Welcome Wittigs

6-19-2011 ~ Blog #394

(David)

My sister, Sheryl, her husband, Michael and their children, Becky and Michael arrived yesterday from Juneau, Alaska.  They plan to spend the summer driving around the lower forty eight - staying most of the time in a tiny Scamp Camper.  We were happy to offer the "Basement Hilton" to them for their stay here.   So far we are having a great visit, but the real fun begins tomorrow when Michael and I begin re-roofing the house. 

Dinosaur Invasion of Virginia Kendall

We celebrated Father's Day today among the free-range dinosaurs at Virginia Kendall Ledges.  No one fell off a cliff or was eaten by a T-Rex; it was a memorable day and lots of fun.

Fixing the Volvo on Father's Day

Happy Birthday Joan

6-13-2011 ~ Blog #393

(David)

Yesterday we went for a hike in Kent on Joan's Birthday.  We were planning on going for our first family bike ride of the summer; I pumped up ten tires, loosened up all four bike racks on the Volvo, found five helmets, switched training wheels on Annika's bike, loaded four bikes on the Volvo's bike rack rails, got the family in the car and then discovered that the Volvo's battery was dead.  (I think the dome light was left on overnight.)  So, we went for a hike instead.

Two more photos; by Svea:

Birds Hate Mustangs!

In the past 12 hours all of the neighborhood birds decided to poop on my Mustang.  Note that the Honda, Toyota and Volvo are completely poop free while the Mustang is totally pooped.

Africa

(Tallmadge Meadows)

6-10-2011 ~ Blog #392

(David)

We've called it Africa for years.  It looks a little like the African savanna and a bit out of place for Ohio; we drive by it daily on the way to school.  Over the past few months the county has made trails and turned it into a metro park. Tallmadge Meadows is it's official name.

Summer has Begun

New Garage Fridge

I bought a ~26 CF fridge at a garage sale last weekend.  It was quite a site on top of the Volvo.

It had rust under the ice maker, a broken handle and broken an missing shelves.  I treated and painted the rust, re-enforced a main glass shelf support and built new freezer and fridge door shelves out of polycarbonate.  It's a big improvement over our old nasty garage fridge (which I cleaned up and sold for $20).

G-Loaded Water Balloons

The girls discovered that they could partially fill a long balloon animal balloon with water, spin around with it and watch it stretch to an amazing length while making a cool buzzing sound.  (Here's a video of the action.)

In this last shot the balloon has exploded off to Brigitta's right.

DVD Yearbook

I finished the DVD yearbooks last weekend.  I haven't posted a blog in the past month because all of my focus and time has been this project.  Disk 1 of the 2011 IHM DVD Yearbook has 275 short movies, one for each of my 3rd through 8th graders, totaling 11 hours of viewing content as well as over 400 pages.  Disk 2 of the 2011 IHM DVD Yearbook has 192 .WMV video files totaling over 16 hours of movies and slide shows. Between the two disks, there are 470 video files totaling 27.6 hours of movies/slide shows.

Oliver!

Annika and Brigitta were cast as orphans and Svea is a pickpocket in Fagin's Gang in the Tallmadge Dynamics production of Oliver!