Howling

I knew it had been a long time since I've blogged, but I didn't realize it had been 2 months. Sorry about that (if you even care).

Tonight my boy and I went out and howled at the full moon again. We've managed to get out every time since we first started on July 7th! (one month it was cloudy so we howled at the faint glow behind the clouds)

We both really look forward to it. I wish I had done this with my daughter, though I'm not sure she would have enjoyed it as much as my boy has been. And this month, we'll get to do it again. Twice in one month, what a treat!

You can read more about it here if you're interested.

Life

Life can be so strange sometimes. Things are going about as good as they can go. I'm blessed beyond measure but at the same time, it's hard to imagine more heartbreak and difficulty than I'm having.

Right now, i'm sitting on the top of an old fire tower in Roaring River State Park. So old, the trees are taller than it is. There probably isn't another person around in over a mile or more.

It's funny how God can use a walk (or hike in this case). There are old burnt and dead trees all around. Tres and leaves dead and decomposing, but in all this there is life and beauty.

The sun is shining, the wind is blowing. I can hear birds and frogs and the talking of the trees. Izve seen beautiful butterflies. I've sen dragon flies and it all so beautiful.

So, even in the chaos of life, there's beauty. And even after the stroms that come through, life thrives.

Holy Cow!!!!!

I just saw a couple things I wanted to share.

First,
The 9/14 issue of Sports Illustrated has OSU on the cover! (go ahead, click the link)

Second,
Take a look at the college football rankings http://espn.go.com/college-football/rankings

A quick summary (AP Poll)
1. Florida
2. Texas
3. USC
4. Alabama
5. Oklahoma State!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
13. Oklahoma

Not sure I've ever seen OSU ranked above OU before.

Crazy!

August?

Are we sure today is the last day og August? It was 51 when I left the house this morning! Not only that, but it never got out of the 70's today!

Crazy I tell you and you'll not get any complants form me!

4th Grade Pictures and more

I promised pictures, So here they are.
As usual, you can click on the pictures to make them larger!

4th Grade

3rd Grade

2nd Grade

1st Grade



Kindergarden


Pre-K

4th Grade

Today is the start of my boys 4th grade year! Wow, it's hard to believe he's here!

It seems like only yesterday he was learning his colors and his letters. Starting to read and write. Today, he's in 4th grade. The things he'll learn, the things he'll experience, I'm excited for him!

My beloved is taking him to school this morning, and I'll be home when he gets off the bus. Hopefully, I'll have a picture of him on his first day of class. I love those pictures as we take them every year, the first day of school.

I'll try to post pictures later.

Good Day

Today is turning out to be a good day, even though it started a bit rough.

I went to be a bit early last night, and was sleeping relatively well. That was until 5:00 this morning when the cat started meowing. So, I get up so he doesn't wake up my wife, to figure out what he needs. He took me to the living room and went to the front door!

He's not an indoor/outdoor cat. He's only indoor unless he escapes, and hasn't escaped since we moved to the new house. Anway, I almost threw him out the door anyway for waking me up! I went ahead and checked his food bowl and made sure that the door was open so he could get to his litter box and went back to bed.

I went back to bed, laid down, and was wide awake! So, after about 5 minutes, I decided to get up. I had my quiet time, surfed the web, fixed breakfast, and packed a lunch. My wife woke up about 7:00 and I got the bed made, laundry going, and dishes done before I left the house at 7:15!

Work has even been going pretty well today.

The downside is knowing my dishwasher broke yesterday, and we've no money to fix it.

Oh well, guess we'll do dishes the old fashioned way for a while.

Mechanic

Today was my boy's first time to work on one of our vehicles.

It was cool having him help me.

Making memories!!!

Tonight, my boy and I went out, and howled at the moon! Why? Because it was a full moon, and we are wild men, and it was fun!

We've also decided to always try to howl at every full moon! Is this silly? You bet! But what better memories can I make with my boy now then to do something silly with my boy!

Things have made me realize how important it is to have fun, and make these precious fun memories with my boy now, while he still wants to be with me, and have fun with me. He's 9, and before long, dad will no longer be cool.

We came into the computer room to see when the next full moon is, and it's on August 5th! So we already have our next howling date scheduled. In fact, we've scheduled the rest of them for the year! (and for the record, there are 2 full moons in December... 12/2 and 12/31!

Then, after howling at the moon, we went and found the ISS passing over and enjoyed watching it fly by!

When it was time to come in, we took the time to howl again!

Good Idea?

So, I'm up in the office this morning, walking back to my desk, and I notice a woman out in the parking lot putting up a sunshade in her truck. That in and of itself is not unusual, but she was putting it on the OUTSIDE of the truck! I even watched her put it under the windshield wipers.

I'm not sure why she was putting it on the outside of the truck, but she did. Before lunch, we noticed that they did indeed blow down as we expected. But, on the bright side, she's warming up the engine for when she gets off of work.

Oh, wait...

Resident Camp Update

First, I will admit. I was nervous this weekend.

This camp that my boy went to was more than just another night at a friends house, this was a true camping trip! The kind where your shower is either a dip in the lake, or provided by God in a rain storm! He slept in a tent, without an adult in it. And to top it off, it was a rather stormy weekend.

I didn't think he would, but I was afraid he would want to call us to come pick him up, and I didn't want that. I wanted him to realize how much fun this stuff is! How he can have fun without me or his mom around.

And man did he!

When we first got there, he saw me get out of the car and came a running! When he finally saw his mom, he ran to her too. He talked to us a few moments, and then was quickly out pacing us with his friends headed to dinner.

The leaders told me what a great job he did, and only had one slight breakdown and that was Sunday morning (after a very tiring week). So, that was awesome! He was so tired come Sunday, after lunch, he fell asleep at the lunch table!

Watching him interact with his friends, allowed me to see how much he grew up this weekend! To listen to him talk about the paddling the war canoes, and swimming, and the castle, and songs, and skits they did, was incredible. We sang one of the songs several times in the car on the way to my parents for church camp this week. I learned more about the 3 days at Resident camp than I think I found out the entire school year about what when on at school.

And as happy and proud of him as I was, it also makes me sad knowing how much my little boy is growing up. But again, that is is how it should be.

This week, he is at church camp with my parents. He'll be exhausted by the time he gets home. But he's having a good summer!

Big Step

Today's a big step in family, or, at least, seems like a big step.

My little boy, who's not as little as I'd like to think, is at Webelos Resident Camp. It's a 3 day, 2 night camp where Boy Scouts run the camp for the Webelos. They'll be camping out while they have all sorts of fun. And I'm here at home, while he's there at camp.

He wanted me to go with him. And normally I would, but I felt like he needed to do this camp without me this time. Let him grow up a bit.

He was sad about it yesterday, but when I left him at the camp today, he didn't bat an eye...

As it should be.

It made me both happy and sad.

And I suppose that is also how it should be.

Decorated!

Well, we finally finished up the decorating and painting... well, mostly, you know how it goes.

The house is really awesome, and we love it here. The house, the area, the quiet, EVERYTHING!

Anyway, I promised some pictures. I put out several on my Flickr page. You can click to enlarge.

More busy-ness

Wow! Has it been a long time since I've blogged. I've thought about it a lot, but just haven't managed to get in here and do it. I've had a lot to say, but now that I've got the time, I can't think of most of it.

So, what's been going on?

• Well, We got moved in, unpacked and the like. We are finishing the painting up of the last room (master bath) today or tomorrow (Saturday at the latest). Once we have the paint done and finish the last bit of decorating, I'll post a bunch of new pictures.
  
• Kids. I'd say what's to say, but there's been a lot, I'll post more below (or later depending on how long this post is.)
• Saturday is my and my beautiful wife's wedding anniversary. We wanted to go do something, but doesn't look like that's going to happen. 11 years!
• I got my parents moved from Bartlesville, OK to Hodgen, OK. I hurt my back in the process, and it's just now getting back to normal.
• I've been pricing fencing for the new place, man is it expensive.
• E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) has been this week, and I've enjoyed it. Wish I could have gone to it! Lots of video game goodness!
• I'm sure there is more, but can't think of it.

So, my kids, first my boy.

• We were asked to have him tested for the Gifted and Talented. I thought it was strange, but I told them they could test him. Anyway, he scored in the 99 percentile (meaning better than 99 out of 100 of people that took the test. So, next year, he'll spend 40 minutes, twice a week for enrichment activities (whatever that means).
• He also was given an application for a Lego Robotics team that will meet one to two times a week before school next year and a competition in Stillwater in December. (I think that link is right) He was completely stoked about it till he found out he had to fill out part of the application himself, so he said "nah". Well, being the good dad I am, I made him fill it out. He was stoked until that point. We've not heard back, but are hoping he gets to be a part. they are only choosing 10 kids out of the 4th -5th grade class.
• He finished 3rd grade with straight A's!!! We are so proud of him.

My daughter though is another matter. We just had to spend $500 so she'd not go blind! She's had the same pair of contacts in her eyes (without removing them nightly like she's suppose to) for the last 8 months+. Luckily she was able to get some glasses (the dr said no contacts for at least 1 year if ever). But she can see, so that's whats important.

Anyway, I guess that's all for now. Hopefully, it wont be month before my next post.

New House

I've twittered about it, but haven't blogged yet.

We closed on the old house Tuesday and the new house today! We've cleaned a lot today, and will paint Friday with Moving on a very rainy Saturday.

More later I'm sure. It's late

Busy, busy, busy

Those 3 words pretty much sum up what's going on for me.

Today and tomorrow we are having garage sale. This will help get rid of stuff we no longer want and make a bit of money in the process. Anything we don't sale, we'll take elsewhere after the sale.

Tonight is my boy's Karate class. This weekend, he tests for his Camo belt!!! We are so excited. Once getting his camo belt, he'll get to move to the advanced class where he'll finally get to start sparing. We're all excited about that.

Saturday evening, we take a final walk-through on the new house to make sure all the repairs were done.

Tuesday we close on our current house and have my boys first advance Karate class!

1 week from today, we close on the new house and start painting and cleaning and have Karate (he may have to miss this day, we'll see).

Friday May 1st, is more cleaning and painting and maybe some moving. The telephone/DSL and Dish Network gets turned on.

Saturday morning May 2nd, we move.

Saturday evening May 2nd, we'll have a birthday party for my grandmother.

Well, that's it for now. More later!

Tulsa #1

Wow, I can't believe it.

In this years RelocateAmerica.com's annual list of the top 100 places to live in the US, Tulsa, OK came in at number 1!

You can see more at this article at MarketWatch, or take a look at the full list at RelocateAmerica.com.

As a brief recap though, Tulsa came in at #1, Dallas/Ft Worth #2, Little Rock at #9, and OKC at #10.

Transformers II

I just saw the Transformers II trailer... Wow!

Work

*sigh*

I'm exhausted. I've been pretty busy with work lately. Tonight we put in a lot of new functionality into one of the applications I work on. Getting ready for this release has been a little stressful considering all the problems I had in getting this working in our QA region.

There were a few hiccups, but luckily nothing major. The actual release, which normally takes about 30 minutes took right at 2 hours to make all the changes on all our servers.

Hopefully, I'll sleep much better tonight than I have been.

Happy Easter!

I hope everyone has a great Easter today. I know it's wet around here, but that shouldn't dampen the holiday as we celebrate the resurrection of Christ!

Satellite Move Scheduled

Making my last post, reminded me I needed to call to move my Dish Network. It's scheduled to move on the same Friday as the phone.

I can't wait!

Phone Move

I called yesterday and scheduled to move the phone to the new house on the Friday after we move. I found out we will end up with a new number (or pay a $6/mo for basically a permanent transfer... not happening)

I also confirmed that I'll be able to keep my same level of DSL service that I had here in town. That makes me very happy!

19 days till we close!

Getting closer

3 weeks from today, we close on the new house! We are so excited. We've been doing what I consider a good job packing. We've packed a lot, designated a lot for a garage sale, and thrown away a lot. I'm not sure were all this stuff has come from, but it's nice to get rid of a lot of it.

The Internet goes to poop today

It's April Fools Day, so today, the internet goes to poop. You might can believe 1% of everything you read today, but even that's not a safe bet.

Have fun, and don't get fooled!

House update

Well, things are going well with the house. 2 of the 3 inspections have been done. There are no termites and nothing major wrong with the house.

That is just great news! We are so excited.

We've started packing. We moved out our comfy chair in the computer room so we have a place to stack boxes once they are packed and labeled. I'm having problems with the packing at the moment, May 4th seem so far off, but I know it will be here before we know it.

We've also loaded up the truck for a trip to the dump. It's amazing how much trash you acquire in 10 years. And I'm not talking about garage sale stuff, I mean trash! It's crazy! I've got more stuff ready, but it wont make a full load, so I may wait a while before my next trip... not sure yet.

Anyway, I'll keep everyone posted.

Oh, I promised more pictures, but since all the pictures I have has all the current owners stuff in them, I probably wont post many. But here are a few more

(Click to enlarge)

New House

Tonight, I got the call, our counter-counter offer was accepted. We will sign the papers tomorrow night.

We're excited!

(Click for a larger picture)

I'll have more pictures later once the paper work is in order.

It's Sold!!!

Tonight we sold our house! We are very happy about it. Now we just have to find a house to buy before we are homeless! :)

We have 2 that we are very interested in. Hopefully we'll get to take a second look at both houses this weekend.

Spring

I went out on the back porch this afternoon, and noticed that there are buds on the plum tree in our backyard!

It's not the plums, but the buds that has me excited!

Spring is almost here!

Update

Wow, it's really been a long time since I've posted. I knew it had been, but I didn't realize it had been almost a month!

For the most part, things have been really quiet (and I'm NOT complaining). We have decided to start looking into buying a new house. I've let the church next door to us know because they had shown some interest in buying the place if we ever sold. So, we've had about 8 people from their church come by and look at the place. I was always under the impression that they wanted to bulldoze it, but they've been asking a lot of questions about the house, so sounds like they may want to keep it. I really don't care as long as we get out of it what we need for a down payment on the next place.

We've not done a lot as far as hunting goes. We've looked online a bit, and drove by a couple houses we've seen, but we've not gone into any of them yet.

Last week, we've also filled out loan papers and are still waiting to hear back on that.

I guess that is basically it. Hopefully it wont be another month before I post again.

Winter storm and pulled muscle

Well, the storm is here, there is a good bit of ice on EVERYTHING, roads, cars, everything. It took me over an hour to come home yesterday from work (which usually takes about 20-25). I picked my son up from the bus stop so he wouldn't have to walk home, and the bus was 30 minutes late. It was crazy.

Anyway, I went ahead and made it to the gym. It was about 25 degrees outside and everything was covered in ice, (the car again), but I didn't want to break my exercising streak. Easier to keep it going than start over. Anyway, since the car was covered in ice again, and the gym was 2 blocks away, I put on my spiky shoes and walked to the gym.

I had a really good workout and after the day I had, I was good to be there and work out some of my stress. Afterward, I got wrapped back up for the cold and started walking home. As I was crossing the street, and Jeep came sliding around the corning going way to fast, so I make a run for it to get out of the road. Well, as he was sliding, he slid right into the parking spots across the street (where I was running to), so I'm trying to make it up on the curb and into the ally (safe from the crazy jeep). About my second step, I pulled a muscle in my right calf!

It was all I could do to get across the street before getting hit! As I did get to saftey, I turned around to check on the jeep, and he was sliding towards an old parked semi. I thought he was going to hit it, but he didn't.

So, I had to hobble the 2 blocks back home to get out of the weather. Every step was horrible. But I made it.

It feels better today, but there is no way I'll be able to make it to the gym today.

*sigh*

Great Horned Owl

The weather has been nice lately, so I've been going on walks. Well yesterday, on my walk, I startled something that flew out of a tree and down the row of trees. It was huge. When it landed, I realized it was an owl. I didn't know what kind, but it was huge!

Thanks to Google, I figured out it was probably a Great Horned Owl. Their bodies can be between 18"-25" long with a wingspan of 36"-60". Those upper numbers are close to how large I thought this owl was. I've never seen an owl in the wild. I've heard them, but never seen them.

I need to try to get a picture of it.

Birthday Cake Time

Well, it's that time of year again, time for another birthday cake. Big number 9.

This year, the cake was Spongebob Squarpants. I think I did ok.

Last year, was Pokemon:


The year before that Yoda. That year, I did 2 cakes cause we had to parties, and I wasn't happy with the first cake.
Second Cake:

First Cake:


I guess I'm getting better, not sure. course when my practice is a year apart, it will take me a while to get really good at it.

Birthday Boy

Today is my son's Birthday... big number 9. The last birthday before he hits double digits. He is getting so big!

Today, he also came home with his report card.

Language Arts - A
Math - A
Reading - A
Science - S
Social Studies - S
Spelling - A
Music - S
PE - S

Considering where we were at the start of 2nd grade, this is nothing but a pure miracle!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone!

May you have a blessed year.