Just Jump

God has taught me a lot this past year.  You grow the most through tough times.

God used my first miscarriage to remind me that he is ultimately in control.  I can make plans, but sometimes there is very little I can do to make them happen.  Lets face it, I did everything right, but my baby still passed away.  Still, no matter what, God is good and he is in control.

A few months later we were expecting again, and God kept telling me not to be afraid, I would be okay.  It was devastating to see my lifeless baby on the ultrasound.  It is an image I would like to erase from my memory.  I cannot.  It will forever be a part of my story.  Through it all God kept whispering in His reassuring voice, "Lean on me.  I will carry you.  You will be okay."  So, I did.  Not because I am some amazing woman of God, but because I had nothing left.  I was heartbroken.  I had no desire to face the world, take care of my family, or fulfill my church and work obligations.  Curling up in a deep dark pit seemed like a better option.

We waited a few months before we decided to stop trying not to get pregnant and decided not to even think about it.  We got pregnant right away.  I did not talk about it to anyone for over two months other than Brian, and the extent of our conversation was, "I'm pregnant."  "I figured."  That was it.  No celebration.  It wasn't that I was afraid for people to know.  I was afraid to get attached to this baby.  I could only think in terms of when we loose this one.  My constant prayer was, "God help me to be okay  when this one joins its siblings in Heaven."

On the ultrasound everything looked okay, but the fear was still a constant sidekick.  It was all consuming.  I had to cancel my next appointment because of a sick kiddo, and I lost it.  It was as if that appointment was my lifeline, the thing that was going to keep this baby alive and remove all the worries.  In the midst of my angry tears, God gave me the image of skydiving with an instructor.  I was white knuckle clinging to him, my instructor, and the plane.  He knows what he is doing.  My only job was to let go and jump.  I had to let go of the fear.  He would take care of everything while I drank in the beauty and life he created.  That's it, just jump.  It was not and is not easy.  Every day I have to consciously let go.  I have to remind myself that it is okay to dream.  God is there.  I am still sad about the two little lives I never got to meet, and there is no guarantee this new little one will be okay.  I am learning to live with the uncertainty and letting God guide the journey.  No matter what happens God is in control, God will take care of me and my family, and I still have joy.

Miter Saw Stand Progress: Drawers Complete!

This weekend I was able to get out into the garage and work on the miter saw stand again. I had figured out all of the dimensions I wanted to cut out for the drawer fronts.  Saturday I cut out the drawer faces and that wasn't too bad but then I had to find the centers so I could drill the holes for the drawer fronts which was slow going. And then I figured out how difficult it was to mount the drawer fronts on the drawers because there wasn't anything that just lined up flush. After mounting the first drawer face I realized that I should cut out a spacer to measure between the side of the drawer and the side of the face. It took a couple of scrap pieces before I got it the width I wanted, but that made things go much faster.

Today (Sunday) I mounted the faces for the top two drawers which was more of a pain because the drawer wasn't square with the front of the stand.  So I had to cut out shims so the faces could be mounted on the drawers and allow the drawers to close all the way.  Then I cut out a three quarter inch square to mount on the top to keep the dust from falling off the top and right into the drawers.  That was pretty easy so I got that all glued up at the end of the afternoon.

So the only thing left is to buy some thin plywood to mount on the back to prevent the sawdust from getting in the drawers and I'll also do it for the sides too. So at this rate I should be able to get this thing all done by next weekend.

I'm very excited to have all these drawers. I used to have two cardboard boxes full of miscellaneous stuff and now it's all in those drawers and nice and organized.

I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out.  I think it looks pretty good.

Joel came out while I was taking pictures.

This is the view from the back.  Joel opened the double doors to look through and be in the picture.

Miter Saw Stand Progress

All the drawers were dry today so I got the rest of the rails screwed in and put them into the stand! Before I cut the drawer faces, I needed to put the two cabinet doors on in order to see how much room I would have with the hinges there. That turned out to be a fiasco because the hinges moved the position of the doors once I screwed them in.  And then I figured out that I had mounted the hinges in different locations on opposite doors!  So then I got to do it again. :p

Hopefully next weekend I can cut and mount the drawer faces on the lower 8 drawers, and then the following weekend I can do them for the top two drawers.  There is still a ton of work on this thing but I think the big chunk (cutting and putting together the basic drawers) is finished.

Miter Saw Stand: The Project Continues

I finished the stand part of my miter saw stand at Thanks Giving 2014, which was really nice. I can throw an 8 foot board on there to cut and I don't have to do any fancy work to support the boards.   I just put it up there and cut.

I had always intended to put some sort of tool/building material storage in the space inside of the frame and since I finally finished the trains project, I decided to take a stab at putting drawers in. There was an amazing amount of pre planning that went into it.  I worked on it every afternoon this week and still was not able to complete the project; but I wanted to show my progress.

I built the first two drawers in a couple of afternoons with plywood I already had.

The next step was to screw the rails on for the lower drawers. This was extremely difficult because I had to figure out how to get the rails on so they would be even, and so they would be at 90 degrees to the front of the frame.  I had to cut several shims to get ones the exact right size so they would be square.

This is my progress after the first day of cutting plywood.  The big stack of squares is the drawer bottoms.  I learned several things while cutting the big 4' X 8' pieces of plywood. The biggest being that I can't cut a sheet that large and have it be good clean cuts.

Joel wanted to be in a picture as well

This is all the wood for the 8 drawers except for 1 piece that got ruined by a mistake.  This is about a sheet and three quarters of plywood all cut up into smaller boards and it was quite massive.

These are two of the shorter drawers getting glued up.  I only have enough clamps to do two drawers at once.

Today I woke up early and glued up another pair of drawers. Then at 2:30 I glued up another pair. And then finally at 9:30 when the kids were watching TV I glued up the last pair. Tomorrow afternoon I should be able to start work on the faces.  I'm in the home stretch which is pretty exciting.

An Experiment that Worked Out

When I was 14 I told my dad I wanted to make a chess board. He said that was one of the hardest things to make.  With the tools he had, he was correct. It would have been almost impossible to come up with a chess board that I would have been happy with.

Now that I have quite a collection of tools, including a table saw and a planer, I decided to give it a shot by using some scrap wood that I had in the garage. I started working on it after I finished the trains, and it turned out a whole lot better than I was expecting so I cut out some checker pieces and gave it to my dad for Christmas.

Rachel was absolutely delighted with the checkers set and had me play several games with her before we wrapped it up for Dad.

I was pretty happy with the way this turned out.

I especially like the border on this that I used my router table to make the corner fancy.

What Has Brian Been Doing?

I haven't posted about this until now because it's been a secret all year. Last winter I started designing wooden trains to give to my kids, my nephews, and Kathy.  During the winter I looked at many pictures of wooden toy trains online. The tricky part, was to build interlocking cars.  I came up with a design for that and built 6 cars.  I had Joel and Rachel play with the cars (which were just flat bed cars) and found out a very important thing. 2 years olds try to push trains from the rear!  So I realized that I needed to make pull toys.  I tied a string to the front and wa-la! Joel could pull them around the house. I also figured out that it takes a long time to build each car so I decided that 3 cars per train would be adequate.  I started working on the engine and put some scrap pieces on one of the cars and brought it into work.  I got lots of opinions about what I could do so I made some adjustments and the following Monday I brought in an improved design. I think I talked to the people at work for 2 o3 different times before I settled on a design. I think it was April by then.  One of the trickiest parts was the smaller dome shaped piece right next to the smoke stack. I ended up needing to build a router table in order to get that done, and building the router table was a project in its self!  I finally got most everything cut out by summer time but found that sanding took a long time.  Anyway, I eventually got them all done and delivered. Here are some pictures of them.

The cargo cars turned out fairly nice. It took quite a while to cut all those rabbits, but the joints were nice and strong.

I really liked how the passenger cars turned out.  My first try on their design was simple, but I liked it so much I didn't try anything fancier.

After I had most of the trains built I found out that my nephew Titus does not play with vehicles much.  So I bought a scroll saw, which I had been wanting for a long time, and cut out animals to go in his train set.

I never had all 22 cars I built assembled at the same time, but I did get four trains together and strung them together for a gigantic train!

Bjorks go to the Snow!

Today we went to the snow and it was lots of fun. We go to a park right by Boreal and we can just walk along in the woods and sled where ever there is a gentle hill.  This time, the snow was a lot firmer everywhere and everyone could walk around easily so it was really nice.

We found a nice gentle hill to sled down.

 

Rachel was a pro and could do it all by herself.

Joel liked being able to walk around by himself in the snow.

That's our snow man. No one else was building them because the snow would not stick, but I made a good one anyway.

The trick to getting the snow balls was to carve them out of existing packed snow.  It took a long time but I succeeded!