Happy Easter, for he has risen! For those of you that don’t know, Buona Pasqua is Italian for Happy Easter.

It’s 6am and I’m headed to the gym before church at 10 and then lunch at 1pm. Yesterday was a sad day in our neighborhood as a man who lives next door to Tom and Ali 4 doors down, had a heart attack and passed away. I knew something was strong when police cars showed up with the fire truck and ambulance. Shortly there after the ambulance gurney came out empty which then told us someone had passed. Turns out John (that was his name) went to the doctor at 10am with a sore rib, came home, took a pain pill and went upstairs and that was it. A death so quick and close to home reminds you of just how precious life is, so be thankful for each and every day. No time for anger, jealousy, self pity or any of the other  negative forces that try to get you each and every day! May he Rest in Peace.

Now on to happier moments. Last night Wisconsin beat Kentucky who was previosuly undefeated going into the game. So tomorrow they will play for the college National Championship. As you can imagine, my Mom is thrilled. I’m happy that she enjoys sports so much as it’s a big part of her life and thankfully her college team has a great football and basketball team. It wouldn’t be so fun if her alma matta was the University of Colorado!

Harry came by last night to look at all the work we have lined up for him. He’ll be here for two weeks working on our house and his sisters. I guess she’s been really sick and it has to do with mold in her bathrooms so he’s fixing all three of them. His Mom is also coming down for a month and I need to tell my Mom so they can get together. (this is me telling you Mom!)

Jag set up his pitching net yesterday and worked out in the backyard while Ty played basketball outside. This morning the boys will hunt Easter eggs before church. Then we’ll rush home to start cooking before my Mom, Tom and Ali come over. I invited Shelly and said I’d go pick her up but she has friends coming over. It’s going to be warm today so not sure what we’ll do after lunch. Lori did paint the trim in the basement yesterday, she’s a worker. I’m sure she’ll get all up in some project. Maybe we can go for a long walk or back to Red Rocks.

Time to run, so read on and have a great day,

The meaning of Easter – What does it mean to you?

The meaning of Easter is Jesus Christ’s victory over death. His resurrection symbolizes the eternal life that is granted to all who believe in Him. The meaning of Easter also symbolizes the complete verification of all that Jesus preached and taught during His three-year ministry. If He had not risen from the dead, if He had merely died and not been resurrected, He would have been considered just another teacher or Rabbi. However, His resurrection changed all that and gave final and irrefutable proof that He was really the Son of God and that He had conquered death once and for all.

However, Easter did not always symbolize Christ’s resurrection from the dead and the meaning of Easter was quite different than what Christians celebrate today. The feast day of Easter was originally a pagan celebration of renewal and rebirth. Celebrated in the early spring, it honored the pagan Saxon goddess Eastre. When the early missionaries converted the Saxons to Christianity, the holiday, since it fell around the same time as the traditional memorial of Christ’s resurrection from the dead, was merged with the pagan celebration, and became know as Easter. The meaning of Easter was also changed to reflect its new Christian orientation.

Today, the meaning of Easter, for million of Christians, is that of honoring and recognizing Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead, and His glorious promises of eternal life for all who believe in Him.

May God Bless you today and every day

It’s Saturday, whoo hoo! I’ll be headed out at 7am to the grocery store to get things for tomorrow’s Easter dinner and of course a few dozen eggs (and some candy) for the kids. Then I’m off to Longmont for a 9am appointment and after that need to stop in Old Arvada before heading downtown for another stop. Then one more stop in Belmar right next to where I’ll be grocery shopping at 7:30 this morning. So 5 stops in all for me and if I’m lucky I should be home by noon.

Last night was our first baseball game and unfortunately it didn’t go as well as we hoped. We kind of got rocked in the first inning but otherwise it was a pretty even game. We just couldn’t overcome the horrible start. All in all though, the boys played great and there were tons of good things to build on. Hopefully we’ll get off to a better start in our next game. Jag walked once and hit a bomb to the outfield but a guy was right there to catch it. It was just one of those games where every ball we hit was right at one of their guys and every one they hit was in a gap. Nothing you could do about it. We’ll be better next week.

Lots of cleaning to do today as we’re back on it. The house is in disarray but it is what it is. Sometimes you need to make a mess to clean a mess!

Hope all’s well, wish everyone was here for Easter, God Bless.

Happy Good Friday! Easter is Sunday and the warm up hopefully starts around noon. Not sure if we’ll have our baseball game tonight as the fields might be too muddy. Lori has a full day at work but Dr R did agree to let her work a half day a week from home. This might not sound like much but trust me, a 2 1/2 day weekend is a whole lot better than a 2 day weekend. Getting off at noon on a Friday (if that’s the day she takes, it’ll vary from week to week) feels like a 3 day weekend.

I have a conference call with Ohio this morning at 7am. Hopefully I’ll be done in time to take the boys at 7:45. Right after school, if we have no game, we have to get back on working on the house. If it’s game on, we’ll be gone from 4 until 7:30.

If you missed the April 1st post, it’s there now, check it out!

God Bless.

Good Friday is a Christian religious holiday commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his death at Calvary. The holiday is observed during Holy Week as part of the Paschal Triduum on the Friday preceding Easter Sunday, and may coincide with the Jewish observance of Passover. It is also known as Holy Friday, Great Friday, Black Friday,^[1] or Easter Friday,^[2][3] though the last term properly refers to the Friday in Easter week.

Based on the details of the canonical gospels, the Crucifixion of Jesus was most likely to have been on a Friday (the day before the Jewish Sabbath) (John 19:42).^[4] The estimated year of the Crucifixion is AD 33, by two different groups, and originally as AD 34 by Isaac Newton via the differences between the Biblical and Julian calendars and the crescent of the moon.^[5] A third method, using a completely different astronomical approach based on a lunarCrucifixion darkness and eclipse model (consistent with Apostle Peter‘s reference to a “moon of blood” in Acts 2:20), points to Friday, 3 April AD 33.^[6]

Good Friday is a widely-instituted legal holiday in many national governments around the world, including in mostWestern countries (especially among Catholic nations and majority-Catholic countries) as well as in 12 U.S. states. Some governments have laws prohibiting certain acts that are seen as profaning the solemn nature of the day.^[7][8]

Yesterday I wrote the post in the morning but for some reason, it didn’t post. Looks like the web site fooled me, sorry about that!

Last night we had baseball practice, (what’s new) and today we’re off. Tomorrow is supposed to be our first game but I think there will be too much snow on the ground by our 5pm starting time.

Lot’s to do today and it’s already 6:30. Harry will leave California on Friday to drive here so he’ll probably be joining us for Easter.

Today I need to run up to Boulder and then to another store to make sure I get all the orders in from our Spring pre-sell. Nationwide it looks like we’ll have our best pre sell ever with over 13,000 cases ordered which is just a bit over $1 Million dollars. So April will be a good month.

Time to run, sorry again about yesterday’s post. Just go to the top of the page and click on the arrow to the left and it’ll take you back to yesterday’s post.

God Bless.

The custom of setting aside a day for the playing of harmless pranks upon one’s neighbor is recognized everywhere.^[1]Some precursors of April Fools’ Day include the Roman festival of Hilaria,^[2] the Holi festival of India,^[3] and the MedievalFeast of Fools.^[4]

In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1392), the “Nun’s Priest’s Tale” is set Syn March bigan thritty dayes and two.^[5] Modern scholars believe that there is a copying error in the extant manuscripts and that Chaucer actually wrote, Syn March was gon.^[6] Thus the passage originally meant 32 days after March, i.e. 2 May,^[7] the anniversary of the engagement of KingRichard II of England to Anne of Bohemia, which took place in 1381. Readers apparently misunderstood this line to mean “32 March”, i.e. 1 April.^[8] In Chaucer’s tale, the vain cock Chauntecleer is tricked by a fox.

In 1508, French poet Eloy d’Amerval referred to a poisson d’avril (April fool, literally “April fish”), a possible reference to the holiday.^[9] In 1539, Flemish poet Eduard de Dene wrote of a nobleman who sent his servants on foolish errands on 1 April.^[7] In 1686, John Aubrey referred to the holiday as “Fooles holy day”, the first British reference.^[7] On 1 April 1698, several people were tricked into going to the Tower of London to “see the Lions washed”.^[7]

So there you have it, I decided not to play any tricks on the misses or the boys or any of you as we all have enough going on, but the day isn’t over so look out!

Yesterday we settled back into our normal routines with the boys in school and Lori and I at work. I need to call Harry today as he should be arriving from California sometime in the next few days or early next week. This morning I need to run up north, then head west and then down south, so I’ll be just about everywhere except on the eastern plains.

Rain and snow return this evening and will stick around until Saturday morning. This means no way will we have our first baseball game Friday night. That’s ok with me as it gives us another week to get our team together as we still have a lot to learn.

Looks like Easter dinner will be at our house which is fine. It’s probably the easiest for everyone, especially the boys who can play outside.

That’s about it, hopefully this is the last snow storm of the year. Last year we had snow in early May though so you never know.

Hope all’s well, take care and God Bless.

Today is the first day back from Spring Break. The kids only have like 8 weeks of school left until summer, how time flies.

Yesterday we had baseball from 3 until 5pm and then had some left overs for dinner.

Lori had a great lunch with Dr R and things seem to have made a drastic turn for the better, all thanks to the misses. No need to go into details but it was a open, honest conversation about how things were and how they should be going forward and all are in agreement. Hope things continue to work out for the best.

Time to run as it’s 6:45. God Bless.

Well we have the basement all painted except for the ceiling. We’ll try to get to that maybe tomorrow as I can’t have it smelling like paint when I’m down there working during the day. In any case, it looks good. We used the same color that Lori chose for the office.

Next up down there is the carpet. After that we need to paint the ceiling in our breakfast area and our bedroom. Then we’ll be touching up some in the kitchen and probably the boys rooms.

Harry should be here in a week so we need to start going through the house and make our list of what we want him to do. Lori is thinking of distressing all the cabinets in the living room.

Mojo ate another pillow of ours again last night while sleeping on the couch. He’s eating me out of house and pillows!

Today the kids are off again before going back to school tomorrow. Then it’s April 1st Wednesday, Wow! They say snow for Thursday and Friday and Easter is Sunday. I think we’ll go to brunch so we don’t have to cook. I remember going to brunch in Scottsdale with Mom and Dad when we were kids. Church is at 10am and then we’re open.

Guess I’ll run, it’s 6:50 and the kids are still sleeping. Ty had a friend spend the night and they stayed up pretty late I’m sure. We have baseball practice today at 3 and then I have a conference call at 5. I’ll need to move that back 15 minutes which will give me time to get home.

Hope all’s well, take care and God Bless.

p.s. Can you believe the family farm thing yesterday? We’re still astonished!

So yesterday we bought the paint and other supplies for the basement. Lori filled all the holes in the walls, washed and caulked the baseboards and taped everything off.  Then the painting began. She’ll do most of it today but at least has a start on it. Meanwhile I was upstairs cleaning out some cabinets that hadn’t been cleaned for 14 years. I boxed up two large boxes of cd’s, two of dvd’s and threw out a bunch of trash. This in itself took two hours! I did find some fun stuff like baby pictures including ones of Dixie, Don, Scotty and Julie and Bob all holding Jagger when he was a baby. There were lots more fun memento’s like that as well.

Before that Jagger and I had baseball and Ty came along to play at the park. We have another practice today as our first game is next Friday. I think Jag will be the starting pitcher which is a big deal. He’ll also play first base mostly and a little bit at third base too.

Wisconsin won their basketball game and is now in the college Final Four which is great. They’ll play Kentucky next who are 38-0 but almost (should have) lost to Notre Dame yesterday. I only mention this as my Mom’s a big fan so you all better cheer for the Badgers. (that’s the name of Wisconsin’s team)

Lori and I did make it to Red Rocks yesterday after I went to the gym. I think she’s going on a walk today with a friend so maybe I’ll drag the boys up there again to hike the 60 rows of benches with me a few times.

That’s it, time to run, lots to do as usual. It feels really good to be getting things done around here whether we move or not. We’re going to be pricing our home high, really high, and if it doesn’t sell, well, it doesn’t sell. In any case, we’ll have fixed everything up around here. We just wish we had another 1000 square feet!

In closing, a little bit of a warning for you all. The Fed Reserve is out of touch and control. Most people don’t understand this much less anything at all as they all have the “it won’t affect me” attitude. Well, it’s getting really really close to affecting all of us. To give you a snapshot, read the is.

1. Europe’s banks now have negative interest rates. That means it costs you money to keep your money in the bank! Get your money out of the bank now and buy some gold or silver!

2. Taylor Swift was just voted as a more influential leader than Barack Obama. Nice!

3. Minimum wage in 1963 was five silver quarters. About 17 dollars in today’s value. And those 5 quarters would buy you goods that would cost $17 dollars today. It was actually possible for a soda-jerk to raise a family back then, if he scrimped and saved. Today one hour of minimum wage will buy you goods worth $0.27 in 1963!

and last, any really unbelievable,

Image from Friends of West Wind Acres Facebook Page

 

Schenectady County, New York – Earlier this month, a family farm in rural New York was raided by police after the owners were cited on a number of trumped up regulatory violations. Joshua Rockwood, the owner of the farm, is being accused of mistreating his animals, and the local government has began confiscating some of them.

Police initially visited Rockwood’s property on February 25th to investigate reports of unlicensed working dogs, weeks before the raid. Unfortunately, Rockwood voluntarily showed local police around his property, which he had not yet tended to that day because of their unexpected interruption.  After showing them around, they began to critically assess every aspect of the farm, writing a number of citations for arbitrary offenses.

The very next day, Rockwood had a veterinarian visit the farm to check on the animals to confirm that they were well taken care of and in good health. According to numerous reports, the vet said that the animals were just fine, and did not seem to share the concerns that the officers alleged during their walk-through.

A second veterinarian was also called in to verify the health of the animals and they also found them to be in perfect health.

A week later, police returned again to notify Rockwood that he was to appear in court the next Thursday on a number of charges relating to the animal’s food and shelter. In total, 12 different charges were brought against Rockwood, but he has posted a number of photos to a Facebook support page, which shows the animals with sufficient housing, and plenty of food.

 

Rockwood has been charged with 12 counts of animal neglect and abuse – some of the charges relating to frozen water bowls and tanks – despite the animals still having access to water. His dogs and horses have been seized and taken away. Rockwood treats his animals better than most factory farms do, but since he uses traditional farming methods, his farm will fail regulatory inspections, while factory farms will pass.

Meanwhile, New York is one of many states that are currently considering “ag-gag” laws, which place criminal penalties on activists who expose animal abuse at factory farms.

The controversial ag-gag laws prohibit “recording an image or sound without the operator’s permission; gaining ‘access to an agricultural operation under false pretenses;’ asking for a job at a place for the purpose of making recordings; and making a recording while trespassing.”

The irony here is that the state will lock you in a cage for filming the horrific atrocities at a factory farm while simultaneously trumping up ridiculous and petty violations if you aren’t a factory farm. Just who does the state “protect” by doing these things?

 

Rockwood has launched a $50,000 gofundme campaign to raise money to post bond for his horses and to pay for the disrupted legal fees and lost business he has incurred and will incur due to the publicity and effort involved in defending himself. He means to go to court to try to fight the charges and to win back his reputation, his rescue dog, and his horses.

Because of his caring and generous customers and supporters they are almost halfway to that goal.

All I can say it what the F__K!

God Bless us help us all!

Take care, God Bless.

Whoo hoo, it’ll be warm today. We need to somehow spend time outside. First up I’m heading to the gym and then we’re getting the pitchers from our baseball team together for a quick hour or so of practice from 10:30 to noon and then I think we’re painting the basement. Hopefully we can then get outside around 2pm when it’ll be getting the warmest.

Yesterday I had to run to Boulder and then we were off to baseball from 4 until about 6:30. Lori beat us boys home and was working on dinner when we walked through the door. The kids are off until Tuesday which sure seems like a long break.

Lori’s work is going good and Dr R called and apologized to Lori and said she wants to take her to lunch when she gets back. Guess she was being super nice according to the misses. Hopefully she had an epiphany and things will be different. If not, I told Lori she has to quit. It’s not worth it for her to have that negativity in her life as she’s just not been as happy as she should and then also brings it home. So one way or another, things are going to change.

Time to run as we’re going to try to get to Red Rocks for a hike before baseball so I need to get to the gym. Hope you all are well, take care, have a great weekend (Easter is a week from Sunday) and God Bless.

Let’s see, Spring Break, the week and the month are all winding down. Soon the kids will be be back in school and April will be here, but first up, yea, is the weekend! We need to stay on task and get something done this weekend. We’re thinking of painting the basement but it’s going to be in the mid 70’s tomorrow which will be the nicest day of the next seven.

Yesterday I had a successful day up north while the kids hung out at home. I need to do something fun with them today as like I said, they’re back in school starting next Tuesday.

Dr R is still on vacation and all is good at work. Lori said all weeks should be two day work weeks. Makes sense to me! Wisconsin won their basketball game last night which was a good one. They sure seem to have a pretty good sports program as their football and basketball teams always seem to be in it. Why can’t we have that here in Colorado?

It’s a bit after 6am and I just returned from the store and Starbucks. Guess I’ll run as Lori is sitting here watching the news with me and the boys are sleeping. Take care and God Bless.