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.