Sammy Snowman (by sarah)

We are currently snowed in so Jean didn't get to go to Pre-School today. Instead we have been building a snowman - his name is Sammy. Here are the pictures of Barbara and Jean - I'm not sure who was having the most fun!

We then all went inside for hot chocolate with special chocolate cream on top! Barbara brought the sledge round but Jean said she didn't want to go on it so they are currently off building Barbaras fire etc...

Here are some other picks of the water fall - from these you can see that down in our valley here in Gloucestershire we haven't actually thawed out for weeks now!

I'm loving my new camera - though at the mo I only have its memory which is about 10 pictures which is frustrating as is the need to use the Kodak software when uploading the photos onto the laptop :/

Sump plug woes (by alaric)

It's time I changed the oil (and the oil filter) in the van, since it's been over a year now.

So I bought myself some new oil, and a new oil filter, and prepared to do the deed according to the instructions in my Haynes manual.

The first step is removing the plug in the bottom of the oil sump, that lets the oil out. It looks like this:

Naturally, when you remove it, lots of hot oil comes running out (you do this with the engine warm so the oil flows well). So you do it with a bucket underneath!

However, I've not gotten as far as that step yet, because the head of the sump plug (which is hexagonal, like a bolt) is rounded. You can see in the pictures how the corners of the hexagon have all come off. They're shiny where I've been trying to grab them with a spanner, which just rotates when I apply enough force... and it doesn't take very much force.

So I went out and bought a special thing for undoing damaged nuts and bolts. It'll make a mess of the sump plug, so I bought a new sump plug, too. The magical nut remover looks like this:

The spiral grooves inside are rifled so that when you put it onto a nut and turn it (such as with the big adjustable spanner in the background), the points grip into the metal of the nut, and the spiral pulls the socket onto the nut as it twists it out, so that it can't push the socket off. Most stripped nuts and bolt heads are rounded towards the top, so tend to push spanners and sockets off as they are twisted; this thing pulls itself onto the nut with the spiral shape, thus counteracting this.

However, my sump plug bolt head is already far enough gone that the special socket rotates on it (shaving off little curls of shiny metal as it goes) when I turn it, again with surprisingly little force - but the next size of socket down doesn't fit onto it...

Perhaps the sump plug was made out of lead or aluminium or something?!?

I guess the next thing to try would be getting under there with a file and shrinking the head down to the next size by putting new flats on it.

But, since it's freezing outside and I've nowhere inside to work on the van, and we need the van ready to do a long drive in a couple of days (which I'd rather not do with the current black oil in, in this punishing weather), I think I'm going to take it to a garage and ask them to sort it out for me... I can give them the oil, the oil filter and the replacement sump plug I've already bought and just ask them to do the hard part!

Jean’s First Christmas Play (by sarah)

I have just come back from the Snowman at Sunset which was the nativity Jean's pre-school put on and Jeany was a snow cloud.

We made her outfit last night and I'm hoping it will have survived so I take a photo of her in it when Daddy comes home on Saturday. The children all had a great time though Jean did do a lot of wide eyed staring and had to be reshuffled to the front when her snow cloud bit happened. The sun shined on her and made her sparkel.

I put hair gel glitter in her hair and then dug out the 'fairy dust' stage glitter my aunt gave me when I was little - this stuff makes you shimmer and I have used it in countless christmas plays and I even used it when going out to clubs and things at uni.

Jean was very sparkly 🙂

She run up at the end of the play and hugged me lots, she said she'd been a bit scared and I told her she did really well and was very sparkly - she even had sparkly shoes. She went off for an after show treat whilst mummy and ferfer (my dad) went for mince pies and non-alcholholic mulled wine.

When I get round to I will put the out fit up on Salaric.

The van is fixed! (by alaric)

After the van's sad demise, it went off to Sarah's excellent uncle David to be fixed.

Anyway, he sorted it out, and I picked it up last weekend, but I've only had a moment to write about it now!

Basically, the front right wishbone had broken. It's a big triangular metal thing that attaches to the chassis on two hinges, and then attaches to the wheel at the other end, with the shock absorber coming down into the middle. As the van rides over bumps, it pivots on the hinges, regulated by the shock absorber. So it plays an important part in supporting the weight of the van.

However, knowing I'd be interested, after replacing it with a new one, David put the broken one in the van for me to take a look at!

I'd have expected something like this to be a solid casting - but no, it's two pressed sheet steel shapes welded together, making a hollow body. It looks like thick steel, 3mm or so, but near where it's cracked apart, it's more like 1mm. I presume that's due to corrosion over the years.

Here's the new one - in situ, under the van. It's the shinier, blacker, cleaner looking part, although it's already picked up quite a bit of mud.

The old one is now in the little garage, awaiting cutting apart to investigate its construction and exact reason for failure, then WELDING PRACTICE!

Old McDonald had an Alpaca (by sarah)

On Saturday we started our outings in the Lakedistrict by going to see the Alpaca's - these are cute little camelids from Pure or somewhere and they are so lovely - I never thought I'd find something I liked more than the Llama.

I have decided that even though they are like £7000 each or something I want to bread them when I retire, I already want Llamas when I retire - I hope they'll get on with goats:/

Jean loved them too - they were a variety of colours from white to carmel brown to dark brown and grey - there where mixed ones too. In the shop they had lots of alpaca rugs which looked suspicously like the pelts skin and all but they where so soft and in lovely geometric patterns. For £30 there where teddies made out of the stuff which was soooo soft - I got Jean a little knitted alpaca from Peru for £3 instead - she has called it Paca/Packer and has not stopped carrying it around with her.

We asked the ladies what sort of noise it made as Jean was asking for Old McDonald - apparently they hum so we now have a verse that goes:

Old McDonald had a farm e-i-e-i-o And on that farm he had an alpaca e-i-e-i-o with a hmm hmm here and a hmm hmm there her a hmm there a hmm everwhere a hmm hmm!

(we already have verses invovling such things a Llama's and dinosuars, tractors and chainsaws)

I will post the photos shortly though they aren't very good due to where the sun was in the sky and the fact that I only had a phone camera to use.