Category Archives: Fun

Driving in the hay field

Adventure, Family, Fun, ,

So yesterday, I mentioned that we went camping last weekend.  The spot where we camped is on the back side of our hay field which lays on a bit of a slope.  We drove both vehicles down to the edge of the woods and left them there overnight so we could have easy access to the junk that remained in them.

This was a month ago...before the grass really grew!

Since we knew it was to get hot, we decided to get an early start.  I am so glad there are no near-neighbors because I started the chainsaw at 6:30 am.  Anyhow, we packed up camp and planned to move the car and van to the end of the hay field where I am erecting my bear-deterring fence for the bees.  Emily started up the Subaru and drove right off though the thigh-high grass in the field.  The van did not fare so well.  The tires spun but the van never moved.

It was clear to me that we were not going to simply drive out so we had to go to plan b.  And then it struck me.  My friend Maria over at Chicken Blog sent me a cool book last year called Fifty Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do).  One of the things the book suggests is to let your kids drive a car.

So, I climbed out of the van and hollered at Isaac.  He’s 11 (and a year older than I was when I first drove a car).  I told him to get in and drive.  He looked at me with that, “Yeah right” look but I opened the door and pointed.  He climbed in and was terrified.  I think that was the proper response.  We did a crash-course on driving and then I went behind the van.  I planned to nudge it to get it moving while he drove it slowly and steadily across the field.  He started off ok, but when it didn’t immediately move, he gunned it.  White smoke rolled from under the tires.

“Dad, the speedometer showed 60!”  I have no doubt about it.  Isaac drove the car 60 mph in the hay field but didn’t move an inch!  We re-visited our driving lesson and on try #2, he successfully drove the van right across the hay field and up to the dirt road.  The boy was so excited and could not have been prouder of himself.  Although his friends did not believe him when he got back to school on Tuesday, he will probably always remember the first time he got to drive a car.  Sometimes a little (controlled) danger can be a good thing!

Camping!

Family, Fun, Nature, WV, , ,

Holy cow it’s been awhile since I have posted. It seems like time is flying! I certainly need to remedy that. So, last weekend, the hottest weekend of the year (so far), we went camping on the bee farm. I had to set more fence posts in the ground and I have been itching to stay up and see the stars and listen to the crickets. You know, they say you can find the temperature by counting cricket chirps for 15 seconds and adding 37. I don’t think I could count fast enough to make a good measurement so I am sure that it works. It was hot!

Anyhow, I dug more fence posts and cut a bunch of trees and brush. The kids mostly read their kindles but they also went on a rock hunt. I told them I would pay them if they would find sufficient rocks to make a proper fire pit. I wanted to hear crickets and by golly, I wanted to smell like smoke before I laid down for the night. The kids were great. They actually dug some rocks out of the ground. I suppose they saw it as an easy way to make things happen fast…find huge rocks and dig them up…make Dad carry them to make for an instant fire pit. Well, they did a great job though my back may never forgive me after carrying some of their finds.

All of this is to say, we got pretty hot and sweaty outside working all day. Luckily, I bought that tank I mentioned in the last post. We had 35 gallons of water to set the concrete posts, cook and bathe. Of course, bathing was a relative thing, but we made the best of it taking a cold water bath at our campsite.

Oh, I don’t want to forget…on the way walking the path between the tent and the car (which housed the water tank), I happened upon a copperhead. He wasn’t wearing pants thankfully or there would have been two of us in a code brown status. I grabbed a shovel and went after him but he was headed for the woods too.

We finally got cleaned up and went to bed. Rather, we went to clumpy ground…it could hardly be called a bed (gee whiz have I become soft in my old age). I never did get a chance to really look at the stars.  Still, camping on our land was absolutely wonderful!  We ate mountain pies and roasted marshmallows.  We giggled in the tent and woke up groggy.  It was a marvelous weekend, stiff backs and necks aside.

There is lots more fun to report including driving the van 60 mph across our hay field…but you will have to wait until next time to read about that!

Milkshake mania!

Awesome, Fun,

My company recently bought a restaurant in South Charleston, WV which will soon be converted into office space.  As a part of the process, all of the restaurant equipment has to be sold so remodeling can begin.  This was a fairly large, well known, established restaurant so there is a ton of stuff in the building.  Lots of restaurant folks have been through the place buying things they need but I was very fortunate to be among the first round of people to get a shot at a few things.  Let me introduce to you my new best friend…

That’s right…in my kitchen, as we speak, I have an industrial strength, commercial grade milkshake making beast!  This, my friends, is the Hamilton Beach 94900 which is capable of bringing frozen goodness and delight to men, women and children alike!  The price was right and karma was with us so we scored a gem!

But before you get too jealous, let me take you back to its beginnings.  Mainly, it was gross.  The sanitary status of the machine was questionable.  In fact, there was still a chocolate chip and gooey icecream on the impeller when I received “the Beast”.  After much Mean Green and elbow grease, the milkshake machine was made whole again.

So, we have made several milkshakes with this thing and it is so much nicer to use than a blender.  It’s  faster to set up, faster to clean, faster to produce a milkshake and it makes smoother milkshakes hands down.  I love the new milkshake machine and I think it is a hit with the family too!

Our woods

Adventure, Awesome, Family, Fun, Nature, Thoughts, WV, , , , ,

We spent our time at the property on Saturday walking in the woods.  Our plan was to walk more of the property line as we still haven’t seen the entire place.  We did hike the better part of the boundary and discovered all sorts of excellent things!  Except for the constant chatter of kids, the sounds of the woods were magnificent.  Actually, the chatter wasn’t so bad either as the kids were having fun.

When I was a kid, hiking in the woods was not high on my list of fun.  I played in the woods a lot but plain old hiking wasn’t good for me.  I was so surprised that Isaac and Abigail walked the entire 2 miles in the woods with only a small handful of complaints.  Incredible!

We did walk the better part of the lower edge of the place and saw all sorts of beautiful flowers and animal tracks of all sorts.  There were too many deer tracks to even keep track of but the kids tried to identify every print they came across.

That's Abigail's finger...she's the brave one

We spooked a turkey and saw the biggest centipede the kids had ever seen.  We found just a little bit of poison ivy and a lot of slippery moss.  Squirrels barked and birds announced our path through the woods.  All around us was noise but it felt like silence.  It was marvelous walking in our woods and this weekend was the reason we bought the place!  I am absolutely positive that my blood pressure is still lowered because of it!

Santana

Audio, Awesome, Fun,

I was in Las Vegas all week last week for a conference related to work.  It’s funny – I work in technology and the conference was related to technology.  The only thing was, there was no technology available at the conference so I was stuck with email and internet via phone.  So, anyhow, I am back and am somewhat comforted by the sweet hum of my computers.

I won’t bore you folks with conference details.  Instead I will share my favorite part of the conference…Carlos Santana was in concert at the Hard Rock in Las Vegas.  We got to see him opening night which was pretty cool.  Even cooler was the fact that we were something like 15 rows back and at center stage.  We could actually see the band and stuff.

I like Santana’s music and I especially like some of his most recent stuff.  Of course, he has been releasing great music for 40 years and it’s hard to say anything bad about most of his music.  We got to enjoy a tour through his years as a performer and it was a blast.

(click the image above for a video.  If that link doesn’t work on your machine, try the one here)

He’s a free spirit and kind of fun to listen to when he talks.  I can’t really explain it but he feels very “spiritual” in his own way.  He also has marijuana leaves as one of his backgrounds on stage.  Surprisingly, I didn’t smell a single bit of smoke.

for B.H.

 

The view from my room

So, I am glad to be back from Las Vegas and if you ever get a chance, definitely go and see Santana in concert!

Eight is Great!

Awesome, Family, Fun

I have been a bit behind in posting this…Abigail turned 8 this weekend!  Holy cow it is hard to believe how time has passed!  Abigail is a delight (except first thing in the morning) and she brings a smile to my face just thinking about her!

Abigail - age 4

Since this post is about her, I am going to brag a little.  I have said before that we are a bunch of reading fiends.  Both kids tend to get in trouble in school a lot for reading too much.  Normally one wouldn’t think of squelching a child’s desire to read, but my kids read non-stop, even when they are not supposed to be reading.  So, here’s the bragging part – Abigail has more Accelerated Reader points than anyone else in her whole school (not grade) and she is only in 2nd grade.  And I mean she has a lot more points!

Just this morning I had to fuss at Abigail to brush her teeth rather than read.  You see, she got a new book on the Greek and Roman gods.  She is entranced by their stories.  Her fascination with this one though, is that it has the gods’ names written in Greek letters.  She took it upon herself to learn the letters and sounds and copy every god’s name in Greek.  Isn’t that cool?

So, this weekend we had a big party for her at the local rec center.  We rented “the party deck” at the pool and invited family and a bunch of her friends.  Usually the place is not crowded but this weekend another group was there that illustrated every single bad stereotype of West Virginia.  Oh. My. WORD!  In spite of their antics, we had a great time and just stuck to our end of the pool.  It was so fun to see Abigail and a gaggle of little girls running around having an absolute ball!  We ate pizza and drank fizzy drinks and had rainbow colored cupcakes!

My folks and Emily’s people were all in attendance so I suspect we had 30-40 people all together.  Abigail, being a socialite, was delighted to make her rounds and it was really great to see her shine.  Instead of presents, she asked people to donate money to the Red Cross for Japan.  Isn’t she cool!?  Honest to goodness, it was totally her idea.  She started the trend with asking people to donate pet supplies for the shelter last year.  Isn’t she cool?!

Well, we are back to the daily drudge of being an 8 year old.  It’s a grind you know?  Still, I see her and I could not be more proud of that beautiful little girl.  Eight is indeed great!

Pregnant by Postcard

Fun

I think my favorite April Fool’s prank involved a postcard.  You may wonder what fun could possibly come from a simple postcard…let me tell you a story

Emily and I met our first day of college.  We knew each other but didn’t hang out much the first semester.  By the end of the second semester though, we decided we ought to start dating.  We hung around all the time and were great friends even before we started dating.  We wrote letters steady through the first summer and talked on the phone quite a bit.  I bet we wrote a letter 4-5 days each week.  We were a bit of a high point for profitability in the post office.  Most times our writing was silly stuff but it kept us going very well through the long summers.  I think it was probably cooler writing letters and courting long-distance than it would be nowadays.  Phone calls were still expensive and no one had computers so we communicated because it was worth it.

During spring break of our sophomore year, we decided to play a prank on my mom.  She worked downtown (Tionesta, my hometown with a population of around 600) so got the mail every day at the post office.  My parents got a PO box after the 900th time the mail box at the house was destroyed by the snow plows.  It was a prefect part of my plan!

Since human nature requires that anyone who touches a postcard reads the message, we decided to exploit the fact that my mom would in fact touch the post card when she picked it up.  As a bonus, since the town was so small, we were certain that the postal workers would also read the post card which would add to the fun.

So, Emily and I worked it out and on the fateful day, my mom called the house where I was waiting.  “We need to talk.  Come down town right now.”  The trap was playing out perfectly.  You see, Emily wrote a postcard informing me she was pregnant.  “What are we going to do?”, she lamented.  Of course, she was not even partially pregnant.

Mom confronted me, I confronted her (afterall, it was addressed to me, not her) and we eventually had a great laugh over the whole thing.  So, while I do not ever condone pulling the “I’m pregnant” trick on your significant other, it is pretty funny if you pull the trick on folks once removed.  Although, such a trick may be harmful to your health!

Yellow one

Family, Fun,

When I was a kid, we always played “the punch buggy game” wherein you would search for Volkswagen bugs and smack the daylights out of your smaller, helpless brother, just hard enough to torment but not hard enough to leave a bruise so your mom and dad would ever know.  You know?  That game.  It was a bunch of fun but, of course, it became more and more rare to see them as time went on since they stopped production.  We stopped playing at some point.

Of course, VW now has the beetles and the advertising campaign that goes along with them.  Adults saying, “Green one” and slugging a co-worker’s arm.  My kids started playing that (was it a year ago?) and we still have a big competition pretty much every day to see who can rack up the most “hits”.  We do not actually hit each other but rather just collect points.

Some other friends play a game where they get points any time they see a yellow car.  We play that game too.  As we live near a 3 schools (who ever thought it was a good idea to put three large schools near each other?  I mean traffic…hello?!), there are numerous school buses which do indeed count.

Now, the holy grail of this game is the elusive yellow VW.  It’s double points you see.  We always require that someone else sees the car so no one can make up sightings, especially for yellow VWs.  For the kids, that puts them at a disadvantage since they are stuck in class all day or are riding with Emily or me who are always playing the game too.  I take a little extra liberty with the rules too.  All I need is proof of a sighting, so I take pictures of any yellow cars or VW beetles and text/email them to Emily and the kids.

All of these pictures are my trophies.  That’s right, I am on a constant VW safari across the hills and hollers of Charleston, West-by-God-Virginia.  I am on the hunt and I am a mighty hunter!

Does anyone else play these games?  All the time or just on trips?  Can you help fuel our madness?

Biker chick

Adventure, Family, Fun, ,

When we live in Nashville, we had a really nice situation for walking and learning to ride bikes.  We had a flat acre of land on a dead-end street.  I bet we walked 5 days a week while Isaac was learning to ride his bike.  We started with a Red Rider tricycle, graduated through various plastic trikes and finally onto a 2-wheeler with training wheels.  We spent a bunch of time riding, now and then raising the training wheels a little so he would have to balance more and more on his own.  One day he had enough and asked me to take the trainers off completely.  I figured we were in for a few skinned knees, but I kid you not, he jumped on the bike and never wrecked a single time!  He was about 5 when he figured it all out.

Isaac’s first time riding w/o training wheels – 2005

We moved to WV when Abigail was 3 so she didn’t have much time to ride bikes like Isaac did.  There is plenty of land here in WV.  In fact, there may be more land here than in Nebraska.  WV is just wrinkled into a small package that is straight up and down!  So, learning to ride a bike here requires that you find a flat piece of ground somewhere.  Last weekend, Emily was at a training class so the kids and I headed over to the track at the nearby high school.  Even at almost-8, Abigail was still in training wheels on her bike.  Before heading to the track, I raised her training wheels a little so she would have to balance a little.

Click the image for a movie!

(Click here if the above movie will not play on your machine)

We walked a few laps and Abigail was beyond fed up.  She got so mad she said, “I wish you would just take those stupid training wheels off.”  Being a good Boy Scout, I had a wrench with me so I had them off in 5 minutes.  I helped her a few laps around but she pretty quickly caught on and is now officially a bike rider!  Now that I have no more training-wheel-encumbered kids in the house, I think I have finally figured out that training wheels do more to slow kids from learning to ride a bike than they help.

So, Abigail is now a biker chick.  She loves riding and wants to go all of the time!  I am super happy for her and so proud that she got mad and decided what she wanted…and made it happen!  Bikes first…next, the world!

Sign of a fine romance?

Fun, Thoughts,

I thought I was pretty hip and still somewhat aware of what is going on around the “cool scene” these days but apparently not.  I was walking through a local grocery store last night looking for a bag of potatoes or a new cheese slicer for Emily’s Valentine’s Day present when I walked past a sign.  I cruised right on by until my brain finally registered what my eyes saw.  Do you ever have that double take thing going on in your head?  So I circled back around and decided that this blog, ever a bastion of freedom, culture and honeybees, needed to report on the new face of romance for this year.

Behold:

Now this is a G-rated blog so I won’t say too much more.  Instead I will leave it to you folks to make of this what you will.  Instead, I will just remind you of some of the other interesting signs I have seen around.

I would also like to report that we will no longer have to just cut the cheese around our house…we can now slice the cheese!  Happy Valentine’s Day!