Sterling!

Hey everybody, We just got the sterling kit car we've been working on in the cache valley cruise in. The work I have done on it is mostly mounting brackets that you don't see. Except for the aluminum dash in this picture. I did that on the mill. My main project is the speed controller so when we can get pictures of that I'll direct you to it. Here's the link to it on ebay. We are going to have to sell it on ebay because the buyer most likely is bailing out. So check it out and if you have 45K floating around place a bid!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Other-Makes-Custom-Battery-Powered-Sterling-Electric-Vehile-FAST_W0QQitemZ140331096566QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_Cars_Trucks?hash=item20ac6299f6&_trksid=p4506.c0.m245&_trkparms=65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C72%3A1171#ebayphotohosting

We are trying real hard to take full advantage of every hour of summer vacation that we have. I've been going fishing almost every night this week. Last night I caught 15 in an hour and a half! Tonight we went and caught 7 and are eating a couple for dinner. (We don't usually keep the fish. Mainly we like to catch them.) We were catching them about every 3rd or 4th cast.

Today we went boating with the Majors at Willard Bay. It was a blast. Fun to just get out and ride a boat and also fun to ride the tube they had. Sara got pretty good at hanging on to it. This is one of the few times she fell off

I also got the news back from my FE test. I passed! Turns out spending 135.00 on that wasn't a waste after all! Sara is searching for a new job. Convergy's was great for a while but in the end it is still a call center and there is no changing that.

I've been getting into golf more than usual lately. In fact I go every week now. The golf course here has a discount for students so I can go for 10.00 if I walk. I usually go with a guy in my ward who also golfs. I'm getting so much into golf that I took to watching it on TV. Never thought I'd get to that point. Hopefully I never feel comfortable watching hours of fishing. Unless you are using a fly as bait fishing is one of the most lazy sports I've participated in. Somehow being too lazy to actually do something lazy (watching fishing on TV) doesn't sound socially appealing.

California

I'm back to the blog with our pictures from our California Adventure (pun intended). First I wanted to share a great bargain we got at DI. We sure love fried potatoes. Or as burger king calls them- french fries. Well anyway, I hate all the work that goes into preparing them. I wish we had something to peel the potatoes too but we have this magical thing to slice them into fries. Cost us a buck fifty and we love it!


We got sweet tickets for disneyland, californa adventure, and even universal studios. A guy sold his to us for way cheap 40 buck for a 1 day park hopper and a free day at universal studios. So total it cost us 80 bucks. We figured if we had paid regular price for all that it would have cost us 250.00. Good deal eh?

Of course not trip to Hollywood would be complete unless you stop on the freeway and take a picture of the sign.


At California adventure waiting in line. A bit nervous I might add because we were worried our tickets weren't 100% legit.

Another classic picture from disneyland.

Sara was all pumped about going on the tea cups. We also learned an important lesson about pictures of ourselves that is that pictures that you take of you and someone else usually include nothing more than your face. We have a bunch of pictures that I took at arms length with our faces all scrunched together. I would include them but they are all the same. You can't see anything but Lillywhite face.

And what a bitter cup of tea it was!

Kade may enjoy this- it's a rapala that is 28" long. we use ones that are 2 inches long. cost: 56.00.

We went to the park with hunter and Mern. Look at all that red hair!

We stayed with Mern and Steven while we were there and got to see their new house as well as help them move some stuff.

Fred's unruly children

Over the last couple months you've heard me gripe about making the plexiglass covers at work. Today I did more of that and wanted to show you my "boneyard" of past failed covers. These are only the most recent (as in the last 3 weeks). I would bet I've gone through upwards of 30-40 covers.

This is what happens when the lexan sticks to the pan it is heated on. There is a point somewhere in between 9 1/2 and 10 minutes of cooking in the oven that it reaches this point. At 9 1/2 the stuff is not quite rubbery enough. At 10 minutes it becomes liquid in places. It's ruined as a liquid but not easily formable at 9 1/2 minutes. This was probably the worst sticking one.

The Lexan bubbles if you don't "predry" it in the oven for 4 hours at 250 F. That adds a lot more time to making these covers-it takes 4 hours to dry them then about 40 minutes to destroy them if you failed.

This is my family of failures. Some of them may look okay but they are bad because the radius isn't close enough to the exact size on thecorners or because one edge bowed up or down too much. It's been the biggest waste of time I've ever experienced. Waste of money too.

Thursday I went golfing and we found this duck walking with a bunch of babies then they hopped in the water. I took this picture planning to count them later. I think this mama was trying to populate the duck colony all by herself. There may have been more ducklings but I just missed them in the picture. I counted 11 in the picture.

We ran into a bunch of groundhogs there too. They were as abundant as chipmunks at yellowstone. And I'm convinced they took one of my golf balls too.

Went fishing with Keith today in honor of free fishing day at first dam. We each caught 2. I caught one pretty good sized one. Keith caught a bunch of weeds with his second fish.

Guess who got a new camera for their birthday!

Yep it was me. I got a new sweet camera for my 23rd birthday today. Its a canon powershot a1000 IS and it is wonderful. It has a feature so that it looks for faces and focuses on them. Plus, we can hook it up directly to my printer that I bought a year ago. It was the cheapest printer I could find so it is a happy coincidence that it works with it. We've been on picture drought for so long I think I may have gone crazy taking pictures and movies. I had Sara be my Vanna (Lilly)white for the day for product demonstrations. She did a swell job at that.




Sara's KitchenAid Mixer that we got from Mom and Dad. This saves so much time (especially making cookies)

Even though this might look like a grapevine, it's actually a tree that is tipping over. I'm hoping that it will someday be as cool as "the bouncy tree" at Temple Flat. I was going to test it today to see if it is ready for bouncing but the ground was muddy.

We went up to Logan Canyon and met mom and dad in the trailer. They are staying the night at Franklin Basin so we met them for dinner and cake.

And what a cake it was courtesy of Sara's cooking skills.

Before going to see Mom and Dad we went mini golfing and I had one bad shot shown here which allowed me to practice my rock climbing skills. This is my actual shot by the way I didn't just act this one out.

This is my whiteboard upstairs with one of my favorite mind boggling "equations". Thank you Vanna.

Sara gave me this nifty watch for our anniversary on Saturday.

Our crops are coming up too. Last year when I planted Sunflowers only a third of them came up so this year I planted them 2 seeds to a hole and 8 inches apart. I'll be danged if every seed came up! They are supposed to get up to 8 feet tall!

The most delicous cake and beautiful cook. That card she gave me was awesome as well.

The camera does really well at close up pictures and our roses are blooming.

This rose is my favorite.

I gave Sara this ipod station for our anniversary. 25 bucks at Wal-Mart.

This is my dart board which if you remember is directly opposite the wall where the whiteboard hangs on. I think I may need to improve my aim. You'll notice there is a rug behind the board to prevent people who have a lack of skill from damaging the wall behind.

When I woke up this morning Sara had already been up for a while decorating the house with signs to help me remember that today is my birthday. By the way our camera does have sound I just didn't say anything when recording. She also made me a delicious traditional Lillywhite breakfast with pancakes, eggs, hashbrowns and lots of it. So delicious.

Upgrades, downgrades

So I have had some thoughts and revelations since the last post. I really don't get on the internet much when I'm not already on the computer doing homework. Hence the long absence of posting over the last couple weeks. With school being out (no guilt) and the summer here (fishing is back in season) there are so many more exciting things to do than be on the internet dreaming about a new coin on ebay. So, all that being said you can expect posting over the summer to be less frequent. The posts (when they happen) will be considerably more exciting though and hopefully we will have a camera for pictures.

In other news, we have both received upgrades recently. My best friend Frank is getting married in August and asked me to be his best man. I consider that an upgrade - going from involved with every decision of a wedding to a bystander who is occasionally in goofy pictures. On Sunday Sara arose out of the depths of ward athletic director with me to the relief society secretary. Tons of fun. Softball season starts in 3 weeks and I will be the sole person overseeing that. It's not a hard task though.

We got our garden all planted last week. We were able to convince all our neighbors that they really weren't going to have a garden. Last summer they all swore they would have a full garden and spoke of the things they would grow. All it turned into was a bunch of balogna and a huge pile of weeds. Now that we have the whole plot we have 20 plants of potatoes, lots of corn, some watermelons, pumpkins, sunflowers, and even tomatoes and bell peppers.

Saturday we went to see Star Trek. Good movie. In its own respect it was as good as batman. I never got into the whole star trek series but they explain everything so you aren't left out anyway.

Summer is here!

Summer has finally arrived! In my opinion summer starts after my last final of the spring semester. I made it through finals alright. I had 3 classes I knew I could do well in and 2 that I was doubtful about. I was just hoping that the 3 good classes would outweigh the other 2. I need a 3.50 GPA to keep my scholarship and last night I checked the grades and all but one class had come through bringing my gpa to 3.49. If my last class was an A (which scores did not indicate would happen) then I would get a 3.50. Anything less would be an A-. Well the curve did me well and I pulled off an A in that class so my scholarship is good for one more semester. If I can keep the 3.50 I get it for next spring then that 's the end of the scholarship. I also took a big chance in one class that paid off. The teacher gave us the option of not taking the final if we took the average of our last 3 test scores and apply them to the final. My would be grade came out at B+ and I almost took it. That was my thermodynamics class which has been hard material. I figured if I got a 92 on the final I could bump my grade up to an A-. I took the chance and the final was a piece of cake. I'm sure I got 100 on it. So my grade actually went up to an A. Oh and I forgot to mention that taking the final was not a no risk gamble. If you took the final and did bad your grade would go down. 3 of my friends who I've studied with all year opted to not take the final and ditched me to study by myself for the test.

We are lovin the spring weather. Last night we went out and bought seeds and plants for the garden at Lowe's. We wanted to get a white lilly in honor of the family name but couldn't find any. Lots of pink ones but no white. Sara works full time at convergy's still. Some days its really busy with angry people but a lot of times she just talks to old ladies who freak out when you say things like 'TV', "input", or "cable". My work is a blast. I love being able to work 8 hours a day and am usually able to accomplish what I want to in a day. I talked to my advisor before I left and she said this job will also count as an internship. Bonus bonus. At work I am making a new plexiglass cover but this time it is out of lexan which is harder to form than acrylic. I did 2 experiments in the last 2 days with the stuff but it never formed right. It either had bubbles in it or wouldn't sit right. So I made some modifications to the mold and found a tip online that said to reduce bubbles you should heat it at 250F for 3 hours. I tried it and it worked. No bubbles and the cover molded just right. Always a good feeling when things go the way you want.

We went to Kaysville to hang out with Sara's parents and to hone in our skills on the Wii. My skill is in golf and sara's is in bowling. It really made me itchin for golf in real life. It was so nice to not have to leave at 8pm so I could hurry home to do homework.

We need to do something funner than tell knock-knock jokes to eachother at night so we are going to go to california this summer. Of course we'll see and stay the infamous hotel goldthorpe as well as see mickey and goofy. Super pumped for that. Besides going to disneyland and maybe the beach we have no plans for that week. In talking to Mern we learned great wisdom "If you plan to have too much fun, you might not have too much fun."-Fred K Lillywhite