Home Improvement Day

Today, Wifeness and I are going to paint and repair the porch. This, on its own, is not terribly challenging, but the children are around and this adds a special twist to everything like this we try to do. To illustrate this, I offer the following example:

My girls (6 and 4) helped me build a picnic table last week. We started at 10am. I measured; they held the tape and remembered the number. I cut lumber to size; they held it, then stacked it when it was cut. I disassembled the old picnic table; they carried the pieces away. I pulled nails from old lumber; they hammered the lumber to death after the nails were pulled. I laid out the legs for the new table; they held the lumber steady while I drilled. I inserted the carriage bolts into the legs; they put on the bolts and washers. They did a great job! By 2pm, we'd managed to actually build half of one of the legs, and they went down for "rest time". By the time they were done with rest, I'd built the rest of the table. It was a great experience for them, and they had a wonderful time. We just didn't set any speed records that day (except, perhaps, the one for the longest time it takes to screw in the nut on a 3½" carriage bolt while not actually stopping in the process).

I'll let you know how this goes...