Daddy For Life

A man walks on this earth For not so very long And he wonder what He'll be remembered by When he is gone. So he struggles through the years Down a road he paves With hopes and fears Trying to carve his name upon the wall of time And so it is, my son That I stand here now Looking over the years Of all the sweat and tears That crossed my brow All the battle plans I drew And all the mountains That I tried to move Lay behind me now Like miles of sifting sand. But of all the things I've done I'll never be more proud Than of you, my son And of all the dreams I've had It meant more just to hear You call me Dad More than any wealth or fame Or any glory I wish I could claim More than anything I'll ever do Son, I'll always be most proud Of You.

Ever wonder what lies beneath the deep blue sea? My dad has always been a big fisherman and he did a great job passing the love of fishing down to me and my kids.  Stream fishing, fishing out of boat, and ice fishing -- we love it all.  We even have a small pond in our backyard full of tiny little fish, turtles, and frogs that we love to watch and play with. But I've always been curious to know just what happens deep below the surface of the waters.  Are there few fish...?  Or many...  Are they taking my bait...?  Or are they playing with me... What else is lurking down below? So we put together a little underwater camera rig equipped with a GoPro Hero 3+ and underwater case and setoff to find out... I've dropped this rig in both salt and fresh water and have seen trout, perch, crab, halibut, shrimp and more.  It's been a super fun thing to bring along to any fishing and camping adventure.

Settlers of Catan is a game in which players assume the roles of settlers, each attempting to build and develop settlements and cities while trading and acquiring resources.  Players gain points as their settlements grow and the first player to reach ten points wins.  There are a number of expansion packs available for the game as well. For a period of time, this was a very popular game within the family.  However, setting up the board was cumbersome (as was clean-up).  So I decided to build a custom Settlers of Catan board (actually, I built two) using wood, an Adafruit Feather board, and NeoPixel LED lights to ease the setup.  Upon powering the board, the layout of the various resource tiles (rock, wood, sheep, brick, and wheat) is randomized. I started by build the basic wooden board.  I did this by cutting several 1x3 boards into eight different pieces measuring 24" in length.  Using Elmer's Wooden Glue , I glued each of the boards togeth...