Quite a journey

I don't have any pictures, or that much to say really. We went snow shoeing yesterday up on the crest, and the kids said a few funny things that I thought I would share.

Dylan: This is quite a journey! He said this after we'd made it about 100 feet from the car.

Simon: There's vultures around here, so don't play dead. (There wasn't a bird in sight, so I'm not sure how he decided there were vultures, but it seemed like good advice.)

Dylan: This is the best day ever! This is the worst day ever! This is the best day ever! This is the worst day ever! And so on, changing about every 10 minutes, depending on if he had fallen down, gotten up again, if Simon was in front of him or behind, which way the wind was blowing, etc...

Simon: This is a big money game! (We were playing Monopoly and the last property had just been bought and I told him now we just see who goes bankrupt first.)

That's about it. We snowshoed about 2 miles, Simon broke trail the whole way up, about 1 mile, which was pretty impressive, becuase the snow was actually kind of deep. I was impressed. Then him and Dylan took turns being the leader on the way back. We got home and played some Monopoly, then set up the telescope to look at a nebula that a computer program I have swore would look rather impressive. We did end up seeing it, but it wasn't as cool as my computer said it would be. Despite the snow shoeing, Simon had boundless energy. The new district ranger was at work last night and he stopped by while Simon and I were outside looking through the telescope, and Simon gave him a detailed account of his life while climbing back and forth over the fence in the front yard. Well, that's about it, I'll try to post some pictures and a video of The Beatrunners, the band Simon, Dylan, and I started.

Just in case nobody's ever seen a picture of $500 ear plugs. I got them as an award at work a few weeks ago. They're kind of like hearing aids, you can turn them up to enhance sound, then when a noise reaches a certain decibal level they shut off and block sound. They were pretty awesome on my 10 day duck hunting adventure, I could have them in and still hear conversations, then they shut down when we started shooting at ducks. Notice I said shooting at ducks, not shooting ducks. We did end up with 68 ducks and 7 geese for 5 guys in 8 days, which is still pretty good, but boy oh boy did we all miss a lot of shots. There was something we are now referring to as "The Drake Incident." The first rule of "The Drake Incident" is that you don't talk about "The Drake Incident", but I'll give you the high lights. 8 big mallard drakes (those are boy ducks, but it sounds cooler to say drake) came into the decoys and cupped their wings, dropped their feet, and presented a profile that only someone with the capability to avoid hitting the broadside of a barn at point blank range could possibly miss. Guns roared, feathers flew like snow flurries, and 8 big mallard drakes flew away quacking in a way that can only be interpreted as maniacal laughter. I guess that's not so much the highlights as the entire story, but if you won't tell anyone neither will I. There were also some pretty impressive shots pulled off by everybody, but the general theme of the hunt seemed to be missing easy shots. Here's a video of Dylan's amazing acrobatic abilities. Along with some of Simon being goofy. As usual.




Hope everybody's doing well.

The Metal Detector

So I've been wanting a metal detector for a couple of years now. I've been telling Faith all summer that as soon as I get a fire assignment I'm going to buy one. So, for those of you that hadn't heard, I spent two weeks in Montana recently on the West Riverside fire. The fire was pretty fun, I worked with the Fire Behavior Analyst, who tries to predict where the fire could go and how it will burn. Mostly we just watched the fire burn and talked about it, then he would write a fire behavior forecast and brief the incident management team a couple times a day and the firefighters every morning and night. Except I started doing the night shift briefings after a couple of days, once he figured out I wasn't an idiot, I think. One day we were hiking up an old closed road looking at what the fire would burn into if it jumped any of the lines and us and a bear sleeping under a tree about 30 feet away scared the crap out of each other. Anyway, I spent 13 days there, and when I got home I bought a metal detector from the local Radio Shack. Faith and I went to a campground along the river that afternoon and I found 2 pennies and a bunch of bullett shells. Only 1,998 more pennies to go til that baby's paid for itself. So today I took the day off, I got sick after I came back from the fire, and I typically get insomnia when I'm sick, so last night I didn't fall asleep until 630 am, and I woke up at 9. I went into work and we decided that my decision making skills and processing of information would probably be a little hampered, so I took the day off. Rather than sleep all day, then risk not being able to sleep again tonight, we decided to take the metal detector out to a place we like to go camping at and let the kids and the dogs run around while I played with the detector. I gave the kids each a leatherman tool to carve sticks with, one that stays in my hiking pack most of the time, and the one I carry everyday. Simon had the daily carrier, which is my nicer one. So I'm looking for stuff with the detector, and I've got a little probe thing and a small garden trowel. Simon comes over and asks if he can borrow the trowel. I say sure and give it to him. He returns it a few minutes later then runs off to play. After a while he says he would really like to shoot the bb gun, and I tell him as soon as I'm done digging up what my detector hit on I'll get it out of the van for him to shoot. Faith asks "Why don't you carve a stick while you're waiting." Simon says "Good idea." I'm kind of involved in digging up what turned out to be a .22 shell buried about 6 inches down, so I'm not sure what he's doing, but he ends up coming over and asking if he can borrow the probe. I say sure and give it to him. He walks off and returns a couple of minutes later and says "Dad, I need you to bring the metal detector over here." I say OK and we walk over to a spot near where the fire pit is. Simon says he wants me to search around in this area. Earlier he had been holding a a toy key, and I tell him that the detector won't pick up the key if he buried it because it's plastic. He assures me he didn't bury the key, so I say "OK, what are we looking for?" Simon, who is normally never at a loss for words, seems speechless for a second, then says, "Well, it's around here somewhere, lets just look." After a few minutes of finding nothing but bullet shells, I ask him if he buried something, and if so, if he tells me what it is I can make sure the detector will pick up that kind of metal only, so we won't have to dig everytime the detector beeps. Simon tells me "Well, I was kind of thinking that if I buried your leatherman tool you could come over and look for it and get some good practice in with your metal detector. Except I decided to carve a stick before you got over here, and now I can't remember where I buried it." At that point I just started laughing. I told him that it was OK, we'll just see what kind of metal shows up when we run the detector over the other leatherman tool that Dylan had, then we can just look for that. Turns out it's just plain iron on the detector, which comes up for everything the detector scans. I started to get a sinking feeling in my stomach at that point, but I figured Simon could at least show me the general area he buried it in to narrow the search down. What followed was "I think I buried it over here. No, didn't find anything? Maybe it was over here," as he led me 30 feet away, "Or maybe it was over here," showing me a spot 30 feet in the other direction. So I settled into a grid pattern and after an hour I found the leatherman tool. The whole time Simon kept saying, "Sorry Dad, sometimes I get these crazy ideas in my head that seem like a good at the time." I've never laughed so hard while being so frustrated with one of the kids in my life. After I found it we discussed never burying any of Dad's things again, which Simon whole heartedly agreed with. That's about it, hope everybody's doing well, I'll try to take some pictures and post them of the kids soon. They both started school recently, and apparently Dylan is the tallest kid in his class. He loves school and got mad this weekend when I told him he didn't have to go. Simon likes his class as well, he's been getting to do special things at assemblies and other stuff for being one of the best behaved kis in class, which is nice for him.

Memorial Day

We went fishing on Sunday up at Swan Lake. We started the day with 4 working fishing poles and ended the day with one working fishing pole (mine). The one Dylan has in that picture is one of the collapsible ones we bought the kids this year. The reels on them both failed about an hour into fishing, so Simon and I took turns with mine with close supervision while he was using it, and Faith and Dylan took turns with Faith's, with no supervision of Dylan while he was using it, until I looked over and asked "How long has be spinning that reel backwards for?" The reel was a complete mess on the inside when I took it apart, so we were down to one fishing pole.

And I caught this fish with it. This was actually the 5th fish I caught, but the only one that was big enough to be worth keeping. There's no minimum size on the fish you can keep in the lakes here, but this fish is about 10 inches long. For those of you who may not see Simon and Dylan a lot, you probably don't realize that Simon is wearing a shirt of Dylan's in this photo. Here's the reason: After the kid's reels quit working, they decided to go play up the hill from the shore. Simon came back in a few minutes and said "I have poop on my shirt. I think it's human poop." After some question and answer we were able to piece this story together. Simon has a little notebook he won from the arcade at the bowling alley we went to on Saturday. Dylan was playing with it and for some unexplicable reason (fecophilia maybe?) set the notebook down in what was reported to be human poop. Simon picked up the notebook and wiped it off on his shirt. End of story. It took us about 20 minutes of questions to get that out of Simon and Dylan. I told Simon he had to take his shirt off, at which point Dylan gave Simon his "extra" shirt he was wearing. Why was Dylan wearing and "extra" shirt? I have no idea. Anyway, I caught a few more fish after this one, but only kept 1 other.

Fishin on Monday. The dock we're on moves quite a bit and the kids were worried it was going to dump them into the lake, so they decided to wear life jackets. Just on the other side of the lake was a dead tree with an osprey nest in it and some hatchlings that were screaming and the mom and dad were fishing and bringing food to the hatchlings. We never got to see them catch a fish, but they would take off to the other end of the lake, and come back and the hatchlings would pop up and they would sit on the edge of the nest for second then take off again. It was pretty neat, I tried to get a picture of it, but was never ready with the camera when they came back. It started thundering and lightning soon after this picture, so we headed home and watched a movie while the storm passed, then piled a bunch of sleeping bags on the trampoline and the kids had me throwing them on to the pile from as I could lift them. I also convinced Dylan to try to learn how to do a backflip. He almost did one, but hurt his ear on something when he landed, so he quit trying after that. It was pretty cool. I'll have try to get a video of his acrobatic feats, he can run at our foot stool, put his hands down on it and kind flip over it, it's pretty neat. That's about it for now, please read the post below to hear about my morning adventure.

I hate Curlew Lake.

Hi, I don't have any pictures right now, Faith took Dylan to school and my camera is in the van. I just wanted (and Faith wanted me to) share this story about why I hate Curlew Lake. Curlew Lake is a huge lake about 7 miles from town, there's a state park there with a beach and swimming area, and it's close enough to go there for an hour or two to go fishing if you don't have a whole lot of time. When I was in Job Corps we used to put the docks in the water in the spring right after the ice melted off, and it was also the time that the new people in Forestry got introduced to our tradition of chucking new people in a freezing cold lake. I threw somebody in that didn't know how to swim, so I got to jump in after them and pull them over to the dock. Then Todd, the instructor, threw me back in the lake once I got out. Then he made me work the rest of the day in wet clothes and near freezing temperatures. We usually let the new people sit in the van with the heater on once they get out of the lake, but apparently I needed to be taught some sort of lesson. The last time I was there Dylan hooked me in the leg with his fishing pole and then took off running and crying when I yelled "OW!" He was still holding the pole, which meant I had to run after him trying to get him to stop, or risk having the hook rip out of my leg. After that fiasco was over with we discovered the battery in the pathfinder was dead, there was no cell coverage, and we were the only people in the state park. Luckily somebody showed up and I was able to convince him to give us a jump. That was two years ago, I haven't been back since. So, as you can see from previous experience, I really don't enjoy the time I've spent at Curlew Lake. Today, however, I made the ill-fated decision to take Dylan fishing for a couple of hours before school started. So we load up, head to lake, get the fishing stuff out of the van, and the sliding door won't shut, it won't even move. So I start looking at it and notice that the roller on the back of the door has popped out of it's track. I apply a little force to the door to see if I can get it to pop back in, and starts sliding closed. I think "Oh, cool." Then it falls off. Completely. It's laying on the ground. Dylan and I stand there in silence for a few moments, then Dylan asks "Dad, what are we going to do!?" Then I started laughing, because Dylan really looked like he was ready to start crying, and I couldn't deal with a sliding door lying on the ground and a crying child at the same time. So Dylan started laughing too, and he went to got throw stuff in the water while I attempted to fix the door. Which I wasn't really able to do. I did however have 50 feet of rope in my back pack, so I got what parts of the door into their proper places I could, then wrapped 50 feet of rope around the van and tied the door on. Then we went fishing for an hour or so. Didn't catch any fish, but I've never caught a fish at that stupid lake. So, we get ready to head home, and start thinking about how many ways my awesome fix can totally fail on the 7 mile trip home. And fail it did, but luckily before I even got to the highway. Now, when I tied the rope on I looked underneath to make sure the rope wasn't going to get wrapped up in the driveline or something, saw that it wouldn't, but did notice that the rope going across part of the exhaust. As the tied on door plan was at that time my only plan, I was just hoping it wouldn't burn through the rope. It did, but as I said, luckily it did it before I had even made it back to the highway. So, with a little reconfiguration, I ended up with the rope wrapped around the door, coming inside the van, and tied off to the drivers seat. I made it about 200 yards at 20 mph on the highway before it became obvious that wasn't going to work for much longer, the rope was sliding towards the front of the door and the back of the door was opening wider as I drove. So I pulled over, took the door all the way off again, and started looking at how the stupid thing was supposed to go back on. I did figure it out, there was a piece at the back of the track I had to take off, then everything slid back in. I haven't tried opening it again, I'm not sure if I will try. We'll see. So anyway, I got to thinking about how everytime I go to that (insert bad word of choice here) lake, something bad happens to me. Which led me to the realization that I hate that lake, and I am never going there again. I'll drive the extra half hour to get to the other lakes around.

P.S. I tried the door, mainly becuase Faith didn't think I should, it works. I'm awesome.

The boys made pinewood derby cars. I drew the design on the block, then they used a coping saw to cut them out, sanded them, and painted them. Simon got 3rd in one of the pinewood derby races, but Dylan couldn't race his in the actual derby because he's not really in scouts yet.

I came home from Oregon and found this in my driveway. The guy that owns the place Faith works at dropped it off while I was gone. I'm friends with his son, and he came over a couple of days later, and I showed it to him. He had built it with his brother in law. He said "Did my dad tell you we never actually got it running? The motor would run, but we never got around to hooking it up so it would move the wheels." Great. I can't even get the motor to run yet, it's not getting fuel. I took the whole fuel system apart last weekend, and was completely baffled. It doesn't have a normal carburetor, just an adjustable screw that controls how much fuel goes into the chamber where it mixes with air. It gets fuel to that screw, but not past it. I cleaned everything and all the holes where fuel should go through are clean, but it still won't make it past there. I'll figure it out, having a go cart is going to be awesome!

Our friend Sara had a baby, she brought her over the other day. Simon loves the babies.

We went geocaching the other day.

Oona looking at some of the geese we got last November. She retrieved one of the geese, they were almost the same size.

Simon turned 7, had a party and sleepover with 5 kids. 4 of them were still alive when their parents showed up the next morning.

Dylan turned 5, had a party, no sleep over.

The golf course opened up, I played yesterday with my friend Shane. Simon and I were going to go today, but when he found out we weren't going out to breakfast first because it was too late for breakfast he asked if we could go tomorrow instead, so I think that's what we'll do. I played golf in the rain yesterday, and it's supposed to rain more today, so I was fine with waiting for tomorrow when it's only a 20% chance of rain and snow instead of 90%. The kids are on spring break next week, I don't think we're doing anything though. I have to work most of the week. Next Sunday I'm going to Shelton, Washington for 3 days, then the Sunday after that I head to Tucson for week for a class. That's about it, looks like I'm good for another 5 months.