One of my weekend projects that has been in my list for a while is to do something to clean up my desk surface. The monitor rider got it to the right height, but takes up a lot of surface area.
My plan was to make a corner shelf for the monitor. I’ve done a few household woodwork projects and although they are fun, I need more experience, and maybe some different tools, to have the turn perfect like I envision them.
This shelf though came together pretty well. It only took me a couple hours to mock up the size with cardboard, cut the wood, assemble it, and move everything over to it. Not bad really.
Here is my desk before:
And here is the after picture.
That gives me a lot more room, and allows me to organize a lot better. Nice!
Last night I surprised the kids with a movie night. Not just a movie night, but a trip to the theatre, and they had no idea it was happening until we got there.
At dinner I asked them to hurry a bit because we had an errand to run after dinner. They were fine with that and right after dinner we piled into the truck and headed out. Amy wasn’t entirely thrilled about having to go out, and started asking questions about why we had to go that night, and what the errand was.
I managed to answer her questions without giving away the end goal. Both of them started reading at some point and when I pulled into the parking lot they didn’t see where I parked. As we walked across the lot Amy said to me “That looks like Silver City”
Me: It is
A: Why are we here?
Me: I have to buy some tickets.
A: For a movie?
Me: Yep
A: I want to go to a movie.
Me: We are.
At this point they both perked up and said “We are?” Yep. There was much rejoicing, especially when they learned it was Kung Fu Panda 3. We got our tickets, some popcorn, and settled into our seats for an enjoyable evening.
Since I am doing spin class on Thursdays, I thought it would be a good idea to move my blood donation to a Friday so that I could still do both. My first test of this happened this past Friday. I donated for the 77th time, and other than it taking a while to get through the process, the whole thing was pretty easy.
Sunday however was a different story. Originally I had planned to ride to the dump, do a tour, then ride home. I evicted against that for some reason, and in retrospect I am very glad. On the trails I felt pretty bad. My heart rate would shoot up and I would easily get out of breath. It reminded me a lot of riding at altitude in Rossland actually. I felt slow and sluggish and uncoordinated. The ride was also very, very wet.
Still, I was glad to have gotten out for a ride and to get some fresh air and exercise.
If there is one thing I would change about myself, it is my sleeping habits/patterns. Case in point, last night Sue and I stayed up to watch Return of the Jedi in prep for seeing The Force Awakens in a couple days. After crawling into bed just before 12, I woke up at 4:15 needing to go to the bathroom. I crawled back into bed, then lay awake for over an hour before finally getting up for the day.
Considering it is New Years Eve, and we are going out to a friends house, perhaps a nap is in order this afternoon.
This weekend we did our annual pumpkin smash. For a few years in a row we take the pumpkins upstairs and toss them out the window. This year we ended up waiting extra long and the pumpkins were extra squishy (except for the indestructible one). The slo-mo on the iPhone is a lot of fun.
Sue, the kids, and I took a walk on the beach by my Mom’s place yesterday. The waves were starting to pick up and the wind was gusting, but there was no rain. A key component to keeping the kids interested in continuing. Beaches are a great place to explore and we did find a lot of interesting things.
The start of our walk was the announcement from the eagle at the top of a very tall tree. It was one of the few times recently where I wished I had my DSLR instead of my phone, but I was still a very impressive sight.
Last year our apple tree produced 12 apples. We were very disappointed. Every other year we had a huge crop and always managed to dehydrate, freeze, turn into apple sauce, eat, and share a lot of apples. We hoped the tree wasn’t on it’s last legs, but this year it was back to normal!
The last few weeks we have been picking a few apples here and there to test their ripeness. One evening the kids and I cored and peeled a large bowl of them and put them in the dehydrator. Here are Amy and Elliot helping me 🙂 A treat for them is to eat the peel as we work.
We decided a week ago they were ready, but I was away for the weekend, so we couldn’t harvest them. This weekend though, game on!
I pulled out all our containers, both ladders and set to work. I filled the below container in about 10 minutes.
These apples are a type of spartan we think, and are sweet, juicy, and very crispy. They are great in crumbles, pies, sauce, and just general eating.
As you can see, we ended up with a LOT of apples. Time to start handing them out!
Yesterday I had a couple errands to run and took the bus on the way home. Amy was with me since she was sick. We ended up on a double decker, upstairs in the very front seats. I decided to take a time lapse video of part of our trip.
The family went for a walk at Matheson Lake today. This was a place that Sue and I would occasionally go to with Yoshi back in the day. We haven’t taken Heart there, and I’m pretty sure we haven’t taken the kids there before.
It was a great hike and the kids did awesome. We had some good snacks for the walk and took breaks whenever they needed to. All in all a great family outing.
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