hate to call rice cereal or mushed sweet potatoes real food). She is getting big. She enjoys the johnny-jump-up, which also induces pooping. She is much lower maintenance then her big brother was, so I am glad we had them in this order. She is almost ready to sit up on her own.

Kevin Callan has a cool link on his blog. Cottage Life mag. has paddle themed Christmas gift tags on their site. They are free to download in PDF format and can be printed on label sheets and stuck on gifts, or printed on paper/card stock and taped/tied on.

I'm not sure how well this fits into the whole "green" thing, but you could reuse them every year, or at least print them on recycled paper.

It's time to start thinking about New Year's resolutions. I saw this article on the This Old House blog about going green. It had some good resolutions.

Some of mine are:

• Killing Vampires. We used to have the tv on a power strip that got turned off, but when we got a repalyTV we had to leave it on. I need to get it off the same strip as the TV and DVD players. The computer area probabbly a big draw. I can put the printer and scanner on a strip that goes into the UPS but gets turned off 99% of the time (or just unplug them since we use them so little). We recently set the computer to shut down at 11pm and we usually don't use it in the morning, so it will only be on a few hours a day. We also need to get better about switching off the strip with the cell phone chargers.
  
  
• Stopping some gaps. The seal on the bottom of the side door is breaking off and I can see light through it. I also need to gasket or foam the outlets in the house.
  
  
• Think about the upstairs. Our second story has original insulation over most of it. The problem is that all the easy places already have been bulked up. The whole cape cod shape makes it a real pain to add to the woefully inadequate insulation we have there. It pretty much requires a gutting.
  
  

The other night this is what I found in my bed when I got in it. I was wondering where the can opener went.

Eli had a blast today. Not only did we get our first significant snow, but we also put up the Christmas tree. Eli also thinks that advent wreaths are awesome: he loves candles.

Amelia couldn't care less.

From Snow!

I remember mountains of wrapping paper strewn about the house Christmas morning, but hopefully my kids won't. Christmas generates enough packaging anyway that we don't need to put one more disposable layer on it. Bridgit's family has used fabric bags for some time, but for the past few years we have been using straight-up fabric. It is fun and we have developed a good stockpile of fabric and ribbon to use.
It started a while back when I discovered the art of Furoshiki which is kinda like origami, but for wrapping things. The Japanese Government has a handy PDF to show you how to wrap what shapes.
While we sometimes use those techniques, I usually do the standard paper techniques, but with fabric.
There are some tricks to making it look good:

• Don't use a blanket to wrap a book. The fabric pieces should be close to the size you need, anything more then twice the size you need can be difficult.
  
• Fold the fabric to the size you need it before you start wrapping. It doesn't need to be complete in-half folds; folding over a few inches to get the right size works well.
  
• Feel free to use pins or tape to keep the fabric taught.
  
• Disposable ribbon works well with cloth, too.
  
• Scrounge fabric from people who sew: my mother has an entire closet filled with fabric. Or check out the "remnants" at your local cloth 'n craft joint.
  

Bonus: cleanup is super easy.

UPDATE:Here are some photos of presents last year.

It's safe to say Amelia is moving. Tom put her in the middle of the quilt, and here she is... photolink
(Awesome quilt made by Erich Harbowy's mother. Thanks!!!) There's also phtos of Eli in soccer socks that he put on himself, and a few photos after going to the park on a cold day: Eli has some pretty sweet clothes on.
She's also gigglin', especially when Eli does anything goofy, which is most of the time, so we have a pretty spirited home theses days.

We were getting ready to start the bedtime routine tonight and Eli ran into the other room. We were doing other stuff, so we let him go. A few moments later we hear a whump... "hehehe -ow- hehehe." It was pretty funny.