Rinn Reflections

I couldn't believe it when my phone rang this morning at 6:30. It was our school librarian (and also my team leader) calling to say that school had been cancelled. I had heard it raining/sleeting in the night, but I never heard any buzz last evening about the weather being bad enough to cancel school. What I love about when it snows in Texas is watching the news...first of all, the "on the scene reporters" (meaning the ones standing out in the weather) are literally ducking the snow/ice hitting their face while they talk. This morning one reporter stooped down and made a snowball and said, "The kids could have a lot of fun making a snowman today!" Another reporter said, "Dallas is already reporting 1/4" of snowfall." Now, I know that this is Texas, and that snow here is definitely a rarity, but, having grown up in Minnesota, it all makes me laugh so hard!! If the weather was like this in January in Minnesota, it would have been a normal day like usual...no school cancellations. And, if the low was only in the 20's (as opposed to the teens, single digits, or below zero), we might not have even needed to wear our snow pants! ;)

Last night we celebrated David's birthday, since he was out of town on his actual birthday (Tuesday, January 9). I made salmon for dinner, and for dessert we had German chocolate cake with Breyers Vanilla Bean ice cream (David's favorite kind of ice cream). He also opened his presents from me: a new rolling Eddie Bauer duffel bag (for his weekly trips out west) and a framed picture of him with his brothers and dad snowmobiling over Christmas. It was such a wonderful night together! With David traveling so much, we truly don't take our time together anymore for granted! Happy Birthday, Love! I know your 28th year is going to be wonderful!!

Yesterday afternoon, my friend Amber called with a crazy idea! Our church, Keystone, is having our "Grand Opening" Sunday tomorrow, so today we had a prayer walk at the church. Amber's idea was that we would run from Keystone's old location, Hillwood Middle School, to our new building on Keller Parkway! Even though it poured all night, it wasn't raining when we left Hillwood at 7:45 this morning!


Right when we turned north to run on 377, though, it started raining/icing. (We're currently having an "Arctic blast" storm here in north Texas.) Thankfully, the rain/ice only lasted 10 minutes. We had an awesome run and made it the 6 miles in an hour. We wore our "Grand Opening" t-shirts (over several layers). David met us at the new building for the prayer walk...plus he brought us hot chocolate from Starbucks!

Thanks for a great run, Amber!

This post is for all friends and family that might be a little curious as to what a Highway Heavy Contractor really does. I admit that I didn't know the half of it when I signed on, and the more I learn, the more I realize how "deep the rabbit hole goes." (to steal a quote from the matrix). Basically, we are one of many general contractors bidding for work encompassing the entire state of Texas, and usually with the Texas Department of Transportation (TXDOT). The lowest bidder gets the job, and that means there is no marketing or sales dept.!! Thank goodness! Currently, our bread and butter are jobs including dirt and concrete, and because of a large inventory of cranes for a company of our size, that means bridges.

These two Lorraine cranes have a capacity to lift 100 tons! They are the larger of the two kinds we use (Bucyrus-Erie 30B's are the other - 30-40 tons). We use them for setting the bridge beams, lifting supplies/equipment on top of the bridge, pouring concrete (getting a concrete bucket where a concrete truck can't get to), setting forms and a multitude of other things.



Here is the bridge we're building in Clyde, TX (near Abilene). Currently we are setting 4"-thick concrete panels on top of the beams to give us a deck to work on. These will stay on and we will pour the finished concrete bridge deck on top later this month. This bridge is our longest to date at around 500 ft. long. We also built the dirt approaches to the bridge from the ground up - about 40 ft. tall and 500,000 cubic yards of dirt!



To move the dirt, we use a combination of off-road belly dumps and dump trucks hauling from land close by. They hauled non-stop during the work day for months to achieve the two earth-mountains on either side of the bridge.




Many times we will use this Komatsu PC300 to load the trucks, although for this job, we loaded with a Hitachi 550 and a Cat 375 b/c of their bucket capacity. This PC300 is our most common excavator and we would be lost without it. Just about every job we've done since I came to work for Earth Builders uses one. Plus, it's probably my favorite piece of equipment to run.

Well, I hope this brief introduction will help y'all out! Keep a lookout for more construction posts- I'll be running my first full job as Superintendent of, yes, another bridge!

We had a fabulous time in New Jersey with our precious friends, Ike and Steph Welsh. We visited them for New Year's 2 years ago, and we were all excited to celebrate together again. On Dec. 30, we went into NYC for some sightseeing. It was already crazy in Times Square! Then, we took the ferry back across the Hudson River to Weehawken, New Jersey where we ate dinner...at Ruth's Chris. I really thought David was going to die he was so happy!! This was Ike's 12th trip to Ruth's Chris, and he has been bragging it up for years to David! It really was a delicious meal! Then we went to the ChartHouse for mud pie for dessert...except they wouldn't seat us if we were just going to order dessert, so we ordered it "to go" and snuck up to the second level to eat it where there was a balcony with an incredible view of NYC. We also saw the movie "Rocky Balboa" together (kind of a snoozer) and did lots of shopping at the world-famous Mall at Short Hills.



On New Year's Eve we had incredible cheese and chocolate fondue and played lots of games. Unfortunately, Steph and I lost to the guys in our Rook tournament. We're so glad we got to spend New Year's with Ike and Steph! Can't wait to see you guys again--hopefully soon!!! Happy 2007, Everyone!

We had a great time in Steamboat for Christmas!!! On Christmas Eve, we went to church and then came home to a delcious dinner of clam chowder that David and I made. (I was mortified by how many cups of cream are in the recipe, though!) On Christmas morning we ate a great breakfast (every meal is great at the Rinn's, really), and then we opened presents!! Michael got me a jewelry box that I was really surprised by! It was very sweet. I had put all of David's high school, Taylor, and post-Taylor pictures in 3 albums, and it was really fun seeing him look through all of them! David also got an iPod from his parents that he completely was not expecting!! :) It was very fun being in real wintery weather, too. David is going to post this weekend about the snowmobiling day he, his dad, and his brothers had (while Susie and I hit the outlet malls--I think we had a much better time!). We had a great Christmas and are very thankful we could travel to Steamboat to be with Tim, Susie, Jon, and Michael (oh--and Blade, Jon's new boxer who you can see in the picture above).