ThePalsRUs

Levi’s Treasure Hunt

2011-09-28T20:50:00.001-05:00

Clue 1:

Everybody like them. Their parents hide them. They are not there every day. We have to look after them every night, but nobody wants to. (Chicken Egg Box)

Clue 2:

Dad built it twice and had to remove it to move. A bird made a nest here and a tasty treat for cat. (Where the Shed used to be)

Clue 3:

Zoey’s favorite black treat! (Black berries)

Clue 4:

Gobble it all up but some things we don’t like. When we are done we deposit them here, the sight causing a fright. Rubbish to most but delicacy to one. Levi’s favorite place to dine after playing video games is done. (Dish Washer)

Clue 5:

It smells like a skunk. But keeps the place neat. Put your foot inside to protect your feet. Off they come nowhere to be found. If you put them here, they will always be around. (Shoe Box)

Clue 6:

Good things are inside but are very hard to eat. A crystalline structure that looks really neat! Put your hand in and it comes out all blue. Often hear dad say, “Get out of there you!” (Freezer)

Clue 7:

Eaten from hand, but despised on the ground. Why wont they eat it even when no one is around. Second to cat food so here it just sits. Will nobody eat me? This is the pits. (chicken food bucket)

Clue 8:

My life is a mess, my casings do stink. I am used all night tossing here and there. Sometimes I feel like I am wrestling a bear. When all settles down and the critter then sleeps, then comes the drool and I began to weep. Why don’t you change me and make me all new? The incentive is grand! A new tag for you! (Levi’s Pillow Case)

Clue 9:

So close, you are more near then you think. Have you checked under there? Or where you get a drink? Not there you fool you don’t drink from there! You first need a cup, germs give us a scare! (Cup Cabinet)

Clue 10:

This is the last clue and soon you will see what treasure awaits in one of the trees! (Bird house)

Clue 11:

Ha, ha, ha! You thought you were done! Look next to the boob tube where you watch Pokémon! (Cabinet next to TV)

Were In!

2011-09-16T10:02:00.001-05:00

We finally closed on our house on Wednesday! I guess it is better late than never. We spend the days since our initial closing date (July 15th) looking for other options, but was unable to find anything better. We did not waste any time getting to work. Yesterday we loaded up the two minivans with boxes and headed down to our new/old house. We unloaded the vans into the garage and began work on getting the house livable.

The house smelled old and dirty so we wanted to pull out all the carpet and old tile so we could start anew. We also are planning to move a few walls around at some point and having no flooring makes this a bit easier. Emma started on the carpets and Levi and I headed off to Lowes to pick up some supplies. New toilets were a must. The old ones did not flush very well and one of them constantly leaked. We also wanted the low water usage ones and the old ones use about 5 gallons each flush. 2 Toilets… check. We also wanted to build a garbage box so we would have a place to toss everything we were pulling out and thus picked up some .5” OSB as well. We are planning to pull out all the cabinets in the kitchen and bathrooms and need some temporary replacements. We are planning on just framing up some cabinets out of 2x4s and plywood so we picked up the necessary supplies and are gleaming craigslist for replacement sinks and fixtures. It only took about 2 hours to get all our supplies when I get a call from Emma. It is after 2 now and she has not had anything to eat so we rush over to Subway and fuel up on our way back to the house. After a brief lunch break we get back to work. We were able to get all the floors up and knocked out the upper cabinets in the kitchen before we cleaned up a bit and called it a night. There was tile in both the back bedrooms, the kitchen, and Family room. I know what you are thinking, why would they pull up perfectly good tile? Well, it was not normal tile. It was the stuff you used to see in old school buildings. It appeared to be some soft of paper/clay tile and was glued down with some sort of black glue. We suspect that it may be asbestos so we wore face masks and are going to wet it down and buff off the black glue with a floor sander. Which is what we are planning for today. I also tried to install a new digital thermostat, but was unable to decipher the Lenox wiring codes so I could hook it up. I called Robert Knox, a friend of ours from church, who works on AC systems and ask him what I could do. When he heard that it was a Lenox system, he said that I should just leave the old one on until I am ready to replace the entire system. Lenox is pretty cryptic with their equipment and do not use conventional wiring schemes. I reinstalled the old one and made sure it worked still and left the house to cool down over night.

Levi helped us all day and he was a real champ! He did a great job with the tile scraper and helped us fill the trash can and cleanup multiple times. He tried to help me lift the wood at Lowes to put it on the cart, but was a little under powered for the task. He was able to help he lift the first 3/4” piece of OSB on before one of the Lowes employees stepped in to help. A few times Levi got a little frustrated, but was able to recover quickly and happily continue work. It wasn’t until the very end where he finally ran out of gas. I hope that he does as well tomorrow. He is a great help.

Today we are planning to remove the rest of the cabinets and update the plumbing a bit. The shutoff valve at the street is the old style instead of the 90 degree ball valve so I may try to have the city come out and change that for us so we can actually turn off the water to the house. I will probably swing by the Re-Store and see if they have some sinks and fixtures that will work for us. We are also going to rent a floor sander from Home Depot and clean the floors today. Emma has also been emailing Trevor her older brother and we are hoping to have him down in about 5 weeks to help us extend the back of the house 10 feet. We have a few things we need to do before he gets here like make sure we have the plans and permits needed to do the extension. We don’t foresee any issues since we are not in the Kyle city limits, but need to have all the documentation in place just to make sure.

Well, I had better get back to it, I need to load up my van full of boxes and go and get my trailer from Tom Stevens house. Emma should be back from getting Zoey and Taya’s physicals and then we can load up her van as well. We plan on leaving the majority of the furniture in the current house until we can get it sold so that it shows better.

I am a bit sore from yesterday, but no better way to make that go away then to do more of the same thing that made you sore in the first place.

House Update

2011-08-08T09:40:00.001-05:00

So we just heard back from the Credit Union where we are trying to get our loan at and they told us that they could not loan us the money. Apparently since no homes have sold in the area recently, they do not have any “comps” to estimate the mortgage insurance against. Comps are comparable estimates based on the value of the homes sold around the area. We ask why they could not use the values that the appraiser that they hired came up with. So they went to the appraiser and ask how he came up with the values that he had and he updated his original estimate to $20K less than he appraised the home for the first time. So the back came back and says, “I am sorry, we cant loan you the money for this home because we can only lend you 80% of the value of the home.” So we are back to where we were before where we would have to get the owner to drop the price again. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to have them drop it $20,000. We initially chose the credit union because they were less likely to sell our loan, but the hassle is not worth it. We are now trying to get our loan through the conventional means which means another 3 weeks before we can close on the house. If these guys come back with the value of the home at $160K then either the home owner will have to drop the price or we are done trying to buy it. It is a little depressing. Anyway, in all my excitement of fixing up this new house I drew up some more plans of what we want to do if we ever move into the place. Below is the before and after images. I will update again when I get more information.

Delays

2011-07-20T10:48:00.001-05:00

Well, our pre-designated close date on the new place has come and gone. We were supposed to close on the 15th and come to find out that there was something wrong on the application. We just got the appraisal back from the bank and they said that the house is not worth as much as the owner wants to sell it for. He wants to sell it to us for $190K and it is only worth $183K so they will not loan us the money unless he drops the price. Hopefully he will concede and drop the price for us since we have pushed it this far. Apparently when the whole process started, he assumed that the house was his after his mother died and did not do any paperwork to get it transferred into his name. So he had to go through the process of finding a will or whatever the process is in order to transfer it to him before he can sell it. Then the tax records and the title company have the land plotted differently so they had to hammer out the details. The tax record had it listed as one plot with 5.7 acres and 2 dwellings on it. The title company had it listed as 1 dwelling with 3.7 acres. I would not have minded them giving us the whole mess for the same price, but I understand. We ultimately want to purchase his 2 acres and the other dwelling from him to put storage units on, but we do not have the money to do that now.

I am getting a little anxious to get things rolling. I have a garage full of boxes that I would like to start moving down there and we just had our tile and carpet cleaned. Emma has been doing a lot of work painting the house and fixing it up so we can get it on the market. I think we are close, we just need to get all this stuff out of here. I think we are taking the chickens to a friends house while we make the transition. Not sure what we are going to do with our compost piles and garden. Emma was talking about just taking the sides off the garden and spreading the dirt out over the lawn. I was thinking of just transferring the compost to the flower beds and covering it up with mulch. We may just leave them and let the new home owners deal with it though. Since we are doing owner financing, we have a few more options.

We are having an architect come down and look over the place today. We want to add another room, a bathroom, an extension on the back of the house, remove the fireplace, redo the kitchen, build a room, bathroom, and pantry in the garage, and put a deck on the back of the house. Emma and I cannot agree on how to do this so she is asking the architect to do it for us. I mean come on, how much more creative can he be than we are? I guess he will know the structural limitations as well so will save us some headaches during the building process. The biggest stumbling block we have to face is were to begin. I know we want to rip out the carpets and what is left of the vinyl tile, but we do not want to put new floors in until we move some walls and plumbing around. If we tear out the back wall of the house, the things will get a bit drafty, but it would allow us to home the wall where we want them. We would also want to do that when the weather is cooler. Hopefully the magic architect will have some ideas for us. Will update when I hear back from him.

Weekend Fun

2011-06-01T07:54:00.001-05:00

Well, it is official, we are preparing to move to Kyle. We had been looking for a place to move to since about February and none of the locations met our criteria until we came across this little place in Kyle. The home owner was selling 2 plots, one with a 3x2 house and the other with a mobile home on it for $300. We did not like the price, but we did like the land. The plots combined mad about 6 acres. We made him several offers, but he was set on the $300K for both places, the tax assessor thinks the 2 plots combines with structures is only work $200K. Since we were not in a hurry, we ask his relator to notify us when he decided to drop the price. It took nearly 4 months for him to accept our offer for the one house with the 3 bed 2 bath and 4 acres for $190K. We would still like both plots, but figured the mobile home is not going anywhere and we should be able to pic it up in a few years. The house needs a lot of work and we will probably end up putting in almost $50K in fixing it up. We want to replace the floors and windows, turn the garage into a master bedroom and bath. Combine the two bathrooms that are there into one big one and add another bath just for fun. We are also redoing the kitchen and adding a sun room across the back of the house.

We are planning on closing in July. We are trying to get our current house ready for the market. We were debating on renting the place until the market turns around, but after talking to a few people, we think it may be better to sell it using owner financing. Since there are so many people in the area now that lost their shirt in CA due to the housing crash, there are a lot of people that have a lot of money and cannot get loans from the bank. A friend of mine just sold a house doing owner financing and got $30K down and charging the new owner 2% more than the bank is for his mortgage. The nice thing is that the guy owns the place and so you don’t have to deal with the renter headache.

I had to take my shed down that I just rebuild earlier this summer thanks to the HOA. I have had a shed there for over 8 years and 4 months after I rebuild it, the HOA decides that it is time to start hassling me about it. I think they are still mad because they told me I could not have chickens and I quoted our HOA hand book that said we could. We are sick of Home Owners Associations and people telling us how to raise our kids and what to do which is why we are moving. I will not miss the communist mentality. We are slowly packing the house and moving things out to the garage. I am selling my golf cart so we have more room in the garage and I am trying to get the yard looking good. We will have to have all the carpets cleaned and do some scrubbing on the tile grout lines. I wish we could just move everything out and have a cleaning service some in and scourer the place.

Levi has cub camp this weekend and I am in charge of the water bottle rocket station. I built a few more launchers for the scouts. I was going to do the same design as before, but the materials to make 2 was over $100 and I wanted to keep this as inexpensive as possible. I did some research online and found a design the I think would be great for the kids and it is also cheap and more compact.


New Cheaper Design	Old Design that Costs too much

Here is a great site on the different water rockets launcher designs. Air Command – Water Rockets

Too Much to Buy but Easy to Make

2011-05-03T17:15:00.001-05:00

Adventures at Grandpa's House

2011-04-11T22:34:00.001-05:00

Another introduction to role playing using the "Shadow" RPG (role playing game) rules. The idea behind it is that each kid has a shadow that tries to get them in trouble. They have 2 dice and each time they want to do something, they have to tell everyone what they want to happen and what their shadow wants to happen. They each start out drawing a picture of themselves and their shadow. Levi drew a shadow that had horns and a hammer for one hand. Olivia drew a shadow with scary eyes. Julia said she messed up drawing her shadow and just went with a messed up shadow. Taya spent the entire game working on her picture and her shadow. I didn't get a chance to see her shadow, but I bet it was very pretty. Each are given 2 dice, one representing themselves and one their shadow, and 3 tokens. The tokens can be used to give to another player to try again in case they fail their shadow roll. When the player rolls their dice, the higher of the two wins unless there is a tie, in which case the good wins over the shadow.

We start out with the kids visiting grandpa Ivin's house and are awaken from sleep by a noise downstairs. They all wake up and decide to go down to investigate. The sound appeared to be coming from the kitchen. So Olivia lead the way to the kitchen and noticed the sound coming from the pantry. Levi said he wanted to open the door and his shadow wanted him to slip on the wet floor that had just been mopped. He rolls and the shadow wins. Levi slips and falls on the floor bumping his head on the tile floor. He is dazed, but ok. Olivia wants him to try again so she gives him a token. He rolls and the shadow wins again. This time Levi goes down and is out for the count. Julia said she wanted to dance around with her arms in the air and her shadow wanted her to slip and fall like Levi. So she danced prettily around Levi's crumpled mass. Taya was able to open the door and they find a Super Hero tied up and gagged in the pantry. His mouth it gagged and he is trying to say something. They pull the gag from his mouth and he tells them how grandpa captured him and that grandpa is really a super villain! Taya goes in to try and search him for something that may corroborate his story and her shadow wants her to have him head butt her. She rolls and her shadow wins. While Taya is trying to search him, the hero tries to look down to see what she is doing and inadvertently head-butts Taya knocking her out. Olivia goes up stairs to try and wake up grandpa to see if he knows what is going on, but grandpa is apparently a heavy sleeper. She jumps on his bed and yells in his ear but is unable to wake him so heads back downstairs and informs the others. Levi groggily makes it to his feet and sees the super hero. He really wants to untie him and his shadow wants him to trip and get knocked out again. So Levi walks up to the man and trips on the mop, knocks the flour off the shelf spilling it everywhere and bangs his head on the shelf, knocking him out again. Julia unties the "hero" and the man exclaims his gratitude for releasing him and says that he is really a super villain that grandpa had captured and when grandpa wasn't watching he had put sleeping powder in his tea.

He tells the kids that he will not hurt them because they rescued him, but he cannot let them go to the authorities either. The kids make a break for it and are able to get out of the house without getting caught. They decide to head to the police station which is 30 miles away and get lost about a mile from their house in the woods. There are a lot of trees in Washington. They spend some time trying to figure out what to do. July starts carving on a tree. Olivia wants to kill some small animals and eat them. Taya wanted to walk around aimlessly in an attempt to find someone to help. Levi wanted to climb a tree to see if he could determine their position from a higher vantage. They ended up liking Levi's idea and Levi rolled to see if he could climb the tree or fall out like his shadow wanted. He successfully climbed the tree and determined that they were in luck. Not using the road and getting lost in the woods put them half way between the police station and grandpa's house. They made their way to the police station and talked the officer into going back to grandpa's house with them to apprehend the bad guy.

The police man drove them back to grandpa's house and when they got out, they all started pointing to what appeared to be a statue in a running position on the front lawn. The policeman thought they were crazy and went into the house to see if grandpa was ok. The villains super power was super slow! When the villain noticed that they were all standing over by the police car, he went back to normal speed and walked over to the car. "HA, I knew you would not be able to resist my super powers!" Julia decided to confront him and made a shadow roll. If she won, she would do a sweep kick to his legs knocking him down, a punch to the face, and a kick to the side. If the shadow won, then he would block her attempt and capture her. She won the toss and beat the guy up. The villain said, "What did you go and do that for? I didn't do anything to you!". Taya's turn to roll she wanted to get some hand cuffs from the police car and cuff the bad guy, her shadow wanted the bad guy to get away. So he jumped up and while sobbing, ran into the forest. When the kids got back into the house, grandpa was sitting in the kitchen talking to the police officer and was saying how grateful he was the they had made it home ok. The kids were a little shocked to see grandpa awake. They all tried to tell grandpa what had happened and had him go over to the pantry and see the mess. There was no mess and no bad guy. Confused, Grandpa shuffled the kids to bed and said that they would talk about it in the morning. The kids talked about what had happened and slowly drifted off to sleep.

In the morning, Olivia jumped up and ran to grandpa's room to see if he was ok and he was gone! His bed was made nicely and she could smell breakfast cooking. They all went down to the kitchen where grandpa had breakfast for them. Grandpa ask how they had slept and ask about what had happened last night. They relayed their story to grandpa and he began to laugh. "You must be talking about old Mr. McGregger", he chuckled. "This is not the first time that something like this has happened. Since we do not get a lot of visitors up this way, we leave our doors unlocked. Old Mr. McGregger is a funny old man that has a wild imagination and a bad habit of sleep walking. One morning I woke to find him huddled under the rug in the family room. I usually just feed him breakfast and send him on his way. In fact, he is joining us for breakfast this morning." The kids look at one another in shock! The bad guy is coming here! No sooner had grandpa spoken then there was a knock at the door. Mr. McGregger comes walking in through the front door. "Hello kids," he exclaims in a creaky old man voice. "These your grandkids?" he asks grandpa. "They look awful familiar. You sure I haven't met them before?" He pulls up a chair at the table and as he scratches his head, a puff of what appears to be flour plumes out from his touch. Grandpa sets down a bowl of oatmeal in from of the man and what seems like an eternity, he slowly picks up his spoon, dips it into the oatmeal, and makes its way to his mouth. Must have taken 5 minutes to take one bite. Grandpa winks and they all break out in laughter.

I am trying to get the kids to come up with their own storied and I had them choose the direction the story would go several times. I would like to see them using the ideas in their own writing and while playing with each other. I used to think pen and paper RPGs were only done by DnD cultists. It got a pretty bad wrap when I was a kid, but I have come to realize the potential of allowing kids to express themselves and their creativity in a non-confrontational manner. I was surprised at the original ideas that the kids came up with. They wanted to help each other out and we had to make sure that everyone listened and did not "help" the younger kids when it came to their turn to decide what would happen next. The good and bad ideas in this type of game helps the kids to see the separation between good and bad choices that they make and the consequences. Prior to this, we did do a RPG type game with Goldie Locks and the Three Bears. It has been awhile and I am going to try and play more often until I see them making up their own scenarios in normal play. I am trying to encourage Taya to make up a story and share it as an RPD with the family. I think she is as confused as I am at this point when it comes to writing a Role Playing Games. So I think we will try to stick with stories we know and just alter them to allow the listener to make their own choices, until we can get the hang of it.

Brent Logo Finalists

2010-11-13T09:11:00.001-06:00

Emma has been helping out now and it looks like we may have some winners. I played around with the color and font. Brent decided he likes the football design so we are going with that. Emma spiced it up and we are waiting to hear back from Brent on the final OK. Then we will mock up some letterhead, cards, signs, etc.

Pedernales Falls State Park

2010-11-13T08:55:00.001-06:00

Time for some family time away from the rigors of modern life. I came home from work on Wed and told everyone we were going camping. Beautiful weather and kids are homeschooled. This is partly why we decided to pull them out of school. They are in school everyday from 7 to 4 whith enough homework piled on them that they have just enough time to get it done before dinner and bed. No free time and they don’t want to go outside during their summer vacation due to the heat. The winters in TX are awesome and we want to take full advantage.

We were in a rush to get to the park before the office closed, that had to barrow some fire from the neighboring campers. No matches. We discovered a few think we needed to bring on our next emergency camping trip and are going to make a kit to bring with us. I would really like to get a popup camper so we can do this more often. Since I am already on the HOA watch list, I should probably wait until we move.

Trunk or Treat/Chili Cook-off

2010-10-27T10:21:00.000-05:00

Every year the various wards do what's called a Trunk or Treat where everyone parks their cars in the church parking lot and the kids go from car to car trick-or-treating. We go to all the wards trunk or treat parties in the stake then take all the kids candy that gets taken away because the are not following the candy rules and hand it out on Halloween. Taya did everyone's face art. Forgot to take pictures of the chili. Just imagine several crock pots of beans and meat in various brown colors. Now imagine tasting them and some are REALLY spicy, some yummy, and some yucky. Now imagine the kids not eating any and only going for the deserts. That’s exactly how it way. Were you there too?

Dr Brent Powell Logo Design

2010-10-15T22:12:00.001-05:00

The time has come. Brent ask me to help him out with his Logo design and so we are currently brain storming some ideas. Here is the process so far: (Let me know what you think and which one is your favorite so far)

1. Hate it

2. Better, but still hate it.

3. Dont want to confuse the customer about name.

4. Um, cant read it very well and want to get away from stereo typical dentist signs. (No teeth or tooth brushes)

5. Um… No

6. This one is nice, maybe with some color.

7. Emma says child is hanging itself. (Not somthing we want to convey to the customer.)

8. Better, Waiting for feedback from Brent.

9. More simplistic

10. Maybe too simple…

11. Design idea from Emma, waiting to hear back from Brent.

12. Proabaly not going to go with “P in the box” Business does not cover Urology yet.

13. First Design with the Happy face as the “O”

14. I like this one (Troy)

15. And this one is much happier (Troy)

16. A compilation of a few of the other ideas.

I find out if my car is totaled

2010-09-29T13:30:00.001-05:00

I got a call from Progressive this morning and they think my car is not worth the effort to repair. My options:
1. They give me $1600 and let me keep the car
2. They give me $2600 and they keep it
I went over to their shop to take a look. (see below)

It doesnt look all the bad to me. I figure I can pick up a new gate for about $600 and a new bumper for not too much more than that. the latch should be good as new after a few whacks with a hammer. So I am going to try and pick it up today and repair it this weekend if I have time. I may try to give may dad a call to see if he needs another vacation down to TX for some good clean fun. :)

Met some new people today

2010-09-23T12:42:00.003-05:00

I met some new people today. I was on my way to Freescale (customer site) and after exiting E Ben White/71 to N 183, I was rear ended. It was a 3 car accident and the one in the back was at fault. The lady in the middle was in a Jeep Grand Cherokee and her car did not appear to have any damage. The little Chevy S10 that hit her and drove her into me was a bit messed up on the front and my back gate on my Plymouth was mashed in.

I took it to his insurance adjuster to see what the damage was. They game me 3 options:

1. Take $1400 and fix it myself

2. Take it to another garage and have them bill the insurance company

3. Let them fix it and the give me a rental car in the mean time

I took the third option and they are going to get back to me and let me know if there is any additional cost.

They called back later that night and let me know that it was $1000 off the total-the-vehicle estimate and that they would get back to me if they were going to total it or fix it.

Guess we will wait and see.

Chicken Tractor

2010-07-18T21:09:00.003-05:00

So the other day Emma is talking about wanting to get some chickens and build a chicken tractor? So my first thought is... chickens driving tractors? She showed me it was just a mobile chicken coop that you can move around your yard as the chickens eat all the grass and bugs in that spot. Sounded pretty straight forward. So I mocked up some plans in Sketchup and away we go.

So here is part of the build process and the final product. I had some left over roofing from when I replaced my shed roof the other day so it looks pretty rough. I figured the chickens wouldnt care. It took about 2 days to build and about 200 gallons of sweat. I worked out on the driveway and the temp was around 98F both days. The first day I stopped because I under estimated the heat and how much water I needed to be drinking. I ended the day with a splitting headache and completely exhausted. The second day I drank about 5 gallons of water and did much better. The heat really saps you strength and if I were to do it again, I would do it in the family room when it is nice and cool. :) I really need to get a better cooling solution for the garage.

Some pics with the kids and their new chickens.

Night Stand Prototype

2010-07-06T23:29:00.001-05:00

Finally finished the night stand/dresser prototype. Glad I made my mistakes on this one. I learned a lot and am much more confident about starting the ones for the master bedroom. Since the kids beds are so close together, the prototype will be perfect for their room and I only had to make one!

Night Stand Sketchup Model

Golf Cart Running

2009-10-05T16:41:00.001-05:00

Last week my parents came down to visit and I spend a good part of the time working on my golf cart with my dad. We finished the wiring and thanks to Galen, we picked up some good looking skins off of craigslist. We had a little trouble at first getting it moving. It went down the hill just fine, but was underpowered going back up the hill. Fortunately I brought my dad for the test drive and he worked just as well as the motor to get us back to the shop. Discovered that a few of the batteries were a bit under powered and had to use a different charger to get them up to where the cart charger would charge them. Apparently if the voltage is too low on the batteries, the charger will not charge them back up. Anyway, here are a few shots of the cart. Still need to do some work on the interior. The last guy tried to paint the hood camo so I tried to scrape off as much as I could and sand blast it a little. I figure that paint will fix the rest. The floor mat needs a little work as well. Haven’t decided if a rear seat kit would be worth the expense. I don't think it will make a difference on the price when I sell it. I also need to recover the seats so they match.

Dungeons and Dragons Weekend - Postmortem

2009-09-11T16:28:00.000-05:00

Interestingly enough, it was awesome.
The Almighty DM has a real treat prepared for us when we arrived. He and some friends had conspired to create a intro to the game that was top notch. The actors painted a picture of intrigue, deception, and betrayal as the game participants contemplated how they came to be in their current predicament. One of the players (Clint) did the sound and editing, creating a seamless and engaging atmosphere. After the rest of the party staggered out the door in the wee hours of the morning, we hit the sack knowing that we have only a few moments of shut-eye before the gaming began.

We started out the day at 8am and finished around 2am. Things started off well on a ship somewhere in the depths that surround Ravenloft. Unfortunately for our DM we made quick work of what should have taken most of the day to process. Instead of sticking together and searching the ship, as was intended, we split up to cover more ground and probably ended up missing the true nature of why we were on the ship in the first place. right from the start most of the players seemed to be very withdrawn and secretive. They have even gone as far as to hide critical information that they gathered on the ship that could prove vital later in the game.

Once we got off the ship, we went our ways to get back home where we found a note instructing us to be at a certain spot at a certain time for further instructions. We met up the the town mayor, picked up a guide, shot up some locals, and found ourselves at the mansion of one of the oldest residents of Ravenloft. On our way to his house, we came across a mansion that appeared deserted with a bleeding statue who vomits flies. He gave us a mission to find several pieces of an artifact and bring them back to him. We set out and soon discovered that many of us were undergoing some changes, both physical and mental.

We stopped in a town and picked up supplies. I bought a horse that was way over priced at $2000 gold and used it for about a day. As we set out to find the first piece of the artifact, we hooked up with a witch that helped direct us to where we needed to go. Strange old coot who sold jewelry. As we headed to the first artifact, we encountered a crumbling tower with a zombie and a willow-wisp in the basement. The zombie was hanging in the middle of the room and pretty quiet until you tried to steal his treasure which was under a stone in the floor. When we pulled the treasure box out, he started to freak out and tried to grab the knife in his belt. I mean come on, since when did zombies start carrying knifes? So I took it away from him and he was pretty harmless after that. We took the treasure upstairs and was fixing to open it when a militia shows up and wants us to surrender. How did they find us? What would they want with us? To the first question, we were betrayed not really sure by who or why, this is where it probably help to have played they type of games before. To the second question, I think they want our autographs. I mean how many people to you know that are actively evolving into some other beings? We said no, so they started trying to bring the place down. Clint and I headed downstairs to get the zombie and send him out as a distraction. I grabbed the feet since I knew that zombies like brains and I did not what it anywhere near mine. Clint on the other hand... So we bring him upstairs and sick him on Adam. Instead of shoving him out the door, Adam goes a couple of rounds with the zombie. I open the treasure box and someone downstairs wants us to search the zombie for the keys. Clint does and I take the keys downstairs where someone has found a trap door that was under the treasure box. Fortunately, I only have 13 keys to try and the trap door is covered in 3 feet of water. It takes me several tries to get the right one and we all start piling through the door. Err, except that is for Adam. Clint graciously booby-traps the stairs and tells everyone upstairs that it is a trap. Probably to that they will know not to come down this way. Too bad Adam is still up there. Somehow we get the treasure box half way down the stairs and Bonnie dumps out her backpack to put all the gold in it. She gives the bag to me and jumps through the trap door. The rest of us follow suit except for Adam who is determined to finish off the zombie and the rest of the militia. Clint covers our tracks be setting off a smoke grenade before going down into the hole. So now the stairs are booby-trapped and the room with the only escape is filled with smoke. Good luck Adam. See you in another life :) The tunnel is pretty cramped. Picture a 3 foot x 2 foot drainage shaft with 6 people swimming down it. This is where we end our game session. I cant wait for the next one!

Fortunately, I was invited back and got the thumbs up from the spouse! We are going to hold it quarterly in an attempt to make it more convenient for all the players to make it.

Darrien Lockwood

Dungeons and Dragons Weekend

2009-09-02T23:09:00.001-05:00

I have a friend that Emma introduced me to through one of Olivia’s friends at school. His name is Chris Newton and we seem to have a lot in common. Emma said when she first met him that she was shocked to find out that he was into everything that I was and then some. Of course I do not make my own home brewed beer or dedicate me free time to preparing for the Renaissance Festival. After meeting, he got me started in all sorts of hair brained schemes and of course I am more than happy to try anything. :)

The fist one was picking up free broken big screen rear projection TVs and fixing them up. We thought we would be able to sell them for some extra cache… that is until we discovered that you could get a new 54” rear projection TV for around $200 since the technology has made them worthless. So I did get a new (new to me) 54” Mitsubishi TV out of my efforts. They are a little difficult to just drop off in a dumpster or have the garbage man pick them up on his way through the neighborhood so they are not exactly free. I have to pay about $35 for the land fill to take the ones I don't want.

The next scheme has a bit more merit. We are building CNC router mills from free printer parts we get off of craigslist. Again, not completely free since it costs money to dispose of the stuff you don't want, but we are hoping to work out the bugs and make an affordable desktop version that will help up to recoup our expenses. The project is temporarily on hold until I can get the golf carts out of my garage and find my tables saw and work bench again. We would like to get the CNC mills going before the next renaissance fair so that we can sell some the the stuff we make. Chris has a great idea for making one that we can engrave mug blanks with custom designs. I will post some images on our projects later.

For Tessa and Tasha’s birthday party, one of Chris’s friends came up from San Antonio. Johnny was talking about getting together to do a dungeons and dragons gaming weekend. Having heard about D&D and never experiencing it, I began to ask questions and soon found myself invited to participate. I had to do a lot of reading on how the create characters and what the basic rules were. I also had to put together a character and a background for that character. I came up with a character named Darrien Lockwood who was a blacksmith that found himself in a strange land after falling overboard when the ship encountered a strange mist. I ended up in a town called Port a-Lucine in Ravenloft. It took me about a month to come up with that story and I hope it is enough to go on. I tried to give my character traits that I might have so that it will be easier to portray my character in game. I am originally from England around the 1500s. I am not sure how people talked back then so I may do my worst Scottish accent and try to pass that off. I guess we get extra points for playing with an accent. When all else fails, go Scottish.

I don't know how excited Emma is about the whole thing. She probably figures that it will pass. I figure it would be fun to see what an actual D&D game is really like. More of a social experiment you could say.

Golf Cart Restoration

2009-09-02T22:46:00.005-05:00

The other day I picked up a golf cart off of craigslist for $300. I didn't have my trailer with me and it happed to fit nicely in the back of my minivan with the seats out. I brought it home and had a hard time pushing it into the garage apparently the previous owner tried to put a lift kit on it without putting a wider front axel on it and so the lift kit was rubbing on the tires. This is probably why the input shaft and coupler got stripped. I pulled out the batteries and looked at the battery box. It was in pretty rough shape and I didn’t have a welder. I figured I would just build me a new one since it didn’t look that difficult. Emma said that Jay Draper up the street had a welder and so I walked up there and got to talking to him. He said I could barrow his welder and that he have a friend named Van Watson down in Kyle that restored golf carts for a living. From what I read online, if you had a bad coupler, you had to replace the whole motor. I figured that I could just weld a nut onto the bad coupler and pop the if off the motor since they did sell coupler online, I figured there must be some what to get it off of there. Sure enough we were able to separate it from the motor. I called Van and got a new input shaft and coupler. My input shaft has the 21 teeth on it.

I also noticed that the frame was in pretty rough shape and so I talked to Van about getting one from his scrap pile. He sold me the input shaft, the coupler, and the frame for $250. Great deal! The input shaft is $100 online the coupler is $30 and I couldn’t even find a new frame. I would have had to build it form scratch.

New $300 Golf Cart

Rusted out frame

Battery Box has seen better days, but there is enough of it to use as a pattern for the new one.

Front lift kit. Guy forgot the wider axel and stripped the input shaft from the wheels rubbing.Good batteries are worth about $100 a piece and there are 6 of them. That alone was worth picking up the car

Coupler that I welded a nut to so I could get it off the motor and Stripped Input Shaft

Left Over Parts form both Cars

I decided to use the rear springs off the fist cart since they were in better shape (not flat)Rear axel out of the new cart all painted… sure hope the the differential accepts a 21 tooth input shaft.

Just finished up welding the new battery box
Applied the rust converter and all the spots where rust was is now black. So that means everything

Put the rear back together and now it is the front ends turn.
Could not get the rack and pinion off for the life of me so I am painting around it.

Finished with the rust-x now to the final coat of black high gloss

Nearly forgot the seat rack.

Shot of the front end off for painting

I stopped by Van’s today to pick up a new F&R Switch, but his mechanic used the last new one he had on another car a week ago and didn’t tell him they were out. Have to wait a week to pick it up so I can start installing the electronics. I figure I will put the front end back on tomorrow and finish putting the battery box in place. I lined the batter box with truck bed liner to try and keep it from corroding from battery acid. Wish these were sealed gel batteries. I guess those are a bit more expensive. Also wish I had taken some more shots of the cars before I took them all apart. I remember where everything goes, but it would have been nice to see what they looked like before I started. I will probably finish stripping the car with the bad frame and and toss it. It is more rust than frame at this point. Not sure where I will be putting all the extra parts. Maybe I can see if Van wants them in trade for another project car when this one is done. :)

SpringBreak 2009

2009-03-22T17:46:00.012-05:00

Spring break was fun this year. We pitched a couple of tents out in the back yard and camped out for 2 days. We recently acquired a fire pit and cooked all of our food on it. You see, campsites in Austin are extremely hard to come by if you dont make reservations a year in advance for spring break. I checked all the state and local parks in the area and everything was full. Probably just as well, the kids had lots of fun and we had the comforts of home close by. The rules were:
No playing in the house
Use the house if you need to go potty
Cook everything outside
No electronics
No eating the local wildlife
I spent both nights in the tents with the kids and Emma joined us on night 2.
Day 3, Emma did a home schooling experiment and you would have to ask her what the verdict was.
Day 4, we bought the parts for our water bottle launcher.
Instructables - Water or Soda Bottle Launcher

Water Bottle Rocket Launcher

Power

DetonatorMechanism

We also hiked to a nearby part about a 2 mile hike.

Zilker Kite Festival 2009

2009-03-02T13:12:00.006-06:00

Zilker Park Kite Festival Austin TX is a really big deal.

It is a good excuse to show off your bling.
If you take the CPR course, you get a free kite!!

The Yellow Cab of Austin is one of the sponsors.

Big Kites and weird people who like their picture taken. I charged him 5 buck for a copy.As you can see, the squid is chasing the purple monster and is about to eat him.We also have big caterpillars here in TX.Olivia is a "Super Star!""This kite business is a piece of cake.""Lets see... I don't think I need this stick thing..."A Plethora of Kites "The Kite Festival is so FUN!!"Biggest Kite Contest "Man I wish I could run out there during the demonstration."Seconds before the eminent collision...
I can hardly believe my eyes! They are not fighting! :)An Old Car Picture for Grampa

As you can see, I did not get any pictures of my kids "flying" thier kites. It was a strange wind day. It would blow for about 2 mintues and then die for about 5. It did this all day so I spent most of the time trying to get the kids kites up in the air and by the time I had 1 or 2 of them up, the wind would die and we spent the next 5 mintues finding and winding up the kites. Just when you get them all ready to go again, the wind picks up and you have enough time to let out the string and hand it to a kid before you start over again. Lots of fun. Seems to do this every year. The kids enjoy it though.

Sketchup Is the Best.

2008-12-18T10:08:00.013-06:00

Just thought I would post my favorite FREE cad program. Sketchup is the best CAD program I have used. It is open source, and a lot of people write Ruby scripts that expand the abilities of the program beyond that of any other 3d cad program. This is the tutorial that started it all for me: (Tutorial by Gary Katz)

As a result of viewing this video I created this computer desk in about an hour:
I now do all of my projects in Sketchup before I realize them. Here is where I post all my ongoing projects:
ThePalsRus Sketchup Projects
I only wish that I could manufacture the project in as little time as it takes me to create it in Sketchup. I understand they are making some headway in 3d printers, but I think there is still a little work to do when it comes to printing good hardwoods. :-)

Levi's New Treehouse Bed

2008-12-08T08:21:00.000-06:00

I am debating on whether to put a small roof on it or not. Problem is that if he stands up on his bed, the ceiling fan will decapitate him. And I just installed a metal fan with razor sharp blades. If I raise the fan more than 6 inches, it will hit the sloped ceiling in his room. He is really excited about the new bed.

This is the ultimate design for his room. The benches are replacing his dresser. Fake campfire just in case you were concerned. :)

BSIT Finished!!!

2008-11-25T09:08:00.001-06:00

Wooo Hooo!!! I have finally finished my BSIT degree program with University of Phoenix. Now I do not have any excuses left for not finishing up that "Honey-Do" list. First item on the docket is finish Levi's tree house bed. So I am off...

Honey Do List:
Clean Garage
Levi's Tree house Bed
Clean office
Install coat hooks in front closet
Office furniture
Deck Part 2
Install 2nd floor on house and a 3 car garage or detached workshop

Stoned Carving ;-)

2008-09-09T16:27:00.003-05:00

Some Stone Carving that I have been working on.

Kids Playdate Cards

2008-09-02T08:44:00.005-05:00

I thought it would be a good idea to make some play-date cards for the kids to give to their friends at school. My kids are kind of loners like their parents so need any advantage they can get. I had a good time "helping" them make these cards. Maybe next year, I will let them come up with the designs.

Ryan and Becca Visit - Make a Square

2008-05-07T08:45:00.000-05:00

This has been a fun week. Becca and her Husband Ryan came down from WA for a visit. We stayed up late catching up on Sunday. I am just now catching back up on my sleep. It is no fun getting old. On Monday we woke up early and walked the kids to school worked out at the Rec Center for an hour. Ryan is abeast and really pushed me during the workout. I wish he lived closer by, he would have a good work out partner. Of course that would mean admitting that my current work out partner is not adequate. I should probably just stick with Emma and not complain. :) After cleaning up, went to the Zilker Botanical Gardens and took some pictures. Then we came home and picked up Levi and Taya from school and went to the Salt Lick to stuff ourselves silly. I sure like it when people come down and visit, it gives me an excuse to put on a few pounds. The kids are still a little rowdy for a restaurant, but they did keep their voices down for the most part so they are getting better. Taya and Levi did not get to spend much time with us, but I think Olivia really enjoyed hanging out with Rebecca. The ask when they would be back to visit us again when they drove off. At our current intervals, I figured about 12 years. Not sure the kids will remember the prior visit if 12 year is the case. It is always fun to connect with friends again. We sure enjoyed the visit, it was good to catch up with Becca and meet Ryan her husband. Ryan is a great guy and I am glad he and Rebecca hooked up. We had a lot of fun and wished we could find friends like them a little closes to home. Seems like whenever you find some people that you really get along with, they up and move. I like how Ryan put it, "Finding friends you both like and that live close by is harder than aligning the planets."

2008-04-28T11:17:00.001-05:00

Thought I would get into the spirit of things and see if I could figure out how to write about what is happening in my life and make it interesting. Let’s try and organize this in a way that will keep me from rambling on.

Family:

Taya is doing well in school and has been working on a paper about Jaguar Undies. I think is some sort of new sport for controlling the local population. From what I gathered, you have to chase down a Jaguar and hurry and put some underwear on them before they tear you to pieces. Her other paper is on the history of Pianos. Kind of a broad topic and I hope that she will be able to narrow it down enough to finish it on time. It is also Taya’s Birthday tomorrow. She is planning on having a birthday party on Saturday to celebrate. She wanted to go to Sea World with the whole family, but I would rather spend $150 on a party rather than on an amusement park where you have to wait in line all day and only get to ride 5 rides.

We are getting less hate-mail for the school regarding Levi’s behavior. Either they have come to terms with it or he is behaving better. I am not sure which at this point. When I walk him to school he seems to know every teach and student. I guess that is one way to become popular, just be the bully of the school. He seems to be a chick magnet though. All the cute little girls know him and say “Hi” to him whenever they see him.

Olivia is still good at entertaining herself. She still picks on her little sister, but Julia is getting better about fighting back with the wooden blocks and anything else that is hard. Olivia is attending a home-school preschool program that Emma and a few of the other LDS women around the neighborhood have initiated. I think Olivia really likes the idea that she is “going to school”. Yesterday, Olivia helped me in the garage to build some wooden mounting plates for the new light fixtures I am putting in the bathroom.

Julia is getting smarter all the time. She really likes to talk on the phone, even if it is with the “the number you have dialed is not longer in service” lady. She is becoming more and more independent every day. Today while Emma was working on the computer, she tugged on Emma’s arm and kept saying, “Come on mom, come on…” When Emma stood up to follow her, she shoved Emma aside and said, “go’way, go’way” and sat in Emma’s chair and started clicking around on the computer. She loves anything with buttons. She wants to do everything herself and will not let me scoop her ice-cream for her or put lids on her cups. She is good at working things out herself. It is fun to see her learning. Should be interesting to see how she copes with the new baby.

Emma is just finishing up painting the house again. She painted over the mustard color that she had painted last year. She chose Fudge instead and it looks a lot better. She is defiantly nesting. I need to get the desks done in the office so that she stops bugging me about it. Or at least I need to frost the windows of the doors to the office so that I can close the doors and she cannot see the mess. J I bought 100 board feet of beech for the desks that I got a good deal on. It is sitting in my garage and waiting for me to give it a little TLC. I probably should move the desks up on my priority list now that I have some material. The only problem is that I will need to clean the garage first. Emma is getting more miserable every week as her pregnancy progresses. She is doing surprisingly well! She is still working out with me every morning even though it is getting harder to walk down to the Rec-Center.

We have had a few couples move into our neighborhood from Idaho and it has been fun to talk to them. One lady if from Rexburg and I think I knew her brother. Her last name is Schwartz? Her dad said she knows Dondavid. I don’t know that I have met many people that do not know dad. The other couple is from Boise and lived in one of the wards that had all the Micron families in it. Apparently Micro is not doing very well and so it looks like I will never get up to Idaho through my connections with KLA-Tencor. We are beginning to realize that I may be some time before we move back up that way. I figure that once I finish me degree program this fall that we will start looking into other options. It would be hard to give up my current job though. I have all the perks of being a full time employee with lots of time to spend with my family. I may just stick around here until the economy takes a dive and keep my eyes open until then.

One of my old friends from Rexburg is coming down to visit this week. Her husband has a friend that is going through the San Antonio Temple and wants them to be there so they are flying down on Wed. They will be here for about a week and I figured I would treat them to some Texas BBQ at the Salt Lick. We are always looking for an excuse to go there. J That is one of the reasons that we like it so much when we have visitors. Hard to justify overeating otherwise.

I have some equipment I have been working on at Spansion (used to be AMD building) that is a lemon. I have replaced almost every PC board I can find on the system and I am still getting a weird error that says the handler cannot move or communicate. Then handler works fine but the tester does not think so. I am planning on replacing some cables this week and short of that, I will need an exorcists. It is a billable tool, which means the customer has to pay for any work done to the system and I feel bad that I cannot fix it any faster. I am trying to get our Tech support group involved, but they know less about the system than I do. The system is obsolete and we have very few parts left for it. I am hoping that we come across a part that we no longer have and tell them to put the system on eBay.

Teresa called yesterday trying to figure out how to hook up her computer to her Cable DVR box and Cox cable will not let her do it. She needs some sort of software upgrade provided by her cable company and they do not want to give their customers that sort of power. She was impressed with the setup that I had when we came up for the family reunion and wants to do something like that at her place. She may even fly me out to help them set it up. It only costs about $200 to fly over to Phoenix.

I have been working on a mapping website http://dgcoursemaps.com. It is a site that localizes all of the disc golf course and maps of the course in a Google map. You can zoom in and see the layout of the holes and get maps to each course. I have been working on it for a few months and am still improving on it. I emailed all the disc golf people in my area to get them to place a link on their pages for it. I put Google Adsense on it so that I can make a little money off of it. So far I think I am up to about $0.22 this month. Of course, I just mailed all the businesses and site last week, so it may takes some time before it gets popular. I am also trying to have my HOA put in a disc golf course here in our neighborhood. I am working with my HOA rep and a guy that designs course for all of TX and the rest of the country. I have learned a lot about creating Google Maps APIs and still have a lot to learn. I need to figure out how to incorporate a database system into it. I do not know much about using PHPs yet, but I think that is what I need to accomplish what I want. I am using the Disc Golf site as a vehicle to learn how to create mapping applications so that I can create something for mapping and laying out Home Teaching Routes and Fast offering Routes. I was recently called as the 1^st counselor in the Elders Quorum. Prior to that I was the Fast Offering coordinator and was using excel and Ms MapPoint to create all my routes. It worked well, but MapPoint maps are out of date and the only way to update them is to buy a subscription to their online service. I am sure the Church frowns on using un-purchased copies of software for the work, but most of the software I buy I need to make sure it will meet my needs before I purchase it. I have probably purchased more “High End” software from downloading it and using it then I ever would have otherwise. I like that Google is providing a lot of applications for free that can be used in place of a lot of the expensive ones.

Well, that should do for now. Have a happy day.

2008-04-01T13:29:00.000-05:00

Work has been fairly slow lately which has allowed me to get more done on my degree program. I met a guy that just moved into our ward from Boise that said Micron is fixing to shut their doors. Guess we will not be moving back up to Boise with KLA anytime soon.
Emma has been getting cabin fever. She decided that having a loved one die and having a baby was not enough stress so she is trying to find somewhere else in Austin to move to. I am not really hot on the idea and would rather fix this place up before moving. Here is a list of what we need to do to improve this house:
Blinds for all the windows
Clean Carpets
Paint/Patch Walls
Mulch Flower Beds
Weed Kill Lawn
Sod the Back Lawn
Clean out the Garage
Desks and cabinets in the Office
Light Mounts and Towel Bars in Master Bath
Shelf and Coat Hooks in Front Closet
New Counter tops in Kitchen
Deeper Shelves in Pantry?
Anyway, you can see we have our work cut out for us.
I also have a few things to do on my Van:
Replaced A/C Compressor
Fix Power Steering Leak
Replace valve cover gaskets
Take transmission in again for work (shifting hard again into 2nd gear)
Replace head liner
Clean inside

I am about half way through my BSIT capstone class and have 2 more "elective" classes after that and I will be done. Cant wait until then. I really dislike school. It will be nice to have it out of the way. I am not sure what that will mean, I really like the flexibility I have with this job. I only wish that it was a little closer to family. Well, I will keep my eyes open for things closer to Idaho, but then again, I have been doing that for the last 9 years without any luck. Guess we will cross that bridge when we get there.

Catching Up

2008-03-14T10:18:00.001-05:00

OK, it has been some time since I have written anything. This is an attempt to catch everyone up on what has happened as far as I can recall. Mind you, these are only events that stand out enough in my memory to even have the ability to recall them.
February was an interesting month. Emma took a trip to Las Vegas for a scrap book convention while I took the week off and watched all of the kids. Half way through Emma's excursion, she got a call that he mother was not doing well and may die at any time. At home, it was business as usual. Taya and Levi had school and I played with the Olivia and Julia. We played dollies, went to the park, and watched a show. The day Emma got home, the forces that be figured I needed more to do. I was very busy for the next two weeks until Emma got a call from her family telling her that she needed to fly up that night (Thursday Feb 14, 2008). So we put her, Olivia, and Julia on a plane and sent her to Seattle to spend the last day of he mother life with her. Fortunately for me, work suddenly got really slow. I was able to catch up on my school work (University of Phoenix Online BSIT Program). I have about 3 classes left for finish me degree program.
I just finished WEB420 Web Programing II class which covered web page design using JavaScript. I learned quite a lot and made some fun programs. The fist thing they had us do was to make a web page that ask you a series of questions that are then plugged into the three bears story. Levi tried it out for me and had a lot of fun.
Then next assignment was to create a form the verified each field before submitting. The third assignment was to create a slide show. The last was to create a slide show that gave a description of each image. The last two were a little difficult because I was not used to programming arrays. I learned a lot from the class and it will help me a lot on my DGCourseMaps site.

I spend several weeks in January trying to figure out how to get Google maps working on my website. I when Disc Golfing with Emma at the beginning of January and we could not find a decent map of the course that we wanted to play on. We ended up getting lost and missing a lot of the holes. Determined to not let that happen to anyone else, I spent my time trying to learn how to customize Google Maps to allow me to plot the GPS coordinates to all the Disc Golf courses in Austin. So far I have about 3 sites mapped, but I was able to come up with a solution for mapping them and posting it to my DGCourseMaps site. The site location is http://DGCourseMaps.com. It still needs a lot of work and Google will not allow you to print off maps with the current API so I have had to take screen shots so people can print off the maps. It has been very educational and it helped me to prepare for the WEB420 class. I will be able to use what I learned in the class to tune up my page and get it running more smoothly.
We are having another baby this year. We do not yet know the gender, but will probably find out this time so that we can start giving away the clothes that we do not need. The baby is due around the End of July and the first of August. We should have a more exact date after we do the ultrasound on Monday.
I was planning on going to Alaska around that time, but with the death of her mother and the new baby, I will have to take off a lot of time this year from work. Emma still wants me to go to Alaska, so I am trying to find a good time to do that. We are thinking around the second or third weeks of July would be best. Ed wants to go and I think Shaun would like to go as well. Dad and Russ would like to go as well, but I do not think Russ has enough time off at work and I know Dad is getting back from China around the beginning of July and is tired of traveling. Dave McCubbins grew up in Alaska and is in my Ward (Lake Travis Ward, Austin, TX). We went a few years back and brought back about 250 pounds of fish fillets. It was a great trip and I have been trying to go back ever since. So, we will see what happens as the time draws closer.
Well that is the extent of my memory and will try to update this more often. For now, Chow.

Congradulations Taya

2008-02-15T22:56:00.000-06:00

Taya made her 1000 girl scout cookie sales goal!!