Moving: Days 2-4

It's been a hectic three days for the Schneegans family.  I spent most of days 2 and 3 running last minute errands, going out for takeout lunches, and other random stuff, while Aimee and the kids moved from room to room to stay out of the movers' way.  It's tough keeping eight kids and a dog cooped up all day while maintaining sanity!  I didn't shoot as many photos as usual for two reasons.  First, I was too busy.  Second, I forgot to set my camera aside, so the movers packed it.  I like the convenience of using a cell phone's camera, but my old, cheapo Canon still shoots better photos.

Still, I captured photographic evidence that that makes me glad we're leaving Junction City.

Apparently, Junction City (or should I call it Raccoon City?) will be ground zero for the zombie apocalypse.

The movers told Aimee they'd be done before 5:00 pm yesterday (Wednesday; day 3), but it took them until around 9:00 pm to finish.  By that time, the three little ones were exhausted and miserable, especially Jer-Bear.  Aimee took them and Sheba to the hotel we'd booked.  The rest of the kids and I got to work on cleaning the house and packing the U-Haul.

Around 11:30 pm, I decided to call it a night.  Fortunately, I was able to change all our hotel reservations, because that meant we'd leave Junction City a day later than we'd originally planned.  It turned out to be a good decision, because we finally finished cleaning the house to our satisfaction around 5:00 pm today (Thursday; day 4).  Also, I had time to make two minor repairs I'd missed.

Aimee and I have a soft spot for every place where we've lived, and the Fort Riley area is no exception.  We're definitely sad to leave our friends.  The kids, especially, made some good friends here.

Our house was a big blessing to us, and because of all the memories we made there, we're sad to leave it too.  We pray it's as big a blessing to a new family, and that it sells quickly.  So, if you know someone in Junction City who's looking for a fairly large four-bedroom, three-bath house with two apple trees, two plum trees, ten planter boxes, a brick planter, a fenced back yard and an 8'x8' shed, let us know!

Note the moving truck's shadow.

Tomorrow; onward to Wyoming!

Moving: Day 1

The movers arrived at our house in Kansas for the first time today.  After running around with our collective hair on fire over the weekend organizing our considerable amount of stuff to ease the process, then still feeling underprepared and overwhelmed as of this morning, the day went much more smoothly than we anticipated.

I'm sure you've all wondered what a Sprinter van towing a 6x12 U-Haul trailer looks like, so here you go.

You're welcome.  That's Abi's leg sticking out of the U-Haul.  We stashed the stuff we're taking with us in the trailer and the van to get it out of the movers' way.

Of the things that didn't go so smoothly, the funniest was that when one of the movers picked up our VCR, she heard something rattling around inside.

Yes, we still have a VCR.  We also have cathode ray tube TVs.  In case you don't remember what those look like (or - if you're one of my nephews - have never seen one), this is one of ours.

You're welcome.  I'm also writing this blog entry on one of these.

Naturally, the movers refused to pack the VCR.  Aimee suspected the culprits might be - not broken VCR parts - but little toys inserted into the VHS slot by little toddler fingers.  Tonight, I disassembled the VCR, and this is what I found.

I wish I'd thought to shoot a photo when I had the VCR completely disassembled, because I've never actually looked inside a VCR, and it's fascinating.

I love the reliability and resiliency of solid state media, and I understand the reason for it is that SSMs have no moving parts, but there's something nostalgically elegant about mechanically operated things.  Or maybe I'm just getting old.  Thus, my Royal.

By the way: have you ever tried to cancel your Dish Network service, even long after your contract's run out?  They are tenacious about trying to keep their long-time customers!

Height Chart

As you all know, we're leaving Kansas and going back to Washington.  That means we're leaving the house we've lived in for the last four years - the first house we've ever owned.  Or mortgaged, anyway.  It's amazing how much sentimental value we've built up in such a short time here.  Eli was four months old when we moved in.  He learned to crawl, walk, run and talk here.  So did Jer-Bear.  We brought Jer-Bear and Pumpkin home to this house.  Then there's all the work we've put into this property.

One sentimental item in this house is the kids' heights we marked onto a wall in the dining room.  Obviously, we couldn't take a chunk of the wall with us, so Aimee asked me to make a wooden height chart we can take with us wherever we move in the future.

The height charts we saw online were all painted, but to add a feeling of permanence to ours, I decided to engrave names and numbers into ours with a Dremel tool, then burn them.

Now I know why most people choose paint.  That was a lot of tedious work!  Especially with the length of our last name and some of our kids' names (Hadassah, Jeremiah).

I started with a 1x24x96 inch board (click on the pics to enlarge).

It's actually a bunch of narrow strips of spruce edge-glued together.  I didn't even know they made such a product, until Aimee and I stumbled upon it at Menard's in Manhattan, KS. 

I shot this photo late at night; thus the blue tinge.  Note the practice piece.

I started with the inch and foot marks on the left hand side and kids' names across the top.  I used a basic Dremel series 100 tool with a high speed cutting bit and the collar from the 565 multipurpose cutting kit attached to maintain constant depth.  It works really well, but with all the practice pieces I made, I had to switch the bit before I finished engraving the kids' names. 

The following morning, coffee became a necessity.

I engraved our family name across the very top, but the height marks and years were too fine for the Dremel, so I burned them in with the finest tip from my wood burning tool from Hobby Lobby in Manhattan, KS. 

I stained the height chart with a shade called "American Maple".  I normally like to use dark stains on light-colored wood like pine, fir or spruce.  But as you can see...

This stain is a bit much.  You can see a lot more detail in person, but not as much as I'd like. 

I tried the stain on a practice piece before applying it to the finished product, of course, and it looked good to me, but it didn't turn out that way on the finished product.  I guess I'll have to sand it down and re-stain it with a much lighter shade, but there's no way I'm undoing all that work any time soon!

Here's a more detailed photo of the names at the top.  Each kid has his or her own vertical section on the height chart. 

And here's a more detailed photo of the ruler on the right side, and the height marks underneath the kids' names. 

It might grow on me and I may leave it as is.  Or I might get more frustrated the more I look at it and decide to sand it down and re-stain it.  Stay tuned! 

End of an Era & Beginning Anew

I haven't been online much because I didn't want to field questions to which I had no answers, but Aimee and I are now ready to make an announcement.  We're leaving the Army.

I've been on the job hunt for a few months now, and just this week I accepted a project management position with ConnocoPhillips.  I'll be constructing new oil-&-gas wells near Kenedy, TX, south of San Antonio, in the Eagle Ford formation, one of the most productive shale formations in the US.

This move has been a long time coming - the MS in Geological Engineering I earned back in 2010 was part of it - but Aimee and I weren't planning on leaving this early at first.  As usual, though, God led us in the direction He wanted us to go, and things worked out in ways we never would've expected on our own.  For example, we didn't expect to be able to move back to Pasco, WA.

The position I accepted at ConnocoPhillips is typical of the oil industry in that the work goes 14 days on and 14 days off, and ConnocoPhillips pays for employees to travel to the well site from anywhere in the lower 48 states.  Because of that, Aimee and I decided to move back to Pasco, where my parents, older brother (Mauricio), sister (Albania), brother-in-law (Jacob) and nephews live.  On top of that, we have lots friends in town and nearby - the Bradburies, Edwards, Millers, Morris, Fragosos, Radachs and many more.  And Aimee's parents and my brother (Josue) and sister-in-law (Stephanie) are only a couple hours away.

In short, we get the best of both worlds.  I get to work in the industry where I've desired to work for years now, and we get to live among an abundance of old friends and family.  The price for that is that I'll be working in southern Texas half the time, but then again, I get two weeks every month at home with no work to do - except for all the honey-do projects that Aimee will surely conjure up for me.

Honestly, this has been a scary time.  The job hunt was grueling and discouraging, with lots of dead ends and false hopes.  But God had something better in store for us than what we had planned.  We are truly blessed, and now I feel guilty for all the times I doubted God along this road.  You'd think I'd have learned my lesson by now.

Thanks for all the prayers, everyone.  We still need to sell our old house and buy a new one (Bani's already hard at work looking for a house for us), so please be praying about that.  We'll keep you all informed as the situation develops.

Huge Spider in the Compost Bin

Our compost bins support quite the little ecosystem.  Mice, birds, rabbits and all kinds of bugs feed on the veggie scraps we dump in the bins.  We even had a spaghetti squash plant grow out of one bin from the squash guts we dumped in there.  The shade from the squash plant attracted even more critters.  Naturally, all those animals attract predators.

Dumping the compost bucket in the kitchen is Eli's chore.  Yesterday, the bucket was much fuller and heavier than normal, so I helped him with it.  When we dumped it in the compost bin, we found this.

Click to enlarge.

Female

I had to look it up to figure out what it is.  According to spiders.us, they're black and yellow garden spiders - a female (the huge one) and a male (the tiny one).  The following quote and the photos on the right are from the website.

Mature females are enormous, their bold black-and-yellow pattern adding to their intimidating appearance. Common in gardens, orchards, forest edges, old fields, and farms, they spin a classic round orb web which is usually decorated with a bold, zigzag band of silk called a stabilimentum.

Eli was very excited about the big spider.  He insisted on showing her off to Aimee (who is terrified of spiders) and everyone else.  He even named her Eight Legs, because - as he said - "Arachnids have eight legs".

Male

Today, Eli just had to go see Eight Legs again.  We watched one of the many flies feeding on veggie scraps get stuck in the web, and Eight Legs quickly pounce on it and eat it.  Eli was elated!  He just had to show Aimee, who was even more creeped out.  As we walked away from the compost bin, Eli looked back toward the bin and said, "Goodbye, Eight Legs.  I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"   

I took another photo with my hand behind Eight Legs to provide some perspective about her size.  The male was nowhere to be seen, which I think means they mated and she ate him.

Eli asked to go check on her again before it got dark.  Aimee wants to get rid of the big, creepy spider, but Eli told her that he likes Eight Legs, and lectured her about how spiders help people by eating bugs like flies.

We'll see if Aimee can tolerate Eight Legs for Eli's sake!

Lil' Pumpkin Update

I didn't have much time for details before, so I'll write some now.

Friday morning, Jer-Bear woke up crying around 03:30 Kansas time, and Aimee went to comfort him.  Around 04:00, she started feeling strong contractions.  She'd been feeling contractions - usually at night - for a few weeks, but she said these were different, painful from the start.  She went and got Sheba to take care of Jer-Bear.  He wasn't too happy about that, but eventually he calmed down and fell back asleep.

Aimee went back to our room, woke me up and told me what was happening.  I got her suitcase from the basement and Aimee went to take a shower.  At that point, the contractions were about 10 minutes apart.

Just as I was almost done getting everything together, Eli got up and asked me to take him with us.  I got Hadassah up and asked her to stay with him in his bed until he fell back asleep.  Eli, of course, started crying, but he also calmed down after a while and fell asleep.  People often ask us how we handle eight kids.  That's how.

Aimee's parents arrived here from Washington late the previous Tuesday night.  I woke Aimee's mom up and told her what was happening.  The plan was for them to wait with the older kids for a while, then meet us at the hospital.

By the time Aimee was out of the shower and ready to go, I had everything ready to go and the car warming up.  And Aimee's contractions were five minutes apart.  It's a 20 minute drive to the hospital at Fort Riley.  Half way there, the contractions were three minutes apart.  By the time we arrived, they were a minute apart.

At the hospital, I explained to the nurses how quickly everything was progressing, but I'm just a worried dad, so they dismissed my explanation without a thought.  It took much longer than I would've liked for them to even admit Aimee and give her an epidural.  By then the contractions were pretty much back-to-back with almost no time in between.

By the time they finally got around to checking how far Aimee was dilated, Aimee was ready to push, and the nurse said, "Wow!  This baby isn't waiting!"

No kidding.  That's what I've been trying to tell you.

The doctor almost missed the delivery.  Aimee's parents barely made it in time.

From the time Aimee felt the first contraction, until Lil' Pumpkin's official birth time was only five hours.  And Aimee only pushed for eight to nine minutes.  And she actually wanted to start pushing before that.  It was pretty amazing.  We were all surprised at how small Lil' Pumpkin turned out.  She was only 0.4 oz heavier than Eli, and shorter than both boys.  Aimee was a lot more uncomfortable a lot sooner with this pregnancy, so we expected Hannah to be a big baby.  Oh well.  They're both perfectly healthy, and thank God for that.

The doctor wanted to keep Aimee and Hannah at the hospital for 48 hours.  Aimee was bored and ready to go home by the afternoon of the first day.  I got to split my time between home with the older kids, and the hospital with Aimee and Hannah.

On Saturday, Aimee's parents and all the kids went to the hospital with me to meet Lil' Pumpkin.  Aimee's parents made the following photos.

Candace is Hannah's buddy.  They sit together in the van.

I was very pleasantly surprised to see Isaiah so happy to hold his new little sister.

That's a proud grandma!

Sunday morning, the pediatrician was ready to release Lil' Pumpkin.  I drove home to pick up the van, and Aimee's mom and Candace went with me to pick up Aimee and Hannah.

Lil' Pumpkin's ready to go, but she doesn't seem to sure about it.

Home at last!

Psalm 127:3-5

New King James Version (NKJV)

3 Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,
The fruit of the womb is a reward.
4 Like arrows in the hand of a warrior,
So are the children of one’s youth.
5 Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them;
They shall not be ashamed,
But shall speak with their enemies in the gate.

Aimee and I are incredibly blessed.  We have eight children - a high capacity quiver!  But not only did God bless us with many children, all our kids are perfectly healthy.  And He blessed Aimee and me with the health and resources to provide for them.  On top of that, we're blessed in that I was present for all our bio-babies' births (although I was deployed when Aimee picked up our adopted children from Ethiopia), and that Aimee's parents also traveled to help us with all three births, and my sister, Albania, was able to visit us after Elijah's birth.  We acknowledge that we didn't do anything to deserve these blessings.  They're evidence of God's grace - His unmerited favor - in our lives.

God doesn't bless His children equally.  He bestows greater blessings in one area on one child, and greater blessings in a different area on a different child.  That may seem unfair to us, and it isn't, because none of us deserve any of it.  If God gave all of us what we deserve - what we earned - we'd all receive judgement for our sin.

I'm reminded, as I watch Aimee with our youngest daughter, that I need to focus on the blessings God actually gave me and thank Him with fear and reverence, and never mind the blessings He gave His other children.

Thank you all who prayed for us with the adoption and each birth.  Please let us know how we can pray for you.

Happy Birthday, Lil' Pumpkin!

Please join me in welcoming our Lil' Pumpkin, Hannah Elizabeth Schneegans-Dahl, to the world.  She was born today at 09:03 Central Time weighing 6 lb, 5.9 oz, and measuring 19 inches in length.

 

 

 

Thanks, Michelle Edwards, for the adorable little hats you made!

Dirt!

Before going back for shoulder surgery, I went into a home improvement frenzy to finish a few projects while I was able.  One of them was to spread some top soil mixed with compost from Britt's Farm on our yard to help the grass grow.  When the contractors prepped the ground to build our house, they pretty much stripped the top soil off and left low-nutrient clay.  We've had a rough time growing grass using store bought seed, fertilizer and weed killer.  The weeds have no trouble growing, of course!  If this doesn't work, I give up.

Anyway, the reason I asked Aimee to shoot these photos is that the kids' neighbor friend, Emily, volunteered to help the kids in their chore of helping me.  She even brought extra shovels!

Most of the kids helped fill the wheel barrow.

Hadassah spread the soil/compost mixture I dumped with the wheel barrow.

Who says you can't get kids to do chores these days?  The skinny brunette isn't even ours!

She worked pretty hard, too!

Eli "helped" fill the wheel barrow too.

With all this help, we spread the mixture, seeded and watered in one afternoon.  See you next time!

Jer-Bear's Second Birthday

Thursday, 20 March was Jeremiah's second birthday.  Unfortunately, I'd just had a second shoulder surgery on the 19th, so we waited until Saturday, the 22nd, to celebrate.  As usual, Aimee made the cake and I decorated it. 

"Wreck It Ralph" is one of Jer-Bear's favorite movies right now.  Heck, it's one of my favorites!

Isaiah, graciously lent me his Legos.

Eli and Jer-Bear were taking a nap while Aimee, the kids and I finished getting his birthday cake and presents ready.  Aimee and I woke the little boys up and Jer-Bear started opening his presents.

Jer-Bear is also into the "Shrek" series right now.

I can't tell if Jer-Bear liked this Shrek plush toy or not.

Jer-Bear ate some blue candy before his nap, so his mouth was stained blue.

Another of Jer-Bear's favorite things right now is "Bubble Guppies".

Unfortunately, toddlers always get jealous during each other's birthdays.

Eli insisted on getting Jer-Bear a "Dada Bear", like the one I got Eli when I went to the National Training Center.

Candace got Jer-Bear another of his favorite things; a minion from "Despicable Me".  Jer-Bear calls them "beedos".

Finally - from Mom, Dad, Gamma and Gampa - a new wagon.  Jer-Bear and Eli both like to ride in their old Radio Flyer, but it's too small for that now.

Finally; time for cake!

Looks like he enjoyed it!

Until next time!