Kenny Chesney concert

While I wait for my Youtube vids to upload, here's a few pix from the Kenny Chesney concert Jen and I went to last weekend.

There was betting going on behind us as to whether the mullet under this dude's wig was real. Nobody could tell. Eventually he got too drunk to stay at the concert.

This guy was to my immediate left. A lightweight by far. The girls he was hanging out with were just getting started by the time he decided the chair in front of him was his new buddy. I was convinced he was going to yack on my shoes. He never did. It would have been a cool story.

There was a drunk girl to Jen's right. She eventually left, too after finding out that trying to dance, drink, scream, sing, wave at Kenny and text message her girlfriends (all at the same time) while blasted drunk is not super cool. Her last text message (I was watching this circus head downhill): "if i leav th cocrt will u guy tke me hm and hld my hair i gotta puke rel bad". OK I made that up, but that would've ben a cool story, too. She left about halfway through.

Kenny is not tall, but not as short as I expected. I guess his height is a tabloid big deal or something. What he lacks in height he makes up for with a 4 story tall video setup:

Either the Fargodome doesn't do well with Kenny's sound setup, or his sound guys should be talked to. It was really hard to make out singing or individual instruments. Another bone to pick is Kenny told this odd and somewhat irrelevant story for a while about the song Sweet Home Alabama and the crowd freaked out cheering because they thought he was going to sing it, then he sang something related (I guess? - I couldn't understand him for the horrid sound). Weird moment, and the crowd reacted with a "w00t!!11! Sweet Home!! YEAH!! *muscstarts* uhh....no? um...uh..... *uncomfortablepause*.. w00t!!1!!1 Kenny is singing a different song! What is it? I dunno!! YEAAHH!!11! *screamingdrunkednessensues*".

KC sure does have energy. They played for (I think) 3 hrs, non stop. The concert was pretty good over all. I loved the light show and the drunk people.

Plastic Convoy

Wife says: No more huge toys.

In my defense, the second one was a steal of a deal. Almost brand new. And it came with a little trailer, big enough for, oh I dunno, a 2 year old named Mason? Plus the new one has more legroom. And a cool flip-down front windshield. Stop looking at me like that. I have 3 boys, ya know!?

Out of order post. About power wheels again.

The power wheels before. Taken with my cruddy cell phone camera. The color is just about spot on, though. It was purply-pink when we got it from sun fading. You can't really see it in the picture, but the wheels were so worn they had holes. The floorboards were covered in mud and gook, the dashboard had been yakked on (seriously - didn't find this out until we hit it with water), the engine compartment had been used to haul dirt, and the whole truck was covered in brown colored paint overspray. Nasty. Did I mention the "AHHHH!!! 90'S EXCESS CRAZY FLAME RANDOM WHATNOT" stickers?

Well, the boys helped take it apart, clean it and paint it. I did the final assembly. Materials used (in case you want to do the same for your kids) were: Krylon Fusion plastic paint, colors used were white and "Chili Pepper Red" (this stuff is really neat paint - if you need to paint plastic, it's the way to go!) and some basic gloss black enamel we had lying around.

That's it. The rest was removing stickers with a hair dryer, disassembling, cleaning and regreasing the gearboxes, a little elbow grease here and there and a new set of wheels from http://www.svcvaccum.com. I now officially have $100 into a normally $250 toy, and it's totally custom now. No silly stickers.

The new battery shows up mid next week!

A little insight.

Small Scale Jeep Restoration

The boys begin restoration of the 1997 Jeep Wrangler Power Wheels we picked up for Adam last night. Soon to arrive: New wheels, new batteries and in the spring, a new paintjob. For now, it's teardown and cleanup time. Everybody pitched in and we tore it down to the plastic shell. Only a little elbow grease required!

Transmission solved

We figured out what to do with the transmission. We're in the process of torching the old mounts off the frame and modifying an early 90's Chevy truck transmission cross-member to fit up inside the frame of the Scout, along with fabricating new frame-side brackets. It's more work than we wanted to do, but this'll ensure it's done right. Here's the modified cross-member and fabbed brackets. Nevermind the booger welds. My welder wasn't feeding the wire correctly.