Last night Anita and I took the kids down to the park to play catch and swing the bat a little bit. It has been a long time since we’ve taken them to play catch and it’s been even longer since I’ve played softball (I miss it). We expected to have a little fun running around, messing around, and trying to learn/teach a few skills. I fully expected Kyle to pick it up (he tends to be the jock in the family)…but we were pleasantly surprised.

Every single one of our kids was able to pick up the bat and make good (if not great) contact with the ball. They took instruction and applied what they learned with positive results. And throwing the ball was no exception. Each one of them can throw and catch (to one degree or another). They’re naturals. It runs in the family blood I guess (on both sides of the family).

We had a great time together a a family and I’m starting to plan my retirement.  ;o)  We are planning on getting them signed up for t-ball/baseball/softball this next season. They’ll make their GGPa proud!! Watch out world!

On the floor. Dead center. 18 rows back.

I’m no concert expert, but we have been to a few this year and the Foreigner concert last night was hands down the best concert I have ever been to…ever! I’m typically fairly reserved when it comes to an event like this, but I couldn’t help but clap…shout…raise a fist…and sing along at the top of my lungs.

It certainly helps that I knew all but maybe two of the songs (and one of them was brand new), including: Feels Like the first Time; Cold as Ice; Hot Blooded; Double Vision; Blue Morning, Blue Day; Dirty White Boy; Urgent; I Want to Know What Love Is; and the best rendition of Juke Box Hero I’ve ever heard.

It. Was. Awesome.

And best of all, I got to share it with my best friend in the whole world. Only thing that might have made it better is if we’d had some friends to share it with. If you like Foreigner and ever get the chance…go to the concert. You won’t be disappointed.

Our annual trek to Como, CO was a huge success this year (as usual). However, when we started out I wasn’t so sure that was going to be the case. At the end of fall last year it was obvious our pop-up trailer needed new tires. So we got new tires from Wal-Mart (a move that will prove to be our ruin) and figured we were all set. We headed out with three other couples bright and early on Friday morning.

We didn’t make it to Santa Fe and C-470 before one of the new tires on the trailer blew. I’ll save you all the nitty-gritty details, but turns out that Wal-Mart had given us the wrong weigh-class tire so we spent 4 hours driving around and waiting for Discount to set us up. We finally made it to camp 4 hours later than we had hoped )thanks in part to some traffic issues on 285)…but we did make it…and we had a blast!

Five families…10 adults…14 kids. Camping in God’s country and having a blast. No big fights (adults or kids) and the weather couldn’t have been any better. This is truly one of the greatest places on earth to spend a weekend with family and friends. Here are some pics to prove it…

Roasting S’mores the First Night

You have to play poker…right? (And yes, Anita won)

The kids wanted in on the action too

The crew fixing one of the Beaver dams on the property

Logan “chillaxing” in the shade

Lindsay eating a little snack of Antelope and Potatoes

I think Kyle needs a shorter BB Gun?

The ATV was a highlight for the kids (no, he didn’t drive it)

Warming up in the morning

Corrina and Raquel

Greg, Paul, and Trent

Shawn (aka “The Great Fisherman)…yes, there are fish in that pond (that’s the pind we fixed last year!)

The moon was incredibly bright all weekend

Showing off the camera skills…oh yeah!

This past week, Logan and I spent two and half days at Magness Adventure Camp for Cub Scouts. We had an absolute blast! Logan is now a Webelo…so we even got to sleep up on the Mesa in a tent with the other Webelos. The night hike they had planned was called on account of rain and wind but it was still fun.

Every day was full of activities perfect for keeping a young boy from getting bored (and keeping his Dad sore). o fewer than either times, Logan declared: “This is the best day of my life!” We had fun…and we did it together. I am looking forward to next year’s camp.

Here are all the pics…

We’re Ready to Roll!

The Entrance to the Camp

Catching Some Sleep Before We Get Started

The Morning Flag Ceremony

The Ice Cream Social

Our Tent for the First Night

Campfire Skits at the end of the first day

The Compass Course on Day 2

Looks fierce…doesn’t he?

Testing The Catapult…it works great!

My Favorite Pic!

He’s Out for the Count

The Mesa Camp Ground (Day 3)

He Looks Official

Archery…stay behind that line!

He loves shooting BB Guns

Swimming at the Lake. We also took the boats out earlier in the day.

A Chance to Cool Off from the Hot Weather

The view from the Mesa of Magness Adventure Camp

Two quick topics this morning…

Topic #1: Closed Captioning

Anita and I went and saw the movie Taken last night for our date night. (Which, by the way, is a good movie. It’s fast-paced and has a good plot. It’s one of those action films that has you on the edge of your seat for 90% of the movie…giving you a few breathers here and there. It’s worth the $10). Anyway, I get to the counter to buy the tickets and the lady behind the glass says, “This showing has closed captioning; is that alright?” We couldn’t wait for another showing and it’s the movie we wanted so I bought the tickets.

Here’s the thing…you can’t not watch the captions! I was able to force myself not to read them for about half of the movie…but that other half had me reading instead of watching the movie. Annoying! Can anyone not read the captions? Anyone?

Topic #2: Daylight Savings Time

This one makes me want to move to Arizona. Why, oh why, must we mess with the clocks? On the way to church yesterday we were explaining DST to the kids and Kyle flat out did not believe that everyone changed their clocks ahead at the same time. “No way!” And he’s right, it’s stupid. All it really manages to do is make everyone look forward to “falling back” and dreading “springing forward”. Dumb. But I’ll be used to it in a few days…just wish we could stay on this time schedule forever.

I am fairly new to this hunting gig having gone rifle hunting for the first time last year. Justin and I decided to get started since our boys are still young and we want to be able to take them when they get old enough (and we want to kind of know what we are doing before they get involved ). So we jumped in with both feet last year: Antelope, Deer, and Elk.

Antelope hunting has been fantastic. We both filled two tags last year and I filled two this year including my first buck of any type. Elk hunting last year was great as well with both of us filling our tags on a great snow hunt.

Deer hunting has been a completely different story! Last year we took the advice of a buddy and went hunting near Eagle, CO. The result was horrific. Not only did we not fill either tag…we didn’t see a single deer the entire time..not one! We chalked it up to a bad year and our inexperience. So we changed venues this year and got deer tags near Craig, CO. Everything we heard was that this was the place to be so our luck was certain to change. We were so confident that we even brought Nick with us and got buck tags instead of doe tags.

The result was better right? W-R-O-N-G. Here is the grand total of deer we saw this year: Zip, zero, zilch, nada. Skunked again! And once again we didn’t even see a deer! We saw plenty of antelope (including a huge buck that makes me want to go back for him next year). Very. Frustrating.

We have determined that one of these reasons (or a combination) is why we have had bad luck with deer:

1. We have no idea what we are doing…inexperience (I’m 100% sure this is at least part of the issue)
2. We are in the wrong place (although we’ve tried 2 different locations)
3. We are doing it wrong (we hiked, we sat, we drove…not sure which we’re supposed to do)
4. There are no deer in Colorado (felt like it anyway)

So for now we are going to do one of the following going forward:

1. Find someone who knows what they are doing (and where) and go with them.
2. Start accumulating preference points until we can hunt in a better location.
3. Give up on deer for the foreseeable future.

It certainly wasn’t a total loss. You can’t call two days with buddies and time spent in God’s country a waste of time…it was still fun, just not as much fun as we were hoping to have. And the Elk hunt is still to come so there is plenty to look forward to (might even come back with two this year). And the deer hunt keeps us humble and trying to improve…and it gives us something to pass along to our boys…you can’t win at everything, but you shouldn’t give up either (that is unless we give up .

I haven’t talked much football yet this season, so here are a few musings and thoughts that have been rolling around my brain…feel free to comment on any and all that you like…

1. Will the real Peyton Manning/LaDanian Tomlinson/Terrell Owens please stand up!
   
   Seriously, would you have bet anything that these guys would perform so poorly this year?  In the meantime we have guys like Trent Edwards playing lights out? Something just isn’t quite right with universe right now.
2. How exactly do these guys still have jobs: Romeo Crennel, Marvin Lewis, and Herm Edwards?
   
   This is especially questionable given that the 49ers just fired Mike Nolan. These coaches have had plenty of opportunity with plenty of talent to make stuff happen and they are not getting done.
3. The Denver Defense should be forced to wear pink jerseys until they man-up and start playing “big boy” football. 

   It’s getting downright embarrassing! How many years do we have to put up with this garbage? They have talent (as much as most other NFL teams) so is it coaching or is it simply desire?

4. Jay Cutler needs to shut his mouth about John Elway and Philip Rivers and FOCUS on football. 

   Hopefully he got a little slice of humble pie last night once again and he decides to screw his head back on and do what we’ve seen him do…tear defenses apart. It seems like once he started getting some attention it went straight to his head and then his head exploded.

There ya go…I feel much better now!

Two weekends ago several guys travelled up to the middle of Wyoming for our now annual Antelope hunt. There were four of us on that trip. Two of us had buck and doe tags (Virgil and I), two had doe tags (Justin and Nick). Within our first hour of getting to our area Virgil had his buck and he filled his doe tag the next day.

This was Nick’s first hunt and he filled his doe tag on the second day of the hunt (after having a shot at 150 yards he didn’t take because he couldn’t settle down ). I wasn’t actually there (Virgil was his “guide”) but I hear it was a nice shot and it was a good-sized doe.

Justin wasn’t able to fill either of his doe tags (VERY unusual for this hunting area…just wasn’t his year I guess). I filled my doe tag on the second day. I had a shot on a buck the first day as well as the second day, but missed on both shots!! I could not believe it (and the first one was a very nice buck). We had to leave a little early because of some weather that was moving into the area (they actually got quite a bit of snow so it was a good decision).

However, that left me without a buck (since I couldn’t hit one to save my life). So, I went back this past Saturday to give it one more try. Another buddy of mine (Brett) was up there as well. I hunted alone in the morning with no luck and met up with Brett t about noon. I had one more stalk left so I headed out while Brett packed up his camp (he had shot his buck the morning prior).

Long story short…after a 2 hour stalk on a group of 75 antelope I finally got my first buck ever. The pack-out was brutal but in the end it’s always worth it. I didn’t have a camera with me in the field (couldn’t find it before I left) so here are some shots from home (not the greatest, but you get the idea):

He’s about a 12 inch buck (not great, but not bad either). I dropped him off at the taxidermist yesterday to get mounted (you gotta mount the first right?). The bad news? I get him back in about a YEAR! But the wait should be worth it. We (Justin, Nick and I) head out to Craig in two weeks for our deer hunt so hopefully there is a monster buck in my near future.  And if not, I’m sure there will be plenty of tales to tell.

One week from today I will be in the middle of Wyoming hunting antelope for 5 days (hopefully it will only take 1 or 2).  This is my second year hunting (you can see the results of last year’s hunt here) and my first year with a buck tag. There are five of us going on this particular hunt this year and I can’t wait to get up there and get started!

I officially have hunting fever…I am so ready to hit the road and get started. Hopefully I come home with some meat for the fridge and something like this to hang on the wall (in the garage of course):

I will have all the details (along with pictures) when I get back. Until then I’ll have to live with my fever…the anticipation is killing me!

Hopefully life is starting to settle down a little bit as I get back into school and a more “regular” schedule (whatever that is!). With the busy schedule blogging has taken a little bit of a backseat…which should mean I have a lot stored up right?

I’ll ease back into it today though. Today’s topic? Bad movie rentals! Anita and I have been on a bad run lately…every movie we have rented lately has S-U-C-K-E-D. Hopefully this is just a result of a lull in the movies that are available, but I am starting to get a little “gun shy” when we go to pick one out! We don’t get to the “big movies” very often so it’s a real bummer when a rental doesn’t pan out. Life is too busy to waste 2 hours of it on a lame flick.

Any recommendations?