Freedom Rink: Battle Stations

So the temps were in the 60's the other day. My iceberg was reduced to more of a hospital ice chip. Actually there was ice covering a majority of the top, but we have other problems. LEAKS!. AAAHHGGG! The dreaded slow drip...I need some little Dutch boy to come stick his finger in the hole and make it stop. See the wet area of the boards? And everything else is dry - not good. I used some duct tape and another board and C-Clamp to slow the bleeding. Temps get back into the freezing range tonight. If I can just get things back into that range maybe the freeze will help close it up before the water makes its way back to the New England coast.


Here's some other pics of the rink - no longer surrounded by snow.




Another note of caution. In the construction phase we shifted from 2x6x12 to 1x6x12 to reduce cost. We added some metal rods/stakes to add support between posts (see leak picture). I was hesitant but went with the majority. I may regret that. We have some significant bowing of the boards and supports under the weight of the water. And don't forget that ice expands...yikes.



We went out and purchased some pucks and sticks for the kids. Cory was sad that I did not buy him official gloves, helmet, and an entire goalie suit...do you have any idea how much that stuff costs. Oh my! Maybe I should rethink this hockey thing and go for a cheaper sport like basketball or track.

On an unrelated note. We took the grandparents into the city for the 60 degree weather. Here's a pic from Quincy Market with the rest of the tourist crowd.

Freedom Rink: Mission Accomplished

There are few times in a Dad's life when you get that real sense of satisfaction. This was one of those times. I've had this crazy idea about a skating rink for months. I talked it up to the neighbors (especially the one who lives next to the rink), hyped the kids into a frenzy, purchased skates for the kids on a hunch it would work, and spent countless hours on the internet learning other's lessons and mistakes. Seeing it work and the kids have a great time has made it all worth it. Dec 23rd was actually the first skate. Here's the video from the few minutes we had before running off to another event.

The next time we were able to get on the ice was 26 Dec (today) and we had the whole day to soak it up. All the kids were able to enjoy it.

Riley - always the performer.

Mary Beth - Aggressive and quick to try even though she finds a way to crash alot.

Cory - Now he thinks he's a real hockey player.

Lucy - not quite a skater, but clearly part of the family and into the fun.

Grandpa was happy to get out and slide around with them pretending to play hockey. I scavenged around the neighborhood and gathered some sticks and pucks for everyone to get involved. Before long we had neighbor kids come over to see what the commotion was all about. The deep end is amazing, smooth and slick ice, but the shallow end still needs some time before it is solid ice from board to board. I added some snow to that end to help build it up. As it melts it will smooth out a little.

The next test is a warm-up. Sometime tonight we get a wintry mix changing over to rain and then it won't get below freezing till late Sunday night/early Monday morning. All that water may test our crudely engineered playland.

This completely rocks!

Quotable Quote

Cory's Grandpa is here. He's been anticipating Grandpa's arrival for weeks for this single reason:

He gets to have coffee with Grandpa every morning. This morning Cory walked from the living room to the kitchen saying,

"I'm going to smell my way to coffee."

0330 - Christmas "Bliss"

Christmas Eve--bathed and in their new jammies...

innocent until...

"Ted, I think I hear someone up." Ted looks at the time on the ceiling (we love our projection atomic alarm clock), but I don't think it registers, as he seems to drift back into dreamland. Within a minute, the sound of Lucy saying "Cory" from somewhere pulls him out of serenity. He presses the light on his watch. I don't think he believes the time on the ceiling. It really is 0330.

Now Lucy is saying "Mare Mare." We both get out of bed and walk to Lucy and Cory's room. This is what we see. Lucy is out of her crib, and standing on a stool next to her crib. Mary Beth and Cory are sitting on Cory's bed with the bedlamp on and a flashlight on. This is not good. Not good at all.

"Cory, did you go downstairs."

"No."

"I did," says Mary Beth.

"Did Santa come?"

"Yes, and he brought me a Password Journal just like I've always wanted, and me and Riley and Cory got a Webkinz, but not Lucy, because he knew I gave her one."

At this point the look on my face causes Mary Beth to get really sad and start to cry.

"Okay, everyone, it's the MIDDLE of the night. We're not supposed to be awake and you need to go to bed."

Ted takes Mary Beth to her room, while I tuck Lucy and Cory back in.

Then I check on Mary Beth and find that she's left a nice little note on her desk for Riley, in case Riley woke up while Mare was out--it says "I went to look in the stockings." She gets an A+ for spelling and punctuation. But it's still 3:30 in the morning!!!!

"Mary Beth, did you tell Cory what he got?"

"Yeah, he got a Star Wars gun with darts!"

"Goodnight, Mary Beth. I'm turning this light off. I'll leave your door open." And I leave, shaking my head in defeat.

Ever hopeful, Ted and I return to bed. Unfortunately, now I'm wide awake and worried that we will be officialy up. That dread alone makes it hard to sleep. And then we hear it. Someone crying. It's Lucy. What to do. What to do.

She ends up in our room. She likes to sleep between us, but it takes her a while to get back in that resting state. She does her standard squirm around, then kicks her feet feet into Ted's back a few dozen times. Then she decides she should sing. She doesn't know many words, so it's kind of a long la-la song. So it's 0400ish and Lucy is in the bed singing. This is not going well. She did eventually fall asleep on the floor. In the end, everyone slept, and we were not awaken again until 0500. When Riley came in and told us she couldn't sleep. Luckily, she went back to bed, and we all got up around 0730.

Before we headed downstairs, I asked Riley if Mary Beth told her what Santa brought. Riley said, "Yeah! Mary Beth woke me up at 3:30 last night! I told her Mom and Dad won't let us get up before 7 o'clock."

After opening all the gifts, I asked Mary Beth if she looked at everyone's presents last night. She said, "Yeah, but it was hard to see them until I got a flashlight."

the culprit :

the accomplice:

the serenading princess and the one-who-knows-better :

Freedom Rink: Slush

I promised to post a picture of the rink full of snow. It's still on it's way to becoming the most fun glacier on the base, for now it is just a giant hazard waiting for someone to fall in the ice/slush mix.

Weather report says below freezing temps for Monday and Tuesday. Hopefully it will thicken up a bit. My orange "stay away" tape didn't make it through the first night.

Here's another pic - but this one is of the kids making snowman parts.

It's A Pajama Day

Here's some scenes of the snow outside our house at 1100 today. We're supposed to get another 5 inches today...then it may turn to sleet and rain or just stay snow. The line of wintery mix will be right around us - just a few miles outside of Boston.

We decided not to venture out to Church so the kids will probably spend most of the day lounging in thier PJs. Bleow is a pic from their outside adventures yesterday.

Where's the global warming they keep telling me about?

Reader request: Here's a pic of the Charlie Brown Christmas tree in the mud room. The family tree (for perspective) is in the living room.

Freedom Rink - The Flood

The weather report called for below freezing temps and multiple snow storms over the weekend. I thought I should take the next step in the Freedom Rink saga. Over the last few weeks many of the neighbors have inquired about when I would put the ice in, but I kept reminding them of the Farmer's Almanac and that warm weather was ahead...wait no more. Winter would finally be here this weekend.

The first real snow fall was Wed and left a few inches inside the rink. I needed to remove that to make sure I did not have any sharp edges underneath the tarp. The kids had played inside the square and caused the ice/snow mix to be full of sharp points. I borrowed a snow blower and tried to get some of the sharps out. I am sure those who watched wondered what the heck I was doing snow blowing my yard. Of course Cory and Lucy wanted to be in the middle as well. Silly kids - who is this rink for anyway?

Now that I had a nice smooth bed, I decided it was now or never. We busted out the tarp. Jason (Freedom #3) helped spread the 30x50 blue monster. Then the real risky part. Running the water hose in 17 degree weather. I used an old hose that had plenty of holes, and started about 1130. For the rest of the day I was this nervous nilly checking the water and side boards and then looking in the back of the house to see if I had busted any pipes or anything.

After about 5pm I decided to call it quits. I didn't quite have all the water in there I wanted, but it was full in the deep end and had just reached the corner of the shallow end. There is about 12-15 inches in the "deep end" of the rink. The pic below was taken only a few hours into the flood. I'll get a few more pics tomorrow to show you the latest. We currently have about 8-12 inches of snow with more predicted tomorrow.

By the next morning I had a few inches of ice on top in the deep end. The shallow end is still very slushy with snow. Today was cold cold and the next few days will be cold enough to keep the freeze going. I want the ice to thicken up before I do any more work on it. It needs a little more water and some smoothing, but I wanted to see how it all worked out first before I run the hose any more.

As I pondered the worst case scenario and at least a thousand gallons of water flooding my next door neighbor's house, I asked K, What do you think? She said "This will either work perfectly, or fail miserably." I wonder which one it will be - so far so good.