A Year of Change

Our friend Peggy made it back from Portland last night. She spent the night with us before she’ll drive home to Aspen today.

Both boys are on the mend. When they got home from school they chased each other around the house like wild banshees  for the first 10 minutes…it felt like an hour. As they were running circles down the hall, into the dining room, through the living room I would catch one of them in a bear hug around the belly an ask which ever one I had at the time to calm down.  My requests were unsuccessful. As soon as I let one of them go it was like a spring action launch and off they would go. Of course the Mr. was on a call downstairs and I’m sure the foot steps sounded more like a stampede, or more likely the running of the bulls. Once I got some food in the kiddos they quieted right down. I think I’ll take their after school snacks with me to pick them up today.

I helped the oldest with his 6th grade math homework…it took us about an hour and a half. Factors, multiples,divisors, least common factor, greatest common factor, divisible, and word problems. Not only did the oldest have to solve word problems, but he had to write word problems and solve them. Ugg! The Mr. is much better at math problems and can figure them out in a matter of seconds. It would be much easier and faster for the oldest to do math homework with the Mr. however he’s always working hard to pay the bills!

I just took a word problem that I was stuck on for at least 15 minutes into the Mr. and he solve it as fas as he read it. I actually had the correct answer after I read it, but I couldn’t figure out how I got the answer. So, I spent 15 minutes trying to write down how I got the answer to no avail.

Uh Oh..just heard the Mr. say that David Axelrod is NBC’s senior analyst…wasn’t he Obama’s campaign manager for two campaigns?  He’s an impartial guy I’m sure….

The youngest and I did his homework…I’m much better with 4th grade homework.  Both boys read , as reading is  part of nightly homework. The youngest bought a book at the school book-fair yesterday and read almost the entire book last night. He came in to our room and said that there is only 2 chapters left. I guess that is what happens when electronics are removed from the scenario.

We had informed the boys that if their rooms were not clean to our satisfaction before they went to bed Monday night that there would be a consequence.  I took the PS3 and the Wii out and cleaned/organized their rooms while they were at school. I thought there would be major drama, but the drama was minimal and they both got in a lot of reading. They also visited with Miss Peggy once she arrived.

Time to get moving…I’m late, I’m late…

Love to all and God Bless

Robi says:

Yea, both boys are sick, Mom and I are trying not to get whatever they picked up at school. The youngest seems to have the worst of it but maybe he’s just a day or two ahead of the oldest. They both have bad coughs and sore throats. First up though, the oldest wanted to ride his motorcycle yesterday so we went up to Grandma’s for 30 or 40 minutes. By the time he was finished he was beat. I’m sure his cold plus the heat in all his gear wore him out. The rest of the day was a quick trip to the sporting goods store for new tennis shoes and stuff and then up to bed for both of them. Grilled cheese and tomato soup for dinner and that was it.

We’ll have to see how they’re doing this morning and then decide whether or not they’re staying home. If they have a fever, like they did last night, they’re home for sure, joy joy.

That’s about it, Mm and I are trying to avoid the plague and praying we don’t get it. We’re also staying away from Grandma so she doesn’t pick it up. Hopefully they’ll turn the corner today. Take care and God Bless,

Oh I almost forgot, I picked up my Mom and I a copy of the Farmers Almanac yesterday and it says we’re in for a piercing cold winter with lots of snow. I don’t know about California but time to get ready here in Colorado.

Last, I sure hope Obummer doesn’t bomb Syria. They say there’s “undeniable evidence” that chemical weapons were used. Now just how in the hell do they know that? What if the Muslim Brotherhood (who are being portrayed as the good guys???) did it to get us to bomb? We don’t know, just stay the hell out. Odds are we’ll send over some missiles in the name of whatever as he’ll do anything to change the subject here at home. Hold on to your hats, gas up your cars and get ready if we move forward! If you don’t understand this no win situation in the muddle, err middle, east, check this out, pay close attention now as it’s hard to follow! Here we go,

Iran is backing Assad (the Syrian Government). Gulf states (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait) are against Assad!

Assad is against Muslim Brotherhood. Muslim Brotherhood and Obama are against General Sisi. But Gulf states are pro-Sisi! Which means they are against the Muslim Brotherhood!

Iran is pro-Hamas. But Hamas is backing Muslim Brotherhood!

Obama is backing Muslim Brotherhood, yet Hamas is against the US!

Gulf states are pro-US. But Turkey is with Gulf states against Assad; yet Turkey is pro-Muslim Brotherhood against General Sisi. And General Sisi is being backed by the Gulf states!

Welcome to the Middle East and have a nice day.

God Bless!

The day started off with me taking Peggy to the airport at 6:15am. Being Sunday, traffic was light which was nice. I washed the truck and hit the grocery store on the way home so I made it back home around 8am. Before we knew it, it was almost 10am and Jag had to leave for his first baseball game around 11:20. He, the misses and I took two cars and headed out to the ball fields. I had my NFL fantasy draft at 1:30 so I had to leave early but first wanted to go meet the new team, coaches and help him warm up and watch as much of the game as I could. I wanted to stay but this is the 17th year of our league and it’s been scheduled on this day for months. We have two people from out of the country and others in various states (like me) and most guys in Seattle. Meanwhile Mom would stay until the end and drive him home after the game. Jag was fine with it but I would have rather stayed anyhow.

Of course right after I left, our guy who was playing second base, made some fantastic plays. Turns out he got all 3 outs in the inning! The first was a high pop fly he raced for and reached out and caught and then threw the runner out at first before they got back to the bag. Next up was another fly ball that he also caught! The misses said some parents in the crowd yelled out “we’ll keep him” as he was new to this team and no one had ever seen him play before. Mom said it was great as he was then instantly mobbed and congratulated by all his new teammates. He also was apparently the only guy to catch not one, but two fly balls during the game. I guess all other fly balls, not hit in his area, were dropped by other players. We’re so happy for him and I took him (and Ty) to Dairy Queen for dessert after dinner as a reward. When he arrived home he came downstairs to tell me and the entire league heard him as I was on speaker phone talking through the computer for our draft. Everyone cheered him after they heard the news. It was a great day for him and all of us!

We cooked up some chicken and lamb chops for dinner that I picked up earlier in the day as that’s the boys favorite meal these days. It does have to be the long french cut lamb chops though, not those short ones! The youngest has a bad cold and was up periodically throughout the night. Someone always gets one the first week of school and then usually spreads it throughout the family. The boys have no school today as they’re still testing other kids.

That’s about it, maybe the misses will post more later. God Bless.

.

Here are the comments I missed yesterday:

Annette says:

The Mr. cleaned the garage in the morning and the kiddos made good use of a lariat that was in the midst of all of the clutter.  They made a giant jump rope and expended so much energy that they were almost too wiped out to help with the garage.

Peggy and her friend Linda came over around noon, so Peggy and Doug could move the 1938 Rolls Royce to the Centennial Airport for the event. On the way to the airport the top flew up like a parachute flying over and behind the car. The Mr. had to signal to Peggy to pull over because she never looks in the rearview mirror in the Rolls…why would you??

The event is put on by the Morgan Adams Foundation. Morgan Adams was a little boy that cancer got the best of at an early age. His parents started this foundation in his honor. The organization is dedicated to improving the quality of life and survival rates of children afflicted with brain cancer.

As we were driving up to the airport the aero show was in full swing. A biplane came buzzing passed us with a trail of smoke jetting out behind it. We opened the sun roof on the truck to see the plane upside down overhead.

Once we arrived we walked out onto the tarmac to watch the unbelievably frightening aerobatics. The pilot took the plane up into loop de loops up, around and down, descending to what appeared to be mere feet away from the ground. Then up, up up into a full stall coasting and turning then falling toward the earth and just barely pulling out the plane out horizontally to the ground below. There were a few audible gasps from the crowd…also quite a few fire trucks standing by. Fortunately none of the fire trucks were needed.

The The cars were amazing…The Mercedes Gullwing was lovely. The car is named “Gullwing”because of unique style of the doors. The 1929 Bentley was the Mr.’s favorite.  We took a picture of the Ferrari’s for our friend Antonio…he loves the Ferrari cars.

The kids had a blast with the new babysitter  and the Mr. took Peggy to the airport this morning at 6:15.  Everyone is up now, so time to go.  Love to all…God Bless.

Today is a gorgeous Colorado morning.  The air is clean and crisp thanks in part to the sheets of rain that fell yesterday. The Mr. and I looked out the window at one point during the early evening and we could not believe the amount of rain that was falling. I’m surprised that the street didn’t turn into a river.

The boys and I walked to school everyday but one this week. Yesterday was by far the most fun. Each day was extremely enjoyable because we walk and talk about everything…real life and imaginary “What ifs”. The walk generally takes 20 to 25 minutes and those are my favorite minutes of the morning. The boys made up a fun new game on the way. We all held hands and one of them would kick a pine cone. If the pine cone was rolling ahead and to the right we would say, “It’s yours” to the youngest(he was on the right..I was in the middle and the oldest obviously was on the left)keeping our hands in tact we would all run together and the youngest would kick it. We would call out the name of the person to kick it and off we would go…holding hands, jogging, kicking, and laughing.  The game went on for a good five blocks.  We then picked up the pine cone to save for another day.

The boys both felt that they did well on their assessment tests when we picked them up. The youngest has a first week of school bug…stuffy nose and a sore throat…bummer.

Lacey is doing much better. She is on steroids for a week and an anti-inflammatory. I think the pressure from her full tummy pinched a nerve that made her hind leg go out and once she was in that position on the floor(hind legs spread eagle) she couldn’t get herself up. She hasn’t had any problems since. I took her for a two block walk and I think I’ll call grandma to see if I may take her swimming in the pond for physical therapy. Wheww! The boys and I were freaking out a little bit….

Ben, the neighbor boy ate dinner and slept over  with the boys last night. They were asleep at 11p.m. and up at 6a.m…..Uh OHHH! They are playing away.

I need to help the Mr. clean the garage…we are on a mission to de-clutter and get everything ship shape.

Have a great day…love to all and God Bless.

Mister here, Meanwhile I’m out de-cluttering the garage, it’s amazing how much junk two boys can collect. I can count 7 scooters, 4 skateboards, 7 bikes and an army’s worth of Nerf Guns. Throw in on top of this every kind of bat, ball and stick known to man and there you have it. I’m on a mission, to clean out everything, fix up everything and start fresh, and I won’t stop until it’s done!

Well about 5am the misses heard a whimpering downstairs so she rushed down to find Lacey our lab who couldn’t get up. You see her hips have been sore for sometime and they were sort of out. We think she was trying to go to the bathroom (as she did on the kitchen floor) and couldn’t get up fast enough. Anyhow she then got right up and seems fine. Of course now we are up so we fed the dogs, made some coffee and here we sit.

Today the boys have assessment testing at school until about 11am, we hate this. Think about it, kids have been gone all summer and then they’re back for 4 days and bam, the school wants to test them. Our kids will do fine as they had a math and reading coach for part of the summer. No summer slide here.

Did anyone see the Nasdaq stock exchange shut down yesterday? You may not think this is a big deal, but this is a big deal. That’s all I’m going to say about it, I’m through preaching about the economy and gov as it doesn’t seem to do anyone any good. If you’re not aware of everything going on around you, you probably never will be. The sad thing is I think  most people just don’t want to face it (reality) so they just ignore it. My poor Mom gets the brunt of it as she lives so close so every now and then I tend to go off on her (like when the Nasdaq was historically halted yesterday) and rant about how things are falling apart, sorry Mom! Hopefully I and lots of other people are way off base and things will get better on their own.

Back to the family, this weekend Jag starts Fall Ball (baseball) on Sunday. As I said the other day, a team from Arvada that we played twice called and wanted him to join them. Tryouts for Golden (his league) are at the end of September. Meanwhile Ty is signing up for La Crosse, we’re big believers in team sports for the boys.

We had big bad storms yesterday afternoon with torrential rain. We needed it but boy did it come and go fast! A few miles away they had flash floods and hail that was almost biblical. Speaking of biblical, we need to find a new church, one that’s closer as it’s too hard to get up to Genesse every week. If you don’t go to church, I hope you’re reading the bible or something, maybe religion can be my new rant, ha!

That’s it, hope everyone’s well, take care and God Bless.

We slept in late as the title says so not much time to write today. We’re all fine, lots going on around here and lots going on this weekend, that’s it,

Bye

here you go,

1. Robi says:

   August 20, 2013 at 5:10 pm

   Aw the boys are so cute or handsome or chick magnets or whatever they wanna be called these days, and the misses looks like a movie star! Not to worry about me – I’m alive and doing well!

   Reply
2. Annette says:

   August 20, 2013 at 7:38 pm

   The boys look very grown up.

   Reply
3. Blondie says:

   August 21, 2013 at 12:59 am

   The boys don’t look very thrilled about going back to school! LOL

   Thanks, actually the boys were thrilled about school, I think we just took a poor picture. Yesterday the work continued on our front patio and we ordered our new garage doors. They should be here in about 3 weeks. Next up is cleaning out the basement to put in new carpet. Our friend Harry is coming in mid September and is going to do some work for us as well. I think we’re going to update the boys upstairs bathroom and perhaps redo the floor down in our kitchen area where its linoleum right now, so lots going on.

   Tonight I have the first of two of my fantasy football drafts at 6pm. The kids are going to the pool after school again (they went yesterday too) as it’s just so hot.

   Let’s see, what’s going on around the World. Fukushima Japan is leaking highly radioactive water (so far 80,000 gallons into the ocean and environment) Syria is using poison gas and attacking their own people, Egypt is in turmoil and our gov is going all out to strip all of our rights away in the name of protecting us, right. Personally I think we need to get out of all these conflicts around the World and let them work it out themselves and for sure stop spying on all Americans, I’ll take my chances. It’s getting so people are more afraid of their own gov than the terrorists they’re supposedly protecting us from. What’s really funny is that it’s the democrats that are against all the domestic spying and many people that are independents or republicans (like us) are for once, agreeing with them! It’s some repubs that are pushing for more and more spying in the name of protecting us, hard to believe. All I know is somehow all this over reaching by the gov needs to be reined in. And worst of all, we have a 15, 16 and 17 year olds in Oklahoma who stalked (followed with the intent of killing him) a college student from Australia who was jogging to shoot him in the back as they were bored and wanted to see what it was like to kill someone. Two of the kids were black and the third was half black but I don’t see Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson anywhere, oh wait, I forgot, this is not a hate crime since the victim was white. And the media has a parent from the Newtown shooting all over tv saying all guns need to be taken away as someone shot off a gun in Georgia near a school. What in the hell is the World coming to.

   By the way, here’s an interesting fact, check out the ages of our Founding Fathers.

    

   The surprising ages of the Founding Fathers on July 4, 1776  AUG 13 2013

   For the Journal of the American Revolution, Todd Andrlik compiled a list of the ages of the key participants in the Revolutionary War as of July 4, 1776. Many of them were surprisingly young:

   Marquis de Lafayette, 18
   James Monroe, 18
   Gilbert Stuart, 20
   Aaron Burr, 20
   Alexander Hamilton, 21
   Betsy Ross, 24
   James Madison, 25

   This is kind of blowing my mind…because of the compression of history, I’d always assumed all these people were around the same age. But in thinking about it, all startups need young people…Hamilton, Lafayette, and Burr were perhaps the Gates, Jobs, and Zuckerberg of the War. Some more ages, just for reference:

   Thomas Jefferson, 33
   John Adams, 40
   Paul Revere, 41
   George Washington, 44
   Samuel Adams, 53

   The oldest prominent participant in the Revolution, by a wide margin, was Benjamin Franklin, who was 70 years old on July 4, 1776. Franklin was a full two generations removed from the likes of Madison and Hamilton. But the oldest participant in the war was Samuel Whittemore, who fought in an early skirmish at the age of 80. I’ll let Wikipedia take it from here:

   Whittemore was in his fields when he spotted an approaching British relief brigade under Earl Percy, sent to assist the retreat. Whittemore loaded his musket and ambushed the British from behind a nearby stone wall, killing one soldier. He then drew his dueling pistols and killed a grenadier and mortally wounded a second. By the time Whittemore had fired his third shot, a British detachment reached his position; Whittemore drew his sword and attacked. He was shot in the face, bayoneted thirteen times, and left for dead in a pool of blood. He was found alive, trying to load his musket to fight again. He was taken to Dr. Cotton Tufts of Medford, who perceived no hope for his survival. However, Whittemore lived another 18 years until dying of natural causes at the age of 98.

    

   Pretty amazing that these men at such young ages were instrumental in the formation of our great country.

    

   Here’s one more interesting fact for you,

   A new CATO Institute study found that a mother in New York State with two children is eligible for $38,004 in welfare benefits–which is greater than the annual salary of a first-year New York school teacher. Wow, is it any wonder why people stay on welfare these days. $38K is not bad for someone uneducated with no job. We’re approaching a point where the Obamaites will never want to work, why would they!

   Time to run, keep posting comments as without them we think no one is reading even though we know most of you are. Take care and God Bless.

The first day of school went well, both boys had a good time. Mom walked the boys to school while I drove to Vail and back. The mountains sure are pretty this time of year but wait until Fall.

The misses and I both had lots of work to do, sometimes it seems that’s all we do but we’re focused on our master plan and we keep working towards our goal.

I think everyone is fine but it’s been sometime since most of you have commented so it’s hard to know. Hope you all are well.

Take care and have a great day.