Thanksgiving!

We spent the entire day on Thursday at my parent's house hanging out with my sister's family, my mom and dad, and my mom's cousin, Carol. These cousins always have fun when they're together.

My sister and my parents do most of the cooking leaving me to bring a bag of rolls and the pop. I can handle that!!

Every year, Rob makes sweet potatoes. I don't care for sweet potatoes, so I drew the line a long time ago and said, "If you want them, you make them." And he always does. I actually tried them this year and they were delish. I can't tell him that, though, or I'll end up making them next year!

Rob and Ethan spent the day strengthening their bond. . .

After my sister and her family left to visit her in-laws, we settled in for a nice, long game of Mexican Train.

I think Rob won, but who's keeping score??? Oh, I am. . . Because you have to keep score. It drives me crazy when you play a game with someone and they just want to play for fun and not keep score. . . how is that fun?? How do you know who wins?? I don't know where this comes from, I'm really not all that competitive. . .

It was another lovely day and I found many, many things to be thankful for.

Quizzing

Our next quiz trip is right around the corner. In an effort to get in as much practice as possible before the meet, we practiced on Wednesday even though classes were cancelled for the Thanksgiving holiday. Steve and Gary gave up a few hours for the cause:

The kid's were so focused heading into the last meet, but this time. . .

. . . It's been a little like pulling teeth. . .

. . . or banging my head against a brick wall. . .

We're still having fun, though, and that's what's important in Bible Quizzing, right?? Right??

Anatomy of a Case

Now that our audio shows are becoming few and far between due to the season, Rob has started to take case orders again. One of the most difficult parts of building a case is finding uninterrupted time to do it. Everything about the construction of a case has to be very precise because even a simple error can cost upwards of $100 (or more). Now, I've admitted I can't cook, but if anyone needs to know how to build an ATA flight case, I'm your woman. I've watched Rob build hundreds of these and on many, many, many of them, I've been Rosie the Riveter. I also paint caster plates, drill and rivet handles and locks, as well as man-handle chop saws and drill presses. Maybe it's nothing to be proud of, but I kind of am. :)

(Day 1 of 3) Rob always tries to get the most out of the case material so he draws up plans not only for the measurements but to see how many cuts he can get out of each sheet of ABS with the least amount of scrap. These measurements are for 2 plasma cases that need to be built and on a truck in a few days:

After the plans are drawn up, he cuts the pieces on the table saw. My job here is to quickly remove the cut pieces, sending the ones that need another cut back to Rob and stacking the others in like piles.

I always bug Rob about double and triple checking his measurements, but he's usually quite accurate on the first try.

He has several different templates that he made way-back-when that he uses to route out handles and locks. This is a template for the large locks that this case requires:

These cases will each have 4 large locks and 4 large handles.

This is the template for the handles:

The cutting and routing took about 2 hours.

(Day 2 of 3) After the pieces are cut and routed, more measurements are taken and all of the extrusion is cut that will hold the cases together. The extrusion is glued onto each piece and the pieces slide right together:

The corners are drilled and riveted on and the cases are set aside for another day. This will be one case- a base and a lid:

Lucy loves the table saw. She follows Rob around the shop and is curious about everything he does.

Rob enjoys having company when he works.

(Day 3 of 3) Now the fun really begins. After the handles, corners and locks are drilled and riveted, carpet has to be cut to cover the insides of both the base and the lid as well as two dividers per case. (28 sections of carpet). I help with the cutting and then tape off the cases so the glue doesn't get on the extrusion:

Meanwhile, we paint the caster plates and install the casters on the 2 base pieces.

We use a very stinky, toxic glue to hold the carpet so it cannot come loose no matter how much the case gets tossed around and abused.

It's nasty stuff:

Each case is taped off and ready to be sprayed:

This is the time when I hand Rob a face mask and I vacate the room closing several sets of doors behind me. . .

. . . and hang out with the kids for awhile. Yes, this is a case that Gloria is pretending to sleep in:

The kids love it when Rob puts them in this case and spins it until they want to throw up. (Please don't call CPS, they beg for this!)

It's highly amusing.

This case offers hours of amusement!!

Gluing in the carpet is one of the longest parts of the process. These cases have to be delivered by 10:00 tomorrow, so it's going to be a late night. Zach and I play PS2 while Gloria uses up all my camera memory and my batteries.

She even snuck in and took a picture of Rob spraying glue!! I hope she held her breath!

Emma's expression says what we're all feeling:

The dividers are finally cut and carpeted. On to the foam:

In order to give the equipment the best protection possible, lots of foam pieces have to be cut to specific shapes and sizes:

I lost track of what's what and what goes where early on in the process. Luckily, Rob totally knows what he's doing (even at 3 a.m.):

Before gluing anything down, we put the plasma in the case with the foam squares in place to make sure it fits snug, but not too snug.

Come to find out, our 2" foam from the factory is closer to 2 1/8" wide and has to be shaved down a bit. Good thing we have a planer:

Once again, I tape off the case so Rob can spray the glue in exactly the right place:

More gluing for Rob, more leaving-the-room for me. . . The foam is glued into place and we carefully lower the monitor in. It's a perfect fit.

The lid is a mirror image of the base, so it slides on perfectly, too.

The finishing touch is to add a Committed Casework's label so more people can order more cases. This label (and word-of-mouth) has been our only form of advertising over the years.

We finished the cases at about 5:30 a.m and headed for home. The kids had fallen asleep snuggled on the couch sometime between 1 and 2 and dropped right back to sleep when we got home. As I was helping Zach into the house at 6 a.m., we had to acknowledge that many of his friends were just getting up to go to school. We really do have a crazy life. I wouldn't trade it with anyone, though.

A Science Lesson

There have certainly been ups and downs in our homeschooling journey, but, so far, I don't regret the decision I made at the end of Zach's first grade year to keep him home and teach him myself. One of the first things I became aware of was that I had serious gaps in my own education. I did drop out of kindergarten, so that may have set me up for failure right off the bat, but considering that I went to 12 years of public school, 1 year at a private college and 3 years at a public university, you'd think I'd have a pretty well-rounded education. Not so. Before I taught Zach second grade geography, I couldn't tell you where China was in relation to the United States to save my life. The only directions I could give you were left and right because, in my estimation, north was straight up and south was straight down. In my mind, time ended and began somewhere in the middle of the United States and I was only vaguely aware that King David was mentioned in books other than the Bible. The Bible itself became very real to me when I read it side by side with secular historical accounts and events and it all began to make sense as history and not just Sunday School stories. I was so excited that first year of homeschooling, and watching Zach soak it all in like a sponge made it all the more satisfying. I think I learned more through teaching Zach second grade than I learned in all the 16 years that I went to school. In school, I learned to cram as much information as I could into my brain in order to spit it out onto a test. I would immediately forget the facts but would still usually end up with an A on the test and in the class. Obviously, I retained enough to do well on the SAT's and ACT's in order to go to college, but my motives for learning were skewed. As an adult I've learned to enjoy learning for the sake of learning rather than for the sake of proving myself. I've continued to learn right along side the kids during the last 7 1/2 years and it's mostly been a positive experience. I'm still pleasantly surprised when I learn something new and feel the excitement of discovery. When I help Zach with his Physical Science, we've really come full circle. He studies it and then teaches it to me. He had a simple science experiment on Monday and I was surprised by the results. The experiment required things we had around the house: a jar, a candle, a candle holder, water, food coloring, and matches. We poured a small amount of colored water into the dish and placed the candle on the holder inside the dish and lit the candle:

We then placed the jar over the candle. I honestly had no idea what to expect. I knew the candle would go out, but I didn't know what would happen with the water.

We all watched with anticipation.

Call me crazy, but I thought it was pretty cool when all of the water was transferred out of the dish into the jar as the candle was extinguished.

The book gives this explanation: "Think about this, then. Air is pressing down on the water in the bowl. Before you allowed the candle to burn, the air in the jar was essentially the same as the air outside of the jar. As a result, the water inside the jar was being pressed down with the same pressure as the water outside the jar. As the candle burned, however, it used up the oxygen in the jar. With less oxygen in the jar, there were less molecules in the air inside the jar. With less molecules, the air in the jar could not exert as much pressure as it did before. As a result, there was an imbalance. There was more pressure on the water outside the jar than on the water inside the jar. As a result, the greater outside pressure began pushing water into the jar. This increased the water level in the jar." (Exploring Creation with Physical Science, p. 59)

Who knew molecules could be this much fun.