News and Happenings 2005

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27 Dec 2005	Heather and I took Chloe for a nice walk in the woods.
25 Dec 2005	MERRY CHRISTMAS Everyone!
24 Dec 2005	Christmas Eve, and the tree looks very pretty still...
18 Dec 2005	And the next morning, Nicholas crashed HARD! Chloe took the opportunity to catch a few winks herself.
17 Dec 2005	Today we participated in a Scouting Outing at the Ralph Inglestaed Arena. For a reduced price scouts and parents got to go to a UND hockey game. (we watched them kick Bemidji! :-) All scouts were welcome to attend, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and Cub Scouts. According to reports there were over 1300 scouts and scouters present! That's a lot of kids and they did a pretty good job arranging it all. Hockey game, pause for cleaning, then ice skating on the official hockey rink, pizza, soda, and movies on the big screens over the ice. We slept in a gym attached to the arena, and the girls slept upstairs in the arena. Lights out was at 2:30 in the morning! And we were up and on our way home by 8:30am. Man I was tired! :-) We had a great time. There were perhaps 80 kids from the Air Force Base there, and adults. Generic pictue of scouts in the stands Gym showing about half the boys sleeping area Of course the boys had a good time! :-)
13 Dec 2005	Nicholas was in the 5th grade play. He's on the right...
13 Dec 2005	YES! Another Cub Scout Hike :-) I took the Bear den out to Turtle River State Park. Hey, click here if you want to see some pictures!
14 Oct 2005	YES! Another Cub Scout camping trip! :-) We went to Camp Wilderness again, over in Minnesota. Hey, click here if you want to see some pictures!
02 Oct 05	Heather (left) is all dressed up for a school dance, she poses here with our neighbor, Kaitlyn.
10 Sep 2005	Tira and Scott are all dressed up with no where to go... ok, ok, ok... so they really do have somewhere to go! They're off the the annual Air Force Ball which is traditionally held the 3rd week of September and which celebrates the "birth" of the US Air Force on 18 Sep 2005.
13 Sep 05	Nicholas and Chloe
27 Sep 2005	Scott rode his new Suzuki C50T motorcycle down to Fargo to buy a new bowling ball today. It was a cold ride in the morning, but warm and sunny in the afternoon on the way home. 102 miles each direction, but still lots of fun. He returned at 6pm, just in time to be to a military ceremony which started at 6:30! He got a great ball drilled by a professional. Now we'll see if it actually helps his score or not! :-)
19 Sep 2005	Happy 19th! I love you Tira.
14 Sep 2005	Bowling starts! Scott and Tira bowl in the same Friday night mixed league as we did last year. Scott also bowls on his squadron team, sometimes. Melanie and Nicholas both bowl in a youth league on Sundays.
14 Sep 2005	Nicholas and Scott went camping with the local Boy Scout troop. It's a requirement for the Webelos who want to earn their Arrow of Light to go on an overnighter with the boy scouts. There were 5 boys out of 10 from his den there, and 3 parents/adults. Nicholas had a good time and has decided that he definitely wants to stay in Boy Scouts when he's old enough. He's old enough after he earns his Arrow of Light badge or when he graduates the 5th grade. See some of pictures here...
10 Sep 2005	Haven't posted too much news the last few weeks. Our lives are getting busy with after school/during school/before school activities. Tira is in school of course. I don't think I mentioned that previously. Scott is not taking classes this quarter, thank goodness! (That's a lot of work!) Scott applied for his bachelars degree finally, and guess what? They told him he has to take English 101!! The english classes he's taken with other schools don't match their curriculum so UMUC (University of Maryland) is making him take/retake English 101. Can you believe that shit? They "re-evaluated" my transcrip last month and now I "only" need 5 more classes.... I work 50 hours a week and try to take care of the family. I've taken classes with them for over 4 years and I have earned nearly 180 credits in the last 22 years and they tell me I need 5 more clasees? Including 1 elective class!!!! I wonder what they call the 55 credits they didn't accept towards my degree? Me, I'd call them electives, if nothing else!!!!   assholes.
10 Sep 2005	Scouts is starting back this week for most of us. Scott is the Webelos 2 den leader, he is the leader of the oldest cub scouts in the pack. His job is to prepare them to advance to Boy Scouts and to give them an opportunity to work towards the Arrow of light badge and the Webelos badge before they cross over. scott is also the leader of the Bear den, they're the same kids he was the leader of last year. They were wolves last year but this year, as 3rd graders, they're bears. Nicholas is a Webelos 2 scout and is looking forward to the fun of scouting this year. Heather is not in the local girl scout troop. Whe was supposed to look into going downtown to join an active senior troop but has not done so yet. Heathe has the distinction of being the oldest Girl Scout on the entire Air Force base and for her it's just not fun. She's the only Senior scout and wants to have friends her own age to do things with. I hope she finds a troop in the city that she likes. Melanie on the other hand is about tired of scouts, I think. She liked it less and less last year but we wouldn't let her quit part way through the year. I guess we'll see how this year pans out.
30 Aug 2005	Well the kids are all back in school. Heather is a sophomore this year and goes to Central High School. Melanie is an 8th grader in Twining Elementary/Middle school. Nicholas is in the 5th grade at Twining Elementary.
12 Aug 2005	Heather and I just returned from a canoe trip. We went with a group of 25 Girls Scouts and adults to the Boundry Waters Canoe Area. It's a group of many lakes and streams that are accessible only by canoe. We canoed in against a strong headwind in 95 degree heat for 6 hours. It was a lot of work and it made me wonder what I was doing out there! But once we arrived and got settled it was great. The 25 people were split into 3 groups and the group I was in had nothing but great people and great fun. I hope to be able to do this again, maybe with Melanie next year? Anyway, here are some pictures from our trip.
07 Aug 2005	Nicholas and I returned today from a Webelos (Cub Scouts) summer camp. It was at Camp Wilderness, a BSA camp in MN just a few miles from lake Itasca. The weather was great the whole time, if a little hot. We both had a wonderful time, especially Nicholas. We did a lot of activities like fishing, swimming, hiking, canoeing and roasting marshmallows. The last night there, we went to a group campfire with over 300 adults and kids, and the boys from our pack did the "Hot Meal" skit. You'll have to ask Nicholas how it goes, it was all pretty gross! :-) I asked Nicholas what his favorite part of camp was and he tells me it was "Tubby", the large (like 15ft) floating trampoline.
04 Aug 2005	HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU, HAPPY 13th BIRTHDAY DEAR MELANIE..... HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU! ! !
01 Aug 2005	We celebrated Melanie's upcoming birthday today, before Nicholas and Scott left for a 4 day cubscout camp.
31 Jul 2005	Nice, huh? My back porch with hundreds of mosquitoes, gnats, beatles, spiders....
15 Jul 05	Well we finally got to go camping. Would have been more fun if Tira could have gotten off of work.... or maybe not. I mean how much more fun could we have?!?!? :-) We went to lake Itasca over in Minnesota for a couple of days. Had fun... 3 hour drive... set up camp... went swimming....camped... swam... camped... pretty cool! :-) Our Campsite... The kids (and Chloe) posing in front of a dead calm lake on our third day. And late the second night we had a secret visitor...
12 Jul 2005	Happy BIRTHDAY Heather! token cake photo... Happy Birthday Heather! We love you.!
4 Jul 2005	Happy Birthday, America! We have discovered fireworks this year. We spent... I don' know... 70 or 80 bucks buying different fire works? We found a very nice spot up the road where we can torch off our stuff to our content and so we've been experimenting with different fireworks. It's bee a pretty cool couple of days.
3 Jul 2005	Yuppers! You guessed it... Melanie has broken her arm... again. If you're keeping count this is #6. Do you recall I mentioned brittle?
19 Jun 05	Guess what we're going to do??? ;-)
02 Jun 05	Lessee.... School..... Scott got an "A" in both classes last quarter. Tira is taking classes over the summer... Scott isn't. She's currently doing teaching at the local grade school. It's her first time teaching... setting the schedule, building the agenda, making a plan. She hopes to finish her teaching degree within a year or so.....Melanie has been asked by the HS track coach to come out for running practice throughout the summer.... she runs a 7:20 mile.... we'd like to see her get under 7... into the 6's, maybe 6:30. Her dad (.... me!) runs an 8:30 mile... HEY! Don't give me any crap... I'm quasdruple her age and easily 100 pounds heavier! :-)
01 Jun 05	Grandma Dona Pictures, finally! With Scott and Tira.... With the kids
30 May 05	For Scott's Birthday we had a BBQ and ate outside. It was the first day in a while with no rain. Note the beautiful BBQ Tira got a few weeks ago. Our 199something BBQ christmas gift from Dad was left in Japan, after many years and many burgers.
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30 May 05	Photo time! Our fat beagle chases prarie dogs...
30 May 05	Hey!!!!!!! It's my Birthday!!!!!!!!!!! HaPPyBirTh dAy to ME....HaPPyBirTh dAy to ME How fun! Dona (Tira's Mom... the kids' Grandma!) has been here for a couple of days.... I know we've bored her to death.... you know, rain every day... nothing really planned.... just visiting and movies and even a few games. The kids ask every day if they can put on a concert with violins and flutes. It really has rained nearly every day. Dona paid us the best compliment ever... whether she knows it or not... she said she had a fine weekend just spending time with a "normal" family. I'm not called "normal" too often... but THANKS MOM! :-)
25 May 05	It's summertime and you know what that means... Scott is playing softball on his squadron's team! Wahoo! Good luck scott.... and don't let all those kids (you know, the ones who are less than half your age!) show you up! :-)
15 May 2005	Nicholas started little league today.
14 May 2005	Last pack meeting of the year up here, and Nicholas who will still be a Webelos next year goes through an arrow ceremony. The breaking of the arrow on his shoulder is symbolic of the path to the Arrow of Light. When the journey is complete the arrow will be repaired and will be presented to the scout.
12 May 2005	Scott took his finals today... nearly 6 full hours of testing! But he thinks he did ok. He took CMIS 385 Perl Programming, and CMST 430 Website management.
06 May 2005	Scott's and Tira's bowling league ended today... And WE TOOK FIRST PLACE!!! :-) <bg>
02 May 2005	Tira took her last final today. She did well, and received an A in both classes. She took Education of the Exceptional Child, and Technology for Teachers.
27 Apr 05	ummm... letseee... yeah, the family is fine... well, Tira is puking but other than that she's fine. The kids are fine too. Not sick, go to school every day, pretend to like us as parents, come home and pretend to share their day with us.... yeah they're fine. My sister is moving to the Check Republic... (don't know where,, she hasn't told us... it's like we're stupid. I mean everyone knows where Prague and Mlada Boleslav and Vaanta are, right? So why all the secrecy!?!?)... my brother lives in Cuba (north) and another lives in Juarez (north) and I live in Canada (south)... but we're all ok... how are you??? Bowling? Thanks for asking... I bowled: 191 - 203 - 246 for a 640 series!     Damn I rock! :-)
15 Apr 05	Tira's cast came off last week. I forgot to post it. Her arm is fine, it was more sore after the cast came off. I guess because without the cast she used it more and also, there was less support. We bowled tonight and won all of our games. I bowled a league high 257! ! ! My series was 625.
14 Apr 2005	Well it's been a long day. It started at 7:05 this morning when Tira was driving down the street and someone backed out of their driveway into the side of her car! :-( It's still only got under 44,000 miles on it, it's practically new! It was slow speeds, but as you can see the other car caught the sliding door, the rear body, and the tire/wheel. The other car? A brand new 2005 Honda, just a few weeks old! Boy I'll bet you that guy was pissed! (His daughter was driving...)
08 Apr 2005	--------- Tonight, I bowled a: 223 - 211 - 196   for a 630 series
06 Apr 2005	Nicholas earned his Webelos Badge today in Cub Scouts, and Scott pins it on him.
15 Mar 2005	As promised... a picture of Tira's broken arm... This is her second cast... the first was a removable thing that sucked and was really huge... I'll dig up a picture of it if I can find one...
05 Mar 2005	(Yes, I know the dates are out of order!) Nicholas took these pictures, it's the first time I've let him touch the digital camera. Last time I let a kid play with my camera they dropped it and broke parts off of the front! The weather was warm, (despite the snow!) so Nicholas and I washed the car! :-)
12 Mar 2005	Nicholas and I went to an indoor motorcycle free-style competition, and boy was it fun! It was eactly what we expected... lots of motorcycles doing jumps and stunts and yes, even flips. This is just one pic, I don't know if you can see the rider, it looks like he's hanging on for deer life but he landed safely!
23 Feb 2005	Hey, Tira fell and broke her wrist. Not cool, but still a little funny.. :-) ok, maybe not. Anyway, I sent her to work today, told her she could get it x-rayed in the morning. Pictures to follow.
18 Feb 2005	Girl Scout cookies went on sale here, in North Dakota, this weekend. Heather and Melanie both went out selling cookies. Heather sold 5 boxes, Melanie sold 37 boxes. Now I'm here to tell you that presentation is everything. Melanie is still young and cute and "girl scout'ish". Heather is grown and mature and I suppose that when people answered the door to my big girl selling cookies they thought to themselves "hmmm... Girls Scouts? Yeah, right, sure." Poor Heather. I know she felt about as bad as I did when I was out bowled by my wife.... :-)
18 Feb 2005	All right... so you may have heard this on CNN.... but here it is, straight from the source..., Yeah, Tira beat me at bowling... right, yeah, so did Nicholas... but Tira beat me in front of our friends. It was Friday night. Tira and I bowl in a Friday night bowling league. Our team is in 1st place... :-) and has been so, for most of the season. My average is 165 and Tira's is like, I don't know, 65 maybe. Anyway, last friday I was bowling good, and looking forward to a 600 series. I shot a 208 and a 189. But the third game I was just a little off, not a lot, but right? Missing is missing. Anyway, to make a long story short, I didn't knock out a deuce, I shot 138. Yeah, 25 under my average but we all have bad days, right? But it gets worse. Not only did I shoot 138, Tira shot a 150. Now I'm not belittling a 150. No, not after I couldn't get it into the 140's. Who am I to say, huh? So I'm not belittling her accomplishment. No, I love Tira, very much. But I just have to ask... if she loved me, would she drop the "best game of her life" right on top of my worst? Would she? I think we all know that the answer to that is no. If she loved me she would not belittle me. She wouldn't embarass me in front of both of our friends. That's what I think. But what did she do? She told everyone. She told the kids. She told the dog. She told the neighbors. She told my co-workers. She told my boss. She told her friends, who told their friends, who told their friends, and so on, and so on, and so on... Like I said, you may have noticed it on CNN?
11 Feb 2005	Melanie got a part in the play "Annie" at her school. She's a singing orphan, or something....
05 Feb 2005	Nicholas and I bowled a game together today... and he beat me. Little monster bowled a 143 to my 128! Ok, I was tired, and my hand was sore, and I'd bowled a few games already; oh yeah, and I didn't sleep well the night before and the oil pattern was not smooth and.....
24 Jan 2005	Sweet! Our hig temperature in ND for the next 5 days is: +27   +10   +13   +28   +27 That is a no-kidding 50 and 60 degree improvement over last week! Light wind, and so no horrendous wind chills, coupled with moderate temperatures.... Boy, I think I'm starting to like it here! Last weekend Nicholas and I went sledding at a nearby state park. Had to go there, it's the only hill within miles... literally! They have a nice hill for the kids to sled on, and a "warming cabin" for the adults to hang out in while they wait. It's a little thing but it shows thought and planning. There is no fee to use the park (ok, there is a daily fee if you don't have an annual pass, but we have an annual pass... so it's free to me...hehe.) Today was my "briefing day". This morning first thing I was given the responsiblilty of briefing a hundred enlisted troops on a few mandatory topics, and on my own topic of choice for professionalism. I chose "WAPS and the Enlisted Evaluation System." A little bit of a cop-out, but I'll follow it up next month with the SNCO promotion system as compared to the Jr. enlisted promotion system, and move on from there. Gotta' start somewhere, right? Following that I coordinated a 3 to 4 hour training day for my career field. It was not too difficult because I was able to pass on one portion of the briefing to someone else for an hour or so. That means I was only responsible for a couple of hours and so I did a quick 40 minutes on "Disqualification Codes" and permanent vs. non-permanent disqualifications, then we moved into a short planning meeting on an upcoming deployment while some of the younger troops did question and answer sessions. Finally, this evening was a Wolf Den Cub Scout meeting. I'm the den leader for a group of 2nd grade Wolf Scouts and had to plan an hour of activities and discussion with an aim to educate/entertain/excite/motivate a group of 8 year old boys... Thank goodness the morning went so well and was so easy to plan! My evening certainly took more out of me! Today, we discussed recycling and protecting our environment, and them moved to proper tool selection (you know, using the right tool for the job at hand?) and then we practiced using a hammer... you know, we banged nails into a 2x4!     :-) Ok, I'll admit it, it was a lot of fun!
20 Jan 2005	I got a new car a couple of weeks ago. Pretty nice... 1998 Olds Aurora or something. Lots of miles, good shape other wise... no rips in the heated leather fully adjustable power seats w/ 2 way lumbar support and programmable position memory... the 250hp V-8 kicks this 4,000 pound car from 0 to 60 in about as long as it takes you to take one breath, and it goes from 0 to 90 in about 4 breaths...but Tira asked me to stop doing that while it's snowing...did I mention the leather seats are heated? any idea how important that is to my ummm.. ego... when I have to hop in the car to go to work at -20 or -30F? do you?
17 Jan 2005	Today was PineWood Derby race day in North Dakota. Now this is normally a Cub Scout event. You know, boys and their dads. Well, Tira is the "Service Unit Manager" for all of Grand Forks AFB Girl Scouts, and she decided no-way were her daughters missing out on this and so with the help of a couple of her Girl Scout leaders she set up the first ever GS Powder Puff Derby. And she was right of course, dad wanted nothing more than to build 3 cars this year!   :-)   Ok, so it wasn't all that bad... Heather is old enough, all I did was pointed her at a band saw and she cut out her own car. It's really a sword, and she named it Nilrem, Sword of Destruction. Melanie used a drill press to cut out the outline of her beautiful Coral Snake car. I ran the band saw for Nicholas, but he drew the outline of his FireBird car. All of the kids did their own sanding and finishing. All of them did their own painting, too. I helped Nicholas line up his stickers, but that was about it. I'm very proud of how much time and effort all of them put into making their cars look just the way they pictured them. After all of the individual races (in which Melanie took 2nd place overall, for all of the 24 Girl Scouts) we ran an Alvar Grudge Match Race. Here, Melanie launches the cars. Left to right it's Nicholas, Heather, Melanie. Nicholas officiates the end of the race and is on the edge of his seat waiting to see who wins. So who won? Who Won!?! Man that was close! Win or lose it was a great day... a little long, (like 6 or 7 hours!) but a great day. Below is an "after" picture. Everyone is still smiling so it couldn't have been all that bad!
13 Jan 2005	This evening's weather forecast:Tonight Clear. Near record low of 25 to 30 below. West winds 10 to 15 mph. Wind chill readings 40 below to 50 below zero.
01 Jan 2005	Midnight, New Years Eve, at the Alvars! :-) yeah, Heather's holding the champagne bottle! ;-)
01 Jan 2005	Lots of changes to the old web site here. Many will be invisible to the you. But some you might notice. First, you might notice the links along the top are different. Also, since my "old news" used to cover 1998 through 2003 I thought it was high time to split it up. You can now view "Old News" sorted by year, along the bottom of this main page. The links along the left fram have been cleaned up, and there are fewer. The picture links now shows pictures, and the about us link takes you to pages about each of us. Finally, I have elevated "More Family", which are links and pictures of brothers and sisters, parents and friends. What you won't see is that the page formats have changed. I've done away with almost all of the page formatting and have linked all of the pages to Style Sheets. Ok, so not "almost", I have linked all of the pages to external style sheets. The only inline styles left will be for individual word or phrase formatting on the fly, like the underlined word all, above.
01 Jan 2005	Happy New Year Tira 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.
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