So I got home from my fire assignment, found out we had been getting fires at home, was told I could work as much as I wanted, decided to work all my days off to earn some extra money since my assignment was short, and Faith decided to bail to Idaho. So I worked all my days off and we haven't gotten any fires since then. Oh well. My fire assignment was pretty good, I got to work on my Division Supervisor task book, which means I'm in charge of pretty big chunk of fire, with about 120 people working for me. I only made one mistake during the fire. That was sitting at the bottom of a ridge and saying to my trainer "It doesn't look that far to the top, I think I'll hike up there tomorrow." There was a road that some crews were working on at the top, so I figured I'd hike up along the fire edge where I had some crews building line, then walk the rest of the division along a roadway that some engine crews were working on making sure it didn't cross over into the fire that burned there a couple of weeks before. That's right, we were making sure fire didn't cross a road into another fire, I didn't get it either, but I do excel at following directions, so that's what I had folks doing. Anyway, "not that far" doesn't mean you can't climb a little over 2000 feet in elevation in a little less than a mile, the last 800' of elevation gained by basically rock climbing in fire boots, a pack, and tossing my tool up to rock ledges so I could use both hands to climb. At one point I decided to go back down, but when I turned around and looked at the shale slope I'd just climbed up, holding onto the edge of a rock bluff the whole way, I decided that sliding off the cliff at the bottom of the shale slope was probably worse than just finishing the hike, so I did. I've done some pretty horrendous hikes on fires, and that one I think is in 2nd place. First place goes to scaling a rock wall with fire gear and assorted helicopter long line equipment wrapped around my body, using a crash axe to reach up and hook onto ledges to pull myself up. Anyway, throughout the assignment as a trainee division supervisor my branch director never talked to me, he's my direct supervisor on the incident management team. After a few days he told me that I was doing such a good job he didn't need to bother me with anything. Then on our last day one of the operations section chiefs (they're second in command on an incident management team in terms of carrying out the actual firefighting) came up to me and told me that the rest of the team was very impressed with me and would like to recruit me to join the team on a permanent basis. The next morning my branch director and the other operations section chief (there's usually a 2 or 3 on a team so they can work in shifts) asked me to consider joining the team full time. I told them I would love too, usually a person has to bounce around for quite awhile before being asked to join a team, and asking a trainee to join the team as a permanent member doesn't happen very often, so I'm pretty stoked about that. I've been pretty bored since Faith and the boys left, I can't wait for them to get home. Faith surprised me by calling one day and telling me to look at the dog Casey on snakeriverretrievers.com, as she would be bringing home one of his puppies as an early Christmas present for me. She's bringing home a female, pure bred lab, from what looks like an excellent line of hunting dogs. It should be fun, and make duck hunting alot easier for me. That's about it, I've just been working and reading alot since Faith and the boys left. I went camping with our friends Landon, Brooke, and their son Jackson on Friday night, that was pretty fun. We camped in a campground, which I normally don't like, but we had a good time all the same. The berries are all just about ripe now, I found a huge patch of thimbleberries and rasberries the other day and picked about a pint in 20 minutes. I ate them all on my way home though. Tomorrow I think I may go pick some huckleberries after I go to work. It's supposed to be my day off, but apparently one the crews we sent out had some problems and I have to go in and talk to them about what the problem was. Hope everybody's doing well.

Sorry

Sorry, no new pictures. I've been meaning to take one of our new (to us) minivan. Faith disavowed me of the knowledge that I had all my parts intact and she did not keep anything in a jar on the mantle place by taking the pathfinder and trading it in for a new all wheel drive minivan. It's a Toyota Previa, like our other one, just way nicer. And all wheel drive. We talked it over, and since I've started the Pathfinder about two times since we moved to our new house (and one of them was just to jump it after I noticed the kids had left 2 doors open and the lights on after getting in it "just to grab something"). So, since we take the van all the time anyway, we figured that we'd trade it in, and I would just drive the old van when I needed to. That's about it for news, Faith's been taking the boys swimming quite a bit, they floated the river the other day. Faith's mom Mary came up for two weeks, we went panning for gold, crystal digging, and Faith took her to do a bunch of other stuff while I was working almost daily during my supposed two vacation. For those scoring at home, that's Faith's family visiting twice, the Curtis family a big fat 0. Faith's family does live farther away, though. Wait, that's not a good defense.
I'm leaving in the morning at 0500 for a fire outside of Wenatchee, WA. I don't know the name of the fire, how big it is, or anything. They've been ordering people up for standby because they've been picking up quite a few small fires, but I was told I was going to an Incident Command Post, so it must be a fire of some size. We'll see how long I stay gone, this is probably my only time out this summer, so hopefully it's for 14 days. Hope everybody's doing well.

We went mushroom hunting with some friends 2 weeks ago (the day after my golf team won the Wildland Firefighter Foundation Charity golf tournament) and Landon brought his old Red Rider BB gun and Simon packed it around all afternoon, protecting us from bears and bad guys that were apparently all around us and were only being held back by Simon's shooting skills. We didn't find any mushrooms. The next picture is an old cabin we hiked up to 3 weeks ago (the weekend before my golf team won the Wildland Firefighter Foundation Charity golf tournament). It's pretty neat, it's about 1/2 mile or so from the road, and I'm not sure what it was for. The general consensus at work is that it's an old miner's cabin, but most of the mining took place on the other side of the county, so I'm not sure I buy that. A lady I work with told me about a little community of old cabins up in the northern part of the county, I'm going to try to find those this summer.

The boys are excited to be out of school for the summer. They've been having friends over to play almost every day, and it finally stopped raining two days ago, although we did have nice weather the day my golf team won the Wildland Firefighter Foundation Charity golf tournament. It's supposed to get up into the 90's the first part of next week. Faith bought a california king snake. She called me while my team was in the process of winning the Wildland Firefighter Foundation Charity golf tournament, and asked if she could buy one. I said we didn't need a snake, she said "Let me rephrase my question, I'm buying a snake." I said if she already knew the answer to the question, why ask it in the first place. Last night one of her friends told me that she had in fact already purchased the snake when she called, but thought she should do it as a courtesy or something. I haven't told Faith that her friend told me that yet, I'll save it for when I come home with a new dog later this summer. Not much else has been going on, I've been busy at work, and Faith just herds kids all day. Oh, I may have forgot to mention this, but the golf team I was on won a golf tournament a couple of weeks ago. It was a charity tournament for the Wildland Firefighter Foundation, and we shot a 65, but since my whole team hardly ever plays golf, and the two that play alot both are horrible (me and my friend Shane) our handicap was 13, which gave us a final score of 52 for the win! We each got a hat, $50 gift certificate to the golf shop, and bragging rights for the next year. The people running the tournament said they were giving us a lower handicap next year, and I got the impression that us winning was not well received by everyone at the tournamnet. Probably because most of the people there are pretty serious golfers, and we laugh and joke and race golf carts and drink beer and try to psych every other team out by congratulating each other on ridiculously low scores whenever we're close to another group. We had most of the other teams believing we were 12 under par by the 8th hole, something else that was not well received when we won and were actually 7 under par. A couple of teams did say that they quit trying so hard when they heard us mention how low our fake score was, which is what we were trying to do, so it worked out. That's about it. I'm supposed to be outside mowing the lawn right now, but after I weed whacked my allergies were so bad I'm boycotting yard work for the rest of the day. Hope everybody's doing well.

Nevermind, the video won't load. For some reason my computer puts itself in sleep mode and disconnects itself from the internet. I'll try to load it here. Nevermind. I'll try to load it again later.

These are from Simon's last tee ball game. I really don't have anything to write, except that there's a new video of Simon and Dylan dancing on you tube. At least there will be in about 2 hours, it's currently uploading.

The new house.

The backyard. Aren't the tires awesome? I think Faith likes them more than anybody, because everytime the kids touch them they end up completely covered in black.

The back of the house. I need to put the trampoline together this week, notice the jumbled mess of a frame in the foreground.

Simon started tee-ball today. He had a great time, and even listened to his coach about 60% of the time.

I found this picture today, Simon and I were sword fighting, and after I smote his ruin upon the carpet, he decided to go get some armour on.

So we're moved into the new house. Faith still has some cleaning to do, my suggestion of leave it dirty and let 'em keep the security deposit was ignored. We still need to get the pick up, but I remembered that I never registered it in WA when we moved up (I was planning on selling it until my friend Todd ripped the back bumper off) and the OR tags are expired, and the battery is dead. I think we're going to get it towed to our new house, cause that's cheaper than getting a ticket for an unregistered vehicle. Oh yeah, I can't find the title to register it in WA either. Most of our free time for the last 3 weeks has been spent moving, except that I've been playing golf once or twice a week. I played in a tournament a couple of weeks ago, in which I managed to make a complete fool of myself, but that's OK, it was alot of fun. This 70 year old guy on my team told if I liked golf and stuck with it I'd probably get better, when I told him I'd been playing for 5 or 6 years he said "Sorry" shook his head and walked away. I'm heading to Tucson on Saturday for a class, I'll be staying with the Curtis clan down there, it's going to be alot of fun. When I went to work this morning I discovered that agreeing to be on a NEPA review team over 6 months ago can really come back to bite you, as they can say you HAVE to be in Portland on Monday morning at 10 am the week following me being in Tucson. So I fly into to Spokane from Tucson next Saturday night, drive for 3 hours to get home, wash clothes, go to sleep, wake up and drive for 9 hours to Portland. I'm on a team that reviews environmental assessments of Forest Service project areas that get appealed in court. I don't really know what I'm going to do on the team, except that I'm the Fuels Specialist for the team, they brief us Monday morning, then I guess we spend the rest of the week reading the appealed EA and saying whether or not the appeal has merit. Reading an EA is about as much fun as watching grass grow, only not as rewarding. I'm really looking forward to it. On the plus side, I get to see my friends in Portland, and ride public transportation, which is always entertaining.

We had Simon's parent teacher conference the other day. He did really good this past quarter. He can apparently read really well, his teacher said she wasn't sure what grade level he was reading at, but it was high. Whenever I try to get him to read at home he says he can't and asks me to read to him. Tricky little fellow. That's about it, hope everyone's doing well.

I'm in Stevenson, WA in a hotel right now. I'm going to a forest chainsaw instructor meeting tomorrow, which is why I'm here. If you'd like to hear more about my trip, I'll need you to choose between the 3 following topics: 1. The context of the fight the couple in the room next to me had from about 7 pm to 9 pm. 2. The sex the same couple had from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. or 3. The drugs the same couple dealt out of the hotel room next to me from 10 p.m. until now. I think they may have gone to sleep now. At least people aren't knocking on their door every 5 minutes, they're not screaming at each other, or making other noises at this point.
In sadder news, for those of you that have not heard, Oscar died last Wednesday. I let him and Arlo out at about 2 p.m., then at 2:30 p.m. I went to walk down to the bus stop to meet Simon. Arlo was waiting at the door, but Oscar wasn't there. I grabbed a couple of leashes, because sometimes Oscar runs up to the houses above us to see the dogs up there, and I figured I'd see him on the walk to the main road. I walked to the bus stop and never saw him, then on the walk back as I rounded the corner to our house I started hearing a dog howling. I got back to house and Faith and I figured out the howling was coming from the lake below our house. I ran down the hill and saw that Oscar had fallen through the ice on the lake about 300 feet from the shore and couldn't get out. As I was trying to figure out how I would get to him, I heard the sound of ice breaking and what I thought was a motor (at this point in the room next to me the people are smoking something, judging from the sounds of coughing) and I was reminded of the sound of ice breakers that some duck hunters have to break ice in front of boats or for putting out decoys. I'll admit I was greatly relieved to hear that sound, I thought somebody had seen him and was coming to rescue Oscar. A couple of seconds after that I heard a woman ask "Are you still in the boat?" Then I heard a man say "No, just a second." So I ran down the shore to see an old man had fallen throught the ice and his wife standing on shore. I guess the motor sound was wishful hearing on my part, but the sound of the ice breaking was this guy falling through. He was trying to walk a canoe out to Oscar, but fell through the ice. I asked the guy if he had any rope with him, or at his house I could run and grab, but he said no. Faith showed up seconds later (she had heard me asking for rope) and had about 50 feet of parachute cord with her. I sent her back to the house for some more rope, and set about trying to get the p-cord out to the guy in the water. He made back into his boat, then managed to get his canoe back up onto the ice. His wife helpfully brought about a 30' extension cord, asking me if it would help. I assured her it would, then sent her back home to call 911. She said she had, and they said they would send a police officer out to assess the situation (God I love Ferry County). The guy said that now he was back on the ice he would walk his boat back to his house (he lived right on the lake). I managed to convince him that the ice he walked across to that point could be weaker now and to come towards the shore to me, and he relunctantly agreed. He was starting to stumble and mumble a bit, so I convinced him to get in the boat, and I broke the ice near the shore enough to walk out and grab the boat and pull it into shore, then I helped him get up the hill to the old road that lead back to his house. His wife came back to help him get home, they refused my help getting home, and tried to convince me to walk the canoe out to Oscar, but I declined, based mostly on thinking about Simon and Dylan, and how stupid I'd feel if I fell in the lake and left them alone. I mentioned that it would be pretty stupid to fall through the ice to the guy and his wife and the guy agreed with me, vehemently enough that I was wondering what the heck he was doing out there in the first place. Anyway, they headed home, Faith came back down with the rope, and Oscar couldn't stay up any longer. He would have 10 this summer, and he had a pretty good life, I think. He got surgery twice, once for eating rocks, and once when he got hit by a car. He was great with the kids, he never snapped at them, or growled when they pulled on his ears or tried to ride him. Me and my friend Ronnie drove from Sisters to Yellowstone for a wedding one summer, and Ronnie bought this huge summer sausage that cost about $30. Our next stop after he bought it was Old Faithful, which Ronnie had never seen. As we left Ronnie's VW to go see the geyser, he asked if it would be alright leaving Oscar and the sausage together. I assured him Oscar had never gotten into food before, and it would be fine. We came back, and as soon as Oscar saw us he turned around and buried his head in the blankets and wouldn't look at either of us, no matter what we said to him. Then we noticed the chewed up summer sausage wrapper on the floor. That was the same trip he ate rocks on. Must have been hungry. He's been the kid's "night time protector" for about two years now, and Simon doesn't really want to sleep in his room anymore. We tried to convince him Arlo would protect him (Arlo almost bit me one night when I brought Dylan in to go pee when the boys and I were sleeping on the trampoline before he figured out it was me), but Simon said Arlo whines too much (true). Oscar was a great dog, and we'll never be able to replace him. We are planning on getting another dog later this summer, we're still talking about what to get. I want a lab, Faith wants a golden retriever. As I'm sure you all know, we'll end up with a golden retriever. We're both pretty upset still, but I think moving into a new house in a couple of weeks will help alot. I've decided the house we live in now is cursed. About 2 weeks before we moved into it, our dog Moses got hit by a car and killed at our friend Todd's house, now about 2 weeks before we were going to move out Oscar died. Anyway, sorry for the depressing post, but I guess wanted to write about it. I was just going to write about the couple in the next room, and it evolved. Oh great, they're having sex again. I love this hotel.