I got out of work a bit after 5:00 on Wednesday and left for Sebewaing. The roads weren’t too bad but the 2.5 hour trip took about 3.5 hours because of a couple backups and idiot drivers.

Aaron(brother #2) left North Carolina 7:00pm Tuesday night, drove straight, and arrived home at 5:30am. Nathan(brother #4) got home from IWU late Tuesday. Troy (brother #3) spent the weekend in Tx.

Mom’s sister and my two cousins flew “home” from Norway to surprise Grandma and Grandpa. It worked very well. They were well pleased. It also explained why Grandpa wasn’t allowed to talk to Karsen on the phone for the last couple weeks.

We had lunch in Unionville with Mom’s family and then went to Pigeon for the tail end of their Thanksgiving dinner and early Christmas. I spent a “while” doing Tech Support for Grandpa, played some cards, and then we watched some old family videos.(Picture: Clockwise from bottom left: Nathan, Dad, Aaron, dad’s other brother Daryl.)

I planned to spend Friday being productive and doing some work on my car, building some carts, and homework. Instead I went with Aaron to drop some fixtures off at a company Detroit Speed uses to make some parts. The owner gave us a tour of the factory. These parts are just a side venture for Rogers Athletics Company, Stage Right, and the packaging plant for all the SaranWrap in the world. There were lots of cool and expensive equipment such as laser cutters which cut ¾” steel and presses which 6” pipe and 4” solid rods, and a powder coating system which can handle pices 4’ x 5’ x 30’.

Friday night Dad, Aaron, and I made some carts to move and store the stage at church. Aaron is a really good welder and detailed person. His job was to make sure the carts were square and wouldn’t break. My job was to make sure it didn’t take all weekend. Dad was supposed to make sure we didn’t kill each other. We got them done in a couple hours and managed to both survive even though we had a little incident figuring angles out… It was a pretty funny site. I think they turned out really well. They should make setup and teardown a little easier. Aaron is a really good welder so I don’t think they will break anytime soon.

Saturday we went to lunch and Dad’s parents with his brother and a sister. I got to do some more tech support. I got to play with Grandpa’s Christmas present – a VCR to DVD recorder. I copied some old video clips to DVD and will edit and upload some clips later. Some of you will get a kick out of them. It will either help to explain me or just make me a candidate for a mental health thesis.

Sunday was church. I got a couple of “cute” (Am I allowed to use that word?) pics of the pastor’s daughter. She figured out how to reach the drinking fountain. Aaron left at 2:00am(have I mentioned he is insane?), Nathan left in the early afternoon and I left mid afternoon.

Back to the homework I didn’t get done this weekend. Coming up soon - archival pictures from the shoeboxes and old family videos. I know you just can’t wait!!!!