This blog has moved

This blog is now located at http://familyblog.adrielhenderson.com/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here.

For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to
http://familyblog.adrielhenderson.com/feeds/posts/default.

Catching up...

A few of the things that have been keeping me too busy to post here lately:

In January I went to the SHOT show in Las Vegas to help with the Leupold booth and get a feel for what other's are doing with video and interactive in their booths. That is one huge trade show!

Also in January and related to work, I launched the Redfield website. This was a five month project on my part, as well as great work with a few fabulous partner companies. Thank you Mind's Eye Productions, Fluid Images and Planet Argon! There's another exciting component coming soon to the Redfield site in a few weeks - for now go to the site and sign up for the email newsletter and we'll drop you an email when it's live.

At home I've jumped into making a more functional workspace for myself, the first step of which has been building a workbench - which I just finished this afternoon. This is based on the "21st Century Workbench" design from Popular Woodworking. I'm hoping that one day I can pass this along to one of my grandchildren.

I was able to take my dad's vise and use it in the end-vise position on this bench:

The drawers in the middle of the table can hold tools and bits while in the middle of a project, or flipped over for a smooth table-top.

Pretty 'n' Pink

The Grandpa Quilt

I have been blessed with in-laws that I both love and respect; and so, I miss my father-in-law very much. In the eighteen months of so before his passing I had really gotten to know him. With Sherie off to Turkministan Dave became a regular at our dinner table and in our family time. He played Wii on rainy days, wrestled with the girls, shot with David in the backyard and had wonderful conversations with Adriel and I about life and God and the kids.

After Dave died I decided that it might help David if he had something to comfort him and remind him of grandpa so I asked Sherie for any shirts that the boys hadn't taken so that I could make a quilt. She generously brought over a whole bag of clothes. Never-mind that I had never been interested in quilting or that I had no idea what I was doing, if my boy needed a quilt I was going to figure it out!

As a side note, it is amazing the things I have learned because my kids needed me to learn them. That is a post for another day though.

It turns out that I had enough shirts for multiple quilts so I decided that David's quilt should not be the first one. I didn't want to make all of the mistakes on his, so I made a trial quilt. I had a lot of help from the quilting moms at The Well Trained Mind board who tirelessly answered my questions and gave detailed instructions.

Making this quilt was, by turns, fun, challenging and full of grief. The shirts smell like Dave and they reminded me that when we saw him we all got great big hugs. The kids were a great joy to Grandpa Dave and if he ever tired of them we never knew it. He was the kind of person who made you feel better just by being around him and when you talked he really listened.

In honor of this amazing man, here is the first David H. Henderson memorial quilt. The kids call it the "Grandpa Quilt".

Layout

Putting it together

Center squares pieced

Tied and quilted

Mim says "It's nice and snuggly" -

all wrapped up in her Grandpa Quilt

~Christina

Goodbye Dad

Big Questions

This morning I went to the garage for something and Miriam followed me out. The casket is out there and we had explained to Miriam that Grandpa's body would go in there when he died but we had also explained that he would go to heaven to be with Jesus. She asked me "How we get Grandpa's box to heaven?" You could almost see the wheels of her mind turning, contemplating the lack of wings and jet engines. So I explained that while his body would go in there, Grandpa's soul would go to heaven.

How do you explain a soul to a three-year-old?

I tried.

I failed.

She nodded and humored me anyway.

Tonight Mim asked to snuggle and so cuddled on the couch between my girls she asks "How we get Grandpa's soul to heaven?"

Wow. In this day filled with playing outside, cartoons, painting, play-dough and dolly birthday parties her little mind had been turning around the conversation of this morning; trying to figure out what it all meant.

How does a soul get to heaven? I don't know. Do any of us really know?

I told her that Jesus would come and take it to heaven. That sounds reasonable.

How can someone so small ask questions so big?


~Christina