Phil « A Bundle of Myrrh

Archive for the ‘Phil’ Category

>Happy Birthday Phil!

Friday, May 15th, 2009

Phil turned 30 years OLD yesterday! Lily and I made him special cards and his favorite taco lunch.

Gifts from my mom arrived right before we headed down to Omaha to spend the day in the “Old Market” and have supper at the Upstream Brewery where Phil and I shared our first meal together in Nebraska two years ago, ahhh.

Omaha is proud of the new pedestrian suspension bridge they just opened. We had to check out this 22 million dollar addition to the city. It was a nice walk after we’d stuffed ourselves. We stopped to look over the edge at the mighty Missouri river that flows under it and realized we weren’t just walking across, we were bouncing. I thought of Mom and Sylvia and how much you gals would have LOVED that!

Posted in Birthdays, Phil | Comments Off on >Happy Birthday Phil!

>Fish from the ice.

Thursday, January 22nd, 2009

Phil had a big day ice fishing! See what he brought home for mama!

I prefer they look this way.

Posted in At The Parsonage, In The Kitchen, Phil | Comments Off on >Fish from the ice.

>The Talented Mr. Hales.

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008

The Hale men have many talents. Here is the jewelry box Phil’s dad Neil made for me. I’ve never seen anything like it! Isn’t it beautiful?

And Phil has been beaming about the “box” he made to attach to a speaker to amplify the sound on my computer and ipod. I’ll let him explain….

“In technical language we call this an amplifier. I had an old kit with all the components in it that I had never put together. I sodered the components and cut up an old set of computer speakers.”

Beaming.

“This is the printed circuit board. It has an integrated circuit which does the real work. There are a few capacitors and resistors too. The white knob is part of the potentiometer, which is a variable resistor used to control the volume of the amplifier output (otherwise known as a volume knob).”

“I found a battery holder for 2 AA’s and wired everything together. The 1/8th in male adapter plugs into any headphone output. I put the circuit in an aluminum box which I folded together like a cardboard box. I drilled a hole for the volume knob. It works pretty well, though turned up it sounds bad because it is too much power (max 1.2 watt) for a such a little speaker (rated .5 watt). But it works nicely to amplify audio. It was also fun to do a bit of engineering and get it to work. We have used it a few times since Aubri’s MacBook has a puny integrated speaker which can not be heard over background noise.”

To which I replied…”Um thanks for the speaker.”

Posted in At The Parsonage, For The Nerds, Phil | Comments Off on >The Talented Mr. Hales.

>Happy Birthday!

Thursday, May 15th, 2008

Yesterday was Phil’s 29th birthday! He was surprised with a wonderful breakfast of all his favorites; hash browns, boiled eggs, bacon and homemade biscuits. He’s such a lucky boy! Also, he finally got to open his cards and a present from my mom. Little did he know that the day would hold another surprise that evening, a secret meatball and spaghetti supper with some good friends! I’d busied myself all week plotting right under his nose and it really paid off.

A shirt from my mom!

Phil arrived home hoping to run off and play some basketball then have a quiet evening. I think he enjoyed what I had planned for him instead.

Look how much fun he’s having!

I made baked spaghetti for the guests and myself, but Phil will have no part of spaghetti with meat in the sauce. He’s a strictly meatballs guy. He had his own birthday boy plate. These happen to be the best meatballs I’ve ever made. Believe it or not, I didn’t, he ate all of this.