Scattered Thoughts . . .

After spending much of the day shopping and going out for a late lunch, we came home and spent the evening in the backyard with Lukey, Kenzie and Pop.  Pop joined us just as we were starting on dinner.   Earlier in the evening, we played quite a few games of Giant Jenga.  I had already written about that here .  There wasn't a whole lot of down time spent sitting around the fire.  We did do some of that but it was really only between games.  This was our first evening out in the backyard for the season so there were a lot of games we wanted to play.  It was fun but it definitely wore me out!  (Being so busy in the backyard also caused me to forget a dose of medications.  This caused significant problems for my health the following morning.) Although this photo, below, appears as though this is a perfect example of poorly applied makeup, this is really the result of eating cherries...   Before we headed out to do our shopping in the morning, I prepared dinner...  Shish-Ka-Bob.  When

W hile Lukey and Kenzie were staying with us for a few days (mom was in the hospital giving birth to Sophia), we spent some time in the backyard.  We had a fire in the firepit, nice Adirondack chairs, a putting green, and the new homemade Giant Jenga game.  Later in the evening, I made some Shish-Ka-Bob on the grill in the outdoor kitchen, we had S'mores and we played a few games of Dominoes.   We had a good time playing quite a few games of Giant Jenga!   I shot video as well as photos but I'll put together a video soon for another blog entry.  Hmmm...  maybe I'll put together a video of all the things we did in the backyard on this evening.   For now, here are some photos of Giant Jenga with Gee, Lukey, Kenzie and Pop... We had a really nice time on this afternoon and night!   We're looking forward to the next time some or all of the grandchildren are at the house.  It is always fun to play!

We've had a few new regular visitors to our backyard lately but this morning was the first time I had any luck in capturing a photo of these new visitors.   We have a couple of rabbits who now visit regularly but I haven't been able to get any photos of them.  We also have a large pileated woodpecker who visits the yard daily but he has been very skittish whenever I have tried to get close with my camera.   Our other regular visitor is a ground hog and I managed to capture a photo of him this morning through one of our windows.  I tried to step outdoors to get the photo but he was about to run off due to the tiny bit of noise I made with the door so I opted to shoot through a closed window and window screen.  This made for a rather blurry image but the image is still decent.   When I first noticed him in the yard this morning as I was walking past our living room window, I thought he was one of the neighborhood cats.  When I went to the back door to step outside, I realized thi

Liza and the kids spent some time at the house after Kenzie's and Gee's 5K run the other day.  They had a little time to kill before Lukey's baseball game later in the afternoon.  While we killed time, we set up the newly finished homemade Giant Jenga game in the backyard so the kids could play a couple of quick games. The weather was chilly, windy and it looked like it would rain at any moment.  We could definitely use the rain but we didn't get any.  It actually feels like September and the lawn looks like a typical dry September lawn.  We really could use rain...  a lot of rain at this point.  We were able to squeeze in a couple of quick games before Liza and the kids had to run to Lukey's baseball game.   Lukey played against Gee in the first game.  Kenzie had the winner in the second game.  Unfortunately, Ace wouldn't allow Kenzie to play so the game was cut short when Ace knocked the tower of blocks over.   Gee and Lukey played a very good game though!  Th

I 've been working on two small woodworking projects lately.  Well, they are what I would consider small projects but they are taking forever to finish! Everything in the photo, at right, has been sanded with 80 grit sandpaper followed by 120 grit sandpaper so I am making some progress.   As seen in the photo at right, I made a table for the backyard and I am making a Giant Jenga game.  Each of these small projects has required a lot of cutting and even more sanding. Giant Jenga will be played on the ground.  It is only sitting on the table for the photo, at right.  Actually, I wanted to keep the bare wood off the damp lawn so I placed everything on the new table.  All this wood in this photo still needs sanding with 220 grit sandpaper but that finish sanding with 220 grit should go quickly.   This photo only shows about two-thirds of the Giant Jenga pieces because I still need to sand the remaining third of pieces.  I ran out of energy yesterday and I ran out of 80 grit sanding be

M y first springtime woodworking project was a small one but one which will be very useful this summer.  I decided to start my annual woodworking projects by making a Giant Jenga game for the backyard.   I cut up all the wood... 54 pieces in all...  then cut some additional pieces to replace any pieces that weren't looking so good in the first batch.  As I was cutting the initial batch of pieces, I noticed that some of them would not work well so I cut up an additional eight foot 2x4.  After I cut all the pieces, I started working on cutting and assembling a leveling base.   This leveling base has leveling feet at each corner so we can have a level playing surface even on uneven ground.   The great thing about the leveling base is that it can be turned upside-down to store all the pieces (see the last photo, at bottom).  I'm thinking I might need to make some handles for it too.  It is exceptionally heavy with all of the pieces stored in it.  Sheila and I did move it but quickl