A Year of Change

What a fun party, not so much the actual party but hanging out with our friends, old and new. We arrived at Denver’s Union Station (the old train station) which is currently not in use. We walked into a tent to be greeted by a tray of champagne filled glasses with gold floating in the bottom of each glass. I passed while the misses grabbed a glass. You then walked through 20 foot high streamers of silver ribbon set up as walls that you followed to the elevator which took you upstairs for the cocktail hour. There we were greeted by a martini bar (my idea which they apparently decided to use) and then walked the upper level which was a silent auction. It soon became really really warm with all the people crammed into the small aisles of the upper level which rimmed the building looking down on the main level.

Our friends Libby and Carl showed up first and then our realtor friend (her date cancelled late) and our new friends Bogi and Solla. After hanging out a bit, we moved downstairs to our table for dinner. Without going into too much detail, it was a great night with everyone. After dinner the live auction began and the acoustics were so bad we couldn’t hear a thing. This seemed like the perfect time to duck out as it was already 10pm. We were home and in bed by 10:45 and it’s now 5am (been up since 4:15) and I need to leave in a hour for my flight.

Now back to the party, you all should know how beautiful the misses was last night. Now we all know she always looks good, but last night she looked spectacular. I’m pretty lucky but don’t tell her. You know how these things go to her head, ha ha.

I land back in Denver at 9:30 tonight so I’m in for a long day but that’s ok, I can handle it. I need to jump in the shower now so I’m going to sign off. Maybe the misses will write a bit later. Hope you all are well, take care and God Bless,

In almost every yard around here, some sort of tree or branch has broken off from the weight of the heavy wet snow and landed in the front yard. We are not immune as we have 3 giant branches and a half of a tree that came down in our backyard. It’s about 10 degrees outside now so all the moisture is frozen. Today it’s supposed to be cold but will finally warm up tomorrow. Of course, I’ll be in Seattle where it will be raining.

The boys had early release yesterday and spent much of the day outside. The afternoon was filled with typical brother vs brother confrontations over one meaningless thing or another. Nothing out of the ordinary, just brothers being brothers. The day was finished up with a good dinner and everyone was in bed by 7:30.

We’re trying to figure out how the misses can keep working during the coming holidays with all the time the boys will have off. You see, this is also a pretty heavy travel time for me as I need to go and meet with at least a dozen distributors to set up 2012. This is further complicated by the launch of our new Andrea Bocelli line of wines. This involves a whole new group of distributors in many cases, so I’m kind of on a road show from now until mid December. We might be witnessing the end of the misses career at Whole Foods very soon. She’s looking for other sources of income where she can work from home right now. When she’s gone, we’ll miss the “love card” or discount card the most. It’s hard to give up our 20% discount, we’re basically addicted to it. She’s been having lots of back and neck problems from having to stand on her feet for 8 hours at a register all day. It’s really becoming an issue as she usually needs a day of rest on the following day to just get back to normal. All this for $10.50 an hour. Those of you that don’t have to get up and go to a 9 to 5 job, should feel really lucky, trust me (or her), it’s no fun.

I’m back on the wagon trying to eat healthy and drink next to nothing. This will be difficult tonight as we have the annual Museum of Contemporary Art dinner. We’re taking our two doctor friends, Libby and Carl and then our uber realtor friend and her new beau who’s the in house counsel for the largest oil and gas firm in Denver, and a new couple who are from Iceland that recently moved to Bachelor Gulch (the Vail area). They also have homes in NY and London we’re told but are supposed to be really fun and down to earth. Their names are Bogi and Solla, how’s that for a couple of names! I guess she (Solla) is also some kind of doctor. Anyhow we’ll be ducking out by about 10pm as I have a 8am flight in the morning.

Both dogs are sleeping at my feet and the misses has an appointment to get her hair fixed up this am and so do I at a different (cheaper) salon. We should both be back by 10:30 or 11am.

We hope all’s well with you all. We’re on post 299 today meaning by Saturday it should be the 300th day of the year if my math is right. (we started on Dec 31st) Not much time left in the year, it’ll be 2012 before we know it.

Take care, God Bless and have a great day,

Last night the first snowfall of the season rolled into town around 10pm. It’s a heavy wet snow, so heavy that it collapsed the tent that Uncle T and Aunt B put up for Mojo to protect him from the rain while we were in Italy. All the branches of all the trees are also bent over almost touching the ground. I’ve already knocked the snow off the trees in the front yard but the back will have to wait until sunrise.

Yesterday my excel class was really good. I made it to Uncle T’s by about 4:45 to pick up the boys. We rushed home to quickly clean the house before Mom arrived home from work. The oldest jumped right in and vacuumed the house while the little guy emptied all the trash cans and picked up clothes and shoes. She had to go back to work at 9:45pm for an hour meeting and made it home by 11pm. I can’t believe they have meetings that late.

Tomorrow is supposed to be field day at school but I don’t know with all this wet snow and cold temperatures. Obama is in town today to collect some more money for his reelection efforts. He’s in that mode where he’s trying to give everyone money to buy their votes. Yesterday it was some kind of homeowners relief in Vegas, but only for those current on payments, underwater, and here’s the big one, only if your loan is with Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. If everyone who had loans with these two government agencies WAS current and WAS underwater and DID refinance, it would impact about 1 million out of 11 million homeowners underwater. Once again, we’re left out in the cold. Today, trying now to get students to vote for him, he’s proposing cutting rates on what students owe on their loans. I wonder who’s next, maybe homeless guys on street corners will all get vouchers for free whisky to keep them warm on the coming cold nights. I’m sorry to jump into this but I just wish he’d go away. There are 16 bills that would help the economy and create some jobs, sitting in the Senate but they won’t vote on them (thanks Harry Reid, the man who said the private sector is fine and that it’s the government employees that need help, even though their average salary is $125K compared to about $45K in the private sector????), as they do not want the republicans to get any kind of victory. You see it works both ways. I’m afraid we’re in for a long painful ride the way things are going.

Alright back to our little corner of the World. Tomorrow we have the museum dinner and then I’m in Seattle all day Friday. Lots of work today getting ready for my meeting so no time to dally. (can’t remember when I ever used that word?) Hopefully the misses is feeling better today. We still need to get the boys costumes ready for Monday night. The youngest keeps changing his mind daily on what he’s going to be. We’ll keep you posted.

Time to run and get everybody up. I need to brush of the cars too and then hit the trees in the backyard. Hope everyone is well, take care and we’ll see you tomorrow.

Today I’m in school for a day. I’ll be wrapped up from 9 until 4 taking an advanced Excel class on the other side of town. The misses too works so once again, Aunt B and Uncle T are coming to the rescue. They will pick the boys up from school and bring them home until we both arrive around 5pm. Thanks much!

Yesterday the misses wasn’t feeling well and had to spend the morning in bed.  I had lots of work to do and finally finished up around 6pm. She managed to get the boys homework done and dinner made and I did the dishes which helped clean up the clutter a little. Tonight the snow begins to come in with the high tomorrow in the low 30’s. Hope it’s not too much.

We have our big museum annual gala Thursday night and I just made reservations to fly to Seattle Friday morning. The dinner is supposed to go until midnight but we’ll have to cut out early so I can make my 8am flight. Thankfully I arrive home at 9:30 Friday night.

I hope the misses is feeling better today. She wasn’t doing very well at all yesterday. I have both dogs in now and as soon as I’m done with this, I’ll feed them and head out to the gym. It’s now 4:21 in the morning so I have lots of time.

Lots of bills to pay (just had to decide which not to pay) as we got hit with that $8K tax bill which really screwed up our lives. We were, for the most part, cruising along doing pretty well, and then out of nowhere, Bam! $8K to the government. Oh well as part of my new de-stressing life style, I’m trying to just dismiss it. After all, it’s only money or a credit rating or whatever happens when you can’t pay some bills. I refuse to lose any sleep over it. That’s probably not a good idea but I decided if you can’t pay, you can’t pay. Nothing I can really do about it so why get all worked up, right. I’m sure I’ll be back on my feet my the first of the year.

Well, time to run as all this debt and bill talk is getting me bummed out. Hope everyone is doing well. Have a good day, take care and God Bless.

Ok, so far the elk have won but the war isn’t over. We had two days of intense hunting, up before sunrise each morning. We arrived Friday afternoon and set up camp in unusually warm weather which was not a good sign. Driving up into the mountains we were surrounded by lots of pick up trucks filled with orange clad hunters preparing for opening day of the 2nd rifle season on Saturday. We pulled into the ranch around 4pm and had the trailer set up along with the rest of camp by about 5. The misses sent along a big pot of chili for us to have for dinner. After a few glasses of wine and a whole bunch of chili, we hit the hay as 4am came early. We made some coffee, and I had some oatmeal and a quick yogurt before heading out the door in the dark around 5:30am. We walked a couple of miles up the mountain until we found a good place by some trees to settle in and wait for the sun to rise. About 45 minutes later the light peaked over the horizon and the hunt was on. I decided to position one guy at a spot where if anything was stirred up, it would go right by him. My other hunting partner headed up one side of the hill and I the other. Moving ever so quiet, I jumped a bunch of deer but all I had was an elk license. After about 3 hours of climbing up and down the hills and not finding any fresh sign of elk, we decided to knock off until evening.

We headed back to the trailer, changed clothes and grabbed a bunch of guns and jumped in the truck. After a 10 minute drive down the road we were on the other side of the ranch and grabbed some shotguns and 22’s with silencers (by hunting buddy is a Class 3 weapons dealer meaning he legally owns a bunch of machine guns and silencers) and decided to walk the woods to see if we could find any sage grouse. After a few minutes we didn’t find any grouse but did find a bunch of fresh claw marks on some aspen trees and then some fresh steamy bear dodo. We all looked at each other and pulled our 44 magnum revolvers and looked around. The bear couldn’t be far. Now we didn’t have a bear license either but we weren’t worried about that, we just didn’t want to be surprised by one. A couple of hours later we headed back to the main camp to get ready for the evening hunt. We still had a few hours to kill so we set up some beer cans 300 yards down the road to shoot at with 22 rifles. Now 300 yards is 3 football fields long and guess who was the only guy to hit the beer can with the 22. You guessed it, it was me and it was on my first shot. Now this is pretty surprising as one of my hunting partners is ranked 6th in the World in long range precision rifle shooting. He did blow the can to pieces on his first shot with a 308 (a much more powerful caliber) but only I hit it with the 22.

By sunset we were back in position, hopefully waiting for some elk to come out into the open at dusk. Once again we had deer walk right by us but no elk. You see, it just was not cold enough. You need pretty cold temperatures to drive them down to the lower elevations. We were at probably 9000 feet but they were probably at 11000 or higher. We couldn’t get up that high where we were and they were on the back side of the mountain as well. Even though we knew this we had to give it another try the next morning.

After a good meal of hamburgers, fried potato’s and veggies, we fell asleep around 8:30. The next morning we were up at 5:30 and out the door 30 minutes later. After checking the wind, which was cold, I decided to have one guy walk up one draw and took the other guy with me up the other side. Once again, no luck. Those deer sure are lucky we only had elk licenses. We were back at camp by 8:45 and decided to load up everything into the camper and leave it there and come back Tuesday night as the weatherman says it’s supposed to snow big time Wednesday morning. The high in Denver that day is going to be around 35 degrees so I imagine it’ll be around 10 up there. I need to rearrange a meeting and if I can, we’ll head back up. If so, we’ll have one last chance Wednesday morning and should be back in Denver by noon, unless were successful. You see if you get an elk, you can count on a good 6 hours chopping him up. I’ll know more later this morning so stay tuned.

When I arrived home, the boys were playing outside and the misses wasn’t feeling too well. I jumped into the shower to wash off two days of dirt and grime and took off for the grocery store. I hadn’t shaved for about 5 days and the boys and the misses pleaded with me to keep my scruff for one more day. It’s coming off this morning as it’s real itchy and makes me look older than I am. The boys think it’s soft and I think the misses thinks I look like the Old Spice man. I made it back to see the Broncos win the football game in overtime and then the neighbors had an impromptu party. We headed over for a couple of cocktails and then finally everyone was in bed by about 8.

I woke up at 4 and it’s now almost 5. I might head to the gym or might wait until tomorrow, I haven’t decided yet. Hope all’s well with everyone, take care and have a great day and we’ll see you tomorrow.

Oh those Chalker parties. I took the boys to the birthday party at the Apex Center yesterday. Oh my.  There were 42….yes 42 birthday participants. We first started in a private room stocked with sandwiches, fruits, veggies, chips, juice, organic soda, water…and of course a beautiful cake. There were balloons and goodie bags and children running and climbing on everything in the room including the furniture. I was going to drop the boys off, but after seeing all of the people I opted to stay.  After cake the kids went down to the ice rink for an hour and half of ice skating and then it was off to the rock wall for another hour and a half of climbing…again….oh my.   Needless to say our friends have put on yet another amazing, over the top birthday party. I can’t imagine what they will do for Mathew’s 8th birthday or for that matter the other two children’s upcoming birthdays. Our guys had a blast and they got to the rock wall 25 minutes before the other children so they enjoyed private climbing until the masses arrived.

Upon returning home the oldest headed down to Uncle T’s and Aunt B’s the youngest went to the neighbor’s (un-benounced to me he also wanted to go to Uncle T’s and Aunt B’s) while I went to LOL’s to clean her house for her. I have to finish this morning.  The boys wanted chinese food for dinner and I happily ordered delivery.

We all climbed into bed at about 8:45 and slept well until 6:00a.m. when the youngest wanted to go downstairs for breakfast.

The Mister gets home sometime around noon today and as of yet has had no success on the hunting front. Big game 3 hunters 0.  That is the kind of score I like to see. Don’t tell the Mister.

Maybe the boys and I will tackle the garage today, or maybe not.  I’ll see how we all are feeling.

Time to feed the munchkins….have a great day and…

God Bless

LLF

Good morning. It’s beautiful out…the air is crisp, the sun is just peaking over the horizon and the colors are amazing.

Both boys slept with me last night.  We first watched Pirates Of The Caribbean..On Stranger Tides. We liked it although the mermaids were a little scary. The youngest had a play date after school and upon returning home began playing with the neighbor boy until almost 9:00p.m. Good times!!

I put up a few more Halloween decorations and the Mister headed off for his hunting excursion. I made a big pot of chili for the cold nights on the mountain and he took along plenty of snacks. They are planning to return Sunday, however the guy driving said it would be Monday if they didn’t get an animal by Sunday.  We’ll see, I don’t think hunting trumps football yet.

The big dog wanted to sleep outside last night and of course some unsuspecting animal wandered in our yard, so I was out of bed and down the stairs at 3:28a.m. and had to bribe him with food to get him in the house.

The kiddos have an ice skating/rock climbing birthday party to go to today from 12-4:00…I’ll come home and clean…again…hopefully the boys will be worn out from the four hours of skating and climbing.  We’ll have another movie or game night and of course they will snuggle and sleep with me once again tonight. Someday they won’t want to, so I better cherish these times, because they are going by too fast.

The boys are restless and in need of food…..sorry for the short post.

God Bless,

LLF

This afternoon I and a couple of buddies will head off to the mountains with a stocked trailer and atv’s in tow for a few days of roughing it (so to speak) while hunting for elk. We’re also taking shotguns and purchased our small game licenses so we can hunt grouse during the heat of the day. I wish is was snowing as with the weather we have we’ll have to go really high up to find elk. The cool thing is it really doesn’t matter if you get an elk (although the meat is great), as it’s really all about the hunt. I thought about taking the oldest guy along but decided to wait one more year. I’ll be home on Sunday meaning it’ll be the misses and the boys for the next 2 days.

Yesterday I had a couple of phone interviews, one with a really high powered expensive guy that I hope we can hire and afford, to take us to the next level. Now we’re pretty smart guys but in our business we’ve come to a point where we need someone who has those long standing relationships along with the knowledge to play with the big boys. I’ll keep you posted here but it looks good.

The boys had a good day at school and then were outside again enjoying the fall afternoon. The misses wasn’t feeling too well yesterday but will hopefully be better today. The oldest guy went down to Uncle T’s and raked some leaves for him and his neighbor and came home with $20 bucks! Apparently he also secured some work from other neighbors after some more leaves fall. Ah, capitalism at it’s best. The misses and I did manage to get the dogs a good half hour walk yesterday morning which they live for. It’s hard to keep them from jumping up and down and barking once they see a leash or hear the word “walk”. We’re going to try to make this a daily routine as much as we can.

I hope everyone is doing well, no politics today, my meditation is teaching me to just “dismiss” the useless banter that is today’s politics for the most part. I do still enjoy it though so watch for some to come! Anyhow have a great weekend and God Bless.

As promised, here are a few quotes from Grandma Annette’s email the other day, pretty profound,

Wow, less than a week ago my blood pressure was 140 over 105 or something like that. Yesterday I was 110 over 87! I don’t know about you but this is a dramatic turnaround in less than 7 days. I’ve done a lot of research (thank God for the internet) and one of the wisest decisions I have ever made in my life was to not take the prescribed bp medicine given to me by my doctor. I could go on and on here into more detail but it’d probably take up your entire day. Suffice it to say that your total body health and key to longevity (or living a long time) is 100% related to your vascular health. Inflammation is a guaranteed killer. If any of you are on bp meds, know that there are things you can do (if you really want to) to get off those medicines and live a healthy life. Please do not stop taking any medications you are on without discussing it with your doctor but do know that if you really want to, you can get your life to a point through diet and exercise where you do not need to take a handful of pills each day. Ok I’ll stop as I know I’m not a doctor (although I played one in college several times!) and I don’t want to preach to everyone, but I do feel compelled to let you know about how quickly I was able to change my blood pressure readings after two separate doctors threw 2 different medicines at me within the period of a week, after spending less than 10 minutes with me each time! It’s not easy and has required a total change in lifestyle (haven’t had red meat since getting back from Italy) but I’ve felt better than I have in a long time. Ok ok onto the day.

The yard is full of leaves and the boys were stuffing their shirts with as many as they could making them look like Santa Claus with a full belly. They had piles and piles of them and were throwing them in the air and at each other. It was one of those Norman Rockwell moments to see young kids enjoying the simple pleasure of playing in the front yard with a pile of golden leaves on a crisp fall afternoon. The misses, upon seeing the neighbor put up some halloween decorations, decided to put up even more at our house. It’s always kind of a fun friendly unspoken competition between her and Roxanne (our neighbor) to see who can put up the most decorations on every holiday. Has anyone seen the movie Christmas Vacation with Chevy Chase playing Clark Griswald? That’s what it’s like around here. I just kind of laugh and let her go to work as she enjoys it so much. I love the holiday’s and am thrilled that the misses makes such a big deal about it for our kids as I want them to experience and remember the happy times of the holidays when they get older. Life goes so so fast, we all need to embrace and enjoy every single day.

The misses worked yesterday and then came home and made a great dinner of fresh wild alaskan cod with a salad for us while the boys had some pasta. The oldest still hungry, finished off the cod on his own as he decided he’d give it a try and voila, he loved it! Everyone is still sleeping and it’s almost 6am. I have lots of work today and the misses is going to tackle the house again. Both dogs are sleeping at my feet and it’s time for a cup of coffee.

The misses will be taking over this weekend as I’ll be elk and grouse hunting in the mountains. There’s three of us going and it’ll be a fun time, whether we get an elk or not. I’ll let you know more about this tomorrow. Oh , Grandma Annette sent a remarkable email yesterday that I’ll share a few bits from tomorrow if I remember.

Take care and God Bless,

I landed in San Fran at 7:30am and after a 1 1/2 hour drive to Santa Rosa, a 1 hour meeting and a 1 1/2 hour drive back to the airport, it was wheels up by 1:15. I landed back in Denver at 4:30 and was home an hour later. The misses was making a warm healthy dinner of baked chicken breast and some lentils which we both love.

From what I understand the boys had a great day but Mom was a bit under the weather with a sore throat and a slight temperature. I hope she’s feeling better this morning as she has to be at work by 7:15.

It’s cool out this morning but I think yesterday morning was a bit cooler. It’s supposed to warm up which is too bad as I’m elk hunting this weekend and snow would make the chances of success a whole lot better. The season runs until October 30th so hopefully the snow will arrive in the high country by then. Today I have a bunch of work to do (what’s new) and am so slammed between now and Christmas that I’m not sure how to get it all done. The youngest one has the eggs and frying pan out and wants to make me “yellow eggs and toast” for breakfast. he says “yellow eggs” as he only eats “white eggs” or those without yolks.

Halloween is coming up fast and we need to get both boys costumes lined up. The misses and I will be sporting our new masks made for Carnival in Venice. We managed to find four handmade masks on our trip that are truly works of art. They were pretty reasonably priced too, after I had a discussion with the shop owner, which brought the price way down. Give the misses something as simple as one mask and she’ll build a whole theme party around it. We’ll have to wait and see what she comes up with.

We also have the Museum of Contemporary Art annual gala coming up on the 27th. We have a table for 8 and need to decide who to take. I’m supposed to be back in San Francisco on the 27th for a 9am meeting but am trying to move it so I don’t have to get up at 3am on the day of the big party.

Politics politics, where do you start. About the most honest thing I’ve heard from a politician in a long time came from Senator Tom Coburn, a former doctor, who said all of Washington (the President and the GOP) are afraid to tell the American people the truth in fear of not getting elected. His point was medicare and social security are not sustainable and will need to be changed but both parties are so afraid of alienating the seniors who are the largest voting block out there, so they will not tell the truth. He said Washington needs to stop treating us like children and tell us the truth. Now I think most of us that really think about it know the truth, but there are so many uninformed people out there who are so easily swayed by tv ads and sound bites. To me it’s comical how the people in power can stand up and tell us things that are just not true with a straight face. I mean come on, anyone can find some way to manipulate some fact to say just about anything these days. Think about it, they can’t all be right? Someone is not telling us the truth and I suspect it is none of them that are telling us the whole truth and nothing but the truth as this wouldn’t support their agenda. Anyhow I’m starting to get stressed out just thinking about how dysfunctional D.C. is so I’m going to sign off now.

Hope you all have a great day and we’ll see you tomorrow.