Scattered Thoughts . . .

A few years ago, I designed and built a Giant Jenga set for our backyard.  It still gets a lot of use today and we happened to have enjoyed it over the past week while Kenzie and Lukey were staying with us! The blocks were fairly easy to make...  I cut 2x4s to size...  each piece the same length as three pieces side-by-side so they would stack evenly.  The hard and very time-consuming part was all the sanding that was required.  I needed to ensure each piece was perfectly smooth.  After the tedious process of sanding to a 400 grit (80 to 120 to 220 to 320 to 400), I waxed every piece so it slides easily without hanging up on rough spots.  These blocks are now nice and slick. Since this giant game is to be played on lawns which are never perfectly level, I made a base for the game that provides a stable and level starting point for stacking the blocks.  I installed leveling feet on this base so I can level it anywhere on the lawn.  You can't ...

L ast week, we traveled out to Cabot to see their Spring Concert.  Not only was both Kenzie and Lukey in this concert again but this time we had Ace up on stage too! At some point, Ace noticed me shooting photos of him.  I know this because it was one of the first things he excitedly talked about after he left the stage.  Since he is looking directly at me in this next photo, it is possible that this is the moment he noticed me shooting photos...  or maybe it was during that first photo at the top of the page... Sophie was wondering where Papa was so Gee pointed out my location while I was shooting photos.  I happened to catch them both looking at me so I captured a photo... Lukey played the drums, keyboards and some guitar this time around.  I didn't capture any photos of him playing guitar because he was directly behind the lead singers from my point of view in the dark back corner of the room. We had a good time at this concert!  Afterward, on the r...

O ur first visit to the Air Force Museum with Lukey and Kenzie was a rather short visit to see the Memorial Park ( see this blog entry here ) and the Wall of Honor ( see this blog entry here ) which are both outdoors.  On this second visit we planned to spend the entire day inside the museum.  The forecast was calling for heavy thunderstorms in the afternoon so we chose this day for this museum knowing we could easily spend the entire day inside where it was dry and safe from lightning.   This museum is huge spanning through four immense hangars so there is a lot to see here.  Actually, one could easily spend a few days at this museum not mere hours.  I've been here countless times before so I knew the spots to visit with the kids.   We did pick up our pace significantly in some areas that I knew would not interest the kids so we could get through the museum in a single day.   Although it made our schedule even tighter on this day, we c...