Turkeys before paint

Turkeys after paint

Sometime in September Sister Thiot (a.k.a. Robynn Thiot) asked me if I would cut out turkeys for a crafts project the Relief Society was doing for Thanksgiving. I agreed and Sister Thiot brought me 12 pieces of pine from which I was to cut out 12 turkeys. This consisted of a head piece, beak, and 5 feathers. When finished, nails are driven into the bottom of the pieces and they are stuck onto a pumpkin. And amazingly it kinda, sorta, does look like a turkey.

shelf-pin jig in original box

Anyway after finishing this up, Sister Thiot rewarded me with a $25 gift certificate to Home Depot. That very same day a tool I had ordered arrived at my home via UPS. The tool is a Veritas Shelf Pin Jig which is used to drill perfectly aligned shelf pin holes in cabinets for adjustable shelves. The tool arrived in a flimsy cardboard box and contained about 30 pieces. My first thought when I opened the box was: “Great! How long until I lose a critical component?”. At that point I realized that I had the perfect solution. Use the $25 Sister Thiot had given me to purchase the oak necessary to make a box to hold the tool. So, I proceeded in that direction.

all the tool parts

After a few failed attempts, I finally hit upon an efficient way to organize the tool in a box about 6″ wide and 30″ long. Based on that design, I drew up detailed plans using Google SketchUp (which is a great little utility by the way). Then I hit the road for Home Depot to purchase the oak; one piece of 3/4″ x 8″ x 8′, and another 3/4″ x 4″ x 8′. After cutting out all the pieces for the box to length/width, I was able to use my new 15″ thickness planer to reduce the stock to 1/2″. Then I made a few dado cuts on the top and sides to facilitate the glupe up, and then I glued the box together. When I was done I had a hollow oak cube. I used the tablesaw to trim about 1/32″ of each end to clean up the inconsistencies in the edges and then used used the tablesaw again to cut the box in half to create the bottom and top.

All the pieces in the box

With the box cut in half, I started adding compartments, and dividers to the bottom of the box to hold all the tools components. With those in place, I added blocks of wood to the top of the box that would hold all the pieces in place when the box was closed to keep them from rattling around. The only thing left unfinished are the holes that need to be drilled for the various sized collars. These will be drilled in the block of wood on the right side of the box once I get a drill press.

I finished the box with an amber shellac to bring out the color of the red oak, then added hinges and locks.

the box before finishing

If your father was a carpenter, or woodworker, you might remember that most of the tools produced 50+ years ago came in nice wooden boxes. This box reminds me of those. It is solid, functional, and beautiful. Now all I need is a place to put the box — I smell another woodworking project coming on…

For full-sized pictures, you may visit our family website, or just click here.

1/2 of table top

A few streets east of us is the home of Dick and Robynn Thiot. Dick is better known in our ward as Bishop Thiot, and Robynn is better known in our ward as, well, Sister Thiot. And in case you’ve forgotten, the Thiot’s have 5 children: Ricky, Tasha, Charlie, Pierce, and Skylar. And with the exception of Skylar, all the Thiot’s children are married. And while were on the subject Skylar is more commonly known as Elder Thiot of the Russia Rostov Na Donu Mission. Elder Thiot is presently home on medical leave while U.S. doctors try to figure out what the Russian bugs are doing to his innards.

Putting table top together

Anyway a few days ago I received an email from Dick Thiot requesting help on a woodworking project. It appears that one of Sister Thiot’s requirements for family dinners is that the entire family be able to sit at the same table, and that their 6′ dining room table just wasn’t big enough for the 16 people the were expecting for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Sister Thiot had asked Dick to make her an 8′ round table top that could be placed on the top of their existing table.

Dick was a bit dubious that this would work, and thus the email to me asking for help. I visited the Thiot’s and we discussed Sister Thiot’s dream… We decided that it was feasible, and that Dick would bring the necessary components to my woodshop on Saturday morning. The components consisted of two 8′ sheets of shop-grade birch, and one 3/4″ x 5″ x 8′ piece of pine.

Fully assembled

Dick arrived on Saturday morning, and we used a jigsaw to cut the two pieces of plywood into two 4′ diamater half-circles. Then we cut the pine into smaller 2″ x 24″ pieces which we then planed down to 1/2″. These pieces were used to create two interlocking supports at the edges of the tables where the two half-circles meet. These interlocking pieces perform two functions: 1) they hold the two halves in perfect alignment, and 2) they keep the edges of the table at the joint in perfect alignment. The remainder were used to create stops to keep the table top from sliding off the table. These interlocks and blocks were glued and screwed to the bottom of the table top.

After Sister Thiot's Magic!

Dick and Skylar took the result back to the Thiot’s home and we set it up on top of their dining room table. Sister Thiot was not at home, but arrived home shortly afterwards. Her first comment was “Oh! It’s just as I dreamed it would be!” That was worth all the work.

I took a few pictures of the table being assembled, and then came back on Sunday to see how Sister Thiot had dressed up the table for their family dinner today. Amazing!

For full sized pictures, visit our family picture site, or click here.

Leanne was eligible to apply for U.S. citizenship in April of this year — which she did. When she submitted her application, the INS told her that they were swamped, and had huge backlogs of applications, and that she should not expect to hear from the INS for 18 months. At about the same time Leanne and Spencer decided to move to Utah. Spencer left in May, and we planned to move Leanne to Utah on June 10th. We all assumed that Leanne would have to travel back to Dallas for her interview and naturalization ceremony in 2009. However, to everyone’s surprise, in early May Leanne received a letter from the INS instructing her to show up for her citizenship interview on June 9th at 7:00am. So, early this morning Leanne drove down to the Dept. of Homeland Security offices for her interview and citizenship test (which she passed). After her interview was completed, the INS officer told her to show up at 2:00pm today to be sworn in as a U.S. citizen. You don’t say “No” to the INS.

So, we changed our plans for the day, and showed up at the Dept. of Homeland Security in Dallas for the naturalization ceremony. As we left the proceedings this afternoon, Leanne stated that this was one of the Lord’s miracles in her life. In retrospect, I would have to agree. Only the Lord could have cut through all the layers of INS bureaucratic red tape to arrange for Leanne to have her citizenship interview, test, and naturalization ceremony all occur on the day before she leaves for Utah — 16 months ahead of schedule. We thank the Lord for this great blessing in our family.

I’ve included pictures of the naturalization ceremony here.

Reid

I’m glad I had the honor and opportunity of serving the chapter as regent. I worked with wonderful dedicated and dependable ladies on the executive board who became good friends. Our chapter grew from 143 members to 169. We have become known at the state level as a chapter who does things and people like coming to. We are a model for other chapters. We have raised thousands of dollars to help DAR veteran’s projects and the USO at the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport. We promoted American history by sponsoring essay contests and presenting portraits of George Washington to Plano schools. We brought The Constitution alive to students in Plano by sponsoring assemblies during Constitution Week. We promoted patriotism by participating in Memorial Day and 4th of July parades with the SAR. I really love being a member of the DAR. Our motto is “God, Home, Country.” Those are all the things I believe in and love.

To view all the pictures my husband took of this event with his fancy camera, click here.

I left Portland, and drove through the Columbia River gorge to Pasco, Washington, and then north to Moses Lake, Coulee City, and final;y to the city Grand Coulee — at the base of the Grand Coulee Dam.

I’ve visited Flaming Gorge, Glen Canyon, and Hoover Dams, and have always been impressed by their size, but Grand Coulee Dam is bigger than all of them combined. The three dams on the Colorado are about 400 feet wide, and around 700 feet high. The Grand Coulee Dam is nearly a mile wide (5200 ft) and 500 feet tall. Lake Roosevelt (good trivia question for anyone in Texas) lies behind the dam and is about 150 miles long. I was hoping to tour the dam itself, but due to maintenance reasons, tours were not available the day I was there.

I’ve included pictures of Grand Coulee Dam, and a few other dams downstream here.

The guest bedroom closet measures about 3′ wide and 5′ deep. Since the house was built this big closet has only had two small shelves and two closet rods. Not much storage in such a big space. So I decided to fix that problem by building a 2′ deep cabinet in the back of the cabinet with 2 deep drawers and adjustable shelves.

The challenge here was that the cabinet would be larger than the closet door. So, I had to design the cabinet so it could be assembled in the closet. This turned out to be much easier than expected, and the cabinet was quickly assembled in the closet. Painting was a breeze because of the enclosed closet. I’ve included photos of the construction of various parts, assembly, and the finished result here.

For my next project I’ll be building shelves in our storage room (8′ x 10′).

The next morning, April 9th, we drove around our’s and adjacent neighborhoods to view the damage. The most visible damage was to the trees and fences. There was very little damage to homes — other than that caused by the falling trees. I’ve posted pictures of the damage here.

Our neighbors on both sides had damage to their trees. Ours came through okay. I attribute this to the fact that I had the trees thinned last year which lessened their resistance to the wind.

Nothing about Texas is boring (okay, maybe Highway 287 between Wichita Falls and Amarrillo).

Pecos is one of the areas I (Reid) served in during my mission back in 1972. At that time, the population of Pecos was about 14,000, compared to about 9,000 today. The apartment I lived in is still standing, along with many other places I remember, but many other places are gone. On the way back home, we stopped in Pecos on Saturday evening so we could attend church at the local ward — which is meeting in a relative new chapel. There were some folks there still from 1972, but as you might expect many had moved on to other places, or passed on.

The primary purpose in going to Phoenix was to visit our granddaughter Kayli Marie Madsen and her parents Peter and Noel. Kayli is a cutie with red hair, and a really mischievous smile. A few pictures of her are show here and the rest are available on the Madsen Family picture site. We went out to dinner with Peter, Noel and Kayli one night, went to Sonic on another, and visited Chucky Cheese on our last evening in Phoenix.

While in Phoenix we visited Bonnie Petersen who is Katie’s mother’s cousin. Because Katie is a genealogist, these family visits usually involve a trip to the local cemetery to find out where family members have been buried, and I have to take pictures of all the headstones for documentation. Ever since “The Sixth Sense” came out, I tease Katie about “seeing dead people.” After visiting the cemetery, Bonnie took us to lunch at a local sandwich shop where Katie and Bonnie exchanged genealogist “how to” information regarding Katie’s search for her grandfather Edward Spencer’s family. After lunch Bonnie loaded us up with pumellos, grapefruit, tangellos, tangerines, and oranges from the citrus trees on her property. It was a great visit.

We also visited Brian Buckmaster, an old High School friend of Katie’s. Brian works at Boeing Corporation and has worked on the Apache Helicopter project in the past and is now working on future battlefield weapon systems. We went out to lunch and Brian and I talked about technical things related to our jobs which I’m sure Katie didn’t understand — but we had fun. It was good to see Brian again.

As a side note, now that Spencer works at the Flying J in Dallas, we’ve started seeing these everywhere we go. Whenever possible we now stop at Flying J’s for our gas and meals when we are travelling. Gotta support the family you know…

Happy New Year to all of you!

We arrived about 30 minutes early and there is already a good crowd which steadily increased until there were about 300 people present. When the soldiers began coming through the doors, the crowd erupted in cheers, whistles and applause, and this continued non-stop for the next 30 minutes as soldiers passed through. Many people were waving American flags, or little yellow “Welcome Home Troops” flags. Others had brought full sized flags, or homemade signs. Some signs were a bit more personal like the little girl holding a sign which read “Welcome home Daddy!”

I stood on chairs and then tables so I could take pictures of the event. My favorite moment is captured in the picture included here. A Soldier, Husband, and Father, holding his new-born infant daughter in his arms as he came through the crowd. There were other tender moments as well when wives embraced and kissed their returning husbands, and when children would put their arms around their daddy’s neck and would not let go. If you would like to view the pictures from this event they are available here.

Later in the day, another group of troops will be leaving DFW to return to Iraq. Local restaurants have been signing up to provide dinner for the troops and their families on the day they leave. Today it was the Gaylord Texan, and if you’ve ever visited the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine, you know that the troops are eating well today!

All troops returning to the USA for R&R arrive at either Atlanta, or DFW, airports. If you would like to welcome the troops home, you can contact the USO in either Atlanta, or DFW. Not sure who to contact in Atlanta, but at DFW you can call the following number for arrival details: 972-574-0392. We called on Christmas Eve to get the arrival time for Christmas Day and then double-checked before leaving on Christmas morning. More information is available at the following site: Welcome Home a Hero Today!

This was a wonderful experience, and we recommend this event to anyone who wants to show their support for the troops.

God Bless our Troops, and God Bless America!