Sandcrawler Progress Volume 2

Jack continues his progress on the sandcrawler and started working on the wheels.  They are pretty cool and include an elaborate turning mechanism.

Wheels done... retractable front panel done!

Starting on the walls next!

Only a few bags remain...note the AT-AT in the background!   And the orange Diary of a Wimpy Kid book.  He has all 10 of them now and has read each of them twice already!   I've read one myself.

Lunch with Jack!

Jack was student of the week last week so we were invited to come eat lunch with him.  Fortunately it was "chicken and waffle" day so I got treated to the following:

Cheese quesadilla was the other option but I followed Jack's lead.  That explains the salsa though which I selected before I knew what the entree was!  The chicken wasn't bad!  The waffles weren't great however.

Jack was a bit confused in having us around I think.  The teacher told us he was excited that we were coming but he didn't really act like once we were there!

Locked Out!

A couple of weeks back Steph tried to open the door leading into the garage and the knob wouldn't pull the latch in all the way meaning we were effectively locked out of the garage.   She managed to pull the latch in and open the door with a super thin screw-driver (which we kept in the house - not in the garage obviously!)

We messed with the door hardware a bit and it seemed to work until it did the same thing a few days later.   Steph managed to open it again and off we went...until it did it again.

The third time was the charm and we couldn't pull the latch in.  Fortunately, the garage door was open so we had access to our tools.  We pulled the knob off but couldn't pull out the core.   After trying Steph's old tricks we were left with only 1 option.   Brute force.   Some of the results of that are below...after about 20 minutes we got it out!

One of the stars of breaking the lock was an old hacksaw blade from the famous "Mr. Spain" collection.  It was brand new despite being probably 40 years old.  I opened it and between the hacksaw blade, a dremel and a strong pair of wire-cutters we got in!  Mr. Spain and Dad would have both been proud!

Sandcrawler Progress! Volume 1

Jack got the Sandcrawler from Santa for Christmas and work has underway for a few weeks now! Here are some progress pictures after the first couple of bags... More to come!

Jack's Match versus Orange Crush

Jack had his first true wrestling match against a kid from another wrestling club last night. Three rounds with a referee, etc.   Orange Crush came to town and they didn't have a ton of wrestlers so Jack was a little lucky to get a match.  The opponent had wrestled previously so that worked in Jack's favor...but the opponent was a good 15-20 pounds heavier than Jack so that worked against him.  See the pic and video below.

In the end, Jack was declared the winner and clearly had more points!

Santa Found Us!

Catching up a bit on the blog, and life in general for that matter, this week-end.  Nice to have a day with nothing really planned!   

Anyway here's a picture of the hearth on Christmas morning before the kids got after it!  Jack's primary score was a Star Wars Lego Sandcrawler while Elle scored a Disney Princess Sofia castle and Peppa and George Pig.  They each got (which seems to be a tradition at this point) a small animal at the top of their stocking.  Jack a Minecraft Ocelot and Elle a Rainbow Dash My Little Pony.