Latest Project

Here is the latest to come out of the shop.  It is a set of occasional tables made from Spatled Cottonwood trimmed in Red Oak.  I made them for the museum auction they are having at the end of the month.  I made three but donated the two best.  The cottonwood came from a tree I planted at my old house.  I didn't know at the time how big cottonwoods can get and it out grew my backyard.  When we cut it down I used an attachment on my chainsaw to slice the log into boards.  I have been using these for odd project. Cottonwood is not usually a primary wood, but the spalting, the black streaking through the grain, makes it very eye catching.

Desert Flowers

Here is a collage of some spring flowers that have started to bloom.  Also is some pictures of our latest neighbors.  This pair of hummingbirds have built a nest on the rope that holds our newly planted Photinia trees.  There are two eggs in the nest.  We hope they will survive and add some more bird life around here.

Junior Olympics

Forgive me family, but has been 76 days since my last blog.  I have waited until the winter-bound folks have started thawing out.  Due to my lack of any common courtesy, I would have said something rude about the weather.  

Instead I'll show you some

 pictures of the girls during junior

 Olympics.  Julie ran the 100 meter and running long jump. Katie ran the 100 & 200 meter as well as the running long jump.  

  The school doesn't spend any time teach the kids how to run or jump so it is more like an organized recess then a competition, but both girls enjoyed themselves and are looking forward to the week off for Spring break.

Julie's First Poem!

Julie just had to get into the writing game.  Here is her first entry.

Cats

by

Julie Koch

Cats are fat

Cats are skinny

Cats are big

Cats are mini

Some walk around all day

Some just lay on a mat

Cats are fluffy

Some are not.

Wonderful Christmas

It was a great Christmas.  Mom and Vinny came down from Fallon to spend a few days with us.  Theresa's family was up for the day so we had 12 for a prime rib dinner.  Theresa and her sister Kris, did an excellent job preparing all the food. We all did our best to eat.  Brother John and Sara stopped by the next day.  John, Sara, Mom, and Vinny then headed back up to Fallon so John and Sara could spend a little time in the snow and appreciate the San Diego weather even more when they get back home.

I learned a new computer past time to spend even more time in front of the computer.  Video chatting.  Vinny guided me through the concept of how to get setup.  I took a cheap little camera that Katie got for her birthday and hooked it into the computer. It is has a little solid state memory device built into it, but if you connect it to the computer with a USB cable it will act as a webcam.  I manged to get that and Skype hooked up and we spent some quality time with my brother Karl and his family Christmas night.  The next day Vinny felt real sorry for me and got me a real webcam.  We got to call my sister Heidi and chat with her family the next day. 

 It was real fun.

If you've got 7 minutes to spare you may want to see the play that Katie put together with her cousins and Julie for Christmas.  Katie came up with story, wrote up scripts for all the players and had rehearsals before the big night after Christmas dinner.  

If the video doesn't work here, you can find it on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hpPFVyIFiY

Here is a picture of the wine glasses I made for Theresa. They are made from Quina wood and then the goblets are attached.  In the middle is a coffee mug I made for her birthday.  It is made from 129 separate pieces of Pink Ivory wood.

We hope everyone had a great Christmas.

New Picture Show

I put a slideshow on the Blog entitled "Old Family Photos"  It as a couple of new pictures that I received from my newly discovered cousin, Suzy (Koch) George.  If you have any input, comments, or corrections, please let me know.  I also have higher resolution of the scans if anybody needs them.

William Frederick Sr., John Jacob Julius(?), Maybe William's sister(?), Karl William, Maybe William's Mother, William Frederick Jr, William Anton, Emma, Lillie Koch Probably 1927

Christmas lights are up

Actually they've been up for a week now I just have fallen out of the blogging mode and it has taken a cold morning to get going again.  It's 35 degrees right now and the wind maxed out at 75 mph yesterday.  May not seem like much for folks from the winter states, but it's cold for us desert dwellers.  The lights on the house are not really as bright as the image looks, it was just the exposure I had to use to get the picture, but it looks kinda cool.

This other picture is from the model train yard.  There is a group here in town that build 1/8 scale trains.  One of the club members has roughly a mile worth of track winding around his property.  

They have switches and bridges and little towns to ride through.  They open it to invited guests a couple of time a year and we take the kids when we can.  This was the first time we came during December. They had a lot of Christmas light displays up.  Julie was a little nervous riding out into the darkness on the first trip, but on the second go around she was playing tour guide.  "And off to the left you will see the snowman family, on the right is a small herd of reindeer."

This is an older picture of the train rides.  Back when Katie was three.