Hotter than a Firecracker

With the heat wave we had the past few weeks, the primary focus has just been trying to keep cool.  The first few days in the upper 90's really slowed us down, and we spent most of our time indoors.  N has been showing more interest in Legos lately, so that was a good excuse to get those out and spend some quality time in the basement building some of my old sets.  N doesn't quite have the patience to dig through the box to find the special pieces called out in the instructions, but if you find the pieces for him he can do the rest pretty well.  L isn't quite there on the building skills yet, but he is really good at keeping N and I busy putting stuff back together.  C has some nice pics of the Lego activities on her blog.  If you check it out, you can also see the whole family getting into the act on the kiddie carwash, which proved to be another great way to beat the heat. 
The string of triple-digit days didn't stop us from working/playing outside entirely, and I dare say by the end we were almost getting used to it.  I took some extra days off around the 4th of July holiday and couldn't resist working on a few projects.  The main project in the workshop right now is redoing the garden wagon I found a couple months ago.  I took the wheels and frame all apart, stripped them down and repainted them.  The boys got to help with reassembly. 

With the running gear all back together, I started on the body.  My plan is to basically make a larger version of our Radio Flyer "Caterpillar" wagon, but in the style of the Amish wooden stake wagons.  With the neighbor's help, I got the boards all cut and then sanded them down.  After it finally cooled off a bit last Sunday, I set up my good ole paint booth and applied a nice clear finish.  Next step will be the stake sides. 

Despite a never ending backlog of projects, I couldn't resist adding just one more.  C and I stopped into a local antique store looking for some home decor items.  Leave it to me to find a garden tractor project while there.  They had a nice little garden cart, which I'm sure would have ended up as a planter, sitting in someone's yard with flowers in it.  I couldn't help but notice more than a passing similarity between it and a fairly obscure John Deere #8 garden cart made 1970-72.  Of course I don't need another cart, but I couldn't help but bring it home thinking I would eventually turn it into a #8 cart replica.  I'm not sure the background on the cart, but have found out that the same body was used for this brand, as well as dump carts for Toro and for John Deere.  This version, unfortunately, is lacking a tongue and dumping mechanism, so coming up with those will require some patience, creativity, or a little bit of both.  In the meantime, we already put it to use holding husks as the boys cleaned some of grandpa's sweet corn.  It was delicious!

The Power Wheels are still getting a pretty good workout, although we have found that if you combine these hot temperatures with some heavy loads driving through the grass, they run down the batteries pretty fast, and will even blow a fuse now and then.  N suffered a blow to his ego this week when the neighbor down the street got a new ride.  For the most part, his Cat Jeep has been the top dog in the neighborhood for a couple years.  That was until the neighbor got his new four wheeler last week that goes up to 7mph.  All of the other vehicles go up to 5mph, which doesn't sound like much of a difference, but when watching them, there is a huge difference between 7mph and 5mph.  I had my doubts that the neighbor boy could handle that much speed, but like the rest of them, he seemed to get used to it pretty quickly.  After a couple days, N got to try it out and he loved it.  Of course, he wants one now, but with a price of over $600, I don't see that happening any time soon. 

Although they are no longer the fastest, the boys' trucks had no problem performing a little task I set up for them.  I changed the furnace filter and needed to break the old one down to fit in the trash can.  Rather than do that manually, I let them pretend it was a crush-car for their power wheels.  They had a ball and did a nice job smashing it down.