Thanksgiving Visit with Jeff and Family

November 19, 2011

It doesn't take long for the excitement to begin as the girls head for a leaf-covered back yard and attempt a wagon trip down the hill. At least they had their helmets on!

My tradition of putting up the little playhouse has persisted even though the girls are getting too big for it, but they usually find some creative use for it. Here Jordan and Elyse fill it with leaves.

Elyse climbs on top of the house and jumps in the leaves. Maybe not such a wise move with your two big sisters present. They promptly put the roof on the house and sat on it.

But there are lots of exits through door or windows, so Ashleigh has to try to thwart Elyse's escape through the door.

Elyse makes good her escape through the front door out of the house full of leaves.

Jordan enters the leaf-filled house, and predictably gets trapped there by her sisters.

Jordan escapes and the game continues.

From feigned terror to triumph.

Elyse has become quite acrobatic. Jeff and Darla attribute it partly to having a trampoline close to the monkey bars.

Jordan and Elyse move from the back yard to clowning around with the dental drill in Rod's shop.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

We all went to church together and Jeff and Darla attended our Sunday School class. We were glad for them to meet the folks we have come to love by being with them each week. We decided to do some family pictures by our colorful little Japanese maple.

This was the evening for our "Thanksgiving Around the Table" gathering at church, which this year was preceded by games for the children and music for families. An appreciative audience in lawnchairs listen to Lewis Brown and his group.

At dinner time, we had an outside serving line for hotdogs and an inside line for barbecue. We settled in at our table for the meal.

We had a large group for dinner in the Fellowship Hall and then a big bonfire afterward for roasting marshmallows.

A side fire was started and was used to roast a lot of marshmallows.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Jeff, Marty and Rod went down to Charlie Brown Airport to visit Mark on the movie set he was working on. Part of the fuselage of one of the two planes they had gotten from the big airplane museum in Roswell, New Mexico was being set up for the crash scene investigation which is part of the movie. They are setting up in a working hangar where you can see a plane being pushed into place close to their set with the bigger plane. Mark has already worked on part of the crash scene at Lakewood Studios and another set in Social Circle.

Mark had directed us down to where he is working on a steel project, building a section of jetway for the movie. He took us around to the hanger where this plane was, and after checking with the crew there that was positioning part of the wing, we went around to the other side of the plane and climbed in through one of the windows.

We poked around in the interior of the plane and had a look at the cockpit.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Wednesday's agenda included a fancy tea with Brenda, Darla and the girls. They had had their trip to the American Girl store, the bear store and the bookstore, and now the girls put on their fancy dresses for the tea.

Dressed for their formal tea Brenda and Darla had put together nice sandwiches and cookies for their time of tea together.

In the afternoon we took an ice cream bar as an offering and again visited Mark at his construction site at Charlie Brown Airport.

We were trying to be sensitive to security issues and making sure that we didn't interrupt Mark's work too much since he was on a very tight timeline. We had told the girls they might not be able to get out of the car here, but it turned out that Mark and one of his welders were the only ones around at this point.

Mark's current task is to build a length of jetway using this cargo container to be the body of the jetway. He is building steel legs to elevate this section to airplane height, and the supporting structure has to be on wheels. Welding had to be done out here in the parking lot since there were jet fuel tanks on the other side of the building where the finished product would be used. Movie jobs are always custom jobs. Mark had to cut a hub out of heavy plate steel with a cutting torch and then lay out the holes to fit the wheel. Then the hub had to be welded onto the axle with enough strength to hold up the jetway section as they rolled it into place.

They were welding up heavy steel leg sets to elevate the trailer body and using a solid steel axle to which to attach the wheels. All this was fit together for the final movie set.

We all gathered around to look at the wheels that had been delivered to Mark for placement on the "jetway". The axles were being built to fit these wheels.

We walked around to the hangar area so Darla and the girls could see the work in progress on the set for the crash investigation segment.

It was also neat to see the sleek corporate jets sitting in this area close to the active runway.