A Year of Change

The Mr. picked up the kiddos from school yesterday, and the youngest brought his friend Jack home for a playdate. We knew that he would eventually ask to have Jack stay for the night. The boys played legos and some make believe games outside. They were in and out multiple times dropping leaves each time they came in…unfortunately they didn’t take the leaves with them on their way back out.

The Mr. brought home all kinds of fun, yummy activities for the kids…caramels to melt and dip apples, marshmallows, milk chocolate and graham crackers for s’mores and carving kits for pumpkins. What a thoughtful daddy!

The oldest went to sleep at 9:30…the other two were awake until well after midnight. The youngest came in to wake me up to make breakfast at 5:18 a.m. Are you kidding me? I came down at 5:30..fed the dogs, made coffee and gave each boy a banana to hold them over until I was ready to make breakfast.

The Mr. has a few work related errands to run this morning..he’s already been to the gym and back. The day is gorgeous, so I’d like to take advantage and get the boys up to Red Rocks for a walk.

Tonight we are taking a few kids to…get ready for it…”Field of Corpses.” A haunted house with fields of Zombies. It may be too scary for the youngest and Dad, so I may have to find another option for them.

I’m off to shower…have a great day and God Bless.

It’s here, and it’s wet, I already used the boys Nerf sword to knock the snow off the trees when I was getting the morning paper. We all slept in as I didn’t roll out of bed until about 6:10. Oh well, we must have needed the sleep.

Here’s a comment from Annette,

Annette says:

Sorry about yesterday, it just got away from us! Field Day was a success for both boys, Lori will try to post pictures later.

Today the misses is already on a conference call and then has to get ready for an MRI across town at noon. I think it’s both with and without contrast meaning she’ll get shot full of dye.

Tax day came and went, we managed to get Colorado, New Jersey, New York and California paid (still don’t understand why I’m filing and paying in CA, NJ and NY!) but couldn’t swing the Fed’s. Oh well, I’ll just get a nasty letter along with a nice penalty and pay it when I can. You can’t let things like money get to you, in the grand scheme of things, it’s just not worth it and trust me, it’ll flat out kill you.

It’s cool outside this morning, just how I like it. They say we’ll have a rain and snow mix starting around 8pm tonight through tomorrow.

Our four legged alarm clock woke me up again around 5am. I seem to get up that time every morning anyhow, I’d make a good farmer/rancher as that’s when they have to get up! Everyone else was up a bit after 6.

Not much else going on, just trying to keep it all in perspective and get through another day. We’re really hoping the MRI shows us something that can be fixed as this has been going on for too long.

Oh yeah, our honorable Congressmen and the Pres have come to an agreement that’ll allow them to spend more of our money (mainly my kids kids) on useless pet projects in their own districts and of course line their own pockets for a couple of months. Then we can do this all over again, yea!

So have a great day, check back this afternoon and look for pictures, they’re great,

God Bless

Well, Lori thought I was writing this morning and obviously I thought she was. Anyhow, we had a good long day at school with Field Day. It was fun for everyone involved, more to come tomorrow,

Bye!

It’s 5:14 and I really don’t have much time today to write much. On top of that, with it being tax day, I’m not really in the mood. Hope everyone is well,

God Bless

Ok, it wasn’t pretty but 2 months from now nobody will remember how bad the Broncos played yesterday, all that matters is another win. We (or they) better get it together though before playing the Colts next Sunday night as they won’t be such a push over. Anyhow we had a great time, lots of fun and laughs and memories for Jag and his friends that’ll last a lifetime. Watch for pictures in this years yearbook.

Today the misses goes to another doctor for her neck and arm issues. We have to get a handle on this once and for all, surgery might be in her future, sooner than you think. We’ll know more after our 10:30 am appointment.

It’s getting cooler with a little snow likely for tomorrow. I can’t wait until tomorrows over as it’s the dreaded tax day, October 15th. Still not sure how we’re going to survive it but hopefully God will come through. Sometimes when you have nothing else left, you have to rely on faith.

70 days until Christmas, hard to believe. Not sure what we’re doing for the holidays, any of them. I think Aunt Robi and Robert are coming for Thanksgiving and I heard Grandma Dixie wants us in California so we’ll need to sit down and figure it out soon. We’d have to drive if we go and that’d be iffy with the weather at the end of November. We’re also hunting the middle of November and we have an event the 19th and 24th we have to go to. On top of all that, work trumps all and the next 60 days are critical for me pulling out the year. I might have to jump on a plane a few times at the drop of a hat. It all depends if any market (state) doesn’t order the wine their supposed to. Anyhow we’ll figure something out.

Oh, the boys had a good race and the 5K yesterday, I guess Jag ran it in 28 minutes and Ty, ever the player, stopped with his friend to veer off the trail and explore, right in the middle of the race! Anyhow they had a great time and it supported the PTA for school. Meanwhile I ran to the gun show to pick up some extra molle pouches for our medical gear. The gun shows are great places to pick things up super cheap as the vendors will all negotiate with you and you know how I love to negotiate! I ended up getting $72 worth of gear for $20, well worth the trip.

Time to run, hope everyone is well, take care, have a good week and we’ll report on the misses prognosis tomorrow.

Yesterday I was mapping out what leftover elk tags are available and when Jag and I will head to the hills. I try to wait as late in the year as possible as that means we’ll have a better chance of bad weather. Right now it looks like November 13th to the 17th are our best bet. That could change if we get a monster snow storm before then. The mountains are actually supposed to get between 6 and 10 inches tomorrow but we’re sitting tight. We have started getting all our gear together though just in case we need to head up early. I might run up on Tuesday as I need to check the fence we just put up and could scout around at the same time. It is tax day though so I might not be able to make it, we’ll see what magic I can work before then.

Hopefully tonight the Bronco’s will be 6 and 0, we’re all excited here in Denver as we should be. We did take the boys to get pumpkins yesterday and picked one up for Grandma also which we dropped off to her on the way home.

Lori just came down as the boys are both running the Gold Rush this morning. This is a 5K race they run every year. They need to be there at 8:30 so no time to waste.

It’s cool outside but not what you’d call cold. I sleep with the window open whenever I can and the heat off to cut down on our bill. I still can’t believe how high our bill is. In our next house, I’m making sure we have good insulation and will probably put in solar panels.

Time to run and get moving as it’s almost 6:30, the paperboy (or girl) must be sleeping in as my newspaper isn’t there yet. Hope everyone is well, take care and God Bless.

I had the guy from the insulation company out yesterday and learned that we only have 3 inches of a needed 18 inches worth of insulation up in our attic! Well this sure explains our high heating bills and the wild temperature swings resulting in hot summer days and cold winter nights. Turns out insulation isn’t cheap (about $2000!) so we won’t be adding any soon. October is an expensive month. Not only do we have taxes next Tuesday (I won’t even go into that) but we also our have car registration and a bunch of medical bills we’re still paying on. But enough of our troubles, at least we now know why our power bill is 2 1/2 times that of our neighbors and why it’s so damn cold upstairs. Maybe we’ll just move all our beds to the basement, that’d solve it. Check out our energy report, you should get yours if you can. Looks like we’re 4 times higher than our efficient neighbors, maybe we should move in with them! (we’re the 2134 guys, ouch)

Yesterday we also shut down the sprinklers and took the boys for haircuts. Jag is not too happy as he says she cut his too short but we told him it’d grow back in a week. Meanwhile Ty wants to grow his out but we managed to get him to sit still long enough to get a respectable cut. Finally around 6pm we made it home and I had put some pork ribs in the oven so the house was smelling oh so good as we walked through the front door. Lacey the lab is on more meds after a $200 trip to the vet, uggh, and will hopefully feel better soon. No one knows why she has such bad ear infections,  I guess labs are prone to it.

Monday Lori goes to a new spine surgeon. Her head was really really bad last night. We think she was laying the wrong way on the couch and hurt herself. If we can afford it, she might just go in and get her discs fused, we’ll know more Monday afternoon.

Fall is definitely here. The leaves are falling and that chill is in the air. I love it as like I’ve said before, it’s my favorite season.

Both dogs are at my feet resting comfortably while everyone else is still sleeping. I think I’ll skip the gym today as I lifted pretty heavy yesterday and need to give my muscles a rest. It’s amazing how the body responds after only a few workouts. I can’t go any longer than a few days without hitting the gym or I feel like my muscles are going into atrophy. I really learned this after knee surgery as I’m still recovering but am getting stronger every day. It’s true what they say, use it or lose it!

Enough rambling, I’ll skip politics today as it’s all crap as usual. Hope everyone has a great weekend, take care and God Bless.

Man the wind was blowing last night. I woke up at 1am and was up until sometime after 2 as I had to run down and do some last minute things on the computer. It didn’t rain but trees and power lines are down around us. They say the winds were 70 miles an hour plus. Luckily we appear to be ok. Today we’re having our sprinkler system winterized and getting an estimate to insulate our attic. I think the insulation is around $2000! When the man told me this on the phone I told him we should probably wait as there’s no way we can afford that but he said he’d come do an energy audit anyhow for free so we know what we’re dealing with. You see our energy bills are twice what our neighbors are according to the power company. Some of this is due to all the computers and phones but a lot is due to poor insulation and living in a house built in 1967.

We’re all up and it’s 7am now. We have lots to do this weekend around here. We need to get the boys their snowboard boots from the rental shop for the season as the ski areas open next weekend! Lacey has a doctor appointment for her ears, taxes are due Tuesday and we just found out they’re double what we were told yesterday, uggh, and we need to find something fun for the boys to do tomorrow, maybe go get our pumpkins!

I also need to go see my Mom. It’s funny as she lives so close (I could throw a baseball and hit her house) but we just don’t get up there much. We all said how we need to make a point to do so as she surely doesn’t come over here!

Time to run, hope everyone is well, God Bless!

It’s snowing in the mountains and the cold weather is headed this way. Not sure when it’ll arrive but temps will be dropping. I have a wine tasting today from 1 until 4 but I’ll probably wrap up by 3 or so. Here’s a comment from yesterday,

Annette says: