Blanket Chest

I got Matt a circular saw, because he kept buying regular saws and none of them worked very well so he would buy another one, and that wouldn't work well, and someone had to put a stop to this madness! But give a mouse a cookie...

So I told Matt that I wanted a nice chest for the family room to put all of our blankets in and pillows and such because we have so many of them. So we found some plans online, didn't really realize what size we were talking about here, and went to Lowes and bought some wood!

Yes, Matt is wearing my $$$ Oakleys as safety glasses....

Matt likes the little laser on the saw.
Here is the frame, and then putting the sides on.

We glued and nailed on the upper lip.

And then we glued and nailed on the bottom decorative edge.

Here it is so far. We bought some stain at Lowe's yesterday and plan to stain it sometime this week maybe. We have the hinge for the lid, but haven't found any "handles" that we like. This thing is so big we have been calling it a coffin, and I am not sure we will be able to lift the coffin anyway, so who needs handles!

PS.

Two things I forgot in my last post. Here is Dad wearing green and eating corned beef and cabbage to celebrate Irish Day and his 25% Irishness. I decided 1/8th Irishness wasn't enough to eat that stuff, but I did wear green.

I also bought a new waterski with the money I "earned" from "harvesting" soybeans :)

Isn't it so pretty!!

Ski Week at Vail

On Monday morning, Mom, Dad, Andrea and I went up to Vail. It was Andrea's spring break. We just hung out and walked around Vail on Monday. On Monday night, Matt, Tim and Cindy came up to stay as well. On Tuesday we went skiing.

It was super sunny and nice out. The three of them went home after skiing Tuesday. On Wednesday after a day of skiing, we signed up to go ski biking. It was exciting! At 5pm we rode up the Gondola. (Happy St. Patrick's Day!)

At the top they strapped mini ski blades onto our feet and gave us a bike. Instead of wheels the bike had skis. Then we went down the hill. Here is Andrea.
Here is Mom and Dad. Mom fell twice in the first 50 feet.

We got to the bottom and then rode the Gondola back up to the top with our bikes. On the second trip down we went through the trees. Dad crashed, and Mom was following him, so she tried to avoid him and went off a drop off, launching herself over a catwalk trail and into the woods on the other side (screaming). Mom and Andrea didn't like ski biking, but I had a lot of fun and want to do it again!

Here we are after we survived our second trip down.

We were all very sore after ski biking (between the bike seats, having death grips on the handle bars, and using our feet to slow down more than you are supposed to). So we were pretty beat on Wednesday night. We went to Bart and Yetis for dinner, and Dad ordered Irish food, but I forgot the picture, so will add that in the next post. Jeff and Tarah tried to come up, but were delayed multiple hours due to a FedEx truck flipping across both lanes of the highway.

On Thursday we went skiing again. Here we are in front of the run International which they renamed to Lindsey's run after Lindsey Vonn who trains at Vail.

We came home on Thursday and I promptly crashed on the couch and did nothing the rest of the day. (I did manage to play travel agent and book Steven and Jon tickets to come visit over Easter). (Oh yea, I watched Texas choke. I think that the last 2 seconds of any basketball game should not count, because I have been burned by the last two seconds too many times!!!)

On Friday morning Matt drove through the blizzard up to the mountains with his friend Terry. I had a dress sizing appointment in Larkspur at noon for my dress for Kim's wedding, so I met Dad, Mom and Andrea in Castle Rock because I have the Jetta and didn't think it would make it through the snow. I brought along the kitties much to Dad's delight :)

It has been snowing since last night, and is supposed to stop at 1am on Saturday morning. We have 14 inches so far - and still coming down!

Michigan State basketball played New Mexico State today in the NCAA tournament, but CBS did not show the game, so we had to watch it on our computers. Here is Dad watching and listening to the pregame with his headphones and green beer.

Here we are all gathered on the couch to watch the computer screen.

MSU barely pulled it out, not the blowout that it was supposed to be and appeared to be in the first half. But a win is a win, and now they go on to play on Sunday the winner of Maryland and Houston. My bracket is already busted, I am not very good at picking teams.

Tomorrow, if I can get out of the driveway, I am going to Denver to celebrate Kim's bachelorette party.

Minute to Win It

On Saturday night, Andrea+Jake, Aubrey+Brandon, and Jessica+Mike came over to play Minute to Win It with us. This new NBC show gives contestants sixty seconds to complete a seemingly easy task in order to win a million dollars. Our prize wasn't a million dollars (or even exist in the first place), but we had a good time playing the game.

Here is Jessica playing Elephant March:

Elephant March

Eight unopened water bottles are placed in two parallel rows on the ground, precisely eight feet apart. The contestant must wear a standard pair of pantyhose over the head, with a baseball placed inside the end of one leg. Keeping one foot on each side of the centerline, the contestant must swing back and forth using the momentum of the baseball to knock down all eight bottles.

BrThis is Brandon playing with coat hangers:

Hangover

From a curtain rod, contestant must hang SIX hangers one on top of the other so that no hook is resting in the corner of another hanger.

This is me playing Egg Roll, which is way harder than you think. Aubrey and Mike tried this later in the day, and Mike did much better than me, Aubrey kept hitting the eggs.

Egg Roll

Contestant must move three eggs across the floor and into a target area only by "fanning" the eggs with an empty pizza box.

Here Matt and Mike played Mouth to Mouth. Mike successfully did it by the end of the night. (We used a card instead of a dollar bill).

Mouth to Mouth

Contestant must pull a dollar bill from between two empty glass bottles balanced mouth-to-mouth on top of each other. The bottles must remain balanced after the dollar is pulled. The contestant must successfully make one out of five attempts.

Here is Jake trying to put Captain Crunch back together again. Aubrey and Brandon looking on.

Breakfast Scramble

Contestant must assemble one 20-piece puzzle. Cereal box covers will be cut into 20 even pieces. The pieces will be in a single stack, and the contestant will have 60 seconds to assemble both box puzzles correctly to complete the game.

Jessica watching and Andrea saying "this is so easy" (she didn't try it).

Andrea doing Candy Elevator - she was successful with one M&M.

Candy Elevator

Contestant uses a mini-elevator consisting of two side-by-side pencils that are tied together with long kite threads at each end. From an elevated platform, contestant drapes a thread over each ear and has to raise the pencils with three M&M'S® Brand Chocolate Candies on it. Pulling on the threads, contestant must raise the elevator and get the candy in their mouth.

Jessica shooting herself more than the cans. But then she got them all over with one sweet shot.

Rapid Fire

Contestant using only their hands must shoot rubber bands and knock a pyramid of six empty soda cans completely off a platform eight feet away.

Me playing Stack Attack. I know the fifth graders can do this much faster, but I did get the tower up and then knocked it down, just not in an organized manner.

Stack Attack

Contestant uses 36 plastic cups to erect a triangle-shaped structure (8 cups along bottom row). Once completed, contestant must remove hands from the structure completely and then proceed to stack all cups into a single stack.

Jake trying to puzzle again, while Brandon looks on to learn where they go so he can do it.

Mike doing the egg roll.

Aubrey doing the egg roll.

This was the only game we did not successfully do, Matt, Brandon and I all failed.

What a Racquet

Contestant must use a tennis racquet positioned between the legs to move a gumball on the webbing from one spot to another without using their hands.

This game, during practice, I did not read that only one hand was allowed, and beat it in 30 seconds, so I threw in another package of M&Ms and declared it good to go. However, during "competitive play" it was realized only one hand was allowed, making this one rather difficult. Brandon and I had a head to head and I won, separating them all in a minute thirteen. The onlookers offered many different strategies. It must have been all my Monk watching that gave me the edge.

Separation Anxiety

Contestant must separate a pile of 50 multicolored M&M'S® Brand Chocolate Candies into five separate containers in a set color order. Using only one hand.

This is another game I didn't test correctly. I had Dad pull all of the tissues out of a tissue box during practice, but he used both hands, and was super quick, so I put this into the "easy" games. Andrea drew it, and provided much laughter for us, however, did not succeed. It is much harder with only one hand... Mike tried later to much enjoyment, but did not succeed either. So I guess this goes with the tennis racquet game.

Hanky Panky

Using only one hand, contestant must pull tissues out of a tissue box one at a time until box is empty.

Matt trying Candy Elevator.

Mike trying Candy Elevator.
I guess I have a short term memory, because this is another game we didn't do. However, I had eliminated this game ahead of time because practice rounds proved this too hard for us beginner Minute to Win it -ers. Everyone tried, and Mike did the best at 13 seconds.

Defying Gravity

Contestants have to concurrently keep three balloons in the air.

Finally after all our games, and all the playing that Matt and I did with him earlier in the day, Tanner finally closed his eyes.

A game that unfortunately we don't have pictured, is Bite Me. Brandon set the record by picking up 4 of the 5 paper bags (they didn't exactly match the heights in the game rules, but close). The previous record was 2, which no one else could beat.

Bite Me

Five paper bags are opened up on the ground 4' apart. The bags are each cut down to different heights: 10", 8", 6", 4", 2". Contestants, using only their mouths, must put all five bags onto five podiums. No part of the contestant's body may touch the ground except for the feet.

We had a good time and the games were fun and easy to gather. I had bought supplies at the dollar store. The show premiers on NBC tonight, I am going to watch and see how they set up the show (you have to win 10 games to win 1mill, and you can quit and take the money at any time). We will see how much money we could win. Matt wants me to send his name in to be a contestant on the show.