Really not a redneck

I sat down to write up a post about our labor day outing, but I noticed that Jill beat me to it. She did a much better job than I could have done, so I'll just let you read hers.

I will say that she makes me sound like Jethro from the hills, which I am not.


I do enjoy an occasional jaunt into the hills, and I do enjoy the gentlemanly art of marksmanship. I do not, however, say "get-er-done", nor do I line dance, and I am quite certain that I've never tasted road kill. I'm really not a redneck (although my neck is currently a bright shade of red from a sunburn from the trip). And even if you believe Jill's post and think that I am such a creature, look at this picture- see, she's one too! Look how much the boys have grown up in the last year!


On a related topic- I really like my Wrangler. It's so much fun. I made Jill get out and take some pictures, and even a video. Sorry, Jill! One interesting thing about pictures and video, is that hills never look as big as they actually are in real life.



Here's another good picture from the trip. Parker has been learning about erosion at school, an look! A perfect example.





Here's a video of the valley we were exploring. Isn't it beautiful? It's such a foreign beauty to what I am accustomed.

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The Storm

It's the monsoon season here. That means that every so often a crazy huge storm dumps the equivalent of a small lake on us over a few hours time. There haven't been any storms at our house this season, and I was beginning to wonder if it was ever going to rain. Well, the storm hit on Monday last week.

It was about 2:45 and I was getting ready to leave to pick up the kids. They get out of school at 3:00 and walk over to our meeting spot by 3:10. I noticed that the sky suddenly got a lot darker and then, boom, the lake started falling. I got into the jeep and headed over a bit early so I arrived at 2:58. I could barely see. The roads were flooded and the wind was blowing like you see on TV when a hurricane hits. Some poor kids were trying to walk or bike home, but they were soaked and the wind was blowing them around.


I got to the parking lot and looked around for the kids. I wasn't really expecting to see them, because I thought that maybe the teachers would hold the kids inside for a few minutes to see if the storm would blow over.

Then I saw them. They came running from behind a building trying to make their way to the jeep through the storm. They made it to me, soaked through and through and climbed into the car. I really wish I would have had a camera, because they looked like they'd just climbed out of a pool with their clothes, backpacks, and instrument cases. It turns out that the teachers let all the kids out 10 minutes early, so the teachers could go help manage traffic. My kids were out huddling behind a building for 10 minutes in a huge thunderstorm. Hmmm. I find it interesting that the school didn't have a plan to deal with a rainstorm at the end of the day. This is a very likely occurrence, and they didn't even consider it. It makes me wonder if they have a plan for things like armed gunmen at the school, or fighting at recess ;)

When we got home, our neighbor's tree had blown over, fortunately into her yard, not mine.

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The Man Cold

I'm sick. I think it may be a man cold. I'm a poor little bunny!

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The latest project

I don't really like doing home improvement projects. I think that it's because I'm worried that I'll mess it up. But sometimes you've just got to do it.

Summer is coming to an end here in AZ, and it's going to start cooling off (yes it cools off here!). I'd like to be able to remove the hard-top from my jeep so I can enjoy the wonderful winter with the breeze running her fingers through my hair. The photo shows the desired result. To accomplish this, I ordered a winch/hoist system so I can get the hard-top off whenever I want.

The project started, as they usually do, with me thinking it will be easy.


The first step was to move all of the shelving and storage from one side of the garage to the other. Why can't they just have basements in AZ? Anyway, that took three hours last Saturday.

The rest of the project (in my mind) was supposed to go as follows: drill 4 or 5 holes and plug in the winch- done! Wrong. First I had to assemble the frame that holds the hardtop. It wasn't too hard, but it took some time, mostly because the instructions they mailed me were wrong.

Then I had to attach the anchor eye-bolts to the ceiling. Hoping that there was a nice strong 2x6 right in the spot where I wanted to screw it in, I peeked up into my attic space. No dice. Where I wanted to attach was between two joists, and of course the joists were the wrong direction. The instructions warned that if you pull on the lag bolt sideways (transverse to the direction of the joist) it could rip out through the side of the 2x4. Is that true? I dunno, but it sounds bad. I also didn't have a lot of room to change the lift location, my garage is pretty tight. It would have probably been OK to attach the hoist the way it was, but I figured better safe than sorry.

So I decided to put a cross member between the joints in the right location and attach to that. I bought a 2x4 and some joist hangars to attach between the joists. There was an access panel for the attic space in the garage, and I thought I could just crawl up in there and work. Then I tried it- no go, too small. So I had to cut a new access panel over in the work area. That ended up being really hard and messy. When I pulled out the piece of drywall, I discovered that it was two sheets thick, no wonder it was so hard to cut. I climbed up in there and nailed in the hangars and cross-member. If this seems wrong to any of you experienced builder-types, please let me know! Then I climbed down and drilled the holes for the lag-bolts, and screwed them in.

The next task was to attach the winch to the wall. It was simple, but the instructions were funny- they told me to 'get a strong friend to hold the winch while tightening the bolts.' Well- I don't need a strong friend! I only almost dropped the winch once!


After that it was pretty easy. I just had to attach the pulleys and run the cable through. Then I hooked the frame to the pulley.

The last steps were to back in the jeep, remove the bolts that hold the top to the jeep, attach the frame to the top, and hoist away! It works great! Here is the final result.

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Braces Suck!

Dad was wrong, it hurt a lot. Poor 11yo! Anyone have words of advice or encouragement for a sad boy who wants to die?

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It won't hurt very much

The 11yo is getting braces today. We were discussing the process at breakfast.

"Is it going to hurt, dad?", He asked.

"Not very much", I replied, "It's not pain free, but there are things in life that hurt a lot more."

The 9yo jumped in, "Like getting married?"
(9yolds don't think much of girls or marriage)

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The next chapter...

I received a job offer from Intel today. It will be doing simulation and process improvement work similar to what I did at Daifuku. It looks like a great job. I'll start sometime in September. Thanks to all of you who were concerned for us and prayed for us.

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The Faces of Terror

Here are a couple of shots from our February trip to Disneyland. They're a bit late, I admit, but they're still funny. Enjoy!



This one is funny because of the personalities. The 9yo was terrified of losing his glases, so he had to keep hold of them. The 11yo actually is scared, despite his fake-scared face. The 6yo was terrified, even though he only looks mildly concerned. This was one of his first "grown-up" rides.






This is the true gem. You can't deny the terror on everyone's face. This is clearly the scarier of the two rides.

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Who is that masked man?

So I'm trying out a new look.













I don't know why, but every few years I'm tempted to grow a beard. Usually it gets itchy right away and I give up. This year I've been growing it for 9 days, which is a record. One new thing this time is the vast amount of whiteness. More evidence that I'm not in my 20s any more.

I've been trying to avoid putting photographs of me on the blog, but I need your help. I'm not sure what to do- should the hair stay or should it go? I've put a poll over on the left. Let me know what you think.

I asked the sunbeams and the vote was 5 to 2 against the hair.

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First Day of School 2008

School starts early here in the heat.

The 11yo is starting 6th grade and he was SO nervous. All the teachers and different classrooms is all very intimidating. Despite the nerves, after the first day was all over he said that it was SO boring- the teachers just went over rules. They apparently have a lot of rules. None of his friends are in his classes- except one boy in band. More about band later.

The 9yo is in 4th grade and he claimed to not be nervous. He got the teacher that Connor had, so that's OK. The real tragedy is that none of his friends are in his class :(

The 6yo is in first 1st grade! He's so excited to stay at school all day and eat school lunch. It's fun when they like things that they'll hate later.

The first day went great and everyone came home happy.

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What is this?

There has been a lot of noise outside recently.

You know the noise your bike makes when you stick a playing card into the spokes? The sound around here is like thousands of children are biking around with cards in the spokes. I thought maybe it was crickets, but the sound was wrong. I was in the back yard the other day and noticed that I could distinguish a location of one of the sounds- it was in a big bush. So I noodled around until I found the culprit. Ugly, isn't he? I grabbed the camera and fearfully snuck my thumb up next to him. I kept imagining the bug leaping onto my thumb and biting, stinging, planting eggs or whatever ugly bugs do. However, he was harmless. There must be thousands of these around in the trees and bushes to make that much noise.

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We only got lost once...

This morning we all got up early and went on our first real Jeep adventure.

I did a bit of research online and found this offroad playground about a half-hour from home. It's just north of Saguaro Lake, no permits required. It called Rolls OHV, which is a little bit too much like "rolls over" for a newbie offroader like myself. What does OHV stand for? Dunno.
We hit a few pretty big hills and had a couple of pretty exciting moments, but overall we kept it tame. Anywhere that was too extreme, we just went another way. The 11yo thought we were stuck once, but I diabused him of that idea with a little 4Low Jeep power. It really is an amazing machine.


After a while the kids were hot and ready to head home. I could see the paved road across the way, but it was a bit tricky getting out. I did have the printout of the roads from the link, but it wasn't really any help, because for some reason there weren't any street signs! (jk) We ended up a bit lost in this area which was used more by motorcycles. The was bad because 1) the turns were sharp and banked at a 45 degree angle, 2) the paths were all really narrow and the bushes and trees were pressing in, and 3)I have a new Jeep with nice paint that I would prefer to not scratch. I had to very carefully navigate out of there, with a few scouting missons on foot to see where the heck I should go.

We found our way out and made it home OK. Oh, and for those worriers among you: Don't worry, I had like 10 gallons of water, some shovels, and we were in a well used area where help was just a yell away.

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Fashion Disaster

I keep trying to tell them to wear black socks, but this is what I get! And no, the one boy does not wear a blue belt.

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Two new additions

We've had a couple of additions to the family in the last few days. (Updated)















A few months back we had to get rid of a crazy dog who bit 6yo on the face twice. The boys have been sooooooo sad since. They've begged and begged for a new dog. We came across Max and we couldn't turn him down. He's 4-5 years old rescue Brittany Spaniel. He's very mellow and sweet. No barking, no licking. He even lets little kids harass him without a fuss. He's a sweet dog. His original name was Jack, but I thought it sounded too much like someone else in the family, so it became Max.















The other addition came upon us suddenly because my Passat started making a scary noise and stalling. I'm tired of paying good money to keep that old beast running so out it goes! I went today and purchased a great Arizona car- Wrangler Unlimited! I'm really excited to go explore the big desert all around here. Plus it has four doors so it's great for the fam. Also, the back is big enough for the new pooch, Max.















Here's our first trip out to the hills. This is just after we turned around from a really serious hill. I really should have taken a picture of it, but I was so emotionally conflicted about not going up the hill and having to back up, that I forgot. I know I could have made it in the sweet jeep!

Updated: After a few hours of processing time, I'm REALLY glad I didn't try to go up that hill. It was huge, steep, and no one knew where we were. I'm going to stick with beginner trails for a while.

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Plant vs. Animal Kingdom

Yesterday P-diddy and I(A****) were playing animal charades. It was P-diddy's turn and I was having a hard time guessing his animal. It really looked like he was making scrambled eggs and toast. I asked for a clue.


P-diddy: "It has three letters."
Mom: "Is it--zoo???" (I had absolutely no idea!)
P-diddy: "No! It starts with M and ends with M."
Mom: "Is is MOM?"
P-diddy: "Yes!" (Said with an isn't it obvious attitude!)
Mom: "But we are playing animal charades!"
P-diddy came and sat on the bed beside me to have a serious discussion: "Mom-there are two different kingdoms in the world. The plant kingdom and the animal kingdom. And I don't think you are a plant."
(P-diddy is constantly cracking us up! He has a very unique personality!)

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"So You've Had a Bad Day"

Wednesday was not such a good day for me(A****).

Actually, it all started on Monday evening when our dog, Maddie, bit J-dog on the cheek. An ER visit, three stitches and two hours later we had handled that crisis. Unfortunately, we decided the dog had to go. J*** called the shelter to give Maddie back and was told that we needed to home quarantine her for 10 days to watch for rabies.


Then Wednesday came along. For those of you who don't know, J*** and I have been planning our 15 year anniversary trip to Cancun. It took us forever to decide when to go and where to stay. I also felt obligated to book it through a co-worker who is a struggling single mom. J*** did not feel this same obligation and thought I was crazy! We finally got it all figured out and then we had some struggles booking it online thru said coworker's site. The website was behaving strangely and kept freezing up. Anyways- I found out on Wednesday afternoon that I had double booked the same reservation! Why would I book a trip for me and J**** on the same flight to the same hotel at the same time twice? It was obviously an honest mistake and besides the stupid website kept freezing up! I thought it would be easy to resolve but boy was I mistaken. The travel agency refuses to credit us for one of our reservations and the cancellation will cost us $800! (We are still fighting for our $!) The whole incident stressed me out and gave me a gigantic headache.

So now for the rest of the day...J*** had told me that Maddie was to be locked up at all times for obvious reasons. But I felt sorry for her and let her out. I was playing a video game with C-dog and Maddie was sleeping at my feet. J-dog came in, bent over and guess what! The unthinkable happened and Maddie bit him again in the same exact spot and tore out all of his stitches. I felt terrible and I was scared to call J***. He had listened to my Cancun trip hysterics all afternoon and now this!

An ER visit, three stitches, 2 hours later (and lots of crying from me) the crisis was resolved. Unfortunately, the dog really needed to go now. Against the boys' wishes J*** and I took her to the animal control on Thursday for her 10 day quarantine. It was a terrible experience and even J*** was choked up.

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The Hike to Blueberry Hill

Our family enjoys hiking. At least we used to when we lived right next to the beautiful Wasatch Mountains. We have gone on a hike here, but it was an hour and a half from home, up in the mountains northeast of Phoenix. We went last June thinking it would be much cooler in the mountains. It was cooler, but it was still 95 degrees and much too hot to hike. Allison was too concerned with making the kids drink, and forgot to drink enough herself, so she threw up all the way home. Yesterday, we tried again, closer to home, with a neighbor family as guides.

They called the hike "blueberry hill". The 5yo loves blueberries and asked if we could pick some there. There were no blueberries, but there were many beautiful blue flowers. That's where the name came from, the flowers. There were also white and yellow poppy flowers. There were also a wide variety of cacti, lizards, and sun. Maddie (our puppy) came along and got so hot that she was foaming at the mouth and hyperventilating. Thank goodness that we had a hiking dog bowl! (Thanks JB!) It really is an alien landscape here.
Good fun was had by all.

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Fast Sunday

Found attached to the calendar early last month:

Dear J***,

They cancelled fast sunday. By the way how is your day. Just to tell you the boys didn't do this so don't punishe them

sinceraly,
A***** your wife.

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Dog Daze

Well, the Tamagotchis and the Nintendogs didn't work! I've been trying to prevent this day from happening. But it's hard to be the kind of dad who refuses to let his three boys get a dog. I do have a good excuse to not want a dog. Our first dog was a disaster! I was trying to stall until they really wanted one and really worked me to get one. The "asking" really started this last month. As the 8yo put it, "If I hadn't whined at you so much, then we wouldn't have gotten a dog. So sometimes good things come from whining." Whatever.

We went to the dog adoption day last Sat. at the PetSmart. We wanted to adopt to get an adult dog to avoid all the puppy issues (potty training, crying a night, chewing, etc.). But of course, they had a couple of really cute black lab puppies. Some background: my sister has a really sweet black lab. So we went for it.





They had to do the surgery to infertilize her, so we had to wait until this Thurs to get the dog. It was all the boys could think about: How many more days for the dog; When are we going to get the dog; Why can't we have the dog now? Every prayer included the line, "thank you that we can get a puppy!"
Then they called on Thursday- the clinic wasn't open so we had to wait until Friday. Uh oh. It was a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth. We went out and picked her up Fri. at lunch. She was really woozy and vomitous from her anesthesia. So we took her home and put her to bed in her kennel.






















Here are my observations after 24 hours of dog. She is very sweet. She knows how to scratch at the door if she needs to go (she's only had a couple of accidents). She slept through most of last night. She seems to like us. It's going OK. There was a problem agreeing on a name. The final compromise is Maddie.

She's at my feet right now chasing her tail. I guess having a dog isn't so bad.

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Come on let's cruise ya got nothin' to lose

This was a big week for the 5yo!

This week the 5yo learned how to ride his bike without training wheels! I'd been noticing that he was starting to balance on his scooter, and I thought that if he can balance on one two-wheeled toy, he should be able to do all two-wheeled toys. So off with the training wheels!

He was actually pretty excited about it and I grabbed onto his seat to support him as he pedaled. Off we go! We biked down the sidewalk to the nearby park, and then around the park. He'd start to balance and I'd let go. This resulted in a lot of crashes onto grass and into bushes. But he was a trooper and kept going. He was actually having a lot of fun couldn't stop giggling (I think that the giggling was the major cause for most of the crashes) I was exhausted and my back was really sore because his bike is really short, so we called it a day.

The next night we went back. He started doing a bit better and was working on his braking, steering and balancing. He'd almost get it and then steer off the sidewalk onto the grass, and then tumble over. On the way back to our house on day 2, he just took off. He rode all the way home by himself, and was circling the driveway when I made it home! Eureka.

The next night was golden, he rode pretty much all the way around the park by himself, except or a few forays down the grass hills. He said that it was accidental, but I think he liked going fast down the hills.

There was one bad crash, and he landed on his handlebars. It looked really painful!

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