The last few weeks . . .

. . . have been very stressful.

We have had a lot of new business as well as ongoing client needs creating a real crunch on our time.

So, with the need to stick around and wait for the Xplornet installer at home I've managed to get some long awaited To Do tasks taken care of and now take a bit of a mental health break. :)

That picture was taken from a parking lot yesterday afternoon in downtown Edmonton.

Keep in mind we had a very cold December with –20C temperatures being very common (and our just landed heating bill showing for it).

So, it was really neat to see a rainbow in January. :)

Oh, and the other day it was +6C here in the Greater Edmonton Area while it was –5C in Las Vegas Nevada! W00t!

All of this hard work has lead to some very intense play sessions with the kids! A local hobby store had boxes of UberARC 3200 kits on sale so we picked up a few. The four of us jumped right into putting some projects together. The first was via the building plans that came with the boxes. The second was a free-flight construction project.

Using the first box we built the UberARC 3200 tower:

We had to trim the top a bit to fit under our 8' ceiling. :)

We then moved on to the following tower project:

The above is the base for the tower incorporating four pillars with the internal walls supported by the cathedral style columns shown.

This is the finished product:

And:

The tower stands pretty close to 7.5' tall and is roughly 22" long by 18" wide. It took two and a half UberARC 3200 boxes to build.

And, some Father/Son time:

My eldest son is right into anything mechanical with LEGO Technic being his real draw right now. He has three kits he built on his own with the above being my first kit. Together we have done some neat things for setups. We are starting to build a Technic collection of spare parts via eBay for some self-built projects we are talking about.

We have a newly purchased Technic 8070 Super Car waiting to be built too.

As tough as it is to make time, it is ultra important to keep in my mind that they come first and that sometimes, especially when things are as nuts as they are now, I need to hammer down and allocate time to spend with my family.

That work/family/life balance can be so hard to keep at times!

Thanks for reading and your support over the years. It is muchly appreciated.

Speaking of life . . . Monique and the kids are in town ... so maybe it's time for some Jet Li window rattling! :D

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

Windows Live Writer