September 17, 2011

Swinging again!

One of Charlotte's favorite things by far has to be her swing.  She loves it!  It was given to us for free by some friends of ours, which was totally awesome of them, and we have definitely gotten some use out of it.  I even made Beau take the thing apart and shove it in our car for our trip to Kansas! It was such a life-saver there too.  About a week ago one day Charlotte was napping and swinging away and it just stopped.  I thought oh great, the batteries are dead or something, but nope.  The birds moved and tweeted and the music played away.  No swinging at all.  Ugh!  For the next few days Charlotte still used it but one of us nudged her with our foot or just gave her a push now and then.  Zoey even got recruited a couple times to give her sister a push when she fussed.  The other night Beau had enough and did some research on how to fix it. Turns out, lots of people have had this problem and you can easily fix it with an air freshener!  You must think I'm crazy, here's how he did it.

He bought one of these:
Come to find out the motor in one of these things is the exact same motor in the swing! Crazy! He took the whole thing apart.


He's got his serious face on
He took the old motor out and soldered the new one in. 

Charlotte was waiting patiently for Daddy to finish.
She was getting ready to have some cereal. Which she looooves by the way.

After he got it all hooked up it the motor worked fine but it still wouldn't turn on to swing.  I guess the electric part where the switch makes it go faster or slower went bad too.  He re-wired the turny birds part to go to the swinging part and had to take away 2 of the batteries or it would swing on super fast mode haha.  We didn't really use the birds anyway so not a big deal, as long as it swings!  Since it's only getting half power if you turn on the music it sounds all drunk and drawn out. Makes us giggle. 

At this point the only way to turn it on or off was to take out one of the batteries.  Beau was so worried that was trashy and decided it needed a switch.  He drilled the hole.

Voila!  New and improved awesome switch!  Complete with an on and off tab.  Charlotte is so thankful (Mom is too by the way) and I am so amazed by Beau. I never could have done something like this and I really appreciate him taking his day off to work on it.  I think the project cost us $14 including the soldering iron so you can't beat that either!  Thanks Beau, you sure did a great job!

Zoey had a GREAT week at school last week, she ended up getting another purple dot and finished the week with a green.  That is 2 more prizes after the chapstick!  After we grabbed the switch we stopped by Target and she picked out a pom-pom pen.
Yay Zoey! Friday we ran to The Dollar Tree for her 3rd prize and she picked finger nail polish, we haven't had a chance to try it on yet.  I'm so proud of her and she was very proud of herself.  Keep up the good work! 

This is Beau's weekend to work so we have been sticking around the house.  We had a birthday party at the neighbors and I made her a super cute gift, I'll have to do a post about it.  It was a big hit! Hope everyone is having a great weekend!




1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Way to go Beau!!!!! I am so glad Charlotte is a swingin! Way to go Zoey for having a good week at school. Way to go Aften for being such a good mamma!! Way to go Charlotte for liking cereal!!! bp