Moving: Day 1

The movers arrived at our house in Kansas for the first time today.  After running around with our collective hair on fire over the weekend organizing our considerable amount of stuff to ease the process, then still feeling underprepared and overwhelmed as of this morning, the day went much more smoothly than we anticipated.

I'm sure you've all wondered what a Sprinter van towing a 6x12 U-Haul trailer looks like, so here you go.

You're welcome.  That's Abi's leg sticking out of the U-Haul.  We stashed the stuff we're taking with us in the trailer and the van to get it out of the movers' way.

Of the things that didn't go so smoothly, the funniest was that when one of the movers picked up our VCR, she heard something rattling around inside.

Yes, we still have a VCR.  We also have cathode ray tube TVs.  In case you don't remember what those look like (or - if you're one of my nephews - have never seen one), this is one of ours.

You're welcome.  I'm also writing this blog entry on one of these.

Naturally, the movers refused to pack the VCR.  Aimee suspected the culprits might be - not broken VCR parts - but little toys inserted into the VHS slot by little toddler fingers.  Tonight, I disassembled the VCR, and this is what I found.

I wish I'd thought to shoot a photo when I had the VCR completely disassembled, because I've never actually looked inside a VCR, and it's fascinating.

I love the reliability and resiliency of solid state media, and I understand the reason for it is that SSMs have no moving parts, but there's something nostalgically elegant about mechanically operated things.  Or maybe I'm just getting old.  Thus, my Royal.

By the way: have you ever tried to cancel your Dish Network service, even long after your contract's run out?  They are tenacious about trying to keep their long-time customers!

Height Chart

As you all know, we're leaving Kansas and going back to Washington.  That means we're leaving the house we've lived in for the last four years - the first house we've ever owned.  Or mortgaged, anyway.  It's amazing how much sentimental value we've built up in such a short time here.  Eli was four months old when we moved in.  He learned to crawl, walk, run and talk here.  So did Jer-Bear.  We brought Jer-Bear and Pumpkin home to this house.  Then there's all the work we've put into this property.

One sentimental item in this house is the kids' heights we marked onto a wall in the dining room.  Obviously, we couldn't take a chunk of the wall with us, so Aimee asked me to make a wooden height chart we can take with us wherever we move in the future.

The height charts we saw online were all painted, but to add a feeling of permanence to ours, I decided to engrave names and numbers into ours with a Dremel tool, then burn them.

Now I know why most people choose paint.  That was a lot of tedious work!  Especially with the length of our last name and some of our kids' names (Hadassah, Jeremiah).

I started with a 1x24x96 inch board (click on the pics to enlarge).

It's actually a bunch of narrow strips of spruce edge-glued together.  I didn't even know they made such a product, until Aimee and I stumbled upon it at Menard's in Manhattan, KS. 

I shot this photo late at night; thus the blue tinge.  Note the practice piece.

I started with the inch and foot marks on the left hand side and kids' names across the top.  I used a basic Dremel series 100 tool with a high speed cutting bit and the collar from the 565 multipurpose cutting kit attached to maintain constant depth.  It works really well, but with all the practice pieces I made, I had to switch the bit before I finished engraving the kids' names. 

The following morning, coffee became a necessity.

I engraved our family name across the very top, but the height marks and years were too fine for the Dremel, so I burned them in with the finest tip from my wood burning tool from Hobby Lobby in Manhattan, KS. 

I stained the height chart with a shade called "American Maple".  I normally like to use dark stains on light-colored wood like pine, fir or spruce.  But as you can see...

This stain is a bit much.  You can see a lot more detail in person, but not as much as I'd like. 

I tried the stain on a practice piece before applying it to the finished product, of course, and it looked good to me, but it didn't turn out that way on the finished product.  I guess I'll have to sand it down and re-stain it with a much lighter shade, but there's no way I'm undoing all that work any time soon!

Here's a more detailed photo of the names at the top.  Each kid has his or her own vertical section on the height chart. 

And here's a more detailed photo of the ruler on the right side, and the height marks underneath the kids' names. 

It might grow on me and I may leave it as is.  Or I might get more frustrated the more I look at it and decide to sand it down and re-stain it.  Stay tuned! 

End of an Era & Beginning Anew

I haven't been online much because I didn't want to field questions to which I had no answers, but Aimee and I are now ready to make an announcement.  We're leaving the Army.

I've been on the job hunt for a few months now, and just this week I accepted a project management position with ConnocoPhillips.  I'll be constructing new oil-&-gas wells near Kenedy, TX, south of San Antonio, in the Eagle Ford formation, one of the most productive shale formations in the US.

This move has been a long time coming - the MS in Geological Engineering I earned back in 2010 was part of it - but Aimee and I weren't planning on leaving this early at first.  As usual, though, God led us in the direction He wanted us to go, and things worked out in ways we never would've expected on our own.  For example, we didn't expect to be able to move back to Pasco, WA.

The position I accepted at ConnocoPhillips is typical of the oil industry in that the work goes 14 days on and 14 days off, and ConnocoPhillips pays for employees to travel to the well site from anywhere in the lower 48 states.  Because of that, Aimee and I decided to move back to Pasco, where my parents, older brother (Mauricio), sister (Albania), brother-in-law (Jacob) and nephews live.  On top of that, we have lots friends in town and nearby - the Bradburies, Edwards, Millers, Morris, Fragosos, Radachs and many more.  And Aimee's parents and my brother (Josue) and sister-in-law (Stephanie) are only a couple hours away.

In short, we get the best of both worlds.  I get to work in the industry where I've desired to work for years now, and we get to live among an abundance of old friends and family.  The price for that is that I'll be working in southern Texas half the time, but then again, I get two weeks every month at home with no work to do - except for all the honey-do projects that Aimee will surely conjure up for me.

Honestly, this has been a scary time.  The job hunt was grueling and discouraging, with lots of dead ends and false hopes.  But God had something better in store for us than what we had planned.  We are truly blessed, and now I feel guilty for all the times I doubted God along this road.  You'd think I'd have learned my lesson by now.

Thanks for all the prayers, everyone.  We still need to sell our old house and buy a new one (Bani's already hard at work looking for a house for us), so please be praying about that.  We'll keep you all informed as the situation develops.