Man Cannot Live By Bread Alone

But he sure will try....

We had a weekend of travels up to the in-laws.  

Here are the highlights:

Number 3 Kiddo sporting his new sweater.

By the Christmas tree, all ready and anxious for the gift exchange.

At the Saint Lucia

The wife found her old wooden clogs.  Stylish!

Pics with the Uncle

At the award winning local pizza shop.

On the way home.  Number 2 Kiddo fell asleep and this is how he is comfortable.  Nice sunset in the background.

A whirlwind round trip of 600 miles. Happy to be home!

Lego Night

The wife won tickets to the Lego Fest at the Indianapolis Convention Center.  We didn't quite know what to expect.

Kids were excited to start.

It was stimulus overload, by far.

The kids went around to different stations and played with different types of Legos for 4 hours.  We started off at "The Racers".

Lots of sculptures were to be seen.  

Lego shooters were a hit.

Lego building competition.  Everybody won!

I can't quite remember what this set was, but it was all good.

Lego Art Tile - shows is a blue hamster and a beach scene.

Somewhere in this mess is the #3 kid.  

I tended to lose him a lot.

 This picture was taken right before he got a big Lego thrown on his head.  He had a nice bloody gash above his ear.

An amazing event.  A fun time for all!

New Glasses

Uh Oh - Guess who failed their vision test.  Prescription glasses just arrived today.  He's pretty proud of them.

The thinker pose:

Busy Days

Wow.  

Where does the time go?  

It's been a month since my last blog posting?!?  

So much to write about, but so few pictures. So, I'll skip alot of stuff.

 In that time, we celebrated a birthday:

Last night, we started digging up our ancient septic system pipe.  

Here we are just beginning the fun:

 But by the end of the day, we dug out 45 linear feet to a depth of  about 24 to 30 inches.

That clay tile is 50 years old, and it has roots plugging it up.

Of course, what is an excavation project without a little rain.  As I write this, more rain continues.  It should be a sloppy and fun day tomorrow.  Oh boy!

The Saw Lives!

I spent the last few weeks working on and restoring the old table saw.  It started out as this:

With a little paint, it turned out to look real nice:

I took off the extension on the right because it was flimsy.

I think it may have been homemade, and not very well done.

I like the 2 tone motor.  That belt is new technology - it's called Power Twist or something like that.  It has individual links.  I like it because I didn't know how long of a v-belt to buy, and this took all the guesswork out of it.  Evidently, these belts are good to reduce vibration.

The aluminum front panel shined up real nice.  It shined up 90% with soap and water, and the final shine came with a little polishing.

I especially like the little measuring stick on the front for the fence.  The rack below ratchets onto a pinion on the fence.  

What you don't see are the new bearings.  I installed 2 new bearings in the motor, and 2 on the arbor.

I fired it up for the first time over the weekend and cut some hard native lumber.  It looks to be red oak, but I'll take a sample to my wood expert at work.  I can say that it sure cuts smooth.  I've heard of guys that can balance a penny on edge on their saw tabletops in order to show minimal vibration.  I think I could do the same.  I'm pleased with this stout old saw.

A Fast Paced Week

A weekend ago, we took a trip north to see a few fun things.  Sunday, we focused on trains.  Our first stop was lunch at the Whistle Stop restaurant in Monon.  It had quite a few good exhibits around the yard, and it took a good long while to get through. 

 

Then up to the Hesston Steam Museum for their "Family Fun Day".  We were able to ride on 3 different sizes of steam engines for the day.  It was a blast.

Real steam

The smallest steam engine was really small - it was a 7 inch track and we were asked not to lean from side to side.

Then we finished the day with a quick trip to the light house at St. Joseph.

The next day was a beach day at Warren Dunes.  We brought 3 big buckets of sand toys, and that is all the boys cared to do all day.

By the end of the day, they worked out a pretty good hole!

Thereafter during the normal course of the week, I got this big monster for a super bargain.  I just finished installing the electrical, and need to work a bit on the air plumbing.

This most recent weekend, we went to the Indy zoo.
I need to teach those boys how to smile.

 Yesterday, I dug up my yellow jacket nest in the ground.  This is the top layer skimmed off, and there were 3 more layers below.  Thus, it was a rather small nest.

 

I used a new method of killing the hive - water plus soap - an earth friendly means bee death.

And just tonight, I discovered another underground hive near the driveway.  With these cooler temperatures, they are pretty sluggish, so that nest should be less intense to deal with.