Last Night

We're slowly settling into our home in Pleasant Grove.  Overall, we LOVE it!  There's just so much to do, and my commute is about 45 minutes each way now, so our free time is pretty limited.  But last night we took a little break from the unpacking, cleaning, weeding, etc. to have a little fun.

My brother Michael and his wife Jessica came over to help us get our new fridge moved in, but we got a little "distracted."  Michael and I recently both got new cameras which just happen to be the exact same model.  So we thought we would practice using them.

First, we admired the sunset:

But I must admit, that was a little boring.  As the night grew darker, we moved to the backyard to mess with the exposure settings.  Here's what we got:

The red name was done with my headlamp's red light.  An LED flashlight was used to create Spencer's name.  I turned the flashlight on and off to separate the letters in the image above.

It was so much fun, we all wanted to take turns.  Then we thought - why take turns?  We can all play at the same time!  Here is what two flashlights and two headlamps can create in a 20 second exposure:

As we were about to call it a night, I glanced over at a tree in the corner of our yard and just had to take a few more pictures.  Here's my favorite:

I love my new camera.  Spencer bought it for me and surprised me with it a few days after my brother got his.  Spencer is the best.

Stay tuned for some pictures of our trip to southern Utah to check out the pioneer trail, "Hole in the Rock."

More Manly by the Minute

Well, It's been a while since I blogged, but I'm excited about my day yesterday.  Through work, Michael (my brother-in-law and business partner) and I have arranged to come up with performance incentives.  The first incentive that I received was a welder; a Hobart Handler 140, seen here:

I have rock sliders on my 4Runner for off-road armor so I don't turn my nice car into a scratch & dent.  Sliders are the tubes under the doors, and they are generally used for two purposes: 

and

You can see the shape of the sliders (if you can look away from my cute wife) 

When I initially built them (or had them built, I just put plastic end caps on, and they were getting all rusty on the inside, and filling up with dirt.  I decided to cut off the ends and use my new welder!  I ultimately thought they looked pretty terrible anyway.

So I made the first incision:

Ground the paint off:

Made my first official weld ever!

Cleaned it up a little bit (not too shabby, I say):

Ground it smooth:

Primed and painted!

It's basically a custom set that would cost over $300 that I made for under $100 total.  Plus I learned to do something new!  I like the way they look much better now too.  I only ruined 2 jackets and started one small fire (oops!). I've got the bug now, so I'm probably going to be spending some more quality time with my welder soon.  Any suggestions about what to build?