Ma and Pa's Blog

Thanks so much, Sebastian, Anna-Marie, and Jeff.   We’re keeping it out all year long!

And, for those who haven’t already seen Sebastian singing “Hippopotamus for Christmas”:

We just got home from a wonderful evening at Lyn and Bob’s.   The family, sans Kris,  Deborah, Nathan, Cooper, James, Jackie,  Jeff,  Anna-Marie and Sebastian, were in attendance.   There was an art raffle (artwork by Amanda and Zach) to raise funds for a lamp for their clubhouse (basement closet), lots of great food,  and the gift exchange.   The children were much more a part of the festivities this year, and they seemed to genuinely enjoy seeing each other.   Liam and Caleb became good buddies over games of tic-tac-toe.   Ma made Liam cry by pretending to have stolen his plate of cheese and crackers.

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White Summons –

Common Pleas Court

Jurors summoned on-call for the week of December 21, 2009 through December 23, 2009: Your service for the one week period has been completed with sincere thanks of the Court for your time and consideration. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

Yay!   I’m safe for a year at least!  Woohoo!

We had a great day for the Thanksgiving gathering yesterday — sunny and just cool enough to dissipate some of the heat from the kitchen.    Rain had been predicted, but it held off until overnight — when it came down as snow!   Now it does feel like Christmas is just around the corner.    Caleb said, “Today’s the first day of Winter!  When we get home we need to get our Christmas tree up.”

First Snow 2009

This is my second glued up project. It’s a cutting or serving board.

Trivet.  Trivet.

. . . [insert chuckle here]

Trivet

I’ve wanted to try something like this for some time.   It was as challenging, as I expected — especially so without a planer to smooth the top.   The pattern was not the most efficient for clamping during gluing, but I like the look.   The top was finally smoothed (after too many attempts) using the router.   A few router marks remain, but I’m happy, and I learned a few things.

Lynda and Bob hosted a wonderful birthday dinner for Poppy.   Here are a few pictures.

We had a very brief, but fun-filled visit from the Lima Steidls.   Here are a few pictures.

Just thought I’d share these few video clips from our January visit.  I know I enjoy watching them over and over.

Fun with Grandson from Pa on Vimeo.

Today was the big competition at Case, and Hoban’s performance was very respectable.   A 4th place was achieved through an admirable effort at the event.   The originally planned algorithms could not be completed in time (lessons learned for next year) and an overnight rewrite was incomplete when we left for the event this AM.   To make it worse, the robot was left at home — prompting an emergency call to, and courier run by, a team member’s mother (God bless her!).  Program tuning throughout the day was successful and got the team into the final-four runoff.   Everyone was pumped, and the underclass team members are already planning for next year.

Lego Robotics Competition from Pa on Vimeo.