All done with the knife!

I took the knife blade with me to Ephraim to show my Grandpa because my mom told me to. I showed it to him and he then showed me some wood that he had made a few things out of called "Iron wood" that he picked up years ago visiting family in Arizona. I decided to use it instead of mahogany because it has so much more figure and character. Anyway, here it is all finished. On to the next project...The spare bedroom makeover!!!

Marc's Kukri Knife

Here's a picture of my new knife, all ready for the handle. Don't worry, you won't be able to see all the holes that I drilled to cut down on the weight of the thing (It's just over 1/4" thick, high carbon steel) so ya, it's heavy. I've got a couple pieces of african mahogany cut out for the handle. It's a work in progress.

Here are a couple pictures of me recreating how I would slay Aloysius if I had my new knife I've been making from a Ford super Duty truck leaf spring. It sure would've been a lot easier than dropping out of a tree during a jackalope stampede, grabbing the biggest one by the antlers and snapping his neck. You know that's how I got this big scar on my hand, right? I got gored by a jackalope. True story.

I've been slowly making this knife at work, It's called a Gurkha knife or a Kukri. They're from Nepal. When it's slow at work, I've been pulling out my grinders and making this thing. It's been fun, very dirty and challenging. The dirt and oil will just wipe off and it's hard to damage so out of all the things that I could do at work with spare time, I thought it seemed like a good idea. It's almost impossible to do homework in the shop and be able to drop it at any moment to go work on a car, plus the paper gets dirty and it's hard to think with all the noise. Poor excuse, I know, but I guess I'm still a little kid that want's to play army. (Dave at work found these helmets at a costume store that was going out of business! Sweet huh?)

I think I'll try to make a flame thrower for my next project...

Busy Month

We had a very busy month of May. Here are some random pictures of things we have been doing.
1. Baby Matthew's blessing in California.




















2. Drigg's Idaho to play with Dave and Evelyn and to meet baby Charlie. Adrienne and Brian have the most beautiful home. I didn't get many pictures, but I'm lucky I got these two. The view is from Ade's driveway. I got to go back the next week with Martha and spend some more time with Adrienne and her adorable kids. We had such an incredible time!






















3. Marc is making a kukri knife with a leaf spring he found in the junk pile at work. It looks even more incredible now that he has sharpened and polished it. More pictures to come. He has so many hidden talents including......




4. Lifting his geo. Unfortunately we just sold his geo metro to Reggie. I have fond memories of climbing over the driver's seat since the passenger one is smashed in. The first day Marc got this 54 miles to the gallon car he said look what I can do...and he picked it up. It's a great little rig--we will miss white lightening.

5. We toured the garden on the top of the conference center. I have lived downtown for two years and had never been. It is as beautiful as they say. Unfortunately we couldn't get a decent picture. Either I have my eyes closed or Marc's are closed. Oh well. Maybe some day we will get some real pictures taken.

6. We finally hung the mirror Marc made that has been sitting on our bedroom floor for a year. Marc used the level to make sure everything was set right. When it was hung it wasn't straight. Marc put the level on the closet door frame and found out the door frame isn't level. (Not a huge surprise since we have had so many problems with our condo!) We decided to take the mirror down and hang it according to the closet frame and not the level. Marc is getting the fine woodworking magazines and it's fun to see what he ends up making. I like his new hobbies. You can also see the step stool he made for me to get into bed reflected in the mirror. I'm currently working on finding hobbies for me. I have signed up for a quilting class and I have been inspired by Liz to try new recipes. My next cooking project is going to be cakepops.

California

This is what I was about to post on the blog:

We just went to CA for Easter, my birthday, get a new car from Liz, see Melissa pregnant, the baby if born, my family and Scott and Melissa's new house (which is so incredibly perfect). You'd think we would have taken pictures, but we only got a few on the drive back in Donner Lake. We looked at them and decided they were blog worthy.

Marc read it and decided he wanted to revise it and in turn publish his own version. In his words, "His very first blog ever." I think he is the new editor-in-chief of our blog.

We got a ride from Tremaine to the airport friday night after work with our bags all packed and ready to go. Things couldn't have gone any more smoothly than they did. We didn't have to wait at the airport for a ride, got to visit with Liz before she left to New York. Saturday we ate a delicious home cooked breakfast (Chef Tom's waffles) then we headed over to check out Scott and Melissa's new house in pleasant hill. We did a few odd jobs there (ask katie about the attic), had dinner and cleaned up.

Easter was a blast! Candy, family and candy and dinner and cake and jelly beans. The Crowders came for dinner and so did our good buddy Matt Moench. It was good to catch up with everyone. Dinner was delicious, the cake was fantastic and I loved the candy. Monday morning we woke up and took Liz's Escape to Utah where it will be driven and cared for affectionately for the rest of it's years. Katie's birthday was spent on the road for 11 hours in a small S.U.V. We passed the time with alphabet games, songs, and learning math facts. Just ask me the formula for a quadratic equation, I'll tell ya! You'd have thought with cramming all that into our weekend we would've thought to take more pictures but all you get is beautiful Donner Lake. On the plus side, we got to see Melissa pregnant, but she had the baby only one day after we left! Poor choice Melissa or Matthew! Oh well, we'll just come visit again at the end of this month or whenever the blessing is.
We had a great time and can't wait to go back!

Here is our totally packed closet. Now I need to go through everything and clean it out. At least it's not all over the couch and our bedroom now. I also need to dust tons because there is dust coated everywhere from sanding down the paste.

Here is my attempt at some raspberry filled cupcakes. I will try to do the frosting a little more fancy next time. I got this arrangement idea from the family I babysit for on the weekends. It was fun to do.

New Closet

We knocked the wall out between our coat closet and bedroom closet so now we have one big closet. It's been a two week project and we are just about done getting everything put away. It's been a long and busy two weeks, but it's just about over and I love my new closet.

Christmas

Marc made his delicious ham...

We visited the Moench and Stott families.

We sang a bunch of fun Christmas songs including some from the Eggertsen Family book my mom made. I learned that I need to desperately learn how to play the piano because everyone else in my family can.

My dad enjoyed doing the clip clop and I loved watching him do it.












Marc, dad and Liz read a lot on Christmas Eve and we all missed Scott and Melissa--I still can't believe I have not seen Melissa pregnant!








Marc was Joseph and Angela's little girl was Mary...

...and mom was a sheep!

Liz and I played with her camera like we always do...

...we put on our new Christmas pj's and took a few pictures. Christmas morning Marc opened up the gift from Scott and Melissa which was a marshmallow gun. I am still finding marshmallows everywhere. I am going to collect the ones I find and make him eat them. I have been attacked multiple times...maybe I should just get myself a marshmallow gun too. Notice his teeth...that was also a surprise from Scott...we had a very fun Christmas!