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At this exact instant in time, our ICQ status is: |
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| until the year 3000!! | |
| 01 Apr 2007 | Nope, not asleep at the wheel. Try this link: http://www.alvars.us/blog |
| 07 Feb 2007 | Low Temperature Today: -24°F High Temperature Today: -3°F Hey, it's warming up! :-) |
| 05 Feb 2007 | Low Temperature Today: -28°F High Temperature Today: -5°F I'm told it'll warm up this weekend. Good. |
| 04 Feb 2007 | Boy aren't we the pathetic family! Melanie has a dislocated knee cap or something. Tira has Laryngitis and can't talk. (Literally!) Scott did something to his neck/back at the gym and can't move. No really... how pathetic... :-) |
| 03 Feb 2007 | LOW TEMPERATURE TODAY: -24°F HIGH TEMPERATURE TODAY: -10°F Wind Chill Temperature? It hit a lovely low of -40°F Lastnight with wind chill!!!!!! SOMEBODY HELP ME!!! Please call my congressman and complain!!!!!!!!! :-) |
| 02 Feb 2007 | Today Melanie finally went to the doctor because her knee hurt. Remember Melanie? No crying unless you're dying? Well, it hurt enough for her to go to the school nurse and she didn't cry (but she almost did!) so we decided, hey! maybe we should go see a doctor... So we go to the doc and short story: she tore her knee cap off of her leg. Long story, she's been walking on it for almost a week because she hurt it at her last High School Dance competition. It wasn't like she fell down in pain and blood came out of her ears or something... it was more subtle that that. First it hurt... ok, no biggee. It's just "sore". Ok, a day later it begins to swell up.... ok, no biggee... it's just "twisted" or something. Anyway, the doctor today said the knee cap has been seperated from her knee due to swelling resulting from a twisted knee. Prognosis? no walking. No walking means crutches and stay home from school and watch TV for 14 hours. Now I'm not a fan of "no walking", but Melanie seems to be enjoying it! :-) |
| 01 Feb 2007 | HIGH TERMPERATURE TODAY: +6°F Remember this, and watch my other news stuff in the next couple of days.... |
| 28 Jan 2007 | I'm glad we had nice weather when the family was here. Temperatures were in the high 20's and nearly 30. Not bad for Grand Forks. A few days later though, after everyone left for warmer climes, it was down below zero again. I took the motorcycle for a ride on Friday, the 26th, because it was sunny and 30°. Two days later, it was -15°F and the wind chill with an average of 20MPH winds, knocked it down to about -40°F. Yeah, nothing like the weather in ND! Woke up this morning and it was 6 above so I took my fat dog for a walk out to Turtle River State Park. It started snowing and was a little windy. My wind-chill chart tells me the temp was about -10°F. More than I asked for so we cut the walk short. Still, we had a nice time. All alone in the woods (go figure) just me and porky crunching through the frozen snow. In the trees the wind was pretty much blocked out and it didn't feel as cold. |
| 20 Jan 2007 | Wow. How amazing! Tim and Ken and Dad all flew in this week to celebrate my promotion to CMSgt with me and my family. Dad arrived by train on the 17th, and the boys came in on the 18th. The 19th was the local "Chief Induction Ceremony" and all of us went, even the kids. I'll post more pictures when I get them. Thursday and Friday I was pretty busy and didn't get to spend near enough time with family but after the Ceremony Friday night I was off work for the weekend! So of course we did the man thing... :-) Ate at a nice restaurant, visited Cabela's sporting goods store, and went to a mens's hockey game at the University of North Dakota. Of course UND won! An early morning run to get Tim and Ken to their flight in the morning and then a nice home day with dad. It was all a lot of fun. I'm sure everyone felt like it was the whirlwind tour or something. I know I didn't stop spinning for days! But I'm sure glad they came. We figured it out and we think it was the first time in 9½ years that all of us have been together at the same time! Next time we won't wait so long. While they were here Tim celebrated a birthday... I'm not sure, I think he's like 61 or something. His birthday was really the 19th but what with my dinner and all it got lost in the commotion so we celebrated in the next day. The girls made brownies (which were ok, but not as good as the rum cake last week!) Here are a couple of pictures, I'll post more in a set when I get some. dad  ken  tim  |
| 14 Jan 2007 | Happy Birthday Tira!!!!!! The kids made the birthday cake. Heather really. She made it from scratch too. I'm not really sure what that means... I picture her sitting on the floor with a broom and dustpan, but I'm sure I'm wrong. I figure "scratch" is just an expression and she didn't really have to scratch anything to make it... I'ts a rum cake, by the way. You can't tell that in the pictures but it was really very good! -) Tira and Nicholas  |
| 13 Jan 2007 | Went to a Monster Truck show today. Pretty lame... couple of jumps, motorcycles doing tricks, 1 small crash. We were up close though, and had a nice time. Nicholas... Scott  
Truck jumping stuff  |
| 02 Jan 2007 | Fresh snow, nice day... so we went sledding at Turtle River state park. Melanie Sledding down 
Does she know I have telephoto?  |
| 01 Jan 2007 | An awful lot going on this week, between Christmas and New Years, so I'm going to break tradition and will include a few late 2006 pictures and stories here on the 2007 page. Also, please note in the Traditional New Years Eve celebration picture, below, that the kids are not holding the champagne bottle this year! :-) |
| 01 Jan 2007 | Midnight, New Years Eve, at the Alvars! :-) |
| 01 Jan 2007 | Happy New YearTira and I want to wish everyone a very happy New Year.In the immortal words of Col Potter, "May she be a damn site better than the old one." |
| 01 Jan 2007 | You know, I say that every year but I just don't know how it could get any better than this year? |
| 01 Jan 2007 | Scott officially sews on Chief today. Here are a couple of pictures of his pin-on ceremony. The pin-on is traditionally the end of the duty day prior to the promotion, so it really happened on 28 Dec, before the new year. It was a very nice ceremony. Lt Col McLaughlin officiated (Scott's DO) and the kids "tacked on" his stripe.
Kids "tacking on" dad's new stripe. 
Lt Col McLaughlin getting in the first handshake 
Scott is already pretty full of himself! 
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| 30 Dec 2006 | We did the wild thing and decided we needed to go to Canada for the weekend.  Now talk about your good times! The day we left it was overcast and they were predicting a little snow, nothing to be worried about, maybe a couple of inches. The Canadian forcast for Winnipeg called for partly cloudy with just a chance of snow.When we hit town, the first thing we did was go to the zoo there, called Assiniboine Park Zoo. It was 21°F and snowing, so we pretty much had the place to ourselves.  Now the Winnipeg Zoo is special because Winnipeg was the original home of Winnie the Pooh. She (Yes, it was Winnifred, and he was really a she) was originally Winnie the Bear, and when her mother was killed by a trapper in Canada, the cub was sold to an army officer at Fort Garry, Winnipeg, who made the cub the unit mascot. He had the bear for only a few months when his unit was sent to battle in WWI. The bear accompanied the brigade to europe where she eventually found a home in the London Zoo when Maj. Colebourn decided it was too dangerous for her in battle. Winnie made a home, and a name for herself in the London Zoo and it was there that Christopher Robin Milne chanced to see her. Eventually of course, his father A. A. Milne wrote the famous Pooh stories about his son and Winnie's friendship. The Winnie statue that the family is posing with is a duplicate of a bronze statue given to the London Zoo by the men of the 34th Fort Garry Horse in 1999.  After the zoo we checked into our hotel and naturally had to go spend some quality time in the pool... you know, the one with the big circular slide? Supper was a dinner theater and it was a hoot! We've never done anything like that before but it was absolutely a good time. The meal was served in courses with songs and bits of the play between and mixed in and around the meal. The whole evening lasted for about 3½ hours. Everyone enjoyed it, even Nicholas. The servers were actually actors who would bring the meal then when we ate they'd be up on the stage doing their next parts. Before leaving town the next morning, we headed to The Forks. There are shops and exhibits and trails. It's really a big park in the middle of the city and is the traditinal center of town. Finally, we left town about 2:00pm and made it home about 6:00 pm. What? A long drive? No, not too bad but since we got a foot of snow the night before it sort of slowed us down! Yes, no kidding, a foot of snow fell in Winnipeg that night. It was supposed to snow a little, a few inches, but not a foot. This is a link to more pictures of our trip. Take a look! :-) |
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