Mimi and Papa bought the kids a Nintendo Wii for their birthdays this year (!!). Dad (Papa) found it in a Wal-Mart in Houston, shlepped it on a plane home to Dallas, then mailed it to us. The globe-trottin’ Wii came in a nondescript brown paper wrapped box. But the longer it sat on top of the TV, awaiting opening for Bria’s birthday (since her’s comes first on Feb. 7th), the more sure the kids strategized that a Wii most certainly awaited inside.
So Dar and I decided to ratchet down the certainty a bit by replacing the contents of the box with some miscellaneous items we had bought for Bria’s birthday this year. I then hooked up the Wii to our TV while the kids were in school that day.
Here’s what happened right after Dar “accidentally” dropped the box while pulling it down from the TV:
On our Labor Day campout with Papa David and Granny Ann, they had just bought this super-cool (literally) ice cream/frozen yogurt/ slushy maker. We had some amazing homemade ice cream that week.
So lo and behold what shows up on my doorstep this week! We just couldn’t wait until Christmas, so we opened it early. We christened it with a cookies-n-cream recipe yesterday (yum), then an Italian soda slushy this afternoon. And tonight we made a rich chocolate frozen yogurt (double yum).
This thing makes it sooo easy to make frozen desserts. No ice, no salt. Just this permanent freezer bowl that you keep frozen until time to use that does all of the magic. 15-20 minutes is all it takes to make most recipes. Clean up is easy, too. It’s Cuisinart ICE-20 and now has a permanent place on our countertop.
OK, OK, it’s been like forever since I posted anything here. Life has indeed been crazy for me this Fall. Now that all of the kids are in school… like not homeschool, I’ve been rolling out my video production business. Work, work, work.
But the real reason I’ve been so lax here, is that I got caught up watching my team come from 4th place in mid-September to grabbing the Wild Card away from the unsuspecting Padres, then sweeping both the Phillies and the D-Backs to make it into the World Series (tying the postseason 7-0 record of the 1976 Reds). Yeah, this was a season of records for the Rox. They won 23 out of 24 games at one point, and had a storied season… possible MVP and Rookie-of-the-Year candidates, and boasting the highest fielding percentage of all time (besting over a 100 years of teams, folks!).
Yeah, they’re my Rox. But now they’re up to their elbows in Sox (0-2, at this writing), so I thought we needed to send our beloved team along a little Mojo. The kids had Rockies Day at school, where they were able to leave the uniforms at home and dress up to root on the team. They even came home all “tatted up” in Rockies ink. So I just had to take them down to Coors Field (where they just happened to have a rally going on) and shot some video of them acting crazy out on the right field porch. Here’s some stills and a vid of our outing.
This morning, for the first time ever, we took all three of our kids to the same school for their first day of this school year. This morning I have a quiet house for the first time… like ever. It’s strange!
Dar got an email from her good friend Glen. It’s hard to believe it’s been over six years since we’ve seen him last. Another lifetime ago (a.k.a. before we had kids), Glen was working in London and paid for us come over two years in a row. The first year, 1996, we floated down the Nile in Egypt and saw pyramids and tombs and world wonders. The next year we did Venice, the Austrian Alps, and Lake Como in Italy. And both times we got to spend some quality time in the great city of London. Yeah… we wouldn’t be world travelers at all without Glen’s generosity.
We finally got to see Glen again when he came to Denver on business last week. Seems he’s been filling up his time founding companies, contracting with the US Navy to update all of their naval bases, having personal meetings with the Secretary of Defense… mundane stuff like that. Fascinating stuff, actually, and Glen’s a really great, down-to-earth guy to boot. We met up at Denver’s Aquarium, the facility that was raised from the ashes of insolvency by the Landry’s people. At the restaurant part of the facility, the ambiance was great… the food and service was just OK.
On the way back home from our meandering Oregon Trail/ Trout Fishing trip, we stopped at a pull-out on the beautiful WY130 Snowy Range Road. We could hear the stream from the road, and wandered down about 50 yards and Logan baited a hook with a worm… and the magic happened.
This was brook trout nirvana… eight brookies in about 10 minutes. See for yourself:
Our last leg of the Oregon Trail journey had us parting ways with the Trail to head southward into the Sierra Madre Mountains of Wyoming to meet up with a fellow busnut and his family and extended family for a weekend of fishing, eating, hiking, and more eating. Craig Shepard of MN kindly invited us to his annual family camping trip, and gave us exact GPS coordinates to find his spot just over Battle Pass on State Hwy. 70… and boy were those coordinates exact. After huffing and puffing our SpaceShip bus over the pass, about a mile later my new GPS software on the laptop said “turn left in 0.2 miles” and I turned precisely into the secluded spot to see Craig’s MC9 for the second time in as many months.
Craig was off fishing with the kids, but his wife Teri introduced herself and showed us a few places we could park and set up camp in their circle. And we quickly did just that.
We’re about halfway through the trip to see a few sites along the Oregon Trail. We finally found a wireless hotspot in Casper, WY… in a Jehovah’s Witness temple’s parking lot, no less, that I discovered while waiting out a huge storm that passed though here yesterday. I came back here this morning to upload a few pics.
More details, pics, and video to follow (of course)!
Rather than continue to sit around and watch Mom work, the kids and me are heading northward this Saturday up to the North Platte River in NW Nebraska to see parts of the emigrant trails taken westward by over 1/2 million homesteaders, 49-ers, trappers, Mormons, and traders in the 19th century. In the course of a handful of days, we can see several vestiges and landmarks along the Trail (even some surviving wagon wheel ruts), along with good museums (and the occasional roadside oddity).
Our kids are sure to learn something along the way. We’re even taking along Logan’s best friend, Sage, who can hardly wait to go. In this day and age of GameBoy and PlayStation mind-rot, it’s encouraging to see a kid get excited about a good old-fashioned road trip. I’m reading up on what I can to be a halfway knowledgeable “tour guide”, and I’m taking pioneer diaries and stories to read while we’re there. Our “SpaceShip” bus should make slightly better time that the prairie schooner of yore!
We’ll no doubt be able to do them all this time. But, we’ll see where the Trail leads us. If I find some WiFi access points along the way, I’ll post some updates here on the blog. We’re meeting up with busnut Craig Shepard (gumpy) and his family… and hopefully some other busnuts the last week in July near Encampment, WY for some trout fishing. At some point, Sage’s folks and brother will meet us up near Saratoga for even more trout fishing.
