White water rafting

We are sitting outside Echo Canyon River Expeditions waiting for our white water rafting trip.

I hope to post a follow up after the trip.

Trip pt 2

I tried posting from upon Pike's Peak, but the best I can tell, I lost the post.

We had a great time with exploring some cff dwellings to shopping, to taking the cog train to a beautiful and clear Pike's Peak.

Tomorrow is white water rafting and a train ride, and who knows what else. We are looking forward to it.

My beautiful bride hasn't been feeling well, so please pray for here.

Pike's Peak

As I type this, we are sitting in a cog train waiting to go to the top.

It's been misty/raining all morning, so much for the great forecast. Rumor has it it's sunny on the top, we'll see.

Trip pt 1

Today, we left my sisters place on the way to Colorado Springs for our 10 year anniversary get-a-way, and after a crazy drive on a New Mecican "highway" which was gravel and had cattle guards (17 long miles considering we had to go to the bathroom), we finally came to a "store" in Colorado. We stopped for a bathroom break and a drink.

When we finally found the guy that works there, he said he had an outhouse. At this point my bride didn't care much. I talked to him for a while and found out he did have a flush bathroom, but many travellers stop and go then go and don't buy anything. Water is a bit scarceand he has to haul it in, so he saves the bathroom for real customers.

For the record, his stuff was great (artist). But around 3ish or so, we were his first customer of the day.

For your enjoyment, I took a picture. The first door is ajar and doesn't look like it can even open.

Anniversary Get-A-Way

I was talking to my boy yesterday about our up coming trip a bit. We are taking him to my sisters house where he'll get to play with his cousins, and it came up that we weren't coming home. He asked why, so I told him that me and his mom have been married for 10 years, and we are going to go and spend some time together.

THEN he said, "Why? You've been together for 10 years!"

Ahh children. Sure made me laugh though.

VBS Update

VBS has finished, and we all survived!!!

We had a good time, and I'm exhausted. We averaged 26 people (workers and kids) with a high of 27 and a low of 24.

GameSpot Mobile

I think I'm in love.

Ok, Maybe not, but I am way excited about an email I received this morning. It was an email from GameSpot talking about their new Gamespot Mobile which is currently in Beta.

First, for those that don't know, Gamespot is a game review page. You can see what how the "experts" rank a game, as well as how other people rate a game. It's really a helpful site when you're buying a game, there's nothing worse than spending money on a game, and get it home and find out it's crap.

More than once I've been at the store (used game store actually) and saw a game that looks really cool, and wondered how it was... well now, I'll be able to pull out my phone, and look it up much easier than before.

This is just too cool.

Another mobile test

I'm curious if I can also post pictures as well...

This is a picture of a truck at work. It must have remote entry, but this person better hope he doesn't lose his keys.

Mobile Blogging

I'm checking out the new mobile bloggiing feature of Google. Might mean more frequent posts...

We'll see.

VBS

Vacation Bible School starts this evening. I guess we'll see how ready I really am.

I'm hoping things go well, and I would love to have a group half the size my sister's church had!

We are trying something new this year. A Sunday Night through Thursday Night VBS with a Friday Night Parents night.

I've gone out and bought some Hawaiian Shirts. The Theme is Outrigger Island, so we'll be in the islands this week.

10 year Anniversary

Today is our 10th wedding anniversary! It's really hard to believe it's been 10 years. We are planning to go out to dinner tonight, and I'm really looking forward to it. Our real gift is a trip to Colorado Springs in a couple weeks.

I have truly been blessed to have her as my wife.

Busy Weekend

I had a good, but busy weekend. Friday, I managed to get the yard mowed, the fence line sprayed (to kill the grass growing in it), around the pool sprayed (Same reason), and the sandbox sprayed (yep, you guessed it, same reason). And I got the garden weeded, and got the grass trimmed back around the tomato plants (since I couldn't weed in there.

And that was just Friday evening.

Saturday, I managed to get the back porch cleaned off. I probably should have taken a picture to show you, but I was really just too embarrassed to show anyone how hideously messy it really was, so no pictures for you.

It wasn't all work though, I did have some nice time playing games, and doing some reading. Church was good, except for getting drenched helping people get from the education building to the sanctuary dry.

And I made it to the grocery store. I forgot that I don't go to the store on Sundays, and at the first of the month. Sunday it was both!

12 days till our trip, and I can't wait!

Flash

I found out today that there is a vulnerability in the Flash player if you don't have the latest version.

You really need to check which version of Flash you are running (on all browsers you have installed) Firefox's flash can be a different version than IE. And when you patch one, that does NOT patch the other one. You can check which version you are running at http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=tn_15507&sliceId=1

And if you need to upgrade to the latest version you can do that at
http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash

BTW, when you check, the latest Windows version should look like WIN 9,0,124,0

Cub World Camping Trip

Armor
Originally uploaded by jarrard@swbell.net

Over the weekend, we had our camping trip to Cub World at Zinc Ranch. It was a lot of fun.
This year, we camped near a castle they have built there, so they had the boys make swords, shields and swords. My wife and I made his sword and shield. It was really cool and he likes them very much. Then Friday, I made his helmet. It wasn't as cool as I would like, but its not bad. It even has padding in the helmet. He was happy with the set, so we were ready for our camping trip.

So, we went Saturday morning and had a great time. The grass was WAY high, but the castle rocked!!! The kids had a great time storming the castle and fighting for ground. It was an awesome time. Saturday, my boy got hurt though. He was at the castle playing and basically ran into a pole. I'm not sure if it was inside or out, but he gave himself a little shiner.

Inside
Originally uploaded by jarrard@swbell.net


Outside
Originally uploaded by jarrard@swbell.net

Memorial Day

IMAG0216
Originally uploaded by jarrard@swbell.net

Every year, Floral Haven raises hundreds of casket flags of US servicemen who's flags have been given to them. There were hundreds of flags all over. It was a wonderful site!

On Memorial Day, they lower all the flags, and it's a huge undertaking, so they have invited all the Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts and Brownies to come help. This is the second year me and my boy have been able to go and help take down the flags.

This year, we started with my grandfathers flag. He served in the US Navy and died 10 years ago this summer. It was very heart warming to see my son and his friends lower my grandfathers flag and fold it.

Camping trip?

We woke up to rain this morning. Rain and camping just doesn't mix. It's not too bad if you set up dry and are there long enough for everything to dry out before packing up. As it is, the ground is probably already soaked.

Well, here we go.

Better gas mileage

As everyone knows, gas now costs an arm and a leg. Last week it cost me over $100 to fill up both vehicles. This is just pretty crazy, and I know it's not going to get better. Also with all the ethenol the gas companies are putting into the gas, my miles per gallon has dropped.

The gas mileage usually runs between 22.3 and 27.7 mpg. I think once I've had the car to over 30 mpg.

I watched a news story a couple weeks ago about slowing down would help with fuel efficiency, so I decided to give it a try. I decided that I'd not drive faster than around 62 mph.

After the first tank of gas, I got 29.5 mpg. Yesterday, I just filled up from my second tank, and I got 30.2 mpg. It really does help. At least for the first 2 weeks I've tried it, I've raise my fuel efficiency by around 10%. That's about a 1 way trip to Tulsa I'm saving each week. Over a months time that will save me enough for 2 round trips to Tulsa! Which is close to half a tank.

And the truth is, you don't lose that much time going somewhere. At 65 mph you can go 65 miles in 1 hour (hence the catchy name). But at least on a daily basis, I'm not going 65 miles. I'm going about 25 miles or so. So it takes me about 1-2 minutes longer to get to work than if i drove 65.

For the moment, I plan on continuing to drive at around 62.

Overwhelmed

Do you ever have so much to do, you just completely and utterly overwhelmed?

On the bright side, with this busy weekend coming up, hopefully I'll have some good blog fodder.

How does your garden grow?

Well, I've had 2 posts today cause I've been reminded that it's been over a month since I last posted. I'm not sure it counts but I've thought about it a lot.

Anyway, My garden is doing pretty well, though the brussel sprouts didn't come up.

I found it very amusing that I already have 3 tomatoes and 1 jalapeño. The corn is doing nicely as well.

Spelling Words

Now that school is about over, I wanted to share with everyone this WONDERFUL piece of software I found a little over a month ago. It's called My Spelling Words.

My boy had been having some problems with his spelling words in school. In fact, it was getting worse. Before I found this program, the last 3 tests were F, F, D. The conventional ways of writing your spelling words out over and over just wasn't working, at least for him.

So, I did what any good geek dad would do, I hit Google and that's when I found this program.

The reviews of it were great, but I don't put much faith in reviews that are listed on the software's own web page... who knows i they were really written or not.

But it had a 30 day free trial, so I figured what did we have to lose?

First week using this program to help him study his words, he made a 100%!!!

WOW!!! But was it just a fluke?

Week 2, 100%, Week 3, 100%!


At this point, I figured it was worth the $20. But it continues.


Week 4, 95%, Week 5 100%

Needless to say, I can't say enough good things about this program.

you do need a sound card and a microphone if you are going to use it.