A Year of Change

Today is the 400th post since we began on December 31st, 2010. I hope the kids enjoy reading them when they are older.

It was a cold day yesterday and even colder last night with temperatures at or below zero.   It’s supposed to warm up a bit today but then another system is headed in sometime this weekend. This morning the misses works at 7 so we woke up at 5. A few minutes later the youngest came down and just told me he’s making breakfast and it’s a surprise, I can hardly wait! Tomorrow we leave for Austin and will be gone 47 hours. Uncle T and Aunt B have come to the rescue again taking the boys while we’re gone. This morning after I drop the kiddos at school, I need to run up to Vail and back. If I leave at 8, I should be back by 11am. Tonight we are filming a family movie for the oldest ones school project. He will be playing Jedediah Smith, the famous Colorado mountain man, with his brother playing the supporting role of a bear, complete with bear skin, in the movie. We’re debating putting it on YouTube. If so, we’ll let you all know where to find it. In any case, we’ll be busy all night from about 5pm on. I also need to Fed Ex some more supplies to Texas today and then sometime late tonight, we’ll pack. Time to run right now but before I go, here’s a few items to chew on. 1. The Air Force is taking the word “God” out of their logo. Why??? Because Obama thinks it offends atheists. 2. The government is telling catholic hospitals they have to provide contraceptives free of charge to all patients even though they oppose abortion, why? And oh yeah, the health care law (you and me) have to pay for it. Now I’m pro choice but why force certain religions who oppose abortion to participate? You can go to any doctor and get birth control pills and go down to any pharmacy and get it filled. Also the Army has prohibited (ordered) all its chaplains from talking about this, hmmm. I could go on and on but in closing let me just say, Santa Claus, Jesus, God, the Bible, Christmas, I’m attracted to women, white heterosexual male! Hope I offended someone. We’re treading on dangerous ground as a society. I wonder what my grandparents would think if they were still alive, hmmm. Oh well, I’d better stop before I’m put on some list. Take care, have a great day and God Bless

Today is the 400th post since we began on December 31st, 2010. I hope the kids enjoy reading them when they are older.

It was a cold day yesterday and even colder last night with temperatures at or below zero.   It’s supposed to warm up a bit today but then another system is headed in sometime this weekend. This morning the misses works at 7 so we woke up at 5. A few minutes later the youngest came down and just told me he’s making breakfast and it’s a surprise, I can hardly wait! Tomorrow we leave for Austin and will be gone 47 hours. Uncle T and Aunt B have come to the rescue again taking the boys while we’re gone.

This morning after I drop the kiddos at school, I need to run up to Vail and back. If I leave at 8, I should be back by 11am. Tonight we are filming a family movie for the oldest ones school project. He will be playing Jedediah Smith, the famous Colorado mountain man, with his brother playing the supporting role of a bear, complete with bear skin, in the movie. We’re debating putting it on YouTube. If so, we’ll let you all know where to find it. In any case, we’ll be busy all night from about 5pm on.

I also need to Fed Ex some more supplies to Texas today and then sometime late tonight, we’ll pack.

Time to run right now but before I go, here’s a few items to chew on. 1. The Air Force is taking the word “God” out of their logo. Why??? Because Obama thinks it offends atheists. 2. The government is telling catholic hospitals they have to provide contraceptives free of charge to all patients even though they oppose abortion, why? And oh yeah, the health care law (you and me) have to pay for it. Now I’m pro choice but why force certain religions who oppose it, to participate. You can go to any doctor and get birth control pills and go down to any pharmacy and get it filled. Also the Army has prohibited (ordered) all its chaplains from talking about this, hmmm. I could go on and on but in closing let me just say, Santa Claus, Jesus, God, the Bible, Christmas, I’m attracted to women, white heterosexual male! Hope I offended someone. We’re treading on dangerous ground. I wonder what my grandparents would think if they were still alive, hmmm.

Oh well, I’d better stop before I’m put on some list. Take care, have a great day and God Bless

That’s right, we awoke to another 3 or 4 inches of the fluffy white stuff. I probably looked pretty funny in green polka dot boxers and a down coat shoveling the walk this morning. See what you all miss by sleeping in!

The misses works today and tomorrow and then we’re off Thursday for Austin. The oldest is working on his school project and I’m sure Mom and Dad will be helping as it’s due Friday and he’s running out of time. Meanwhile the youngest had D.I. yesterday and is reading really well these days. Both are still sleeping at 6:30 am.

I need to go brush off the snow from both cars. I guess I’d better put on pants as the sun’s coming up. I’ll have to go to the gym after I drop the kids at school. Hard to believe it’s almost Valentines Day and Spring and then Summer, will be here before we know it.

Not much else going on today to write about. Aunt B is recovering from her eye surgery and from what I know, everyone else is doing ok . Time to run, drop us a line (comment) or give us a call. Have a great day, and be thankful for what you have in life, we’re all very lucky! Think about it.

It was a pretty good game. As the misses said yesterday, I’m glad the Giants won as I saw them as the underdog so that’s why I was cheering for them. The halftime show was a joke. I don’t know about you but to me, it was embarrassing to see Madonna lip synching (and she was according to NBC this morning) and whoever MIA is, giving us all the middle finger. Nice, I’m sure her mother is proud. (sad thing is her mother probably really is proud!) At least it gave me 15 minutes to go to the bathroom and replenish my snacks without missing anything. My favorite part, as always, was the commercials.

Well back to the daily grind today. The kids have school and the misses is getting her hair done and I have lots of work. It’s still cold, 13 degrees right now, with lots of snow on the ground. The boys made some igloos yesterday and played for most of the day outside. Earlier in the morning, the oldest one was melting down pretty good. Must be sugar or hormones.

I’ll be glad when this week and the big event are over so I can get back to my regular work. I feel pretty good about 2012 and where we’re going on a business level. On a personal level, I’m a bit worried about the economy and rising prices on everything from food to gas to electricity. Even the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) said unemployment is going up this year and next. Looks like we’re not out of the woods yet.

We have so much to do here to fix up our home. We have huge drafts where cold gets in and heat gets out. The kitchen needs a major overhaul and lots of other things to do cosmetically. We have to get new garage doors this year and fix the door opener as we’ve had one side that has been broken for a couple of years. Oh yea, then there’s the microwave that’s broke and dishwasher that doesn’t seem to clean as good as it used to. Throw in the bentonite soil under our house and the cracking driveway and basement floor and you’ve got quite a list. Oh well, at least our home has character. It would be much easier to just move but I don’t think we can afford it, we’ll keep you posted. If we do move, it would only be a mile or two. I’ll just make a master list and tackle things one at a time.

I just woke the misses so she can get ready for her day. Both boys are still sleeping, thankfully. Time to run, lots going on. February is always a bad month for bills. It starts with half of our property taxes due and then goes downhill from there. The misses is going to try to work some more (although I don’t know if that’s a good idea as she’s plenty busy as it is) but every penny counts. Time to finish up my coffee and get going for the day myself. Hope everyone is well, take care and have a good week.

Good morning.  The sky is beautiful and the snow is glistening with pink and purple hues.

The oldest was already downstairs when I came down and the Mister is at the gym.  The youngest is still asleep in our bed.  He kicked and twisted and turned most of the night.  I’m sure the Mister has multiple bruises on his legs.  When I went up last night (after finishing emails) both the mister and the munchkin were fast asleep.  I tried to pick up the munchkin to move him to his bed, but he was so far over that I couldn’t get a good angle to lift him.  So in our bed he stayed…that won’t be happening tonight….to many bruises and not enough sleep.

Are you ready for some FOOTBALL?  The mister is cheering for the Giants, the rest of us will probably cheer with him.  We don’t have loyalty to either team and we tend to cheer for the “Under dog”.  Personally I’m only watching for the commercials.

I was painting the truffles yesterday…it’s much harder than it sounds.  If anyone out there has a suggestion on making the gold go on smoothly….please let me know.

The boys played outside in the snow most of the morning and then came with us to run some errands…super bowl food and more gold dust for the truffles.  When we got home they donned their snow clothes and went to a friends to build an igloo.  The kiddos were at their friends for an hour or so and then returned home for dinner and a movie.

I cleaned the youngest’s room yesterday…UGH!  I was going to make him do it, but the amounts of legos, knex and assorted toys were almost too overwhelming for me.  Needless to say I had him sort some of it yesterday, but the neighbor boys had pulled a great amount of the toys out. The youngest asked if once it was clean…if the kids  neighbor) could play in his brother’s room instead since they always mess his up.  Good point…I’ll try monitoring and implementing some clean as you go rules.  I could use some of those myself.

Well I am off to cook some breakfast and paint truffles.

Have a great day and God Bless,

LLF

It’s still snowing, but just a little. It’s been snowing pretty much non stop since 5pm on Thursday night. We have just a touch over 2 feet here at the house. It was like deja-vu when I shoveled at 6 this morning as I’ve done the same thing about 3 times in the past 36 hours. I don’t know why anyone should be surprised, we knew the snow would come, it always does. The funny thing is the mountains and all the ski areas got less than an inch! Weird weather patterns here and all over the World. In Italy and most of Europe, they were hit hard. Rome had their first snow in 26 years and in Eastern Europe (Hungary, Germany and other similar countries) people are freezing to death. In Moscow Russia, the government has put out over 3000 heaters for the public to go stand by, outside, and get warm as many of the buildings are without heat. Imagine if you had no heat or power, how well would you have faired the past few days. For us, it would have required extra work but we would have been ok. Anyhow, what a storm, we usually don’t get this much snow until March.

Yesterday the misses and Judy finished making the truffles for the party and the final tally was 159 handmade chocolate masterpieces. Today she’ll be hand painting a bunch of them for special guests. The boys had a blast in the snow. We finally had to make them come in around 6:30 as it was too dark. The youngest had crawled into Mojo’s dog house and then the oldest filled the front up with snow trapping him in. Kids huh.

The wife is patiently (not really) waiting for the computer so I’d better sign off. Lots to do today and the Super Bowl is tomorrow. I really don’t care who wins and frankly am not that excited for it. I am looking forward to the commercials, they’re always the best part anyhow as most games are not very good games. Time to clean off the car and head out to the gym. Have a great weekend.

It started with Grandma calling last night around 7pm telling us the kids would have no school today. She had seen the announcement across the bottom of the tv screen. Not two minutes later, the phone rang again with a robo call from the school district confirming Grandma’s message. At this time (7ish on Thursday night) it was snowing lightly but they must have a better weatherman then we do because they were spot on. It’s now 5am and so far we have about 8 inches here at the house and it’s coming down pretty darn good. It’s supposed to snow all day long and into tomorrow which means the snow totals will add up. They say we’ll get somewhere around 18 inches, so it’ll be quite a mess around here for a few days.

Yesterday at 3pm the misses and our neighbor Judy began the process of making 200 handmade truffles for the big event next week. There were a number of steps involved in the process and they finished up with stage 1 by about 7pm. We now have half finished candy in our refrigerator and out in the garage. They still need to dip the soft truffle centers in the hard candy shell that they have yet to make. Then the misses will hand paint (are you kidding me) all 200 with edible gold paint. It’s a very special treat I’m sure everyone will enjoy. We also had a conference call yesterday to go through the final details of everything else and it looks like we’re all set. She made her best case for a photographer she found, who has worked with the likes of the band U2 and on many major campaigns all over the World. She negotiated with him to reduce his fee and take some free wine as partial payment and convinced our CFO to sign off on the expense. It’s probably the single biggest expense we have next week but the guy is a pro and guests will leave the reception with a finished print of a photo of them with Andrea. There’s tons of other details too numerous to mention but she’s done a great job. I told her she should start her own event company since she loves doing this kind of thing so much.

Aunt B is home recovering from eye surgery due to a detached retina. I’m not sure how you “detach” your retina but she did it. Hope she’s well soon. The boys think it’s pretty cool that she gets to wear a pirate patch.

The oldest and I were going  to go to the baseball tryouts in Golden tomorrow but I’m sure they will be cancelled. We just found out about them earlier this week from his flag football coach whose boys are playing. We sneaked in a few days of throwing and catching and one of hitting but that’s all. It’d be great if we had another week of practice but he’s playing pretty well. We’ll keep you posted on what we do. I think it’s like 4 days a week and he’s swimming for sure which is 6 days a week so we need to make sure we don’t take on too much. They just said on the news that the winter storm warning goes on until 11pm tonight. Looks like we’ll be doing lots of shoveling all day. Maybe Uncle T will make it up here with his snow blower, it’s times like these I wish I had one! Oh oh, they just said more snow on Tuesday. I told you it would come.

I left my snow boots in the car from snow boarding with the kids last week so I’m going to have to shovel my way to my boots. The misses was supposed to work for 1 hour this morning, (some kind of training thing) but called last night when she found out the boys would be home. She actually thought it was yesterday she was supposed to be there as she went in at 9am only to find out it was today, not yesterday, whoops.

I’ll have to dig my way out today as I need to go to the bank. I hope they’re open. It’s days like these we’re glad we have 4 wheel drive vehicles. I’m sure the boys will be bugging us to go sledding or snow boarding somewhere.

Well time to get after it. I think I’ll get dressed and start digging out the driveway, at least far enough to get the paper, if it’s there. Hope everyone is doing well, take care, stay warm and safe and God Bless.

Today they say 6 to 12 inches in Denver. Hope they’re wrong. The misses worked yesterday as you know and then was super busy when she arrived home around 3. Before we knew it, it was time for dinner and bed. Now onto politics, hold onto your hats.

I’m watching the loser senator from New York Chuck Shumer, telling everyone on tv that this election cycle we should not have big money from Wall Street going to candidates because this time the money is not going to Obama! Do you believe it, he flat out said that it needs to change now because this time they’re not supporting democrats. Unbelievable. Now first off, I cannot understand why this guy is even in office. I’m sorry but the people of New York in his district are seriously misguided. Maybe it’s not them at all as a lot of elections in NY are fixed, that’s right, fixed. In fact there are NY Assemblymen on trial right now in NY and democratic officials in Indiana and Illinois facing prison terms in separate trials for fixing primary’s and forging signatures to get Obama on the ballots where he was eventually elected. Corruption reigns supreme, you’d better believe it!

I’m already sick with politics and it hasn’t really even started yet. In fact, I’m so sick, I can’t go on. I’m sure some of you are happy but don’t worry, we have a good 8 months of it ahead of us. I’m really bummed as the Republicans continue to shoot themselves in the head with unforced errors. It’s really a sad statement on our Country and leadership. The problem is politics are so screwed up,  good people who could really make a change, don’t want to get into it.

Oh well, both dogs are in and everyone else is still sleeping. I’m going to get in a quick workout. Hope you all are well and stay warm if you live in Denver. Have a great day,

Here we go, time’s flying by! Spring will be here soon but as I said a few days ago, looks like old man winter is back tomorrow.

Last night we went out for Grandma’s birthday. It was the misses, the boys, me and Uncle T. Aunt B stayed home as she wasn’t feeling well. We had a nice time and were all home by a bit after 8. Grandma over ruled me and said the boys could have their favorite dessert, fried ice cream! I have to admit, it is really good. When we were driving home, the youngest one said, right out of nowhere, “when I die and you bury me, if I still have great abs, bury me with my shirt off”. Now how funny is that? Grandma asked how does he know about abs? The misses said it was from her as she always tells the boys what great abs they have, which they do!

The misses had to go to work last night for a team meeting at 9:45 and was home by 11pm. She’s rushing around now as she works at 7am this morning. Grandma said she should have just stayed all night.

Speaking of Grandma’s, I hear Grandma Dixie is up at Uncle Larry’s in Washington State. They (her and Pa Don) sure don’t let any grass grow under their feet.

I need to go to the misses store today to buy some supplies as she’s making hand made chocolates using wine from the Bocelli estate in Italy for the event and as a gift for Andrea, Alberto (his brother) and his wife Cinzia. Wow, where does she come up with these ideas? She is even “hand painting” each chocolate with our Company logo in gold with some kind of edible paint. I’ll tell you, if any of you have an event, and if you can afford her, (ha ha) you should hire the misses. I wouldn’t be surprised if she gets some work from some of the people she has met.

Alright, time for me to run as I need to get moving since I’m in charge of getting the kids fed and off to school this morning. The youngest is eating in the kitchen right now but the oldest is still fast asleep. Boy is he a teenager these days. You can see it in height, (he’s almost as tall as Grandma) sleeping habits (always wants to sleep in), eating habits (the appetite has kicked in) and last and worst, in attitude! We used to get upset but now we just laugh.

Hope you all have a great day, take care and rest up as I’ll be hitting you hard with politics tomorrow, ha ha. God Bless

Today’s my Mom’s birthday, 79 I think. That’s quite an accomplishment. She looks at least 10 years younger than that! Tonight we’re all going to dinner at 6 at one of her favorite local hangouts. It was pretty warm yesterday and supposed to be so again today but then light snow comes tomorrow.

The youngest was off to school yesterday but the oldest one stayed home as he was not feeling well. We think he was just tired from the weekend and just needed a rest. They’re both on the couch right now sparring with each other. I’m getting my haircut this morning and the misses will be working away on her ideas for the big event. I can’t even keep up with all the things she has going on. The misses says the sky is full of lots of colors this morning, I haven’t seen it yet as I’m writing away and it was still dark when I went out for the paper.

I don’t have anymore material today so time to go. Breakfast is almost ready and we’re trying to get the boys to go get dressed. It’s only the first of February but we’re already looking forward to Spring. This happens every year, we get a taste of warm weather, get excited for Spring and then, BAM, we get a huge snow storm, never fail.

Well, have a great day, and once again, Happy Birthday Mom!