Ice in the brakes?

We have been having some car issues lately, and we have a shop that we can use for the next week.  So for this next week we will be doing several repairs to both of our vehicles.

Andrew getting the brake booster our of the car

 I (Cristina) lost my brakes last week when it was really cold, so Andrew took my brake booster and and master cylinder out to check things out...

  

This is a picture of the inside of my brake booster.  That brown lump in there is actually ice..... No wonder I couldn't stop!

Projects on Andrews truck include taking off the side steps, (In the wintertime they hold snow and ice against the doors of the truck resulting in a lot of rust) fixing the windshield wipers, (one is slightly bent) taking off the plow frame, and grinding away rust and welding sheet metal back on over the holes.

Here is a picture of our research/Cristina's blogging station:

Add caption

Here we look up parts on Napa or Auto Zone to price them out.  They are both closed today because it's a federal holiday, but tomorrow we will hopefully be ordering parts.

 

Here is our tool station.. Andrew is breaking in his new tools that he got from his parents yesterday.  I think he has wayyyy too much fun with them!

We are now in the midst of dropping down the oil pan on my car.  (It has a leak in the bottom, and the side..) We are going to try to fix it, and if we can't, we will have to order a new one of those as well.

 

Thanks for reading!

Little People

The other day I was babysitting the kids (Patricia, Moriah, Noah, and Jonah) and so we made gingerbread cookies!

Patricia cutting gingerbread cookies

I think it's safe to say that all had a great time making the batter, rolling and cutting out cookies, and then decorating them.

Noah cutting Christmas cookies

Our Christmas tree... taken from the woods out behind the house

Later that week we experimented with making Christmas wreaths.  They came out pretty good, and they weren't very hard to make at all.

Cristina making a wreath

We used two wire coat hangers as a frame, then wrapped them up with floral tape to make them non-slip.

 Here is Patricia working on her wreath:

Needless to say, wreath making is messy business.. This is about half the greenery that was on the floor when we were finished.

The end product.  In the woods out behind the house we found evergreen with little pine cones.  So cute!

One morning Andrew and I went for a walk down the road to pick some winter berries.  We were going to add them to a wreath, but we decided that the wreaths looked better without them, so we used them to decorate a windowsill with. :)