Amature Photographer

The kids both received new cameras for Christmas.  Eli has always enjoyed playing with the tripod, now he has a camera to use with it.

Water + waterproof electrical box = ????

What happens when water gets in a waterproof electrical box? Yup, it
can't get out and causes the GFI to cook itself. Now the box has some
weep holes in the bottom.

Blast from the Past

Eli's working on a biography of me for class.  He asked mom if she had any old pictures of me.  Well of course she did.  She dug into her archives and came out with these 8 oldies but goodies.  Enjoy.

Helping build the 1st deck.  I think the deck on on revision 4 now.

Science fair

February 27, 1982 - played Cuckoo

Piano workshop at UALR

March, 1982

First bike ride

Sam, Sarah (cousin), Erin

House construction

Garage Construction (Sam, Rachel, Dad)

Dad, me, Eli

Nana and PawPaw's Pool

Nana and PawPaw finally have water in their pool, so we went to go check it out. Let's just say, it was brisk. The kids didn't care.

I know, I know (again)

Yea yea yea, I know, I know, I'm slacking.

Let's see, we went on vacation (I've got a draft post around here somewhere that I need to finish up). The kids competed on the neighborhood swim team. Errr, it's been hotter than blazes. We went GeoCaching today.

$500 or $50 + about an hour

So the driver's side headlight on the Prius has been going on and off. So I started doing a bit of research. Apparently this is a sign that the HID (read EXPENSIVE) bulb is burning out. Toyota apparently got a bad batch of bulbs when they were building the '06 models. For $350 worth of parts and 1.5 hours of labor (I figure $500 total at least) the local dealership will be more than happy to replace both headlights for me (this based on Googling, not an actual quote).

So I headed to my friendly auto parts store. I figured I could do it myself. They wanted a mer $149 per bulb. Time to head to the great online shopping world. I found a place where I can get order a pair of bulbs for $50 shippped (with a 1 year guarantee, since they are willing to go upto a 3 year guarantee for $12 they will last a while). So, I figure I can swap them a couple of times for the $350 Toyota wants.

Then the fun began. First I tried following the instructions in the car's manual. They left out a few steps. Back to the internet, more luck (at least for the passenger side). To get to the driver's side bulb the 1st recommendation was to pop the top off of the fuse box to give you more arm room. This might work for someone with skinnier arms than me (and mine aren't that large). Back to the web. Ah, remove the entire headlight assembly, which requires detaching the bumper.

So, an hour and a half later, both headlights are swapped out. And now that I know how to do it I bet I can swap them in 30 minutes.

My Baby Girl is 5?

My baby girl turned 5 yesterday.  Where has the time gone?

Alicia made a doll cake

Eli made her a doll house out of cardboard boxes and egg boxes