My mother’s day gift to my wife is nearly done! I’ve finished installing all of the white pickets and the post caps. The only thing left to do is build and install the gates! So, now you know what I’ll be doing this weekend. 
Just so you know… those post caps are solar powered and illuminate at night. They look so beautiful once the sun has gone down. I’ll try to get a picture of them at night. Needless to say, my wife is pleased. 
Has anyone ever heard of a global art project called “Before I Die…“? What started off as an experiment in New Orleans, has now grown global! Apparently, over 200 Before I Die walls have now been created in over 15 languages and in over 40 countries, including Kazakhstan, Portugal, Japan, Denmark, Australia, Argentina, and South Africa.
I admit that I didn’t know anything about the project until I happened to drive past a wall on my way home from church on Sunday. My wife actually spotted it and said, “Hey! That’s one of the Before I Die walls!” I said, “What?” and looked to see where she was pointing. And that’s when I saw it… I was so moved by it that I turned the car around and parked so that I could get some photos of it.
If you are interested on the back story, check out the website HERE.
What do you want to do before you die?
For the past week, I’ve been working on building a white picket fence around my front yard as a Mother’s Day gift to my wife. Some of you may have seen a few of the photos from last Saturday on my FB page. But for those who haven’t, I’d like to share with you my progress! 
So I went to Home Depot and rented an auger the night before we were to begin, so I wouldn’t kill myself trying to dig post holes in the clay that Los Angeles substitutes for regular dirt.
Got up early on Saturday morning and hauled out said auger.
My good friend Jonathan was helping me cut the lumber. These boards were being cut in half to be used as fence posts.
My son Micah using the auger to dig a post hole.
Aaron was lending a hand doing something constructive (destructive?) with this shovel.
Jonathan wanted a turn with the auger and wound up with a small burn on his arm when the auger kicked back and tagged him with the exhaust. :-/
Arielle, not one to be left out, was assisting with clay/dirt scattering. Because scattering is a big part of building… apparently.
I wanted to make sure that each of the posts were not only the same height, but level as well. My dad was supervising.
We decided on an 18 inch inset for the posts near our neighbors driveway so they wouldn’t have trouble getting into/our of their cars.
Jonathan and I discussing the finer points of cement pouring. This is important as I didn’t realize cement pouring had fine points.
My dad mixing the cement for us to, well… pour. Now that we’d agreed on all the finer points.
Fence building is a family project.
Another check of the post height. With all of the posts in and the cement poured, that was all we were able to do on the first day. We had to let the cement set before we could proceed any further.
My wife wanted to paint the posts before we started adding the rails.
So she went around to all 15 posts and did just that.
My wife’s beautiful handiwork.
Avery decided to show up and demonstrate how easy it is to apply fence paint to clothing.
Rail progress!
Then, in the middle of everything, we had a beautiful evening rainbow that bloomed out of nowhere.
We were trying to figure out what caused such an unusual glow and I later found out that there was an eclipse taking place. The residual light reflected off the moisture in the air, causing an ambient glow that lit up the entire neighborhood.
By the time we were done, it was too dark to get a good picture. So I took a few this morning before I headed in to work.
We worked well into the night and managed to get all of the rails up. Now on Saturday we’ll start adding the pickets.
When you live in a house with seven other people [1 other adult (the wife) 2 teenagers in high school (ages 16 & 17), 3 kids under 6, and an infant], you come to expect a certain level of noise. If we were using a noise scale from 1 to 100, my house would average about 87. This comes as simply a natural byproduct of all these people living in such close proximity. The way I’ve calculated it, the combined commotion increases exponentially for each person in my house under 18, and that doubles if you have a newborn in the mix.
As the days wind down, we can usually start to see a gradual decrease in the peak volume level. The teenagers are barricaded in their room either texting or frying their brains through YouTube overexposure. The small children may have their mouths full with a snack, something to drink or they’re being bathed. And the milk-drunk baby’s eyelids are getting heavier and heavier.
Now normally, in order to get the smaller kids (and especially the baby) to sleep, you’d think that we’d want the house to be as quiet as possible. You know, that whole “hear a pin drop” kind of quiet? But noooo. That couldn’t be further from the truth. What we’ve found is that our children actually sleep BETTER when they’ve undergone some noise conditioning.
What does that mean, you ask?
It means that from the moment they come home from the hospital, we take no special pains to make the house quiet. As a matter of fact, we prefer the house to maintain its typical volume level just as it existed prior to the baby’s arrival. Why? Because once the baby has grown accustomed to the noise level, it becomes a lot easier to get them to fall asleep, and we don’t have to worry about a sudden crash or bang waking them from their slumber.
It’s a wonderful thing.
Our children have slept through all kinds of noise… like the karoake New Year’s Eve party that ran til 3am… mistakenly setting off the house alarm at 1am… dogs barking… thunder… you name it, and our children will probably sleep through it!
You know what the best part is? When the children fall asleep while we’re out visiting, the hustle and bustle of life won’t cut short their naps. We don’t have to whisper and beg people to tip toe around the house. We just carry on living life and usual and the kids get the rest they need.
After reading a friend’s post about her eye color, it got me to thinking…
My gorgeous wife has the most beautiful green eyes. When we started having children, I had this small inkling of hope that perhaps one of our children would get her green eyes, or maybe even her father’s blue eyes. As it turned out, all six (6) of my children have brown eyes. 
Not that there’s anything wrong with brown eyes. But I thought it would be nice to have at least one kid who took after her and got those beautiful green (or blue) eyes.
Yeah, didn’t happen. 
Who knew my genes were so strong?? So I did a little research and came upon these neat little calculator that takes into account not only the parents’ eye color, but the grandparents’ eye color as well. This is what it returned:
As you can see, even with her parents’ blue and green eyes and the fact she has a sibling with blue eyes, there was really no hope of any of my kids getting them. Well, I guess, unless I had a 7th kid? 
Uh, no. 
Here’s the link if you’re interested in checking your own eye color probability: http://genetics.thetech.org/online-exhibits/what-color-eyes-will-your-children-have.
