Happy Birthday Liam! My big man is 3!

It's Liam's third birthday today!  That really doesn't seem possible at all - it seems like just a month or two ago we were throwing his second birthday party here.  Blows my mind.

So I really haven't been as good about taking pictures this year as I was in his earlier years, but I've made up for this with a ton of great videos.  Now that he's so much more mobile and coordinated (and pretty much never still), I find that it's easier to catch little bits of video here and there than photos.  I thought it would be fun to recap Liam's last year of life through various videos I've taken from his second birthday up until now.  I know I'm biased, but I think you'll agree with me that these are all pretty adorable.

11/22/12 - First up, Liam performing for everyone at Thanksgiving in Brenham last year.

12/27/12 - Next is one of my all time favorites.  This is a great example of how dang funny this kid is - he's always just coming up with the most random and hilarious things to do, all on his own.

1/11/13 - As most readers will know, I've always loved frisbee golf (yes I committed the cardinal sin not calling it disc golf).  One fine crisp day in January, I introduced Liam to the joys as well.

2/4/13 - One day Liam decided he wanted to walk around in my shoes for a change.  Listen for how he says "hi" at 27 seconds - completely melts my heart, every time.

3/2/13 - Kristen's parents got Liam a trampoline for Christmas, and this is easily one of the best gifts he's ever had.  He gets a ton of use out of this thing, and loves rolling all over it.  Here's a typical session:

3/16/13 - This is the evolution of a thing Liam had already been doing for at least 8 or 9 months - what we call the "old man walk".

4/5/13 - Bedtime is always fun.  Our usual routine is to take a bath, then go to Mama and Dada's room to sit on the bed and read a book or two before we go to sleep.  All the parenting books always say that the bath is a great tool to help get the kids ready to sleep - all it really does for Liam is wake him up I think.  Here's a good sample of after the bath.

4/19/13 - As most of you know, Liam is gaga for anything remotely construction related.  Thanks to his interest, I now know how to tell a skid steer, front loader, excavator, and grader by sight (just to name a few).  The very first construction equipment toy he got was his beloved Bobcat skid steer.  I'm pretty sure this is the first time we recorded him in action with it.

5/16/13 - Liam has gotten pretty good at some basic soccer skills and likes to kick his multi-color bouncy balls all over the yard.  Interestingly, he always uses his left leg.

6/5/13 - Liam really is a sweet little man.  He's always trying to help Kristen or me with whatever we're working on (sometimes this is good, sometimes not).  Kristen found him this little lawn mower somewhere which he loves to push all over the yard, especially if one of us is mowing.

6/7/13 - I absolutely love this one - it's short but great.  One random dinner Liam and Kristen decided to do a little dance together.

8/11/13 - Liam loves to spend time outside, but it's rough in the dog days of summer when you wake up to sweltering heat.  The answer?  Frisbee golf!  His throws have gotten a lot better in 7 months...

8/17/13 - Kristen found these great little construction themed puzzles (I think they're Melissa and Doug puzzles).  Liam loves to put these things together and has gotten pretty good.  Here he is assembling the excavator one.

9/7/13 - We all went over to Brenham to hang out at Oma's house one evening and have dinner.  Here's a snapshot of what happened when the bubble wrap came out...

10/27/13 - Liam loves for us to get the cats to chase the laser pointer.  One day while Hannah was visiting we were doing this, and then Liam decided to get in on the chasing action.

10/30/13 - There are these animal ride things at the playground near our house that Liam likes to ride on.  They're basically just big seats attached to a huge metal spring that lets them rock all over the place.  He's gotten pretty good at getting himself going.

So there you go, a quick look at Liam's life for the last year.  I had trouble picking only this few videos, though I'm sure you're all thinking it's way too many.  There are a lot of really great ones I found as I was looking back through them all to decide what to share here.

I'll leave you with one more - this one is actually from a year and a half ago, but it's hilarious.  The setup: Kristen and I had gotten Whataburger and were eating on the back porch.  Liam had been playing with the ketchup packets - I was pretty sure it was going to get interesting, and I started videoing just in time.  Make sure and re-watch the video to catch the popping moment - right at 2 seconds.

Liam's Special Project

Been a while since my last post - life's been a bit of a whirlwind!  Not too long after the last post (somewhere in mid-June), our little family was struck with a feel-like-crap bug.  Liam got it first (dang shopping carts), and was under the weather for a good 1-2 weeks.  Then I got it, was feeling bad for about a week, and then as I was recovering - you guessed it - Kristen came down with the same thing.  So someone in our house was sick for a good 4 weeks straight.  Pretty miserable.  The good part was that only one of us was sick at any given time.

Happily, we moved past that fun time, and I decided I needed a new construction project to keep me busy.  I had something in mind I'd wanted to build Liam for quite a while, so I decided that I'd build something for him and involve him as much as I could, without telling him what I was going to make.  So you'll have to indulge me, dear reader, as I keep you similarly in the dark.

This one started off humbly enough, just a small pile of choice cedar lumber in the back of my truck.  A 2x4, a couple of 1x8's, and a handful of 1x4's, all rough cut cedar 8 feet long.

With Liam's expert help marking the boards for cutting, I quickly got these cut down to size using the trusty miter saw.  Liam solemnly said "Dada's saw is loud" after I finished.  I got all this done at the end of a weekend - after this, work had to proceed an hour here and an hour there in the evenings after I got home from work.  Very quickly into this process, when I'd get home Liam would say "Want to work on special project!" (pronounced very cutely PRAW-ject).

Now that the cuts were finished, on to the sanding.  I got this random orbit variable speed sander a few projects ago - this little dude is worth its weight in gold.  Seriously, I love this thing.

Hopefully the photo shows the detail decently - left is un-sanded, right is sanded with the sander for only a few minutes.  Liam was a huge help with sanding, too - after getting the main planks sanded with the sander, we both broke out the hand sanders to knock off the corners.

The next step I had to do one morning while Mom took Liam out and about - sealing the wood.  I opted for a clear sealer with no tint - I think cedar is gorgeous enough on it's own not to need any color added.  You can see the difference between sealed and unsealed, it really brings out the color and beautiful grain.

Now comes the really fun part - stickers!  I found these really fun construction stickers on Amazon (of course).  Liam had a ball putting these on the boards with me.  Once we got the stickers set it's finally time for assembly!  Liam was a fantastic helper - we both had our drills out, and after I drilled pilot holes he would grab a screw and set it into the hole for me to drive.

The first night we got one set of sub-assemblies done.  I know the top photo isn't super clear, but it's super cute.

A few nights later we got the second set of sub-assemblies done.  I was so impressed by how on task he stayed while we worked on these.  Finally, with the sub-assemblies done, it was time to work on the main structure.

First, making a box.  Note Liam's drill in the background - he was not to be left out of the drilling action.

And a few boards on top.  Anyone guessed what this is yet?

The next day we cut some landscape fabric and stapled that to the bottom.

Next came the first set of hinges - we took the first set of board assemblies and attached to the main structure using some nice steel hinges.  So close to finishing, but we had to break for dinner and bath time.

A few days later we finally got to tackle the last steps.  We got the last set of board sub-assemblies attached with more hinges.  Now time to test this baby out!

Liam really liked raising and lowering the bench seats :)

Ok, enough suspense - the finished project.  As you might have guessed already, it's a sandbox for the crazy man!  I placed it in the yard and filled it with sand (500 lb!) while Kristen and Liam were down at the ranch for a few days - I can't wait until he gets back to see his surpise!  I can't take credit for the design - before I started I was perusing the web looking for inspiration and came upon this site and the free plans for this box.  Fantastic site, by the way, you should check it out.  But I take full credit for the fine craftsmanship and, of course, the personal touch of construction stickers.  I am seriously happy with the way this one turned out.  I'm hoping that since Liam helped so much with the building, he'll appreciate this that much more.  As soon as he and Kristen get back in town I'll do the full reveal for him and see what he thinks - I'll save that for another post.

Our Home at Rivers End

I was thinking of things I wanted to write about, and I realized that I've never taken the time to talk about and share photos of our home here.  We have done a ton of work here on landscaping to make the outside of our home beautiful, a haven to escape from the outside world.  And by "we have done work" I mean Kristen has used her amazing plant knowledge and all around green thumb to design and nurture some amazing landscaping, and I've supplied the manual labor and occasional watering.  But we make a good team - Kristen comes up with the vision and picks out the plants, I prep the beds and do the construction-related projects, and we bring our landscaping to life.

I walked around the outside of our home this morning with my camera and took photos of, well, pretty much everything.  I wanted to share those today.  Photography note: I just switched my DSLR to record photos in both JPEG and RAW - all of these photos are from the RAW file, the difference between the two is amazing.  I had heard bits here and there about shooting in RAW, and I finally took the time to look up the difference (here's a wonderful article which explained it well).  Anyways, on to the photos.

These two shots show the front as you approach with the main bed.  On the left, the big tree-like thing is a vitex with gold lantana blooming underneath it.  As you get closer we have a lemon tree and fig tree in pots.

I'm excited about our lemons this fall - I haven't taken the time to count, but we've got to have at least 50 forming, and the tree isn't even that big!

The fig tree has a fair amount of fruit on it, we should have some ripe ones in a month or two.  That front bed is really beautiful, with a great variety of gorgeous plants that are almost all in bloom right now.  Here are some of my favorite shots from this morning of the bed.

You may have noticed earlier, when you approach the front door there's more: an herb box on the right and some angel wing begonia in pots by the door.

We also have a duranta on the other corner of our driveway at the garage - this thing was tiny when we planted it about 3 years ago and has gotten absolutely enormous.  It has really pretty small purple blossoms that attract butterflies.

Going around the left of the house to the back yard, we come to our back porch and pergola.  We planted wisteria several years ago - one plant at the base of each of the 3 main posts of the pergola.  It's done a terrific job of climbing and covering the pergola, I'm hoping it completely covers the top this growing season. The main blooming happened during spring, but we got a late burst of blooms lately, too.  They make a cluster of gorgeous purple flowers.

Kristen did a great job picking out a great little patio table and chairs, and also found these fun colored glass lanterns that we've hung from the pergola ceiling.  Sometimes at night we'll put some candles in them and light them, that makes a pretty nice effect too.  And of course, more plants in pots for the porch as well.

Moving out into the backyard and looking back, you can see the wisteria is really pretty monstrous.  I actually need to do some training of those tendrils to make sure they climb the right way (and probably some pruning, looking at this photo).  It's totally transformed the back porch from a scorching oven to a shady, cool (well, not as hot) retreat.

And last but not least, we recently revamped this back bed by adding some nice stones and putting in some knockout roses.  I think it turned out quite nice.  Oh and if you're wondering about that terra cotta colored barrel - that's where we collect our rain for watering the garden.

Hope you enjoyed our little tour - I definitely enjoyed taking the photos!  I promise I'll do some updates soon on Liam and our garden - we had our first main harvest!

The End of an Era

I'm confident that 90% of you reading this will not understand why I feel compelled to write this post, and 100% of you will laugh about it, but here goes anyways.

I stand at a crossroads in my life.  Without consciously realizing it at the time, I hit the 20 year mark a little while back.  I guess I felt like it was time for a change, time to try something a little different.  I'm talking, of course, about my pocket multi-tool.

I've carried a Swiss Army knife in my pocket since I was 14 years old.  Since that first knife, I've upgraded, changed models, occasionally down-sized to save room, but always stuck with that familiar red tool.  As anyone who's owned one knows, the Swiss Army knife is fantastically useful.  From the entry level Classic Pocket Knife (with pen knife, file, scissors, toothpick, and tweezers) up to the completely over the top Swiss Champ (seriously, it's got 31 tools and weighs a hefty 6 oz), you can find a model that fits any need.

I've had my latest model for at least 4-5 years now (can't remember exactly the last time I bought one), and I still love it, but I felt like maybe it was time for a change.  Kristen is baffled by this, as I tend to be a "don't fix it if it ain't broke kind of guy" (her words, very true).  And it's true, I'm a creature of habit, I find the things I like and I stick with them.  I can't fully explain why, but I felt like it was time to branch out from my familiar red handyman tool.

I started looking at reviews of some other popular brands and came across an unfamiliar acronym: EDC.  After a quick Google search (and ruling out some pretty hilarious options - Electric Daisy Carnival, seriously?), I learned that in the DIY world this stands for Every Day Carry.  There's actually a whole culture out there built around the fact that what we carry on us every day says a lot about our core persona, there's some pretty intense stuff (check this site out for example).  I'm not that crazy about it, but I did want a nice multi-tool with great features that I could carry in my pocket without weighing me down too much.  I eventually settled on the Leatherman Wingman.

Out of the box the Wingman is slightly wider than my Swiss Army, but not as deep, right about the same length, and maybe an ounce heavier.  I really loved the all-stainless look and the mechanical feel - this looks like a tool that's designed to do things.  I've been living with it for about a week, and I'm happy to say that I think I made a good choice.  So, now we have to compare under the hoods, of course.  First, my steadfast Swiss Army:

This particular model has 12 tools: a large and small knife, scissors with spring handle, large flat head screwdriver + bottle opener, small flat head screwdriver + can opener, phillips head screwdriver, corkscrew, and several others that aren't shown because I couldn't open them (seldom used: awl, parcel carrier, and plastic magnifying glass).  All the ones shown above are crazy handy, and I used something on my knife at least 4-5 times a day.

Now, the Wingman.  Without opening up the main part, you can access the knife and scissors.  Both can be opened one handed and both have a locking mechanism to prevent closing - especially nice on the knife for obvious reasons.  I like that I can open and close the knife one handed, quite handy when you're holding something with the off hand already.

Opening up the tool transforms the main part into a spring loaded set of pliers, both needle-nose and regular, with wire cutters at the base of the pliers.  This also gives you access to the rest of the tools: phillips head screwdriver, large flat head screwdriver, can+bottle opener, file+ruler+small flat head screwdriver, and plastic package opener (haven't tried this one out yet).  This is a really nice range of tools for my use without going overboard.

I have to say that the pliers alone have made this a fantastic purchase.  I can't tell you how many times I've encountered situations where I just needed some pliers for a few seconds and didn't want to or couldn't run out to my truck, garage, etc.  Seriously, pliers are handy.  And of course I've known for years how handy it is to have 2 screwdrivers at your fingertips.

Well I'll wrap this one up.  Hopefully provided some entertainment and a change of pace.  I'll be back soon with more posts about our garden (first big harvest!) and entertaining Liam stories.  My new multi-tool is fully 100% Liam approved, by the way.  I believe his exact words on first seeing it were: "Oooh, Dada's new tool is pretty!"

Garden #3: Growing and first fruits

So far so good on actually doing some semi-regular blog posts.  Full disclosure - this entire post is about plants, gardening, and watching stuff grow.  If that's not your particular cup of tea feel free and skim, but you should also give it a shot, it's deceptively and fascinatingly interesting (plus there's some great photos).  There are also a few great shots of Liam and Kristen in here, too.

Last time around we had just seen all the plants safely planted in the garden and getting happy.  Here's a shot of the group one week after that:

These are some tomatoes on our "Early Girl" variety right about this time (4/22).  As you can see they're still very green, but you'll be amazed how fast they get color.

I had gotten out my nice Canon to take these and some other photos, and I grabbed some fantastic ones of Liam, too.

I also got a few great ones of Kristen and Liam together.  Here they're both doing Liam's trademark smile:

And this one is just photo gold:

About a week later (4/28), we found our first squash blossom!  I also found out an interesting fact about squash (and zucchini) blossoms - they open for an hour or two in the mornings, then close back up, and then keep repeating that every day for 1-2 weeks before they dry up and fall off.  Fascinating!

Another shot of the Early Girl tomatoes - it's only been 6 days and those first ones are already starting to get some color.

The cucumber also started to put out little feelers - this one found the nylon trellis and wrapped around it all on its own, we didn't have to train it at all.  Pretty amazing.

Only two days later (4/30) and the Early Girl tomatoes are a strong orange-red.  Liam was so excited, we kept telling him that we couldn't pick any of the tomatoes until they turned red - when he saw these he got ecstatic (even though they still aren't quite ready).

Here's another round of top views to show the growth.  These are from 5/1, just 11 days after the photos at the top of this post.  Pretty astounding how fast this stuff grew, especially the squash and zucchini (squash are top left and bottom center, zucchini are top right and middle right)

Our tomatoes are starting to look like an impenetrable tomato forest.  The square foot gardening book recommended this tight of planting, but I think next time we'll space them out a bit so they can breathe.  Doing great though.

We also saw the first good looking squash of the season!  I managed to get out at the right time of the morning to get the blossoms open as well.

 

On the weekend a few days later I broke out my nice Canon and took a ton of photos of everything - I'll only inflict a few on you here.  These are some of the cherry tomatoes we have going - I absolutely love how they grow in a little array, so nice and neat.  The engineer in me can't help but appreciate and love that design.

Also another example of the cucumber tendrils grabbing the nylon trellis - again completely on its own, no training at all.  Just amazing.

And those first Early Girl tomatoes are looking delicious!  They looked so good, in fact, that I told Liam we could pick them.

 
He was absolutely thrilled!  He got so excited about them, just held them, checked them out, and carried them around for the next 30 minutes.  These are just a few of my favorites during this time.

I jumped the gun on these just slightly - once we cut them open there was a tiny green spot in the middle, but we ate them anyways (as part of a caprese salad, yum).  They were unbelievably divine.  The closest I can come to describing the taste is that it was fuller in every sense than any store bought tomato - eating them side by side just made the store bought ones taste washed out.  I know you gardeners out there know this already, and maybe my taste buds were biased since I knew we grew these ourselves, but they really were amazing.

We're getting pretty close to being able to harvest our first squash I think.  I can't wait until we have enough to fill baskets!  More to come...