A Year of Change

It’s hot out and the statewide fires are spreading smoke everywhere. Last night the winds had to be blowing at 40 miles plus which couldn’t help. Hopefully today at our two baseball games, we’ll be far enough north to be away from the smoke.

Yesterday I was gone for most of the day. Jag went to Uncle T’s and Ty had a friend over and went to the pool. Later in the afternoon Mom went to get her nails done while the boys were playing outside but I was home 15 minutes or so after she left.

Lots of cotton blowing around outside from all the cottonwood trees but it seems to come down a bit more in clumps this year which is good. Man we’d move to the mountains tomorrow if Grandma wasn’t so close and we could afford it, (oh yea there’s that). The air is so much cleaner and the temps are much more accommodating. Oh well, someday, it gives us a goal to shoot for.

It’s 6:15 and I need to go to the store before baseball as we’re bringing hamburgers and hot dogs (half of them) for the 40 plus person end of baseball season party after our games today. Not that we have the money to buy the meat but when the coach sent out a list asking who could buy what, people were choosing to bring napkins or paper plates, or condiments or a salad or hamburger or hot dog buns but no one chose meat? I don’t know if they couldn’t afford it or what but we stepped up and said we’d buy the meat but couldn’t buy for all 40 plus people so finally another single dad jumped in and said he’d buy the other half. Good thing as we were about to have a big bbq with everything except the stuff you bbq! The coach is bringing a bunch of beer (which we don’t drink anyhow) and he reserved a park in Golden on Clear Creek where the kids can tube in the water. We have to find life jackets somewhere as no way our kids are going in any moving water without them. Mom’s still leery which means I’ll probably end up standing in the creek (pronounced “crick” like brick, ha ha) in case anyone gets in trouble.

That’s about it, time to run, take care and have a great weekend. Buy some extra freakin food, if for no other reason, just so I’ll shut up about it, humor me.

Take care and God Bless.

Especially for the misses, the long day that is. She left around 1pm and was home after 7:30. In the morning we all cleaned up the house, the oldest and I then ran an errand or two and then she took off for her event complete with a video shoot featuring 6 or 8 former patients giving testimonials for the practice.

The boys and I ran downtown to get our dry cleaning, hit the grocery store and later went to Costco. We made it back around 4:30. As soon as we arrived home the kids were bugging me non stop to go through a big container my buddy Matt gave me yesterday as he cleaned out his house and garage before being gone for the next 6 months. Matt was in the Navy, he was a medic and in special ops and put together a huge plastic container full old uniforms, packs, pouches and assorted gear as this morning he’s driving to Georgia for a 6 month training program to become a Homeland Security agent. You may remember him as he’s also my hunting buddy and cooks great bbq. We’ll next see him mid December.

Anyhow the kids we outside playing Army dressed up in all sorts of gear. They seemed to love the camo hats the most and wore them all night.

We have at least 12 fires burning in the State. Smoke blows in and out of town depending on the wind. It’s awful early and hot for so many fires to be burning. Hope we get some rain soon.

Lucky we went to Costco as we were all out of coffee. We bought 20 plus pounds, ( you know me, I like to stock up!) some extra tin foil (always good to have on hand) and a case of Ziplocs, so it was a quick trip. I think I’m going to try to clean out the basement this weekend although we have lots going on.

Tomorrow we have a double header (meaning two) baseball games and then a bbq as it’s the end of the season. Our friends from Encampment Wyoming, who now live in Ft Collins, are at the Jefferson Country Fairgrounds as Chere is a professional barrel racer and it’s rodeo season. She’ll compete tomorrow and then go to Breckenridge for a rodeo Sunday morning at 9am and then try to hurry back to compete again in the afternoon here. They sleep in their massive horse trailer which has bunks and go from rodeo to rodeo all summer. She can win a few thousand at a time and that’s her income. Rex her husband, used to rodeo but now has bad knees and has been making saddles for cowboys for 20 years, he made ours last year too! Also the best Western Show of the year is in Denver this weekend. It starts at 2pm today and ends Sunday night with a big auction. Last year the only known photo of Billy the Kid (an old tin type photo) sold for $4 million! We have friends that come to town each year and exhibit and we always go so we’ll be there too.

Here’s a comment from Grandma Eleanor,

Eleanor Tafoya says:

The simple answer is, everything, our sprinklers, the economy, the oldest guys ear and on and on. Here’s some details.

First up, it’s our sprinkler regulator out front that needs to be fixed, hmmm, that’ll be another few hundred. It’s always something.

On top of that, instead of going to Aspen to deliver wine, I need to take it to the distributor so they, being a registered agent, can deliver it. This is actually good news as it’ll save me 5 hours of driving.

Turns out the oldest has swimmers ear, meaning no swimming and $50 for ear drops and $30 for a visit to the doctor.

4 more fires burning here in Colorado and more hot weather on the way. If you live here, you’re supposed to stay inside today.

The misses will be at work most of the day and night filming video testimonials, (just an fyi)

But worst of all, Gold dropped overnight by almost $50 an ounce! What this means is that the World is finally freaking out about the economy. You see when stocks AND precious metals drop, we are flat out in trouble. Usually if stocks drop, metals go up! What does all this mean to you, well when it crashes at least metals will be worth something while paper (dollars) will be killed.  Just an economic 101 for the day. Here’s a bit more to chew on,

• Bonds Tumble With Stocks as Gold Drops in Rout on Fed (BBG)
• Bernanke Sees Beginning of End for Fed’s Record Easing (BBG)
• Gold Tumbles to 2 1/2 Year-Low After Fed as Silver Plummets (BBG)
• PBoC dashes hopes of China liquidity boost (FT)
• U.S. Icons Now Made of Chinese Steel (WSJ)
• Emerging Markets Crack as $3.9 Trillion Funds Unwind (BBG)
• Everyone joins the fun: India sets up elaborate system to tap phone calls, e-mail (Reuters)
• China Manufacturing Shrinks Faster in Threat to Europe (BBG)
• More on how Syria’s Al-qaeda, and now US, supported “rebels”, aka Qatar mercenaries, operate (Reuters)
• Echoes of Mao in China cash crunch (FT) – how dare a central bank not pander to every bank demand?
• French watchdog tells Google to change privacy policy (Reuters)

If this is all over your head, no worries, what it means in simple terms is that things just are not well. Here at home, our false economy is slowly unravelling (The Fed buying 85 Billion dollars worth of bonds a month can’t even s ave the economy!) while our civil liberties are quickly being eroded. We spend more money to buy less and have less rights and more government. Does anyone see this or are you all conditioned to it since it’s been happening continuously now for some time. Even if you don’t believe me (or want to know) everyone here has to notice that their cereal, beer, milk, eggs, something has gone way up in cost. At the same time, the size of the package you buy has shrunk. Check it out, everything comes in smaller packages these days as this is one way they try to fool you. I could go on and on but most of you don’t read for a gloom and doom forecast of society, so I’ll wrap it up. Just do me a favor and buy some food, you have to have food. I don’t care of it’s 50 cans of canned food and a few bags of rice, just get some kind of back up.

Time to go to the gym, hope everyone is well. I’ll have the misses write tomorrow as I’m sure she’s a little more fun to read. Take care and God Bless.

Good morning.  The oldest had his late game last night and the Umpires need to be reported!  The Umps were calling strikes that were literally in the dirt and not calling outs that were clearly “Outs.”  The oldest had the hardest hit ball of the night that went straight into the other teams coaches and dugout…sending boys and men scrambling.  The Ump called the next ball a strike even though it hit the ground before passing over the plate and that was it for our guy.  I think the parents were more upset than the kiddos.  It was a very long and discouraging game, but our team kept their heads up and did not go on and on about the unfairness of the ridiculous calls.

We arrived home close to 10p.m. and decided upon no swim team this morning.  The oldest has a terrible ear ache, so a visit to the Dr. is probably on the agenda today. He went on an errand with his Dad this morning…they left at 6:45a.m. and will return sometime around 11a.m. Hopefully, I’ll have some of this giant rubbish pile a.k.a. our house cleaned up before they return.  I’m really tired, so we’ll see….I need a professional organizer to come in and help me decide what to keep and what to toss.

The big dog needs to go to the groomer today…he is dropping clumps of fur everywhere he treads.  Dog hair on hardwood floors under bare feet feels disgusting. EWWW!

I have ten of Dr. Rodgers patients lined up for a video testimonial shoot tomorrow afternoon.  I will be one of the patients filmed…in case you didn’t know I had my girls remodeled after nursing the boys for 20 months each…great for the kiddos….not so great for mommy’s body.  Anyway, the videos will be posted on Dr. Rodgers’ new website 2 at a time and rotated monthly.

The Mr. has a busy day, and of course the youngest is already planning his play date line up.

I’m off to start on this mess.  Love to all!

God Bless

Let’s see, the Bocelli’s arrived June 3rd and last night at 4:50 Aleks left for San Francisco meaning it was two weeks straight with guests and activities. Last night was the first night where we could sit back and relax. The misses neck was hurting her but we actually had a few days relief while in Aspen. The only thing I could think of that was different up there, besides all the great food, fun and sun, was she forget her bra! So being the smart guy that I am, I figured that was what was giving her a pain in the neck.

Now while we were in Aspen luckily her two Nicole Miller dresses and her casual sun dresses all had bras built in so we didn’t have to go out and buy one so we’ll see if that’s maybe what has been hurting her. She thinks it’s just me wanting her to go braless!

This morning the boys are back at swimming and then the oldest has baseball at 7:30 tonight! I’m not sure what all I have going as I haven’t really thought about it yet. I need to follow up on emails thanking everyone I met in Aspen and plan out my next few days. I have to go to Fort Collins tomorrow and get up to the St Regis in Aspen one day with 25 cases of wine. That’ll be an early trip with me leaving around 5:30 or 6am to beat the heat.

The oldest was playing first base at practice last night and is really turning into quite the ball player. We’re glad he’s having so much fun.

The misses has a 7am conference call with New York and will then head down to the office. I need to ship an old winchester I sold to a friend in Houston Texas and work out again today. So you can see, we’re all over the place trying to get back into our normal routine.

Here’s a comment from Aunt Robi,

robi says:

After a five hour drive, we pulled into home a bit after 4pm. They are doing some construction on a tunnel near Idaho Springs and this, for some reason, caused a back up from 40 miles away. It was Sunday so they weren’t working on it, they just had signs up everywhere telling everyone which caused the back up.

Halfway home we stopped in Leadville which is 10,195 feet above sea level for lunch. Before that we stopped in a mini snowstorm at the top of Independence Pass which is 12,000 plus feet high. Aleks was amazed as he has never been that high in altitude as the peaks in Italy and Slovenia where you can drive (and maybe even hike) just aren’t that high.

We had a blast in Aspen as we said and will be back up probably next week and then the first of July. Today Aleks fly’s to San Francisco at 4pm and Jag has baseball at 5:30. He then has a game from 7:30 to 9:30 tomorrow night and a double header on Saturday to close out the season. Both boys need to get back on their school work books this morning. I’m sure that’ll be a chore for us getting them back in the groove.

That’s about it, back to reality here in Denver. It’s a good thing as Polo is probably boring and I’m not sure if I’d fit in a Ferrari, ha ha. Hope everyone is well, take care and God Bless.

Most of these people, including our friends up here, just live a different life than the rest of us. In many ways they’re very similar and just like us, the think like I do politically, (sorry Grandma Dix) have the same family values, are honest and kind but boy do they have a shit load of money!

Our day started off like the others, coffee and swimming for the boys, then Aleks and I prepared for our tasting at noon. The first to arrive were two our of friends, Diane, whose dad was the Director of the C.I.A. under Kennedy and who was also a top model for the Ford Agency in the 60’s, and Billie, whose husband Greg is one of the 5.2% of billionaires that live in Aspen. Now you wouldn’t know it if you were talking to them as they’re just great down to earth people. Michael Martini also showed up (from the famed Louis Martini wine family) as he was staying at Greg’s and Billie’s. He’s a great guy who recently sold his 4th generation wine empire to Gallo. We instantly hit it off and he insists we come to California and stay with him and his family. So anyhow the tasting went well with Craig who runs the Broadmoor showing up with his family at the urging of the President of my distributor. They stayed 3 hours and are calling us Monday to come down and stay and plan out the wine for their new italian restaurant and want us to join in with some golf tournament in July. So overall a successful day.

We went to dinner at Cache Cache where Aleks was until 3am the night before. Peggy joined the three of us and after a great dinner, we went over to the Caribou Club which is the members only place where everyone tries to get in. We sat around and Michael joined us and people watched. Peggy took us into all the back rooms and showed us around and explained all the history as she was great friends with Harley the founder who passed away four years ago. Diane meanwhile was eating in the dining room with her friends who we had Aleks sign a bottle of wine for earlier as it was one mans birthday. Franklyn was his  name and of course he asked us to join them but we just ate and said we’d see them after in the bar. He’s leaving for Nantucket tomorrow for the summer, really? Who are these people??? Now this place doesn’t get going until around 11pm or later. We actually left a bit before midnight as the place was filling up. Billy (the gay nazi door man) who we knew from an event in Denver a few years ago, was deciding who gets in and who doesn’t. It was like a scene out of a movie. When we walked in with Peggy, no one questioned us at all.

This morning we’re packing up and will head out around 11. We’ll see all these people again over the July 4th weekend when we’re back up. Diane wants us to join her for the World Championship Fox Hunt and Polo Match in October. She’s offered to handle everything but somehow I don’t think we’ll be going, but you never know.

Here’s some pictures from the misses. The thing to take away from the whole weekend is people are people. The misses is going to start dieting now for the 1960’s Italian glamour dress code for our July 5th event. The misses had a great time talking with Diane hearing all the stories from her modeling days and growing up with daddy running the C.I.A. Anyhow like I said, just like you and I but with a tad more money, but you’d never know it. And by the way, Peggy insists we take the Ferrari when we’re back up and use it for the 3 days we’re here, are you kidding me??? How could I say no? She also wants us to stay with her and go to her house in Belize that sleeps 11, more on that to come. I guess it’s only 2 hours from Dallas.

So back to reality which suits us just fine but these guys are really nice, regular people who were very kind to us and just love the boys. There’s a program for kids that’s a two week economic thing Greg and Billie have promised to get the kids into. Many leaders of the world have all attended this when they were kids. He says they started it as school just doesn’t teach real economics these days. This is an offer we’ll take him up on! It’ll be a few years but it’ll be great for each boy.

I think they like us as we’re just regular people who they can hang out with who doesn’t ask or want anything from them. Maybe it’s just because we’re such a great family, ha ha. Anyhow they took us under their wing and treated us just like one of the group. What fun.

Take care, God Bless.

Busy busy busy, the town is full. You could just hang out all day and people watch and not get bored. People are from all over the country and World are here and you see just about everything.

We had a great day as I said (sorry we were late) and the boys had a blast. You can actually let them go down to the park alone here and not be worried. Above is the misses and the boys in a bike they rented bringing water back to our hotel for the event. They swam hard on and off for the entire day before we all jumped in our friend Peggy’s 1938 Rolls Royce for the trip to the Inn at Aspen out by Buttermilk. The boys loved it as they sat in the front and the car, like something out of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and it would backfire really loud every now and then like a gun shot or something. We had everyone looking at us as we were driving through town and I’d venture to say, this is the only 1938 Rolls convertible here. Peggy, who comes from a wealthy family in Memphis, bought it for fun when there was a Great Gatsby party to go to. Her house is just on the outside of town and she bought it 30 some years ago when she first came to Aspen. She said no one would rent to a 20 year old kid so she had to buy it. Her family had lots of horses and was into polo and fox hunting (you get the picture) but Peggy is kind, sweet and not at all into herself. She has her own horses here, drives a jeep most of the time but does have a couple of Ferrari’s, the Rolls and who knows what else. She used to be married to this now 60 some year old famous musician in town who we all went to see play. So we had a blast with her, met lots of her friends and spent the evening here and there having fun. She’s going with us to the big fund raiser at the St. Regis July 5th when we’re back in town. By the way, the misses looked like some movie star (click on the photo above to blow it up) in the back in her great dress, big sunglasses and scarf wrapped around her head.

Today we’re back to work from 12 to 3 hosting whoever floats in to try our wines. One of our friends who has a great restaurant in Denver kept texting us to see what we were doing. Around 10pm I went home (the misses went 10 minutes earlier) and left Aleks to walk around. I gave our friend Aleks cell number so they could hook up and they must have as I heard Aleks get in around 3:30 or 4am, glad I didn’t stay with him!

It’s cooler today but the sky is blue and I’m sure it’ll warm up! Here’s the misses to post some photos, oh by the way, the beds are real comfy.

Here’s three comments from yesterday,

1. Blondie says:

   June 13, 2013 at 3:40 pm

   I am one of the two people who would worry! Have fun and be safe:)

   Reply
2. Annette says:

   June 13, 2013 at 3:57 pm

   Me too!

   Reply
3. robi says:

   June 13, 2013 at 4:29 pm

   Ok you have 3 people who would worry! This blog is the highlight of my morning!

   Ok, first off thanks, second Aunt Robi, you need a better morning routine if we’re the highlight!

   We had a great day yesterday, lots of good food, champagne and Aspen. Today we started off the day working out in the fitness center (fancy name for a little gym) and then hit the town. The boys and the misses rented a 4 wheel bike to ride around town while Aleks and I did some work like going to the champagne industry tasting at the Sky Hotel. After that we hosted 30 or so people at our hospitality suite (fancy name for our great place) and now we’re headed to the Inn at Aspen for drinks and to see some famous musician with our friends Michael and Peggy. Michael is coming to pick us up in a 1938 Rolls Royce convertible, what fun! (Peggy comes from an old Memphis family , it’s her car)

   The misses did a great job setting up our place for the tasting and Aleks was a big hit. We’ll do the same thing tomorrow hopefully with the same success. The weather is beautiful, 80 to 85 degrees and sunny with not a cloud in the blue sky. If you’ve ever been here you understand why it’s so revered.

   Sorry we’re late, lots of other funny stuff happened and the misses will post pictures tomorrow.

   God Bless from God’s country!

Another whirlwind day, a wine tasting at noon and a wine dinner at 7 means Aleks and I made it home by a bit after 10. This morning I’ve washed and gassed up the car, packed wine and the misses is packing cheese, nuts and other assorted foods that go with wine.

I literally have no time and shouldn’t even be writing but the misses said we have 1 or 2 people who’d wonder what happened to us.

So time to go, we’ll try to write a longer post tomorrow. We hope to arrive in Aspen by 1 or 2, get settled and our first dinner is at 7:15.

Take care and God Bless.