Woodwork from Grandpa Egg

Another Christmas means another year of ornaments from Grandpa Egg. He is very handy with the dremal tool. If you look back in our blog you will see pictures of the Christmas ornaments that he created last year.

Note: All pictures below are very large, I did that so that you can click on them and get a much more detailed version of the image to see the work that was done.

This year was another year of excellent ornaments. There were 6 ornaments this year.






First ornament of the year was for my brother's engagement to Anita. The reason it is in the shape of a heart is because he got engaged on Valentine's day. What makes this ornament really cool is that it opens up, so there are two different ways to display this ornament on the Christmas tree.




The next thing that happened this year that earned the prestige of being an ornament is Riker James Eggleston was born, and my father never goes with the obvious for an ornament, and he did not disappoint for this one either. Riker (a name taken from Star Trek The Next Generation) needed a Star Trek Ornament so we had stroller in the shape of the Enterprise.




This May Grandma Egg retired after 31 years of teaching at Tippecanoe Valley High School. She was glad to be done. The ornament is showing all the things she is going to be doing in retirement. Playing with grandchildren, sewing on her new sewing machine, playing Sudoku, reading John Grisham books....




This summer Grandpa Egg took a three week "VACATION" to Louisiana to help run Shelters for the Red Cross because of Hurricane Gustov. It wasn't the most enjoyable time he has had, but he was very willing to help out. The ornament lists all the different cities he worked in while he was there.




My brother Ben had a change of jobs again this year. He become a college professor at Bethel College, and this is a pretty good approximation of his desk in his office.




As all of you know, who read this blog, Danny lost his job in October, but was fortunate enough to find another job in a month with The Tire Rack. This ornament from a distance just looks like a Tire on a Rack with "Tire Rack" over it and "Good Year" under it. Grandpa Egg did a great job with the ornament's text if you look close, so please click the picture and read the text above "Tire Rack" and above "Good Year".

Those are all the ornaments for this year, but this was not all of the wood work for this year. Grandpa Egg and Grandma Egg worked together to make Sydney a gift this year, and it is amazing how well it came out. As you have seen in previous blog posts, Sydney sleeps in a new set of bunk beds.



Most girls get little doll houses to play with, but Grandma and Grandpa Egg decided that she needed her own little set of bunk beds to tuck her animals into.



The quilts and mattresses are by Grandma Egg and the wood work is by Grandpa Egg. The crazy thing is the wood work is all exactly to scale. I believe they said the scale was 12:1. AMAZING.

Hope you have enjoyed the Eggleston creativity half as much as we have!

Indianapolis Children's Museum

Fun in the hall of mirrors.

The family took a trip to the Indianapolis Children's Museum. Who went on this trip was Mom, Dad, Sydney, Riker, Grandma Egg, Grandpa Egg, and soon-to-be Aunt Anita. It was a great time. We left home at 6 AM (definitely not the fun part!). It was a long morning getting down there, but once we were there it was a great time.

We started the day by going to the little kids area, which was perfect for both Sydney and Riker.


Sydney playing in the water.

Here is a video of some the things the kids did while they were in there.



This shows truley how happy Riker was! We didn't expect him to have so much fun!


Sydney then saw the Carousel they have and REALLY wanted to ride so Grandpa took her on. Hear is a small video collage of her ride:



We even found a nickel horse for Sydney to ride on, and she had so much fun we let her ride it twice (we are such big spenders :-))



Dad found that his favorite toy ever comes in MANY MANY MANY sizes.



Grandma Egg even got in on the action in the Christmas area with Sydney and played in the snow fort.




While we were in the Christmas area we took the kids to see Santa, we thought that Sydney would do better than last year, we were WRONG. She was already to run up to him, but soon as it was her turn the water works started. She did manage to say she wanted "toys" as she ran away. We weren't even able to get a picture of it, but Riker loved the big guy.



We decided to stop on the way out for a group picture. Sydney had, had enough but hey, it was a big long day of running, exploring, playing, learning and general adorableness!

Jamie is cracking up...

Danny here: Last Thursday I went to my friends house in Warsaw to help him build a workbench. We spent all day working on it. Later afternoon I called Jamie and she came down to Warsaw for dinner and to hang-out for the evening. We had a great evening, the kids had a great time too. Here is a nice picture of their two kids (Jonah and Claire) and Sydney, all hanging out by Claire's car seat. The evening seemed to be going along great.




Then it was time to head home. Since Jamie had come down later in the day we had two cars in Warsaw. So, we both needed to drive home. I was going to lead the way (with all the tools in the car), and Jamie was going to follow in the van with the kids. We went a different way out of our friends neighborhood. The neighborhood was very dark. I came up on a trailer parked on the wrong side of the road with no reflectors, I went out around it, and hoped Jamie had seen the BLACK trailer, I was wrong. I heard a crash behind me and saw the trailer move.

Everyone was fine, the trailer was fine, but the van was not quite so good.




We ended up staying the night at our friends' house (thanks again guys!), and then I managed to drive the van home the next morning, and reported the accident to the insurance company on the way home, setup an appointment for the van, and took it in to start on the repairs. The estimate is nearly $5,000 of damage. Thank goodness for insurance! The van will take until the 29th of December to be fixed, so we will be down to 1 car for quite awhile. I guess it was a good thing that I don't start my new job until then!

Garage Shelves and a Half Wall

I (Danny) decided to do another building project before I started my new job, and I got my dad involved again, and also got some help from my father-in-law. This time I was building another set of shelves in the garage, and a half-wall to divide the third garage from the rest. Here is a video to start the project.




The project moved forward pretty well from here through the morning.




When we moved into the 1/2 wall we had many different little problems to solve, but at the end of one day we solved them all with some help from Jamie's Dad.




I hope you have enjoyed another project at the Eggleston household, as always stay tuned for more projects in the future!

Christmas Spirit

They've got spirit yes they do -- they've got spirit how about you!!!!

Just a little something to make you grin!