Simon and Dylan getting ready to sled. We found an awesome spot to sled last weekend. It's an old gravel pit, I think, the hill's pretty steep but not to long, and some water has pooled up at the bottom and froze, so when you sled down you go shooting across the ice. Simon and I rode down on the same sled and fell off right before the ice and slid all the way across without the sled. It's a pretty fun spot. I put a new video on youtube. Just go to youtube and type curtisfamilyrepublic into the search thing and it should come up. Simon told us he could wiggle his ears when they got home from a New Years Eve party tonight. It's weird, but funny. I don't think I've ever seen anyone wiggle their ears before. We're going sledding again tomorrow, I'll try to take some video and post on you tube. Happy New Year everybody!

Christmas

This is the Playmobil castle set that we (Faith and I and her parents) got the boys for Christmas. It took us 3.5 hours to put together on Christmas Eve. We started a 930 and finished a 1 a.m. I think Dylan had a hard time believing it was real when he woke up the next morning, as he kept asking "Is this a castle!? Is it really a castle!? Is this a castle!?" They've been playing with it pretty much non-stop since 6:00 Christmas morning, with brief interludes for sleep and the occaisonal Mario Olympics Wii game with me. Notice I didn't mention food in their approved things to stop playing for. They pretend to come and eat, but they take one bite of food and then say they're full and go back to playing with the castle again. It was a pretty good Christmas overall, we opened presents and then just played with all our new stuff the rest of the day. Not much else is going on. We haven't been doing anything lately. We did go to Spokane a couple of weeks ago and spent the night at a hotel with a big water slide, but the boys weren't tall enough to slide on it alone, and they wouldn't let me stand at the bottom to catch them unless we were the only ones in the pool, which only happened for about 15 minutes, so that was kind of a bust. Faith did her best to drown both herself and Dylan in the regular pool, though. The pool goes from 3 feet deep to 7 feet deep in about 2 steps. Faith was holding Dylan and stepped a little to far. I would rate both of their swimming abilities somewhere between a chunk of lead and a big rock. I turned around to see Faith completely under water, raising Dylan above her head as high as she could reach, which was still about 8 inches short of his head being out of the water. I swam over grabbed Dylan, and started heading for edge of the pool. Remembering that Faith doesn't have life insurance and somebody has to watch the kids while I'm at work, I swam back, grabbed her arm, pulled her up so she could get a breath, and pushed her to the edge of the pool. She didn't even say thank you.

Hope everybody had a good Christmas.

Here's a few pictures of the boys in their chosen attire.

I couldn't manage to get both of them to smile at the same time. On Wednesday night Simon said he wanted to dress up for our big dinner and he wanted to wear a tie. Dylan jumped on the bandwagon as well. Simon also told me he wanted to be the one to answer the door when everybody got here so he could wish them "Happy...what day is it again?" Dylan kept his tie on for an hour or so after everyone got here, Simon was trooper and kept his on until bed time. It was a great Thanksgiving for us. We missed our friend Ken, who was a constant guest at Thanksgiving for about 5 years or so, but other than that it was great. Our friend Shane and his wife and son came over. Their son, Atticus, usually just clings to one of them whenever we're around, but he got down and played with all the other kids quite a bit, which was fun. After everybody left and the kids were in bed Faith and I were reminiscing over Thanksgivings past. I pointed out that last year at this time we were inside Jeremy's house while he was talking to the police and Ethan was hiding in the bathroom. Ah, good times. Hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving.

Here's a picture of Dylan about 3 minutes before the previously mentioned fall in the creek.

Nothing new.

Nothing new, we just wanted to wish everybody a Happy Thanksgiving. We'll have 13 people at our house tomorrow. Everybody but Simon was sick all week, Faith and I were wondering if we'd even do Thanksgiving. I took the kids out to a creek near our house on Sunday to pan for gold and throw rocks. Simon and Dylan both swore they could walk in the creek and they wouldn't get cold because they had rubber boots on (the creek is about 4 or 5 inches deep where we were). I tried to tell them they'd get cold, but they kept saying they wouldn't, so I figured what the heck, maybe they're right. So within 5 minutes Simon was crying that his feet were freezing and Dylan fell in the creek. We had been there for about 15 minutes all together. While they got in the Pathfinder I scooped up some dirt and rocks from the creek bottom and we panned for gold at home. No gold, but we all found some little purple crystals. That's about it. Oh, wait, no it's not. While Faith, Dylan, and I were home sick on Tuesday, the school called. Simon had been bitten 3 times on the arm. None of them drew blood, but they said it was obviously bite marks. Upon questioning, Simon told the receptionist that a boy on the bus had done it. When he talked to the principal he told her that Dylan had done it on the bus on the way to school. So the school called us, and we told them that Dylan had stayed home sick that day. They asked Faith to talk to him and try and get the real story out of him. The result: He had bitten himself during quiet time after recess. When he got home I talked to him about it and asked why he had done that. He said he wanted to play a trick on his class. When I asked him what the culmination of the trick would have been, he said he wasn't sure, he just thought it would be funny. Faith's not very happy that I start laughing everytime I think about Simon biting himself. Oh boy... Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

Dylan opening presents at his birthday party.

Dylan with some nerf gear he got for his birthday.

Simon lost his first tooth!

Dylan's birthday was on Tuesday. He woke up at about 530 and asked if he could open his presents. We made him wait for Simon to wake up, so he opened them at about 6. We had a birthday party after school. There were 10 kids over, ranging in age from 2 to 8. It was utter chaos. After they ate cake and ice cream it got even worse. It was pretty fun though. There are 2 new videos on you tube, just type curtisfamilyrepublic into the search engine. In the video of all the kids on the trampoline make sure you keep on eye on Simon after Dylan gets off the tramp. Well, they're not on there yet, but they should be uploaded by tonite (Friday). Not much else has happened this week. It snowed a couple of inches at our house last Sunday, but it all melted. A winter storm watch was issued for Republic for Wednesday night, so when I woke up Thursday morning I told the kids to look outside and see how much it snowed. It hadn't snowed, it rained all night. When I left for work and got a couple of miles from our house there was a few inches of snow. Town is maybe a hundred feet higher than where we live, and that was enough to have snow in town. Everyplace else was rain though, even in the mountains. That's about it, hope everybody's doing well.

These are all the guys I hunted with in Oregon, clockwise from the bottom left are James, Ron, Phil, John, and Kent.

In the blind with John, Kent, and Jack (John's new dog).

Ron and Phil. I was about 800 feet away when I took this picture with my new camera at 80x digital zoom. I was pretty pleased with it.

Me with our ducks from the first day.

Our ducks from the second to last day.

I got home Friday night from my duck hunting trip. It was tons of fun. The total tally for the group for the five days we hunted was 51 ducks, three falls in the river (two of them were me on the same day), and 4 holes poked in waders (all me). I heard the funniest thing one day down in Oregon. Sensitive or easily offended readers should maybe skip to the next paragraph. Ron shot a wood duck, also called a "woody", and they are really awesome looking ducks. John said he should get it mounted, but Ron said he didn't think he could afford it. He said "I'll see if anybody in the other blind wants it." He grabbed the radio to call the other guys we hunted with. He keyed the mike and said "Hey, I've got a real nice woody over here if anybody wants to mount it." Utter silence followed that statement, and Ron just looked at us as we stared at him in shock. Then grabbed the radio again and said "It's a wood duck you perverts." I laughed so hard I almost fell off the bench. Not much else exciting happened, unless you think getting up a 330 in the morning to wade around in a river putting out decoys, then laying in a blind either freezing or roasting, all so you can shoot some birds, then pick up all the decoys and spend the rest of the evening getting ready for the next day exciting. I find it very exciting.

Faith took the kids to Colville to go grocery shopping on Halloween. They wore their costumes and figured out that they could trick or treat at each checkstand in the 3 grocery stores they went to. By the time they were done shopping and it was time to go trick or treating at houses, they said they had enough candy and wanted to go home. Weirdos. Faith didn't take any pictures of their costumes, or of the awesome pumpkins we carved the night before I left. Simon told me this morning that I couldn't go hunting anymore because he missed me too much. We didn't do much today. Tomorrow we're going to go out to a lake and shoot some guns and mess around. That's about it, hope everybody's doing well.

Dylan on an awesome rope swing we found last weekend.

Faith on said rope swing.

You get it.

Simon and Dylan holding a geocache we found.

On Sunday we spent the day around Colville. First we went to a place called Crystal Falls about 10 miles outside of Colville. There's just a wide spot off the highway where you pull off and then walk down to the falls. There's fences all over, so you can't hike around them too much, but it's still a pretty cool spot. There is a small trail that heads downstream from the falls. We went for a walk down that to find a geocache. That's what the last picture is from. After that we went to an old army fort outside of Colville. The fort is gone, all there is a memorial for it. We did another geocache there, then called our friend Shane to come meet us for the last one. We parked in a grade school parking lot and met Shane and let the kids play in the playground for a while. Then we went behind the school into a wooded area in the middle of town to find the last geocache. That's where we found the rope swing from the top pictures. It doesn't go over water or anything, it's just in a huge opening. It was so much fun. The stump that Faith is getting ready to go off of is the highest you get, which is only about 4 and a half feet off the ground, but when you get up there it seems higher. The kids, as you can see from the photos, even jumped off the stump. Well, actually they were to small to get their feet in the loop from the top of the stump, so they put their foot in at the bottom, then I hauled them over so they were above the stump and let them go. We looked for the geocache there but couldn't find it. We went back and played at the play ground some more, then went out to pizza for dinner. It was a pretty great day.

Faith is subbing at the school all week this week. I'm only working until Wednesday, then on Thursday I'm getting packed for my duck hunting trip, and leaving on Friday. I'm driving to my friend Kent's house in Newport, WA, then we'll take Kent's truck down to Boardman, OR to meet 4 of our friends from Bend to hunt for 2 days, then we'll all go back to Kent's house in Newport to hunt some more. I'm going to stay there for 3 days, but everybody else is staying for a week I think. I'm pretty excited, it should be alot of fun. That's about it, hope everybody's doing well.

Hi, just a quick note to let you all know that we posted some videos on you tube. Just go to you tube and type CurtisFamilyRepublic into its search and they'll come up. Right now it's two videos of Simon singing and dancing to his favorite group, The Ting Tings. I've been having problems uploading videos here, so I decided to do you tube instead. Later

Simon In 1 Million Words Or Less

We got a homework assignment on Simon's first day of school. The assignment was called "Describe Your Child In A Million Words Or Less". The purpose of the assignment was to let the teacher get to know your child. I wrote it, and Faith finally read it today, and thought that I should post it here. So here it its.
SIMON CURTIS IN A MILLION WORDS OR LESS

Simon was born at 10:02 p.m. on January 9th, 2004. Due to the time zones, his grandmother in Ohio still believes he was born on January 10th, because it was 1:30 a.m. on January 10th in Ohio when she received the news. To this day, she still calls on January 10th to wish him a happy birthday.
Simon was born in Redmond, Oregon, and then taken home to Sisters, Oregon. He lived in a house on at a Forest Service ranger station, where his mom worked. His dad worked for the Forest Service in Bend, Oregon at the time. His family had a dog named Oscar and two cats, Miko and Cassidy. There was a dog door that led to the back yard, which was right against the forest. The cat Miko loved her family, and was constantly bringing proof of her love through the dog door. One night when Simon was around 3 months old, his parents were awoken by Simon screaming in a way they had never heard him scream before. They rushed into his room to discover that Miko had tried to show her love for Simon by placing a mouse in his crib with him. Unfortunately, the mouse was still alive, very scared, and had very sharp teeth. Simon was bit on his upper lip just below his nose. His very scared mom called his pediatrician in the middle of night, and was told that mice can’t communicate diseases through their bite, and as long as he didn’t need stitches, there was no reason to bring him to the hospital. Simon still has a small scar under his nose, and still claims to remember being bit by the mouse.
Life progressed normally for Simon after that. He took a vacation to Hawaii with his parents in February and March of 2005. While he claims to remember being bit by a mouse when he was 3 months old, he claims no memory of his trip to Hawaii. The Forest Service is a family friendly business, and Simon went to work with his mom for the first year of his life. This made him very comfortable around other people, as he was constantly being held and played with by people that would rather play with a baby than work. Simon’s dad’s sister is a speech pathologist and convinced Simon’s parents to teach him sign language, starting when he was about 8 month old. Communication with Simon became possible much earlier than he could talk, though he stopped using it as his ability to speak progressed. In November of 2005 Simon was blessed with a younger brother, Dylan. Remembering the problems his grandmother had with Simon’s birthday, his parents chose to call his grandmother in the middle of the day, and tell her explicitly what day Dylan was born. Simon was very enamored with his new brother, and tried to help do everything to take care of him. The cats had to go live at new homes after Dylan was born. They were very confused by the new baby, and started marking territory inside the house, something they had never done when Simon was a baby. The cats were replaced by a new dog, Moses. Simon instantly declared Moses his dog, and accepted the responsibility to feed him when he was about two years old. It took him some time to learn that feeding the dog did not mean giving him his unwanted food from meals, but he took to his new responsibilities very easily. He still claims that feeding the dogs is his job, and can get quite upset when somebody else does it.
Simon’s parents decided they did not want him raised by a day care, so Simon’s mom quit her job shortly after Dylan was born. This gave Simon even more exposure to other people, as his mother was constantly taking him to play with other children in the area. He developed a very outgoing personality, and is not scared to talk to whoever he sees, despite his parents’ warnings about strangers. He makes friends effortlessly, and has a new best friend every time he goes to the park.
In 2006 Simon’s dad took a job at a remote guard station in South Eastern Oregon. This meant his dad was gone for two weeks at a time, then home for one or two days, and then gone for two weeks again. Simon is very close to his dad, and this was a very hard time for him. His dad came home for good at the end of the summer, but had to leave the very next day on a wild land fire assignment. Simon was very distraught, and developed a minor case of alopecia. His pediatrician said it was probably due to stress of some form. While he grew all of his hair back, for the next year he would still start to lose his hair when his dad left on fire assignments. This has cleared up in the past two years, as he is able to better understand why his dad has to leave, though he still gets very upset when his dad leaves.
Simon’s dad accepted a new job in Republic, Washington in 2007, and the family moved in August of that year. They lived in a hotel for two months until they found a home to move into. Living in a hotel with two kids and two dogs that were near 100 pounds in size each was very difficult. The dogs went to stay with an old family friend in Curlew until they could find a house to live in. Todd, the family friend, told Simon’s dad one day that he had never seen a dog scale an eight foot tall fence before. Moses was a very good escape artist. Unfortunately he escaped one day and was hit by a car and killed. Simon’s parents explained to Simon about his dog, and he accepted Moses’ death as a natural part of life. Against his parents’ better judgment, they got a new dog a few months later, and named him Arlo. Simon started pre-school in 2007. Due to the fact he was living in a hotel at the time he started pre-school, this apparently classified him as homeless, and he was placed into the ECAP program. Simon did very well in pre-school, making even more friends. He stayed in pre-school for two years because of his age, and was very excited to start kindergarten and spend the whole day at school.
Simon is very close to his extended family, and is constantly trying to convince his parents to drive to Idaho “for just a little while” so he can see his grandparents that live in South Eastern Idaho. He loves playing outside, whether just playing outside at home, or going out to the woods to splash in a creek. He started playing golf with his dad in 2009, and gets very excited whenever they can go play. He is a self styled vegetarian, and his parents are still trying to figure out where he heard the word and how he figured out that it applied to him, though he uses it correctly, and very rarely eats meat. Simon may be the only boy in the world that is told he needs to eat something other than salad and vegetables at dinner time. His favorite color is yellow, and his favorite movies are the Star Wars series. He has a very active imagination, and is constantly playing some sort of make-believe with his brother Dylan. Simon is very close to Dylan, and tends to mope when Dylan is taking a nap and can’t play with him. Simon will talk incessantly given the opportunity, and answer any question posed to him. He is very analytical, and a very good problem solver. Teaching him sign language at a young age helped his communication skills greatly, and he is usually able to use his words to communicate his feelings, but he still gets frustrated at times and stops using words to communicate, and starts using actions which may not be appropriate for the situation. He accepts responsibility for his actions easily, though, and is very quick to calm down and start using words again. He loves jokes, and fancies himself quite the comedian, making up jokes almost daily at home. He loves to laugh, and his laughter is very infectious.

In other news, I went over to my friend Jay's house tonight. Jay is a retired Forest Service guy, he worked in fire supervising a helicopter and a helitack crew, then went into timber after he got sick and couldn't do fire anymore. Jay is a...I don't know, like a hobbyist woodworker that does professional quality work. The upshoot is that he builds guitars and banjos. So I went over to his place tonight and talked about building a banjo. We talked about what kind of wood to use, what kind of metal to use for the tone ring and support for the neck, and everything else I would need to build a banjo. Jay has four banjos that he has built, and one guitar, and another guitar that is almost done, and about 4 or 5 other banjos in various states of completion. I got a list of all the wood I'll need, and some metal I'll need to build other parts. I'm really excited about building a banjo. We'll start the "pot", the round part that the head of the banjo stretches over and produces the sound, as soon as I get the wood. We'll start the pot at Jay's house, then I'll bring it home with very explicit instructions on how to add the different layers of it. I'll take pictures and post them as the project progresses. Instead of a store bought head for the banjo we're going to use a real hide, which I thought produces a better sound after playing Jay's homemade banjos. After the pot is done, we'll make the neck, and I'll buy tuner pegs to put onto the head. Then we'll put a fingerboard on, that's the part with the frets on it. After that's on, we'll do an inlay. Jay has two different kinds of inlays that he knows how to do, one just round rings made out of tire stem valves with pearl inlayed into the center of them, and he also knows how to do an inlay of vines made out of veneer with flowers made out of pearl. We'll see how the cost is when we get to that point, but I'm thinking tire stem valves with pearl will probably be what I do. That's about it, hope everybody's doing well.

This picture was taken at an old silver mine outside of Republic. The tailing piles are left from all the rock that they didn't take, and you can dig through them and find crystals. The whole area around there is full of crystals, we talked to a Job Corps group out that day and one guy had found a rock about the size of a small dinner plate that had 3 inch tall crystals sticking up all over it. The kids just like to go and throw rocks while I dig around. We didn't find any crystals that day though.

Simon bowling.

Dylan bowling. He didn't fall down. He carries his ball up, places it on the lane very carefully, then lays down behind it and pushes it.

So we found the camera, carefully hidden away in the glove box of the van. Faith found it when she was going grocery shopping, and I had already told her to buy a new camera. She bought a new one anyway. It snowed here about a week and a half ago. There was about 2 inches above 4000 feet or so. I took the kids up to play in it the next morning, and most of it had melted. We drove up to a spot called Bodie Mountain, which is an old fire lookout, but the tower is gone. The top of the mountain is just barely big enough to turn a pickup around on, and is surrounded on all sides by pretty tall cliffs except where the road is blasted through. We drove up until we hit snow, but the only turn around on the road is at the top, so I drove up there to get turned around. When I got to the top and nosed up to one of the cliffs to turn around, Dylan suddenly screamed "I don't want to die!" I said "What?!" and he told me he didn't like it up there and wanted to go back down. So, death narrowly averted, we got turned around and drove back down from the top a little ways and stopped. It's too steep off either side of the road, so I just parked in the middle of the road and we had an awesome snowball fight, started to make a snow man (which turned into a "Biggest Snowball Ever" fight) and I showed the boys how to shake snow off a tree onto someone standing underneath it. Most of the rest the time was consumed by the boys giggling and asking me to "Come look at right underneath this tree." The snow all melted, but it's supposed to snow tonight or tomorrow again. The next week I went to Portland for training, and saw Mom and Dad there. Leave it to me to ruin their vacation where they "didn't want to visit anybody." It was great to see them when the circumstances weren't linked to a funeral. My training was about two steps above completely awful, but I guess it was somewhat educational. The training was on how to use a new database we're supposed to track our fuel treatment monitoring in. While I realize that's probably complete gibberish for most normal people, maybe somebody will understand it. I stayed with my friend Mark and his family, which was nice. I left my truck parked at his house and took public transportation everywhere I went, which is awesome. If you're ever feeling sorry for yourself, just go ride the bus and/or train in Portland for an hour or so, and you'll realize you're actually doing pretty darn good. I got home on Friday, right into a three day weekend (Yay Columbus showing up after a whole slew of other people and getting all the credit!) I slept and watched movies and played games with the boys the first day, went crystal digging/rock throwing the second day, and went bowling on Monday. It was a pretty good weekend. Back to work and school tomorrow though. Simon's class took some tests a couple of weeks ago to see where they're at academically, and Simon is the only one in the class to test out at where he's supposed to be for his age, everyone else in the class tested below where they're supposed to be. We were pretty excited about that. Simon sits right in the front row on the bus, and his bus driver told Faith the other day that he is surprised at the level of intelligence that Simon shows when talking to him. Dylan's doing alright in school, 3 days into him starting I went to pick him up and was asked to stay and talk to his teacher after everyone else left. He had apparently gotten mad at his teacher's assistant for not giving him yogurt (preschool eats breakfast at school, but Dylan eats before he goes, so we just pack him a little snack, which didn't include yogurt until this incident) and had backhanded her in the face during his little tantrum. I asked Dylan why his teacher wanted to talk to me while I was waiting for all the other kids to leave, and he told me right away "Umm, I got in trouble." "Why?" "I hit my teacher." "Oh. Great." The upshoot is that if he hits a teacher again he has to go home. It hasn't happened again. His teacher told us at open house that Dylan has a really hard time transitioning between activities, which is normal for his age. Other than that, he really likes going. That's about it for now, hope everybody's doing well.

Correction

It's not very often that someone is lucky enough to prove me wrong, but I guess it had to happen sooner or later. Mary, Faith's mom, was kind enough to point out that I'm a schmuck. The actual score is Friends: 2 Family: 1. Faith's folks came up when we first moved up here. They live in Denver, CO, and drove nonstop for about 24 hours to come and see us. I would point out that that's about twice as far as anybody else has to drive, except for Jeremy and Trisha. Bet you're feeling pretty crappy right now.
We still can't find the camera. Simon and Dylan had a soccer game last night. I would say that each team scored about the same number of goals, with the highest percentage of goals being scored by Simon and Dylan's team in their own goal. Simon scored the only goal for his team that went in the right goal. Simon is sitting here while I'm writing this and he wants me to say how proud of him I am for scoring a goal. He did great. Dylan did really good also, when he couldn't get the ball from the other team he resorted to grabbing the other team members by the jersey and holding them in place. At one point when everyone from both teams were in a circle kicking at the ball Dylan saved the day by diving into the middle of the circle and wrapping both arms around the ball and covering it with his body. I think football may be in his future.
We finally switch off of our summer schedule at work this weekend, so I'll have weekends off again. Oh yeah, we had tons of fun when Dan and Annie and Aidan and Kodi came up. They got here at about 11:00 at night, so we just put their kids in the room with Simon and Dylan while they were all asleep. Then all the adults stayed up until 3:00 in the morning catching up. At 5:00 a.m we were awoken to the sound of kids shrieking "You're here, you're here!" then the sound of little kids sprinting all over the house yelling. They were pretty excited. We went to an old silver mine that day and dug through the old tailing piles and found a bunch of crystals, red ones, purple ones, and regular old white ones. It was pretty neat, the kids claimed to really enjoy digging for crystals, but all they really did was stand on top of rock piles and throw rocks, which was actually pretty fun too. As me and Tim's old friend Darryl pointed out to me on a camping trip one time "It's a good thing no girls are here, because they wouldn't be in to spending 4 hours throwing rocks in the creek like we just did." Throwing rocks is fun. Dan and Annie and the kids left on Wednesday morning to head to Seattle. We were all really glad they came, it was tons of fun. The kids caught a garter snake today, it looks like it's a baby. It's only gotten loose once, and it wrapped itself a couple of times around Dylan's finger, which made Dylan yell "Let go of me, nake" (he has a problem saying the letter S for some reason). We've been meaning to ask Amy this, but Dylan does the strangest thing. Whenever he asks to do something he adds a sound effect at the end. For example: "Want to go jump on the trampoline, boing, boing, boing?" He does it for a lot of things, and he makes the right noise to describe what he wants to do. Let's see, what else? Oh yeah, I know you're all looking forward to the new season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars that starts next Friday, I know the boys and I are. That's about it, I guess. Hope everyone's doing well.

Lost it again.

We lost the camera again. Faith remembers telling Simon to quit messing with the shutter, but she doesn't remember where he was when she told him that, if they were in the house or in the van. Simon had his first soccer game on Thursday night. Dylan and I didn't go, we were both sick with fevers. They don't keep score for the games in their age group, Faith said the other team probably scored more goals. Simon and Dylan's team are all 5 years old and younger, and the other team's kids were all between 5 and 7 years old. Simon scored a goal though! He was pretty excited when he came home. Faith said it was so much fun. She said that the kids all did good dribbling the ball on their own, they just don't pass it to each other, and at times two kids from the same team would take the ball from each other. She said the older team did that to, though. I suggested doing a drill at practice where three kids line up and practice moving the ball down the field without dribbling it, only passing to the person next to them. She said she'll try it out at their next practice on Tuesday. I went to one practice, but I don't get to go anymore, Simon and Dylan both got too excited when I got there and wouldn't practice anymore. I took the kids grouse hunting last week after school and got a grouse. The boys were super excited about it. We took it home and cooked it up, Dylan didn't try any, but Simon was game, he tried one piece but as soon as he put in his mouth he made a face like he'd just sucked on a lemon and spit it out. I convinced him to try another one, with the same result. Faith really liked it, though, and I thought it was pretty good. Let's see, what else is happening. Work is super busy for me right now, and will continue to get busier through about December. Our forest got 1.8 million dollars for stimulus money to put local folks to work on contracts for the Forest Service, and it's all supposed to be fuels reduction and timber stand improvement, which is all my job, so I have to put together a bunch of contracts and line a bunch of folks out to get the work done to get the contracts ready. I don't even really know what that means, so it should be interesting. Our friends Dan and Annie from Bend just called and said they're coming to visit us! They'll be here either Sunday night or Monday morning. They're staying until Wednesday,then heading to Seattle. That's the second friend that's come to visit. So the score as I have it is Friends: 2 Family: 0. I think I'll put a moratorium on visiting Idaho until somebody comes to Republic. It's really nice here if you're into......let's see.....um......nevermind, I've lifted my moratorium, there's no reason for anybody to come here. Unless you're into hunting whitetail deer, or you work for the new mine they opened up, those are the only out of town people that come here. That's about it, hope everybody's doing well.

Kickin A's and Takin N's

I played in golf tournament today. We took third. It was actually a tie between us and another team for 2nd and 3rd, we had a sudden death chip off for 2nd and 3rd, and we lost the chip off. It was pretty fun though, I usually count on getting last in any golf tournament I've ever played in, so getting 3rd out of 10 teams was pretty good. Faith took the boys to Colville while I played in the tournament, they went to a new toy store and got some new toys. After the tournament we all went to our friend Landon's house and had some lasagna, which is something I've been trying to get Faith to cook for months, but she keeps refusing. Then our friend Dave came over, but I think he must be tired, cause he's asleep on our couch right now. I forgot the camera for the tournament, which is a bummer, because we had a lot of fun playing golf today. Lots of hijinks and jokes and laughing while we played. Nothing much else is going on, Faith is taking the boys to church for the first time tomorrow. It's at our friend Gwen's parent's house. It's not so much church as a bible study group thingy. There's a bible study for the kids there though, so Faith will go to one room and the kids will go to another. I'm not going because I've read the bible and think aobut it enough on my own, and I don't think they'd appreciate my takes on it, but that's OK, it'll be good for the kids to get some introduction to some moral type stories. That's about it, hope everybody's doing well.

The good news is we finally found the camera. We just haven't taken any pictures with it yet. Faith dyed her hair blonde, so I'll take some pictures of her this weekend to post. The kids first soccer game is next Thursday, so I'll definitely take some video of that to post as well.
My work computer crashed yesterday. It is less than a month old. I turned it off in the middle of the day to hook up a new monitor I had gotten, but the monitor wouldn't pick up the signal. It's a laptop, so I unhooked it from its dock and opened it up to discover a black screen with a blinking cursor. Crap, I thought, so I turned it off and turned it back on, and the same thing happened. Double crap. Our computer help was contracted out a few years ago, so instead of grabbing a computer tech from the office, I have to call a help center. Don't get confused by the word help in help center, as no such thing was offered in this case. The guy asks my phone number right when he answers, I give it to him, tell him my problem, and he says he can't do anything to help me, so he'll forward it on to someone else. Then he says ""The contact number I have for you is 509-775-7458, is this correct?" That's my old phone number, even though I have told that center my new number at least 5 times, they still can't get it right. I already gave him my new number when he asked for it at the beginning of the call, but I guess expecting him to listen to me is too much to hope for. So I say no, I've changed desks, my new number is 509-775-7457. It's quiet for a minute, then he says, OK, I'll make a note of that change. Yeah, right. So they post your problems on a website where you can check to see how far along they are in attempting to fix it, and at the bottom it has contact information. All it has down is my email address, no phone number. They shut off remote access to our email a couple months ago, so you have to have a computer with your specific email id file on it to access your email. I've just told the idiot that my computer is broken, and the only contact info he puts for me is email? I beginning to think that 216th is a little high. Luckily my old computer still has my id file on it, so I can get into my email, but if I had listened to the help center and deleted it like I was supposed to, I wouldn't have access to it. So, now, I'm kind of stuck. All my work is on my new computer, and it's broken. I get stuck in the office a couple days a week being the duty officer (I organize all the response to new fires, send people to fires off district as needed, hire casual employees for fire assignments as needed) and you have to be in the office when your duty officer. I usually use those couple days to get all my computer work done, and now I can't. I don't even know what I'm going to do if they can't get my computer fixed, I have years of work that I transferred over to that computer, and I'll be pretty screwed if I have to start over from scratch on all of it. Crap.
I'm playing in a Forest Service golf tournament tomorrow. I am spectacularly horrible at golf, so I plan on getting last place, but that's OK, they usually give a prize to last place to try to make them feel even worse, but I'm just stoked to get free stuff, and let's face it, you can't keep me down, so I just laugh with everyone else and give them crap right back.
In other news, Simon's loving kindergarten, and Dylan starts preschool next Wednesday. He's really excited to go. Faith's really excited to have him go too. Nothing much else is going on. I'm going to Portland for some training in the beginning of October for a week, and then I'm going duck hunting for 2 days in Oregon with some friends, then we're all going up to Newport, WA for a week to duck hunt with another friend who runs a guide outfit, that's at the end of October, but I'm super excited to go. Hope everyone's doing well. Later.

Sorry, still no pictures

I've really got to work on remembering the camera one of these days.  The big news is that Simon starts kindergarten tomorrow morning.  Kindergarten here is all day long, he gets on the bus at 0727, and gets off the bus at 229.  He's pretty excited, he got a new backpack and a lunchbox to take to school, and he's been trying to convince us to put a lunch in it everyday since Faith brought it home.  Dylan starts preschool on the 8th, he'll just be gone half a day.  Faith's looking forward to having some to herself.  Simon and I went and played golf this morning.  We walked again, but I think that will be the last time until he's older.  He got mad at me because I wouldn't let him stop and look at every tree we came across.  I'm taking Dylan to play on Tuesday while Simon's at school.  Faith wanted to go shopping today, which I didn't want to do, and I don't think she wanted me complaining all day.  She couldn't find any of her friends to go with her, so she went by herself.  Me and the boys are hanging out at home, as Faith bailed with Dylan's car seat, so we're stuck.  We did buy them a Slip-N-Slide last week, so maybe I'll get some photos of that.  Not much else is going on.  I still haven't gotten my official job offer yet, my boss told me last Friday that the District Ranger, she's the head boss of the whole district, forgot to send the message to our HR people that they had selected me for the job, so she sent it on Friday, and it takes a couple of weeks to get it all processed.  Holding strong at 216th still, I suppose.  Hope everybody's doing well.

I actually got both my days off this weekend, which was kind of a strange feeling in August. Our friend Ken came up from Portland on his way to Canada and spent a day hanging out. We went and panned for gold then went and shot some guns. Here's Simon shooting a real gun for his first time. Well, this video is the third or fourth time he shot the .22 that day. It was pretty funny, towards the end of the day he had a really hard time working the action on the gun and holding it up. He had a huge ear to ear grin on his face the whole time. He also shot my .45 with me holding it, but I think it kicked so much it kind of freaked him out, he only did one shot with that, so there's no video. Dylan had been sick, so he didn't get to come with us. Sunday was the first day he didn't have a fever, and Faith wanted him to stay home and rest instead of playing in the creek. Sissy. Nevermind, the video wouldn't load. I'll try to load it later.

On my next day off Ken left early in the morning to head to Canada, Simon and I went and played some golf. We played nine holes and walked, which Simon did not want to do, he wanted to get a cart again, but Faith found me a pushcart at a garage sale that I wanted to try out. I only had to give him two shoulder rides, he walked the rest of it. I can remember when I was a kid Dad always telling me to hurry up, or to keep up, or to quit looking at stuff and walk, and I think Simon must be God's way of showing me how patient Dad was, because holy crap, that boy walks slower than a herd of turtles stampeding through peanut butter. He stops and looks at everything, and I swear that he is incapable of walking and talking at the same time, and he talks constantly. After golf we went home and grabbed Dylan and went up to another creek so I could try panning for gold again, which I apparently do not know how to do. I found a few flakes, but I looked on the internet for some videos on how to do it and I was doing it all wrong. I guess doing things like how I see it in movies isn't always the best. I gave the boys each a knife to carve on sticks and Simon stabbed himself in the arm once, then Dylan stabbed Simon once. Simon stabbed himself by holding onto a log and trying to stab it and missed. Dylan stabbed Simon cause Simon splashed him with water. Just kidding, they were "fighting leaves", which I heard them say they were going to do, and didn't click right away what that might entail, so I didn't stop it until I looked up and saw them wildly stabbing plant leaves with the knives, and before I could stop them one wild swing got Simon in the arm. Luckily neither of them are strong enough to put a lot of force into it, and the knives were just old leatherman tools I had, which don't have the sharpest points on them, so both wounds were pretty minor. Faith opted to spend some time by herself, so she missed all the fun. That's about it. Hope everybody's doing well.

I'm home.

Well, I'm home now.  I got home this afternoon.  I went to the Umpqua National Forest in western Oregon.  This is the 3rd time I've been to that forest, once in 2002, last year, then this year.  Those three experiences have taught me that I hate that forest.  Here's why:  That place is about 1,000 times as steep as it needs to be.  I'm serious, I think it's the steepest place I've ever been.  Northern California is pretty steep, but the Umpqua is steeper.  The second fire I went to we parked on the road then hiked down to the fire.  We dropped 500 feet in .18 miles, worked on the fire all day, then had to hike back out.  Sometimes it's fun to hike on really steep fires, but when you take three steps forward then slide back 2.9 steps cause the dirt is all loose it ceases to be fun.  One of the fires they had to leave 4 foot tall stumps in the middle of the fireline so you could grab onto something while you pulled yourself up the hill.  Ri-goshdarn-diculous.  Other than that it was a pretty fun fire.  It was 38 small-medium sized fires scattered over about 40 square miles.  It rained the first two days I was there, then they kept trying to stick me in staging to wait for new fires, but I'm pretty good at finding work for myself in some capacity, so I only had to sit in staging for 2 days instead of 7 like they had planned.  Oh yeah, the best part of the fire was when I got offered a new job the day I got there.  I accepted the Assistant Fire Management Officer job in Republic.  It's the job I've been doing for a year, but now they'll start paying me for it, which will be nice, I'll be a GS-8 for about 8 months which is about a $1.20 an hour raise, then I'll be a GS-9 after that, which is another at least $1.00 raise.  Hooray me!!  The only downside is that we'll be staying in Republic for a while now.  Hope everybody's doing well.  See ya.

Hi everyone. There won't be any new posts for awhile. I've got a job interview at 1030, then I'm heading for the Tiller Complex in Western Oregon. Hope everybody's doing well. See you later.

Simon and I went and played golf on my last day off. He dressed himself. We had a good time, after golf we went and met Faith and Dylan for lunch, then went to a little swimming pool in the park in Colville. It's only about 2.5 feet deep at it's deepest part, and it's free, so it works out pretty well. Here's some video Simon:

Not much else is going on. I've been working alot, and Faith's been taking the boys to the river pretty regularly. I talked to the FMO about the job in Idaho City I applied for, and he said that I had a good application and good experience, but that I was on the lower half of the selection list because most of the other applicants were already AFMO's with more experience than me. He said there was even a FMO on the list that wanted to take a pay cut to move there. Oh well. I was told that I would get an interview for the AFMO job here in Republic on Friday, but it never happened, and the FMO won't be back to work until next Thursday, and I become available for fire assignments on Monday and will hopefully leave, so I don't have a lot of hope that any decisions will be made soon on that one. The Idaho City job will make a decision early next week, and that job colsed July 10th. The AFMO job here closed in the middle of May, and I bet it'll be September before they make a job offer. Remember when I said the Forest Service was ranked 216th in employee satisfaction out of like 230 federal agencies. More proof right there. Hope everybody's doing well.

We just went to see the new Harry Potter movie.  Due to road construction, we spent more time driving to and from the movie than we spent watching the movie.  The movie was 2 hours and 40 minutes.  Our baby sitter was an hour late, and with the road construction, that meant our night out to dinner and movie consisted of driving for an hour and a half, eating fast food drive through in front of the movie theater before rushing inside to make the movie on time, watching the movie, then driving for another hour and a half to get home.  I love living in the middle of nowhere.  At least the deer keep things interesting here.  While that may not make sense right now, just follow this link: http://www.kxly.com/Global/story.asp?S=10727185

If that's not a link then copy and paste I guess, then click on the "Deer take Republic residents under siege" link

under the Also See tab. I have no idea why my font or size or something changed. It'll probably try to post it all as

one link. Oh well. Let's see. Weird. I hope everybody's doing well. See ya.

The Mines of...

We went to an old mine yesterday, called Kelly Mine. This picture is from what was just a cave at first that they sunk shafts into. All the shafts had filled with water, and it was a little dicey getting down into this one and back out, so the kids stayed on top and threw rocks into the water.
This is a tunnel down the mountain a little ways from the cave. The old ore cart tracks are still there.

Here's the entrance to the tunnel.

The kids really liked it, and while I was disappointed by the lack of dwarves, gold, or a battle with a Balrog on a narrow bridge over a fiery chasm, I suppose it was pretty cool. The tunnel went back a little ways, maybe 1000 feet or so. Today Simon and I are going to play golf in Colville, and Faith and Dylan are going swimming in Colville. We're having a barbeque tomorrow afternoon with some friends and their kids, then we can watch the fire works from our back deck. Hope everybody's doing well.

Return of the King

Okay, I stole this picture from Melanie's blog, but he is my son, which technically gives me the rights to it. And it's a great picture. We never did stop and get anymore crowns, but I'll film him opening the box when Mom and Dad send that one up, I bet it'll be a hoot. I'll put some pictures up as soon as I locate the camera. It was great seeing everyone, but it was also nice to come back home where the nearest traffic light is over 50 miles away. It had rained all day, every day for a week before we left, so our lawn was looking a little shaggy to begin with, then it rained every day we were gone, so walking through the grass was kind of like being in the plains on the Serengeti, minus the zebras, but not the wildebeests. The kids were happy to see the dogs, and it was nice sleeping in a bed that my feet didn't hang 2 feet over the edge of. I went back to work and found out my name had made it on the cert list for the AFMO job here, then today I found out that due to a screw up by the company that runs our application website they have to re advertise the job until the 3rd of July, but that's a holiday weekend, so they can't even request a cert until the 6th, which means they won't get it until 13th, which means they probably won't offer the job until August sometime. A recent survey showed the Forest Service ranked 206 out 216 for federal agencies in employee satisfaction. I wonder why. Jerks. Faith went to her knitting group tonight. Last time she went she told me how all the women in group talked about the proper role of women in a marriage and how women should be subservient to the man. There is a time and place for peer pressure, and I think this is it. We'll see what she says tonight when she gets home. They were painting yarn that the head knitter (or whatever she's called) wove. Weaved? Whatever. Hope everybody's doing well, talk to you later.

I found the camera. This will make more sense when you read the post below. Here's some more pictures.

I explained what this is in the post below. Now, at the risk of sounding like a complete fool, I am going to relate to you something that happened to me in October of 2007, then I will tell you what happened to me at work today.

I was writing a burn plan for some prescribed fire units. I had been working here in Republic for a couple of months and, as you may remember, I got back surgery that year and was confined to the office. The first time I went out into the field after surgery was to go look at the units I was writing the plan for. I spent a few hours looking at various things on the unit, then decided to walk the unit boundary to find a good spot to put in some fireline. The unit had been logged, so it was pretty open, but outside the unit was so thick with trees you could only see 20 feet or so outside the unit. As I was walking the boundary I heard a large stick break in the thick trees. I looked, but as mentioned above, I couldn't see back into the trees. So I kept walking, and I heard another big stick break. Then another one, then what sounded like a stick being hit against a tree. So, deciding that since I was about 3 months out of back surgery, and that any wild animal I had to shank with my knife would probably die of embarassment at getting it's a$$ handed to it by a cripple like I was at that point, I turned around and started walking back to my truck. As I walked back to my truck I kept hearing sticks break off in the thick trees, and the sounds were keeping pace with me as I went back to the truck. I decided I really didn't have the time to kill anything creepy in the woods that day, so rather get involved in something time consuming like that, I decided to run back to my truck. Sticks kept breaking off to my side keeping pace with me again. I got back to my truck, tried desperately to change my fight or flight reaction away from the fight side so I could drive home, and went back to the district office. Being new there I was kind of hesitant to tell anybody about how I almost killed a moose (that's what I figured it was), but I told a guy that worked there named Bill. Bill asked me what I thought it was, and I told him I thought it was a moose, and Bill said there's alot of Bigfoot sightings in this area. I figured I didn't have a bigfoot story in my arsenal yet, so I decided it must of been a bigfoot. Then I never told anybody the story, except I might of told Dad, because people with bigfoot stories are generally thought of as crazy lunatics. I basically forgot about it, until I saw something run across the road in front of me the next spring in the same area, that was probably a bear, but since it was close to the same place, I decided it was actually Bigfoot. Then I forgot about that until today.

At work today, our front desk lady, Dortha, said somebody at the front desk had some questions about prescribed fire. I went up to talk to them, found out they owned some land we are going to burning next too this fall and they wanted to know about the burn. I told them about what we were planning around their property, as well as some other projects we had planned in the area. They asked if we were doing anymore logging in that area, and I said we had finished logging in there. The guy said good, he didn't think the yeti would like being disturbed. I said "Yeti?" thinking "Crazy lunatic" to myself, and the man and his wife told me how a yeti lives near their property, "Right about here", the man said and pointed on our front desk map exactly where the unit is that I was walking through when I heard the bigfoot following me. I said "Your bleeping kidding me", which I probably shouldn't have blurted out in the front reception area of the district office, but oh well. I told them about what happened to me, they told me all the weird stuff they've heard at their place at night, then told me they don't go outside at night up there. I ran back to the fire shop and told everybody what happened, which earned me some crazy lunatic looks and a lot of laughter. I told the kids about it today, and now Simon won't go out in the front yard by himself. Faith's gonna be mad at me. Well, me and the boys have birthday cake to make. I'll probably post some more pictures later.

Hi everyone. I have some new pictures, but I can't post them until we figure out what happened to the camera. I bet we'll find it soon though. We went camping for three days last weekend, and it was so cold at night. Faith is the only one that complained though, the kids both said they were fine. Dylan did his usual crying and saying he wanted to go home, but we think that's just because he was cold the first morning when he got out of his sleeping bag. One bad thing about going camping right after the snow melts and after it's been raining for 3-4 days is that it's really hard to find dry wood to have a fire. Don't worry, though, my mountain man skills are still up to snuff, it just took me a little longer to get a good blaze going than it normally would have. On our way home we stopped by a full size Stonehenge replica that was pretty cool. I have a bunch of pictures of it, but they are on the currently missing camera. We actually lost the camera on the camping trip, but I'm almost positive that I saw it in the Pathfinder on Saturday, so I'm sure it will turn up. Hopefully. Today is Faith's birthday, one of her friends found a baby sitter for Dylan and is taking her out to breakfast this morning. The pre-school teacher called and wanted her to sub today, but I told her to tell them no and go out to breakfast instead. Not much else is going on, really. Hope everybody's doing well.

Hi, sorry still no pictures, I usually remember I forgot the camera after we're more than halfway to where we're going. Simon did a couple of funny things the other day that I wanted to share though.
1. He called me into his bedroom the other night to ask me to sleep in his bed with him. When I asked him why he wanted me to sleep in his bed he told me that earlier in the day he had started amonster farm and it looked like one of them had escaped and he was worried it was mad at him and would come and get him when he fell asleep. I managed to keep a straight face when I told him that's what he gets for keeping monsters captive on a farm, then I turned off his lights and said hopefully I'll see you in the morning. Just kidding, I convinced him that he would be OK without me in his room. That's the first funny thing. Here's the second:
2. He threw a freaking spear at me. Here's what happened, we went out in the woods yesterday and the boys said they wanted spears, so I made one for each of us. I gave Simon his first, then Dylan, then while I was making mine something hit me in the hand, and it hurt like crazy. It was Simon's spear. He said he wasn't aiming at me, he was aiming at something next to my head, so I guess I'm lucky his aim is off a little bit.
Nothing much else is going on, the forest started burning so it looks like I don't have any days off for awhile. We're thinking about getting an early season camping trip in, if the weather cooperates. It's been crazy warm here at night, so we think it wouldn't be too bad for the kids. Hope everybody's doing well.

Hi everybody. I don't have any pictures to post today, I've only taken two pictures since my birthday, and they're still on my camera. Not much has been happening. I'll get the bad news out of the way first: We're not going to be able to make it to Boise for Caitlin's graduation. I thought we would, but I forgot about the dogs and it would cost us more money than we can spend to board them for that weekend. Sorry. I can counter that bad news with some good news though: Faith is definitely coming to Idaho later this summer. We're not sure when, but it will probably be mid summer once fire season gets going and I'm gone.
On to other news. Simon got pulled out of wrestling while I was gone at training. Faith went to two of his practices (they ask parents not to go very often as the kids will focus more on the parents than the coach, apparently) and at the first one Simon wasn't listening to his coach at all and when Faith talked to the coach he said that's pretty typical for Simon. So Faith talked to Simon and told him if he didn't start listening to his coach that he wouldn't come to wrestling anymore. So at the next practice, he still wasn't really listening, then during a practice match he was losing he did what anybody would do when losing a fight, he figured out a way to win. By poking his 5 year old opponent in the eye really hard. So after a brief consultation with the coach, the decision was made that he wouldn't be wrestling anymore this year. I think we'll try to put him in again next year.
Easter was pretty mellow, we dyed eggs the day before, then went to a Log Flume Heritage Site to do some geocaches in the area. The heritage site was really cool, the two pictures I've taken since my birthday are both of the kids standing in a log flume in the pouring rain. We then went to our friend Shane's house for a BBQ but Faith and the kids were both asleep in the car, and Shane's son was just being put down for a nap, so we decided to bag it. We did a couple more geocaches in Colville and then drove home. The sun shined for three days here last week, so everybody at work thinks it's time for spring burning even though there's still snow once you get out of town a little bit. They've never burned in April before, and there's actually more snow now than there was at this time last year, but why they let pesky facts like that get in their way. As such, they ordered a plane so we can fly the district to look at some of our burn units. Why fly to look at them? Because there's too much snow to drive to them, duh. Yay, tax dollars!

There's nothing like starting off your birthday by getting punched in the cajones by your wife.

She said she was trying to slap my butt and I turned. When I stab her in the eye with an icepick tonight, I'll say I was trying to stab her in the ear and she turned. We spent most of the day in Colville for Simon's wrestling meet. He lost both matches, but he had a huge smile on his face, even when he was getting pinned. Here's the first match. Hopefully it loads.

Nevermind, this is his second match, the first one wouldn't load. Look at how much he's smiling.

The bummer thing about this wrestling thing is that his coach both times said "That's OK Simon" then walked off, didn't talk to him about what he could do different or what he needed to work on. Maybe they'll talk to him at practice. I'm leaving tomorrow morning for some more training down in Central Oregon, hopefully the weather's good so I can go play golf with my friend Jim. I'll be there for a week, then home for a week, then I leave for three more days for a Prescribed Fire Burn Boss Refresher down in La Grande, Oregon. I'll get to see some friends down there that I haven't seen since we moved up here, so that won't be too bad. I did have a bunch of fun with the southern Curtis clan down in Tucson, but it was hard getting off the plane in Spokane where it was about 12 degrees and snowing. Not a bad year of mixing training with seeing friends and family I don't get to see very often. Well, hope everybody's doing well, see you later.

Proof that Superheroes like bluegrass

Well, it's all down hill now. I just have to make it through the rest of today and tomorrow, then Faith will be here on Saturday. I'm going to pick her up in Spokane Saturday morning, they fly in Friday night at 1200, so they're getting a hotel room. Her friend wants to stay and shop in Spokane on Saturday, but as this is my last weekend at home until April, Faith elected to have me pick her up. The true test of this whole adventure will be tomorrow when I attempt to take the boys grocery shopping, something I have never attempted. It should be interesting. I've been thinking of ways to keep them calm and not fighting while they're sitting in a shopping cart, and so far I think my best bet is P-cord and duct tape, but that might earn me some weird looks in the local Omak Wal-mart. Although, it is Omak, and it is Wal-mart, so maybe not. We haven't done much exciting since the last post, it snowed a couple inches the other day, so the boys helped me shovel the driveway, then we built an awesome tunnel through one of the snow banks next to the driveway. Today is the kid's dream day, they get to play Wii and watch Star Wars so I can clean the house with few distractions. So far Simon's beaten me and Dylan at bowling, Dylan schooled us at tennis, together we've beaten three levels on Lego Batman, and Faith will have something to do when she gets home on Saturday. Faith is still feeling the bad food they ate on their first day there, so she hasn't been able to eat or drink a whole lot, but she's been having fun all the same. She went parasailing this morning, went on a tour of the city yesterday, and went on a cruise the day before. Here's the proof, by the way.

Well, we're starting day five with no Faith and everybody's still alive. We haven't done much of anything, I wanted to go snowshoeing the other day, but Simon wanted to go sledding in the backyard, then he wanted to go snowshoeing, then sledding in the yard, then...you get the idea. It culminated with Simon screaming it was too hard a decision make, laying on the floor screaming and kicking, then getting up, slapping me in the face (because I was laughing, I think) then running to his room. I wanted to get outside today, but looking out the window right now it's snowing sideways, so hopefully it clears up by lunch. Faith's having fun, they went to a time-share sales thing, I don't know, but they got free hot-stone massages for listening to it. They didn't do anything yesterday, because they got food posioning at the time-share listening thing buffet and spent the whole day in their hotel room taking turns throwing up in the bathroom. Today Faith said she thinks they're riding horses out to an island. Well the boys just came and grabbed me and said it's time to play bowling on the Wii, so I better go. Melanie, I don't think there will be any footage of us hula-hooping, I tried to bust out the balance board the other day and they didn't want anything to do with it. I'd put footage of myself hula-hooping, but apparently my considerable hula-ing skills transfer rather well to the Wii, so I don't think it would be as funny as you were hoping. Seriously, though, I kick a$$ at hula-hoop. I'll get some video of the boys bowling today, it's generally pretty funny. Later.

I saw this the other day and it cracked me up. Faith left today for Old Mexico. Things are going alright now, but it's really only been like 3 hours. It should be interesting. I'm not sure what we're going to do, I might take the boys to a gun show at Cabela's in Post Falls on Saturday, but I'm not sure if I want to yet. In other news my continuing fight with multi-tools is still being won by the multi-tool devil. It all started this summer, when I lost a Leatherman tool on a fire. I had gotten the leatherman as an award when I worked for the BLM one summer, and it retails for about $120, and had an engraving on it, and I was pretty bummed that I lost it. So I bought a new leatherman, a different model, that I actually liked better, but I lost that somewhere during our Tucson trip. So I bought a new multi-tool made by CRKT, which is a knife company whose pocket knives are the only kind I've owned for the past several years, they make great knives. Yesterday I was getting out of a pick-up at work and apparently hooked the pocket clip of the multi-tool on the door or something without noticing and I heard a loud PING! and I looked down and saw I had busted off the pocket clip for it. So I cursed. Really loud. In the Forest Service office parking lot. Then I cursed again. Even louder. And kicked a snow bank. And looked up and saw the UPS guy staring at me with big eyes. And he said "Sorry, wish I had package for you." The best part is I had just gotten that multi-tool about 6 days ago. Luckily the company guarantees all its products for as long as the original owner owns it, so I just have to ship it back and they'll fix it or send me a new one for free. I expect my day is about to rapidly descend into madness, I told the kids they could have some Valentine's Day candy after they ate lunch, and they just finished lunch and are eating chocolate something. Speaking of Valentine's Day, I hope everybody has a good one, I will be spending it alone because my wife ditched me to go to Mexico.

Hi everybody. We went to Spokane for Dylan's cardiologist appointment for his new heart murmur on Thursday. Before the appointment we decided to go to Target. We've been thinking about getting a new TV for awhile now, so while we were at Target I wandered over to electronics to get a Wii game (we'll get into that later) and saw a 32" Magnavox flat panel TV for $200 less than it normally cost, and about $100 less than the other TV's we had been looking at doing price comparisms. So I went and grabbed Faith, who can apparently spend 45 minutes picking out two shirts, and told her about the TV and asked her to come over and look at it. So 30 minutes and 1 shirt later Faith shows up. She likes the TV, I like the TV, so we load one onto the cart and buy it. Whoo-hoo! We get it home, and get to hooking it up. We get the satellite box and our DVD player hooked up, go to turn everything back on and our DVD player won't turn on. So we spend the next 30 minutes switching which outlet it's plugged into, moving extension cords all over the house, and listening to me curse. We can get it to come on for a minute, then it goes off again. Faith starts laughing and I ask her why she's laughing and she says guess what brand of DVD player we have? It's a bleeping Magnavox, just like our new TV. We bought that DVD player less than a year ago, and it already broke. Great. So the next day Faith calls Magnavox and they pretty much say sorry about your luck, go buy a new one. Jerks. So we take the DVD player apart, I mean at this point it can't anymore broken, and don't see anything obviously wrong, but what the heck do we know about the internal workings of a DVD player. I find a fuse, pull it out, clean it off, put it back, and the DVD player starts working. So we put it all back together, plug it back in, and turn it on. We put a movie in to test it, and it won't read the movie, then it starts making the most horrible noise I've ever heard. So we're like crap, guess we get to buy a new one. Back to the Wii really quick, part of the deal with Faith going to Mexico is that I get a Nintedo Wii. So before we go to Spokane I call every place I can think of and nobody has one in stock. So I order one off the internet, paying about $20 for shipping, it should be here next week. So yesterday we go to Walmart to get a new DVD player, but we change it up and go to Omak instead of Colville. We get a new DVD player, (another Magnavox, I swear my brain just turns off when Faith starts trying to convince me of something) then stop at Starbucks so Faith can get some coffee. Right next door to Starbucks is a game crazy with a big sign that says "Nintendo Wii: In stock!" Crap. I mention my inability to catch a break, and Faith says "I didn't want to tell you but I saw a few people with Wii's in their cart in that Walmart." I never called anyplace in Omak. Crap. Oh well. Faith's leaving in 12 days, which means I get a whole week off work in 12 days. Hope everyone's doing well.

I'm an idiot.

I've come to the realization that I'm an idiot. While I realize this may not be a surprise to some of you, I've been so good at self delusion for a such a long time that it came as something of a shock to me. Here's how my epiphany came about:
It all started about 5 minutes ago, when Erin and Katie said "Bye Ben, wish you were coming with us!" and got into a truck and started driving to Alabama. My thoughts went something like this: I could be going with them, but two days ago it seemed like the whole thing was going to flop. So when a request for a Burn Boss to go to Las Vegas came in I started to think about pulling myself off the Alabama list and going to Las Vegas. Then yesterday morning my boss came in and said the guy from Alabama wasn't returning his calls, and he wasnt' sure it was going to happen. So I said to pull me from Alabama and I'll take the Vegas assignment. So he did. Then the guy from Alabama called and said everything was a go, people should leave on Friday. No biggie I thought, I'm just waiting for my resource order and I'll be heading out. So I waited, and waited, and waited. Then we called dispatch and said what the heck, and dispatch said "Sorry, we filled the request with somebody else." Crap. Any chance I can get back on the Alabama thing? No, Ben, you said you'd rather go to Vegas so everybody's driving and you won't get back in time for Faith to go to Mexico if you drive. Crap. I'm an idiot. That's what I get for trying to trade up. My boss called me this morning and said I can go in March, but I've got training every other week in March, so that's not happening. Oh well. Nothing else is going on, Dylan's doctor discovered a heart murmur at his check up the other day, so he's going to a pediatric cardiologist in Spokane next Thursday. I like the small town thing, but having to drive for 3 hours to get decent medical care is kind of lame. Hope everybody's doing well.